Arabia 2007, Political vacuums, Bhutto's Revenge,

"The root of the word 'vacuum' is the Latin adjective 'vacuus' which means empty, but space can never be perfectly empty. A perfect vacuum with a gaseous pressure of absolute zero is a philosophical concept that is never observed in practice, partly because 'quantum theory' predicts that no volume or space can be perfectly empty in this way." Wiko.
Arab media has been full of anguish over Lebanon. Statements by Arab leaders are full of the same anguish about Lebanon. They are all worried about the vacuum of the presidency in Lebanon. This is all symbolic, of course, because the president of Lebanon is a head of state and does not make policy: he is no more important for the daily running of the country than the presidents of Israel and Germany, and how many people remember their names? What they probably worry about is the continued impasse between the Hariri-Saniora rump cabinet and the Hezbollah-Amal-Michel Oun opposition, which has paralyzed the country. There is a vacuum in Lebanon that needs to be filled soon, if only bcause it is hampering the functioning of a full cabinet that does not exist.

Reporters, columnists, and opinion-makers in the (Persian) Gulf of Frustration states, some of them perofessors doubling as royal gunslingers, get especially misty-eyed about Lebanon these days. They lament the old days when they spent summers in cool Lebanon, doing and drinking many things they cannot do and drink at home whether in Najd, Hijaz or on the shores of the Gulf of Frustration. Those were the same old days when many disenfranchised Lebanese, mostly Shi'as, were confined to their southern villages and subsistence farms, and did not bother the bosses who ruled from Beirut and were mostly paid up agents of Western and Arab regimes. Those were the days when everybody knew their place: in true Arab fashion, as the atrocious popular Gulf saying goes, "one never extended his feet beyond his blanket". That tattered blanket has been kicked off and burned. Aaah, for the days of cheap drinks and cheap women in Lebanon, perhaps gone forever.

Yet everybody in the Arab media seems to ignore a bigger vacuum looming in the Middle East- in the largest Arab country. The president of Egypt, in power for over 26 years, is nearing eighty years of age. He has always refused to appoint a vice president, disingenuously claiming that he does not want to impose a future president on the country. And he says it with a straight face. He has imposed himself on the people without an election for all these years, yet he worries about a vice president. Of course he has been grooming his son to inherit power, in the style of a true Arab absolute monarchy, a la Kim Jung Il and Bashar al-Assad, both having inherited their respective countries and their peoples from their despotic fathers. He has been doing it for a quarter century, and has only been forced in recent years to show his hand. And the Arabs, rulers and media have bought it all, hook, line, and sinker- well, they know, but then they all play the same game. So apparently has the West: both Bush and Sarko stand next to Mubarak, creator of what can be potentially the biggest political vacuum in the MIddle East, and decry the vacuum in Lebanon. Clever Arab autocrat? Dumb Westerners? A bit of both.

The Saudi ruling family has noted the possibility of family conflict once the direct sons of old Ibn Saud are dead. The ruling family has set up a council from among its members, of course, to look into the issue of succession in the future. They do not want a vacuum and the potential internal conflicts it might lead to, as has happened in some emirates and sheikhdoms in the Gulf in recent years.

Iran's Ahmadinejad made a blunder of his own by talking about a coming vacuum in Iraq. He said that Iran, along with Iraqis and other regional nations like Saudi Arabia, can help fill the vacuum. This was another of his many foolish statements- he seems to be good at making them just when everybody has almost forgotten his last one. It shored up the Bush administration policy in Iraq and the Middle East by worrying Americans and scaring the hell out of some Arabs. But is any regime foolish enough to think it can supplant the United States in Iraq and do any better?

In Pakistan, the late Benazir Bhutto was being feted as a near-martyr democrat by the Western and Arab press when her will was read. In true 'turd' world fashion, she had willed the whole Pakistan People's Party to her 19 year old son and her husband with sticky fingers. That was her lousy present to her people on New Years Eve. Maybe it was her way of avenging herself and her father. No wonder Pakistan is a hopeless case with nuclear weapons. Imagine Hillary willing the Democratic Party to Chelsea.

Alarabiya TV reports that Saudi Arabian security has been holding a blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, for three weeks now. Officials say he is being held for breaking certain 'regulations'. They did not say what these regulations were that he broke- perhaps they have not decided. I think it has to do with free speech and speaking his mind, to some extent. The report notes that he is one of the few Saudi bloggers who write in their own names. His family have not seen him since his arrest, and they do not know what he is being charged with. Bloggers in Egypt were also eagerly persecuted by the thugs of the security services, with several arrests and many sites being closed.

On the brighter side, and contrary to some 'expert' predictions in the West, petroleum prices held steady and then moved above $ 90 during the year. This has been good politically for all Middle East rulers, both Arab and Iranian. Talk of reform continues, but it is more muted, and is almost exclusively about economic and financial reform, which tends to flow with about the speed of cold molasses on a January morning.
Cheers
Mohammed