Concrete Progress

Eight days into operation Odyssey Dawn and there have been the first signs that the operation is working on the ground. The rebels have retaken Ajdabiya, with further reports that they have advanced and retaken Brega.

As yet there have been no confirmed cases of civilian deaths due to the air campaign.

The critics of the UN backed action continue to point abstract fingers at events, in an effort to deliberately misunderstand the notion of protecting civilians.

On Saturday morning a concrete example of a civilian in need of protection walked into the Rixos hotel in Tripoli.

Iman al-Obeidi claims that she was detained at a check point and subjected to two days of torture, during which she was gang raped and defecated on. Before she could be properly interviewed, Gaddafi regime minders jumped on her and hustled her away. In the melee a CNN camera crew had their equipment smashed. The Financial Times reporter, Charles Clover was assaulted, as well as other journalists who stepped in to try and defend the woman.

Rumours of rape being used as a weapon by the Gaddafi regime have circulated for weeks.

Perhaps more extraordinary, in a country without the internet, with tapped phones, and all but media but the state broadcaster jamed, was that Libya TV then launched into a propaganda assault on Ms al-Obeidi, calling her a prostitute, ridiculing her story, and declaring that after investigation, including talking to her sister, that it wasn’t her real name; this in addition to branding her mentally ill at the time of arrest.

She is currently one of the main topics of conversation among the queues at petrol stations in Tripoli.

Following fashion

The February issue of Vogue carried an article about Asma al-Assad, which carried the by-line, a rose in the desert. The soft focussed hagiography has been widely ridiculed, in its attempt to paint the dictators wife as a reformer.

The bare facts of the matter; Amnesty is tonight reporting 55 confirmed dead; make shocking reading. But compared to the dire warning last weekend when a column of tanks was seen approaching the town of Dara, in southern Syria, 55 dead does not seem that bad, as a everyone was expecting a repeat of the massacre of Hama, in which at least 10,000 were killed in 1982.

The government has responded with both the carrot and the stick; and with statements that are straight out of the Arab Dictators Handbook. Perhaps the most bizarre example was the statement of ex-foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, “We are not opposed to the Islamic currents that are rational and broad-minded which understand their true roots, but as for Al Qaeda and the Taliban which take their instructions from America, and pretend that they are against it, they are condemnable.”

The carrots offered take the form of pay rises for civil servants, and promises to review media laws. But with regard to the state of emergency, which has been in force since 1963, the government has offered only the vaguest nod towards considering its repeal.

And as the unrest spreads, the stick remains the preferred political tool, and thus the death toll rises and more and more Syrian towns get pulled into the unrest.

In search of the war

News of John Simpson’s arrival in Tripoli perhaps sent shivers down Colonel Gaddafi’s spine, as an omen that the regime is doomed.

But hope is still high in Tripoli.

Last night the foreign minister told assembled journalists that the Gaddafi regime was willing to accept the offers of mediation from the Russians and Turk, not only to conclude a peace treaty with the international community but also with the rebels.

This hope appeared dashed today when Turkey agreed to join the coalition, by sending ships to help enforce the naval blockade, and in doing so clearing the way for NATO to take over the running of operation Odyssey Dawn; and in doing so solve a fractious diplomatic row. Whether anything will come of the Russian offer remains to be seen.

Elsewhere Air Vice-Marshal Greg Bagwell declared that the air strikes had destroyed Gaddafi’s ‘eyes and ears’.

Something that CNN reporter Nic Robertson might attest to.

The Libyan news agency, JANA, announced that civilian houses had been hit in a raid in eastern Tripoli and civilians killed. Thus the minders herded the assembled press from their hotel and took them in search of the story. Unfortunately the bombed out houses could not be found. And after driving around the suburbs of Tripoli for a while the reporters were returned to their hotel.

With news in short supply, in part because of the lack of internet access from Libyan and the tight censorship of the regime, headline writers have resorted to making the most out of the snippets they are fed. Thus today headlines declared an allied success at shooting down a Libyan plane. Dramatic stuff, except that the latest reports claim the plane was destroyed on the ground.

The politics of fear

As the events in Gaza take a turn for the worse, with partisan observers on both sides using the deaths of women and children as rhetorical bargaining chips. Recent polling of Palestinians demonstrates that the stabilising influence of outside mediators may be fuelling the problem.

Defenders of the Hamas government in Gaza point to their being elected, and yet the polls show that their opponents Fatah have more support inside Gaza than the government; 42% vs 33%.

Thus the events of the past ten days may be seen as Hamas attempting shore up its lack of political support by resorting to the stagnant politics of military action in the hope of provoking the Israeli’s into a disproportionate response. Thus gaining international sympathy and perhaps more importantly outrage from the Arab tweet.

This sterile tactic appeared to be working, when last night children playing football were killed seemingly by an Israeli mortar. Yet the bombing at a bus stop in Jerusalem, which has so far claimed the life of a woman, and injured two pregnant women, may have undermined this strategy of trading the lives of women and children for political legitimacy.

The situation is further complicated by the situation in Syria, where anti-government protests in Daraa have led to widespread violence and the reported killing of at least four people in a mosque when it was stormed by security forces. There are unconfirmed reports that the government crackdown is being aided by Hezbollah fighters from both within Syria and from neighbouring Lebanon.

This opens up the spectre of a return to the two-front politics of the intifada.

All of which bodes ill for the discussions between Hamas and President Abbas on unification of the two Palestinian enclaves, a move supported by only a third of the country if the concessions demanded by Hamas are included in any deal.

None of which will help the Abbas government’s attempts to have the Palestinian state recognised by the UN, a move that gained some traction by Israel and the West Bank government jointly co-sponsoring a resolution to have Libya removed from the UN Human Rights Commission last month.

Fire at the heart of Egyptian government

For the second time in 30 days the Ministry of Interior building in Cairo has been the subject of suspected arson.

The previous fire was blamed on police officers attempting to destroy files containing proof of human rights abuses and corruption.

Today’s fire coincided with a march by disgruntled police officers and ministry officials demanding a pay rise. Several thousand were involved in a peaceful protest, which included a march through Tahrir Square, despite there being an official ban on such protests in the square.

It was shortly after an official delegation went into the building, to discuss their demands that the fire broke out on the top floors of the building.

As yet explanation has been given for whom or what started the fire.

But a retired police officer speaking on Al Jazeera Arabic stated that senior figures in the old State Security, recently renamed national Security as part of a reform program, were desperate to prove that the country still needed their services, and had untaken a campaign of chaos to protect their positions. He also stated that within the police force a group had been founded, called ‘officer but honest’ to fight against the corruption and speed up the process of reform within Egyptian security forces.