For most people in the world, retirement is a time of idleness and careful penny-pinching of pensions or savings. Senior Egyptian military officers, however, are not most people in the world. Upon retiring from his post, a senior officer in Egypt's military becomes a governor of a province, a manager of a town, or a head of a city neighborhood. Or he might run a factory or a company owned by the state or the military. He might even manage a seaport or a large oil company. Luckily for him, he also retains his Armed Forces pension, on top of the high salary for his new civilian job. This privileged group holds almost every high position in the state. Egypt is par excellence a republic of retired generals.

Egypt's first post-Mubarak presidential election is rapidly approaching, scheduled to begin at the end of May. Candidates of varied political stances are enthusiastically campaigning in media and touring the length of the country offering promises on everything from security to education to foreign policy. But amid this busy atmosphere, there is silence on the most sensitive and crucial question: Will any civilian winner be able to demilitarize the Egyptian state? 

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The United Nations should establish an investigation commission to collect evidence about war crimes in Syria to prepare the ground for any future investigation, leading Arab international law expert Cherif Bassiouni told Foreign Policy during a wide-ranging interview yesterday following his talk at George Washington University's Institute for Middle East Studies [videos of both the interview and the talk will be posted shortly]. He warned that Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh should not count on his immunity deal holding up, discounted the ability of Libya's courts to try Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and blasted Egypt's post-revolutionary trials as focusing on flimsy, marginal cases which avoided dealing with systemic, institutionalized corruption.   

Also, he explained that Moammar Qaddafi was a sex addict whose heavy use of Viagra badly affected his decision-making -- which could complicate the ICC's efforts to convict Saif al-Islam (FP's web editors wanted that to be the lead, for some reason).

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Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a prominent Bahraini human rights activist who was sentenced to life imprisonment in a military court, is now in a critical stage of a hunger strike which has gone on for 64 days. Foreign doctors who have been to see him have said he is at serious risk of death if he continues. The Bahraini government has rejected increasing international pressure to release him, and has limited outside access. His plight has begun to draw attention to the failure of reform in Bahrain, including an unusual White House statement yesterday. If he dies, it could mark a significant breaking point for the regime's efforts to rehabilitate its tarnished reputation -- and could accelerate the disturbing trend toward militant radicalization in the opposition.

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At least seven young Shiite Muslims have been shot dead and several dozen wounded by security forces in Eastern Saudi Arabia in recent months. While details of the shootings remain unclear, and the ministry of interior claims those shot were attacking the security forces, mass protests have followed the funerals of the deceased. These events are only the latest developments in the decades-long struggle of the Saudi Shiites, which has taken on a new urgency in the context of 2011's regional uprisings -- but have been largely ignored by mainstream media.

The events of the Arab Spring have heightened long-standing tensions in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. Just three days after large-scale protests started in Bahrain on February 14, 2011, protests began in the Eastern Province, which is a 30-minute drive across the causeway from Bahrain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Saudi interior ministry vowed to crush the protests with an "Iron Fist" and has unleashed a media-smear campaign against protests and the Shiites in general. While protests subsided over the summer, they started again in October and have become larger ever since, leading to an ever more heavy-handed response from the security forces.

This repressive response, with distinct rhetorical echoes of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, poses an awkward challenge to recent Saudi foreign policy. The protests of the people in the Eastern Province are as legitimate as the protests in Syria. If Saudi Arabia does not respond to these calls for reform at home how can it seriously claim to rise to the defense of democracy in Syria? The crackdown in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain has given the Iranian and Syrian regime, as well as Shiite political movements in Lebanon and Iraq, a useful rhetorical gambit to push back against their regional rivals.

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General Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, head of Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, announced the lifting of the much-criticized State of Emergency today on the eve of the anniversary of the revolution. Ending the state of emergency has been one of the primary demands of Egyptian activists and civil society, as well as the international community, for many years. What does it mean? The Middle East Channel asked Nathan Brown, a leading expert on the Egyptian constitution, for his thoughts: 

General Tantawi appears to have given the Egyptian Revolution a tremendous birthday gift -- he has ended a state of emergency that has lasted (with only brief interruptions) since the 76-year-old general was four. Except, of course, for the baltagiyya, hooligans or thugs who roam Egyptian streets attacking peaceful citizens and virtuous revolutionaries. 

Ending the state of emergency was one of the most important demands of the revolutionary coalition that ousted President Hosni Mubarak last year. I have read only news accounts of his action, but those make it clear that the fine print makes this a bit less of a gift than it initially appears. As far as I can make out:

• Tantawi did not repeal the emergency law -- that law remains on the books. It would probably be up to the parliament to amend it.
• What Tantawi did instead was end the state of emergency for most areas. Here is the distinction: the emergency law gets activated upon the declaration of a state of emergency; such a declaration requires parliamentary approval to continue.
• The state of emergency was approved 2.5 years ago by Mubarak's rubber-stamp parliament; it was approved at that point for three years. Thus, according to the SCAF, it remains in effect until June 2012. Any extension after June 2012 would require parliamentary approval. It will be the president whose election is promised in June who will have to deal with the full end of the state of emergency.
• The state of emergency still applies for thuggery. That means, in essence, that the SCAF can transfer thugs to military courts for trial. And that is one of the major complaints of the revolutionary groups, who point out that they have been victims of (rather than protected by) the SCAF's purported moves against thuggery.
• Any extension after June 2012 by the newly-elected parliament is politically out of the question unless there is a major change in Egypt's security situation. Even then it would be politically very difficult to extend the state of emergency. I did ask Freedom and Justice Party deputies about this last week on a brief visit to Cairo; they chuckled at the idea of a renewal. So the revolutionaries may eventually get their gift, but just not on the revolution's birthday.
• An argument can be made that the state of emergency has already ended (Tariq al-Bishri holds such a view) but I think that argument has gotten nowhere politically.

Later this month, the representatives just elected by Tunisian voters will begin the task of designing a new political order for the country. If all goes well (though it may not) Egyptians and Libyans will follow suit by drafting new constitutions. It is still not inconceivable that other Arab societies will join them in an attempt to reinvent political systems on a more democratic basis. People in these societies are about to engage in an unprecedented process for them -- while they have all lived under constitutions before, those documents generally enabled authoritarian government. Now they want to write constitutions that will allow them to live democratically. As Americans, this seems to be a story we know well -- a people rises up, throws off oppression, and then deliberates carefully how to write a set of rules for a new republican order fit for a free people. Therefore, we will soon hear lots of well-meaning advice on how Arab societies should write their constitutions and what those constitutions should say. 

We saw in Iraq how much U.S. understanding of the constitution drafting process was colored by the U.S. experience. Commentators rushed to speak about a "Philadelphia moment," recommended favorite clauses from the Bill of Rights, and even argued over judicial review by reference to Marbury vs. Madison or Roe vs. Wade. We should have learned our lesson: much of our advice will be bad and most will be irrelevant.

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Armed security officers wearing balaclavas led Nasser Abul, blindfolded and shackled, into a courtroom in downtown Kuwait City on July 19. Accused of crimes against the state, he answered the judge's questions from a wood-and-metal cage in the courtroom. His mother, watching the proceedings, hoped her 26-year-old eldest son would finally be released after nearly two months in detention. The judiciary has refused to grant her wish.

Abul found himself in jail because of a few tweets. Twitter was wildly popular in Kuwait even before protests began in Tunis and Cairo, and its use in Kuwait surged as the Arab Spring provided daily inspiration for news updates and commentary. Between January and March, people in Kuwait wrote over 3.69 million tweets -- more than any other country in the Middle East, according to a June report by the Dubai School of Government.

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The trajectory of peaceful demonstrations in Libya and Syria has been impacted by regime violence. The result: large populations of internally displaced peoples (IDP's) have been created inside of those countries as well as great numbers of refugees fleeing to bordering countries. Furthermore, the revolutions of the Arab Spring have serious ramifications for already existing refugee populations, notably the more than one million Iraqi refugees that have settled in Syria since 2006. The possibility of increased large-scale refugee movement from Libya and Syria will not only spur a devastating humanitarian crisis, but could also further destabilize the region.

Considering that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is already working with insufficient funds, Western policymakers should pay attention to these imminent crises. One need only look at the social and economic repercussions of the still unresolved predicament of Iraqi refugees to see the urgency of keeping the current situations from escalating into another protracted refugee crisis. The consequences of a prolonged refugee situation could be dire, especially as many of the countries to which the people are fleeing allow few -- if any -- rights, benefits, or protection for refugees.

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More than 12 people were killed by security forces in a single day. Activists and journalists were harassed and arrested. A curfew was put in place and neither satellite television stations nor trucks carrying water and food were allowed near the protestors. One would think this occurred in Cairo or in Sana'a, but would be mistaken. This is Iraq.

After the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, many approving pundits in the West portrayed Iraq as a country that had been freed and which was now a "fledgling" democracy. Eight years later, that proposition is being put to a real test. Protests against permeating political corruption and unbearable living conditions began on February 3 and reached their highest point so far on February 25, a "Day of Anger."

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If the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak falls, the tipping point will have been mid-afternoon of January 28. For several hours after the conclusion of Friday noon prayers, the police and Central Security Forces successfully kept demonstrators away from the center of Cairo. About 2:00 pm, 20,000 protestors broke through the blockades and took over the Qasr al-Nil Bridge connecting Giza and Zamalek to Tahrir Square, the hub of the downtown district. Two hours later the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party, which President Mubarak leads, was on fire.

Earlier in the afternoon, crowds stormed regional NDP headquarters in the Suez Canal city of Isma‘iliyya and the Delta provincial capital of Mansura. The provincial NDP headquarters in Fayyum was torched a few hours later. Hundreds of thousands of protesters throughout the country defied the 6:00 PM curfew proclaimed by the regime and remained in the streets throughout the night. In Alexandria, Egypt's second city, demonstrators drove the police and Central Security Force out of town. By the time President Mubarak addressed the nation that evening and announced he had requested the resignation of the entire cabinet, the army had begun to assume security responsibility for Egypt's major cities.

The targets of angry crowds are rarely accidental. In this case, assaulting the offices of the ruling party, and other official buildings in Alexandria, Suez, and Tanta underscored one of the main chants of the demonstrators: "The people want an end to the regime." Not "reform" and the resignation of the cabinet, which is a technocratic and administrative body with limited powers, but a regime change and a transition to democracy which would only begin with the resignation of President Mubarak.

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Lebanon's dysfunctional political system has once again been set back to square one. Months of speculation, rumors, and unconfirmed press reports about a negotiated settlement to the latest crisis came to an abrupt end Jan. 12, when Hezbollah and its allies resigned from Prime Minister Saad Hariri's government, precipitating its collapse. This step sets the stage for a confrontation over the makeup of the next government. And in this showdown, all sides stand to come out losers.

Political divisions over the U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is charged with prosecuting those responsible for the 2005 assassination of Saad's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, are the cause of the crisis. A number of explosive leaks to the media have signaled that the tribunal plans to indict members of Hezbollah for the crime. Hezbollah and its allies, in a bid to contain the domestic fallout from this revelation, have demanded that Hariri cut Lebanon's funding for the tribunal and disavow any indictment issued by the court. Because Hariri refused to give in to their demands, Hezbollah and its allies have now upped the ante by toppling his government.

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The Republic of Yemen is often spoken of in the press and in policy circles as a society on the verge of collapse (last year it was "another Somalia"), based largely on two claims, the first being the supposed weakness of its state, the other the supposed lawlessness of its tribal population that makes up the majority ethnic group (about seventy-five percent are settled agriculturalists in the mountains and another five per cent, nomadic Bedouin in the eastern desert). And supposedly being on the verge of collapse, Yemen is seen as vulnerable to take-over by terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda that threaten America's and the region's security. Let us consider how tribe and state, law and conflict operate in Yemen that few analysts seem to grasp when they make these pronouncements.

History may provide some perspective. There has been a state or dawlah in Yemen for thousands of years, whether the Sabaean state that built Marib Dam and was the reputed homeland of the Queen of Sheba, or the Islamic state created shortly after the advent of Islam which lasted for a thousand years, or the republican state that came into being in 1962 and has lasted until the present day, despite two bitter civil wars. To be sure, the state has waxed and waned in power and contracted or expanded in territory during this history, and it has faced formidable outside opponents, beginning with the Romans and most recently with al-Qaeda, but it has never fully collapsed or disappeared from the scene. It is unlikely to do so in the present in spite of arguments that the current regime is at a tipping point and about to fall apart because of an unprecedented number of seemingly intractable problems facing it (an ever weakening economy, unsustainable water consumption, projected diminished oil reserves, conflicts between the state and certain regional populations, rampant corruption, and let us not forget al-Qaeda).

To those who would say to me, "How do you know it is not at a tipping point?" I can only respond with, "How do you know that it is?" and remind ourselves of the longue durée of Yemeni history.

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In a highly-anticipated decision yesterday, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote affirmed the constitutionality of provisions in federal law criminalizing the provision of "material support" to foreign designated terrorist organizations (FTO), even in circumstances where that support is non-lethal and consists solely of speech--at least if that speech is coordinated with the designated FTO. This will have significant ramifications for US policy in the Middle East, where many of the groups designated as FTOs operate.

While the relevant statute defines "material support" to include a long list of items that are clearly connected to the violent activities of terrorists, it also includes more ambiguous terms such as "any...service,...training, expert advice or assistance." The principle plaintiffs in this case, The Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), wished to provide training to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the use of "humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes"; "engage in political advocacy on behalf of the Kurds who live in Turkey"; and "teach PKK members how to petition various representative bodies such as the United Nations for relief." The PKK, however, has been designated a "foreign terrorist organization" pursuant to the federal statute that criminalizes the provision of "material support" to such groups. Accordingly, the HLP brought this suit to obtain a judgment that provision of support of the kind which they intended--non-lethal tools to further political advocacy and peace-building--could not be legitimately criminalized under the US constitution.

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In recent full page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, renowned author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel argued that Jerusalem is "above politics." But the portrait of the city Wiesel painted is so factually inaccurate and so morally specious as to leave no room for doubt: Wiesel's false innocence and moral posturing over Jerusalem is an example of politics par excellence, with Wiesel willingly becoming a tool of Israel's extreme right in its desperate efforts to block Obama's peace efforts.

A review of the facts is in order.

93 percent of Israel - including most of West Jerusalem and the 35 percent of privately-owned land in East Jerusalem expropriated by Israel since 1967 - is categorized by Israel as "State Land." Only Israeli citizens and those entitled to immigrate under the Law of Return may acquire properties on this land. Palestinians of East Jerusalem, with rare exception, are in neither of these categories. So while Wiesel may purchase a home in anywhere in East or West Jerusalem, a Palestinian cannot.

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