Our enemies did not cross our borders

They crept through our weakness like ants.

-- Nizar Qabbani, “Footnotes to the Book of Setback”

(Hawamesh ‘ala Daftar al-Naksah), 1967.

I. Refugees.

"How would you cry when the spears of the enemies are broken on your waist?

Vijay Prashad discusses with Newsclick how the US and its allies have struck back against the mas movements that overthrew Ben Ali and Mubarak. This is what he terms as the Libyan Winter. He analyses the forces that the US and its allies are putting together and the danger to the region from these forces.

Seema Mustafa, who has just returned from Syria, reports on the increased presence of al Qaeda is Syria and its alliance on the ground with the armed opposition groups.
 

NATO headquarters shares with the caves of al-Qaeda the error of hubris.

The trajectory of the democratic movement in the Arab world was never going to be straight line with clear goals and objectives. The Arab regimes are not homogeneous; they have medieval Islamist monarchies as in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, secular but completely authoritarian regimes -- both western puppets like Mubarak to anti-west figures such as Bashir al-Assad. Gaddafi falls in a class by himself – originally anti-west but later made up with the west before being discarded and proclaimed an enemy once again.