PHOTO: Rouhai Safajoo, a Baha’i member arrested in Iran last month


What we are reading this week about the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran:

IRAN

Young Woman’s Quest for Higher Education Exposes Iran’s Discrimination Against Baha’is
International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Rouhie Safajoo, who lives in Karaj (12 miles west of Tehran), was arrested on the morning of March 8, 2016 for allegedly “acting against national security on cyberspace.”

In 2014 and 2015 she had taken Iran’s grueling annual university entrance exam, along with millions of other students, but both times her results were withheld because of her faith, making it impossible for her to access higher education. Since receiving her first rejection she has been actively writing about the daily persecution she and other Baha’is are forced to endure on her Facebook page.

The Baha’i community is one of the most severely persecuted religious minorities in Iran. The faith is not recognized in the Islamic Republic’s Constitution and its members face harsh discrimination in all walks of life as well as prosecution for the public display of their faith.

The last public Facebook post she wrote, on March 5, 2016, was a widely circulated poem dedicated to the five-year-old son of a Baha’i woman imprisoned for teaching at a banned online Baha’i university that Rouhie Safajoo had also attended.

Read more….

YEMEN

US Bombs Used in Deadliest Market Strike
Human Rights Watch

Saudi Arabia-led coalition airstrikes using United States-supplied bombs killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children, in northwestern Yemen on March 15, 2016….The two strikes, on a crowded market in the village of Mastaba that may have also killed about 10 Houthi fighters, caused indiscriminate or foreseeably disproportionate loss of civilian life, in violation of the laws of war. Such unlawful attacks when carried out deliberately or recklessly are war crimes.

Human Rights Watch conducted on-site investigations on March 28, and found remnants at the market of a GBU-31 satellite-guided bomb, which consists of a US-supplied MK-84 2,000-pound bomb mated with a JDAM satellite guidance kit, also US-supplied. A team of journalists from ITV, a British news channel, visited the site on March 26, and found remnants of an MK-84 bomb paired with a Paveway laser guidance kit. Human Rights Watch reviewed the journalists’ photographs and footage of these fragments.

Read more….


What the Yemen Cabinet Shakeup Means
Julian Schwedler, The Wilson Center

Yemeni President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi’s seemingly sudden reshuffle in the Yemeni government on Sunday raised a number of questions surrounding his motivation while underlining the difficult road ahead if Yemen’s war is to end in the next few months. Hadi sacked Khaled Bahah, who served as both Vice President and Prime Minister, just one week before the scheduled ceasefire on April 10. Hadi gave the positions to two people: northerner and General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar rose to Vice President from his current position as Deputy Chief Commander of the Armed Forces, a position he assumed February 23. Ahmed bin Dagher, a southerner and former Secretary General of the General People’s Congress (GPC), was appointed Prime Minister….

Hadi’s support inside of Yemen comes from a range of groups that share his interest in pushing back the Houthis. But that support is weak, and efforts to suggest otherwise are met by Yemenis with incredulity.

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IRAQ

The Mosul Dam: Turning a Potential Disaster into a Win-Win Solution
Azzam Alwash

Iraq has seen its share of calamities in recent years, but none is as dangerous as the impending failure of the Mosul Dam. The dam, if it were to be breached, will result in a tsunami-like wave that would sweep through cities and hamlets along the Tigris River from Mosul to as far south as Amarah and even Basra. Baghdad would be submerged under five meters of water within four days of the breach of the dam. Not only do experts estimate the possible fatalities to range from 500,000 to more than one million, but consider the logistics of trying to provide electricity, drinking water, food, hospitals, transportation, and diesel for millions of people.

The reaction to this potential calamity ranges from the U.S. government’s caution, which has issued warnings to its expats to stay at least six kilometers away from the Tigris (noting that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is situated on the shores of the Tigris in the Green Zone), to the Iraqi government’s nonchalance, which has only calm pronouncements to offer that there is nothing wrong with the dam and that grouting operations designed to strengthen it are proceeding on schedule.

Read more….

LIBYA

Everyone Says the Libya Intervention was a Failure. They’re Wrong.
Shadi Hamid, Vox

Libya and the 2011 NATO intervention there have become synonymous with failure, disaster, and the Middle East being a “shit show” (to use President Obama’s colorful descriptor). It has perhaps never been more important to question this prevailing wisdom, because how we interpret Libya affects how we interpret Syria and, importantly, how we assess Obama’s foreign policy legacy.

Of course, Libya, as anyone can see, is a mess, and Americans are reasonably asking if the intervention was a mistake. But just because it’s reasonable doesn’t make it right.

Most criticisms of the intervention, even with the benefit of hindsight, fall short. It is certainly true that the intervention didn’t produce something resembling a stable democracy. This, however, was never the goal. The goal was to protect civilians and prevent a massacre.

Read more….

https://news.vice.com/article/rebels-ignored-the-islamic-state-in-south-syria-and-its-come-back-to-haunt-them

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/jordan-syria-refugees-border-blocks-medical-care-unhcr.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-unbelievable-devastation-of-a-shattered-syrian-city/2016/04/05/2d67f896-f51d-11e5-958d-d038dac6e718_story.html

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/distract-deceive-destroy-atlantic-council-report-exposes-putin-s-deceptions-in-syria#.VwT5xKw9xQA.twitter

http://www.c-span.org/video/?407546-1/discussion-bashar-alassads-role-syria
http://sn4hr.org/wp-content/pdf/english/896_documented_violation_since_the_start_of_the_Ceasefire_agreement_en.pdf

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/im-from-palmyra-and-i-can-tell-you-after-what-ive-seen-that-the-assad-regime-is-no-better-than-isis-a6961681.html

http://carnegie-mec.org/2016/04/01/suspended-conflict-in-syria-reinterpreting-russia-s-partial-pull-out/iwbq