Egypt buries Mubarak, the ‘Pharaoh’ toppled by Arab Spring

Egypt held a military funeral for its former President Hosni Mubarak, bestowing the state’s final rehabilitation on the man who ruled for 30 years until he was ousted in disgrace in a 2011 popular uprising. Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian military and political leader who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011. Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in the Egyptian Air Force. He served as its commander from 1972 to 1975 and rose to the rank of air chief marshal in 1973. He assumed the presidency after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Mubarak’s presidency lasted almost thirty years, making him Egypt’s longest-serving ruler since Muhammad Ali Pasha, who ruled the country from 1805 to 1848, a reign of 43 years.  Mubarak stepped down after 18 days of demonstrations during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. On 11 February 2011, former Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak and he had resigned as president and vice president respectively and transferred authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

On 13 April 2011, a prosecutor ordered Mubarak and both of his sons (Alaa and Gamal) to be detained for 15 days of questioning about allegations of corruption and abuse of power. Mubarak was then ordered to stand trial on charges of negligence for failing to halt the killing of peaceful protesters during the revolution. These trials began on 3 August 2011. On 2 June 2012, an Egyptian court sentenced Mubarak to life imprisonment. After sentencing, he was reported to have suffered a series of health crises. On 13 January 2013, Egypt’s Court of Cassation (the nation’s high court of appeal) overturned Mubarak’s sentence and ordered a retrial. On retrial, Mubarak and his sons were convicted on 9 May 2015 of corruption and given prison sentences. Mubarak was detained in a military hospital and his sons were freed 12 October 2015 by a Cairo court. He was acquitted on 2 March 2017 by the Court of Cassation and released on 24 March 2017. He died on 25 February 2020. He received a military burial at a family plot outside Cairo.

Syrian refugee girls collect wood to be used for heating

Syrian refugee girls collect wood to be used for heating at an informal tented settlement near the Syrian border.

Syria War : Safe passage from Syrian towns

Besieged rebel fighters and trapped families are evacuated from three Syrian towns in a rare, U.N.-backed deal..

Andrew Simmons (journalist)

Andrew Simmons is an award-winning broadcast journalist, currently working with Al Jazeera English.

Simmons has more than 30 years of experience in television news, with a number of the world’s leading broadcasters. In recent years, he has specialised in covering the conflicts of the Arab Spring.

Career 

Al Jazeera English

Simmons has been Al Jazeera English since 2005, in the run-up to its launch. His original brief was to help set up the East Africa bureau and, immediately following the launch in 2006, he remained at the Nairobi bureau as Bureau Chief and senior correspondent.

Following his next appointment, as a senior correspondent based in the London broadcast-centre, in 2011 he covered the downfalls of Gaddafi in Libya and Mubarak in Egypt.

In 2013, he moved to the main broadcast-centre, in Doha in Qatar, still as a roving correspondent and presenter. The main purpose of this move was to cover the war in Syria from inside the country, reporting on the conflict first-hand. However, when the Westgate mall attack took place in Kenya, he returned briefly to Nairobi, to cover events in the city which had once been his home and for which he had a particular expertise in the local places, politics and peoples. Later, he returned to the Near East, to cover the strain on Lebanon’s small population and economy, of hosting the huge new wave of refugees from Syria, in addition to the older wave from Palestine.

BBC

Before joining Al Jazeera English, Simmons was West Africa Correspondent for BBC TV News. He had previously been a presenter in the United Kingdom, for the BBC News channel. 

Sky News

When Simmons was with Sky News, he worked as a correspondent in an investigative unit. 

ITN

For more than 15 years, Simmons served as a correspondent with ITN, the much-respected UK news channel. His experience in covering conflict included Northern Ireland, where he spent four years based in Belfast, plus extensive assignments in: Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka. At the end of the first Gulf War, he covered the 1991 uprising in Iraq by the Shia population of Basra and was captured by the Iraqi Republican Guard. He was released ten days later, in Baghdad. 

Awards 

In 1991, Simmons received a UK Royal Television Society award for his coverage of the exodus of the Kurdish people during the conflict in Iraq. 

Omar Hassan al-Bashir waves as he leads victory celebrations

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir waves as he leads victory celebrations after the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) defeated the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels during his visit to the battle area of Gouz Dango in South Darfur, Sudan

Tunisia Elections

Tunisia politics vote

Israeli riot police clash with Israeli Arab during a protest

Israeli riot police officers clash with Israeli Arab during a protest over the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old Arab Israeli who appeared in video footage to be retreating from police, in the Arab village of Kfar Kana, northern Israel. Dozens of youths in this Arab village clashed with Israeli police on Sunday, hurling stones, uprooting traffic signs and hurling firebombs.

The Syrian civil war

The Syrian civil war,^[52] also commonly known as the Syrian uprising,^[53] is an ongoing armed conflict in Syria between forces loyal to the Syrian Ba’ath Partygovernment and those seeking to oust it. The conflict began on 15 March 2011 with nationwide demonstrations, as part of the wider protest movement known as the Arab Spring. Protesters demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has held the presidency in Syria since 1971, as well as the end to nearly five decades of Ba’ath Party rule.

In April 2011, the Syrian Army was deployed to quell the uprising, and soldiers were ordered to open fire on demonstrators. After months of military sieges,^[54] the protests evolved into an armed rebellion. Opposition forces, mainly composed of defected soldiers and civilian volunteers, became increasingly armed and organized as they unified into larger groups. However, the rebels remained fractured, without organized leadership. The Syrian government characterizes the insurgency as an uprising of “armed terrorist groups and foreign mercenaries”.^[55] The conflict has no clear fronts, with clashes taking place in many towns and cities across the country.^[56]

The Arab League, United States, European Union, Arab States of the Persian Gulf, and other countries condemned the use of violence against the protesters. The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership because of the government’s response to the crisis, but it sent an observer mission in December 2011, as part of its proposal for peaceful resolution of the crisis. A further attempt to resolve the crisis was made through the appointment of Kofi Annan as aspecial envoy. On 15 July 2012, theInternational Committee of the Red Crossassessed the Syrian conflict as a “non-international armed conflict” (the ICRC’s legal term for civil war), thus applying international humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions to Syria.

On 2 January 2013, the United Nationsstated that the war’s death toll had exceeded 60,000;^[57] on 12 February, this figure was updated to 70,000.^[45] According to various opposition activist groups, between 50,000 and 63,735 people have been killed,^[28][44][58]of which about half were civilians, but also including 26,110–27,900 armed combatants consisting of both the Syrian Army and rebel forces,^[28][59] up to 2,505 opposition protesters^[42][43] and 1,000 government officials.^[31] By October 2012, up to 28,000 people had been reported missing, including civilians forcibly abducted by government troops or security forces.^[60] According to the UN, about 1.2 million Syrians have been displaced within the country.^[48] To escape the violence, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries. In addition, tens of thousands of protesters have been imprisoned and there were reports of widespread torture and psychological terror in state prisons.^[61][62] International organizations have accused both government and opposition forces of severe human rights violations.^[63][64] However, human rights groups report that the majority of abuses have been committed by the Syrian government’s forces, and UN investigations have concluded that the government’s abuses are the greatest in both gravity and scale.^[65][66][67]

Assad regime

Main article: Modern history of Syria

The Ba’ath Party government came to power in 1964 after a successful coup d’état. In 1966, another coup overthrew the traditional leaders of the party, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar.^[68] In 1970, the Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad seized power and declared himself President, a position he would hold until his death in 2000. Since then, the secular Ba’ath Party has remained the dominant political authority in a virtual single-party state in Syria, and Syrian citizens may only approve the President by referendum and – until the government-controlled multi-party 2012 parliamentary election– could not vote in multi-party elections for the legislature.^[69]

In 1982, at the height of a six-year Islamist armed insurgency throughout the country, Hafez al-Assad conducted a scorched earth policy against Islamist-held quarters inside the town of Hama to quell an uprising by the Sunni Islamist community, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and others.^[70]This ruthless crackdown became known as the Hama massacre, which left tens of thousands – both armed insurgents and civilians – dead, although estimates of the death toll still vary.^[71]

The issue of President Hafez al-Assad’s succession prompted the 1999 Latakia protests,^[72] when violent protests and armed clashes erupted following the 1998 Syrian People’s Assembly elections. The violent events were an explosion of a long-running feud between Hafez al-Assad and his influential younger brother Rifaat.^[72] Two people were killed in fire exchanges between Syrian police and Rifaat’s supporters during a police crackdown on Rifaat’s port compound in Latakia. According to opposition sources, denied by the government, the protests resulted in hundreds dead and injured.^[73] Hafez al-Assad died one year later, from pulmonary fibrosis. He was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad, who was appointed after a constitutional amendment lowered the age requirement for President from 40 to his then age of 34.^[69]

Bashar al-Assad, who speaks English fluently and whose wife is a British-born and British-educatedSunni Muslim,^[55] initially inspired hopes for democratic and state reforms; a “Damascus Spring” of intense social and political debate took place from July 2000 to August 2001.^[74] The period was characterized by the emergence of numerous political forums or salons, where groups of like-minded people met in private houses to debate political and social issues. Political activists such as Riad Seif, Haitham al-Maleh, Kamal al-Labwani, Riyad al-Turk and Aref Dalila were important in mobilizing the movement.^[75] The most famous of the forums were the Riad Seif Forum and the Jamal al-AtassiForum. The Damascus Spring ended in August 2001 with the arrest and imprisonment of ten leading activists who had called for democratic elections and for a campaign of civil disobedience.^[72]Opposition renewed in October 2005 when Syrian Christian activist Michel Kilo collaborated with other leading opposition figures to deliver the Damascus Declaration, which criticized the Syrian government as “authoritarian, totalitarian and cliquish” and called for democratic reforms.^[76]

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Syria

The Assad family comes from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that comprises an estimated 12 percent of the total Syrian population.^[77] It has maintained tight control on Syria’s security services, generating resentment among some Sunni Muslims,^[78] a sect that makes up about three quarters of Syria’s population. Ethnic minority Syrian Kurds have also protested and complained over ethnic discrimination and denial of their cultural and language rights.^[79] When the uprising began,Bouthaina Shaaban, a presidential adviser, blamed individual “radical extremist” Sunni clerics and“takfiri” preachers for inciting Sunnis to revolt, such as Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi called for in his heated sermon in Doha on 25 March.^[80] The Syrian government allegedly has relied mostly on Alawite-dominated units of the security services to fight the uprising. Assad’s younger brother Maher al-Assad commands the army’s elite Fourth Armored Division, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, was the deputy minister of defense until the latter’s assassination in the 18 July 2012 Damascus bombing. Because the government is dominated by the Alawite sect, it has had to make some gestures toward the majority Sunni sects and other minority populations in order to retain power.

Socioeconomics

Discontent against the government was strongest in Syria’s poorer and more radical Sunni areas.^[81]These included cities with high poverty rates, such as Daraa and Homs, rural areas hit hard by a drought in early 2011, and the poorer districts of large cities. Socioeconomic inequality increased significantly after free market policies were initiated by Hafez al-Assad in his later years, and accelerated after Bashar al-Assad came to power. With an emphasis on the service sector, these policies benefited a minority of the nation’s population, mostly people who had connections with the government, and members of the Sunni merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo.^[81] By 2011, Syria was facing a deterioration in the national standard of living and steep rises in the prices of commodities.^[82] The country also faced particularly high youth unemployment rates.^[83]

he state of human rights in Syria has long been the subject of harsh criticism from global organizations.^[85] The country was under emergency rule from 1963 until 2011, effectively granting security forces sweeping powers of arrest and detention.^[86]The Syrian government justified this by pointing to the fact that the country has been in a continuous state of war with Israel. After taking power in 1970, Hafez al-Assad quickly purged the government of any political adversaries and asserted his control over all aspects of Syrian society. He developed an elaborate cult of personality and violently repressed any opposition, most notoriously in the 1982 Hama massacre. After his death in 2000 and the succession of his son Bashar al-Assad to the Presidency, it was hoped that the Syrian government would make concessions toward the development of a more liberal society; this period became known as theDamascus Spring. However, Bashar al-Assad is widely regarded to have been unsuccessful in implementing democratic change, with a 2010 report from Human Rights Watch stating that he had failed to substantially improve the state of human rights since taking power, although some minor aspects had seen improvement.^[87] All political parties other than the Ba’ath Party have remained banned, thereby leaving Syria a one-party state without free elections.^[86]

Rights of free expression, association and assembly were strictly controlled in Syria even before the uprising.^[88] The authorities harass and imprison human rights activists and other critics of the government, who are oftentimes indefinitely detained and tortured in poor prison conditions.^[88] While al-Assad permitted radio stations to play Western pop music, websites such as Amazon.com,Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube were blocked until 1 January 2011, when all citizens were permitted to sign up for high speed internet and those sites were allowed.^[89] However, a 2007 law requires Internet cafes to record all comments that users post on online chat forums.^[90]

Women and ethnic minorities have faced discrimination in the public sector.^[88] Thousands of Syrian Kurds were denied citizenship in 1962 and their descendants continued to be labeled as “foreigners” until 2011, when 120,000 out of roughly 200,000 stateless Kurds were granted citizenship on 6 April by a decree of president Bashar al-Assad.^[91] Several riots prompted increased tension in Syria’s Kurdish areas since 2004. That year, riots broke out against the government in the northeastern Kurdish-Assyrian town of Qamishli. During a chaotic soccer match, some people raised Kurdish flags and the match turned into a political conflict. In a brutal reaction by Syrian police and clashes between Kurdish and Arab groups, at least 30 people were killed,^[92] with some claims indicating a casualty count of about 100 people.^[93] Occasional clashes between Kurdish protesters and security forces have since continued.

Arab Spring

Main article: Arab Spring

In December 2010, mass anti-government protests began in Tunisia and later spread across the Arab world, including Syria. By February 2011, revolutions occurred in Tunisia and Egypt, while Libya began to experience a civil war. Numerous other Arab countries also faced protests, with some attempting to calm the masses by making concessions and governmental changes.

Before the uprising in Syria began in mid-March 2011, protests were relatively modest, considering the wave of unrest that was spreading across the Arab world. Syria remained what Al Jazeera described as a “kingdom of silence”, due to strict security measures, a relatively popular president, religious diversity, and concerns over the prospects of insurgency like that seen in neighboring Iraq.^[94]

Minor protests calling for government reforms began in January, and continued into March. A “Day of Rage” was called for by activists in Syria to occur on 4 February via social media websites Facebook and Twitter. However, protests failed to materialize within the country itself.^[95]

The unrest began on 15 March in the southern city of Daraa, sometimes called the “Cradle of the Revolution”. The city has been straining under the influx of internal refugees who were forced to leave their northeastern lands due to a drought which was exacerbated by the government’s lack of provision.^[96] The protests were triggered by the incarceration and torture of several young students, who were arrested for writing anti-government graffiti in the city.^[97] Demonstrators clashed with local police, and confrontations escalated on 18 March after Friday prayers. With thousands protesting, the clashes resulted in several civilian deaths. On 20 March, a mob burned down the Ba’ath Party headquarters and other public buildings. Security forces quickly responded, firing live ammunition at crowds, and attacking the focal points of the demonstrations. The two-day assault resulted in the deaths of fifteen protestors.^[84]

Meanwhile, minor protests occurred elsewhere in the country. Protesters demanded the release of political prisoners, the abolition of Syria’s 48-year emergency law, more freedoms, and an end to pervasive government corruption.^[98] On 16 March, some 200 people gathered in front of the Interior Ministry in Damascus, calling for the release of political prisoners.^[99] These events lead to a “Friday of Dignity” on 18 March, when large-scale protests broke out in several cities, including Banias, Damascus, al-Hasakah, Daraa, Deir az-Zor and Hama. Police responded to the protests with tear gas, water cannons, beatings. At least 6 people were killed and many others injured. Over the course of the uprising, protests often gathered after Friday communal prayers at central mosques.^[100]

On 25 March, mass protests spread nation-wide, as demonstrators emerged after Friday prayers.^[84]Over 100,000 people reportedly marched in Daraa,^[101] but at least 20 protesters were reportedly killed. Protests also spread to other Syrian cities, including Homs, Hama, Baniyas, Jasim, Aleppo, Damascus and Latakia. Over 70 protesters in total were reported dead.^[102]

Military operations

As the protests and unrest continued, the Syrian government began launching major military operations to suppress resistance, signaling a new phase in the uprising. On 25 April, Daraa, which had become a focal point of the uprising, was one of the first cities to be besieged by the Syrian Army. An estimated hundreds to 6,000 soldiers were deployed, firing live ammunition at demonstrators and searching house to house for protestors, arresting hundreds.^[128][129] Tanks were used for the first time against demonstrators, and snipers took positions on rooftops. Mosques used as headquarters for demonstrators and organizers were especially targeted.^[128] Security forces began shutting off water, power and phone lines, and confiscating flour and food. Clashes between the army and opposition forces, which included armed protestors and defected soldiers, led to the death of hundreds.^[129][130] By 5 May, most of the protests had been suppressed, and the military began pulling out of Daraa, with some troops remaining to keep the situation under control.

During the crackdown in Daraa, the Syrian Army also besieged and blockaded several towns around Damascus. Throughout May, situations similar to those that occurred in Daraa were reported in other besieged towns and cities, such as Baniyas, Homs, Talkalakh, Latakia, and several other towns.^[131]After the end of each siege, the violent suppression of sporadic protests in the area continued throughout the following months.^[132]

The military crackdown, led by an Alawite government, worsened tensions between Sunnis and Alawites in the country. A 17 May report of claims by refugees coming from Telkalakh on the Lebanese border indicated that sectarian attacks may have been occurring. Sunni refugees said that uniformed Alawite Shabiha militiamen were killing Sunnis in the town of Telkalakh. As the uprising progressed, sectarian elements increasingly emerged from the conflict.^[133]

Defections and resistance

When the uprising began in mid-March, many analysts believed that the Syrian government would remain intact, partly due to strict loyalty tests and the fact that most top-position officials belonged to the same sect as Assad, the Alawites. However, in response to the use of lethal force against unarmed protesters, many soldiers and low-level officers began to desert from the Syrian Army. Many soldiers who refused to open fire against civilians were summarily executed by the army. The first defections occurred during the April Daraa operation.^[84] The number of defections increased during the following months, as army deserters began to group together to form fighting units. As the uprising progressed, opposition fighters became more well-equipped and organized, and senior military officers and government officials began to defect as well to the opposition.^[134] Some analysts stated that these defections were signs of Assad’s weakening inner circle.^[135]

The first instance of armed insurrection occurred on 4 June in Jisr ash-Shugur, a city near the Turkishborder in Idlib province. Angry protestors set fire to a building where security forces had fired on a funeral demonstration. Eight security officers died in the fire as demonstrators took control of a police station, seizing weapons. Clashes between protestors and security forces continued in the following days. Some security officers defected after secret police and intelligence agents executed soldiers who refused to shoot civilians. On 6 June, Sunni militiamen and army defectors ambushed an group of security forces heading to the city. More security officers were killed when the city’s security headquarters was overrun; 120 security forces were reportedly killed on that day. In response, the government sent troops supported by 200 military vehicles and helicopter gunships to the city. Fearing a massacre, insurgents and defectors, along with 10,000 residents, fled across the Turkish border.^[84]

In June and July, protests continued as government forces expanded operations, repeatedly firing at protesters, employing tanks against demonstrations, and conducting arrests. The towns of Rastan and Talbiseh, and Maarat al-Numaan were besieged in early June.^[136] On 30 June, large protests erupted against the Assad government in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.^[137] On 3 July, Syrian tanks were deployed to Hama, two days after the city witnessed the largest demonstration against Bashar al-Assad.^[138] On 31 July, a nationwide crackdown nicknamed the “Ramadan Massacre” resulted in the death of at least 142 people and hundreds of injuries.^[139] Some besieged cities and towns were described as having famine-like conditions.^[140]

On 29 July, a group of defected officers announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which would become the main opposition army. Composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces personnel and civilian volunteers, the rebel army seeks to remove Bashar al-Assad and his government from power. This began a new phase in the conflict, with more armed resistance against the government crackdown. The FSA would grow in size, to about 20,000 by December, and to an estimated 40,000 by June 2012.^[141]

On 23 August, a coalition of anti-government groups was formed, the Syrian National Council. The group, based in Turkey, attempted to organize the opposition. However, the opposition, including the FSA, remained a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grass-roots organizers and armed militants, divided along ideological, ethnic or sectarian lines.^[142]

Throughout August, Syrian forces stormed major urban centers and outlying regions, and continued to attack protests. On 14 August, the Siege of Latakia continued as the Syrian Navy became involved in the military crackdown for the first time. Gunboats fired heavy machine guns at waterfront districts in Latakia, as ground troops and security agents backed by armor stormed several neighborhoods, causing up to 28 deaths.^[143] Throughout the next few days the siege dragged on, with government forces and shabiha militia continuing to fire on civilians in the city, as well as throughout the country. The Eid ul-Fitr celebrations, started in near the end of August, were muted after security forces fired on large demonstrations in Homs, Daraa, and the suburbs of Damascus.^[144]

During the first six months of the uprising, the inhabitants of Syria’s two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, remained largely uninvolved in the anti-government protests.^[145] The two cities’ central squares have seen organized rallies of hundreds of thousands in support of president Assad and his government.^[146]

Fighting for a noble cause

This is in response to the letter, “Many Malalas in Pakistan” by Khawaja Umer Farooq. I know Farooq is not the only one questioning the worldwide focus on Malala Yousufzai. There are many more like him in Pakistan, especially the religious hard-liners, who are accusing the teenager of being a US spy and someone who has been propped by the Zionists.

Conspiracy theorists are working overtime.

Some of them are unhappy over the fact that why so much national and international media coverage is being given to only Malala when hundreds of other girls like her have been killed by Taleban during the last 10 years.



To all of them I would say — there may be many Malalas in Pakistan but there is only one Malala Yousufzai; the one whose un-compromised mission for girls’ education earned her worldwide fame. She is the only one because her sacrifices toward a noble cause have changed the tide against the extremism in Pakistan. There are number of events and personalities in the world who single-handed changed the course of history.

Just to refresh the memory, I would mention of Rosa Parks whose defiance against racial segregation boosted the rights campaign in the US, terrorists attacks on 9/11 changed the world forever, assassination of Austrian prince Ferdinand by a Serb initiated the World War I, Pearl Harbor attack forced the US to join the allied forces in World War II, death of Tarek Al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi sparked the Arab Spring.

In my opinion conspiracy theorists shall stop smelling conspiracy in Malala’s shooting as Pakistani nation is getting united in its resolve to root out the terrorists once for all. I call on Khawaja and others to help Pakistan’s Army to achieve this goal.

Masood Khan, Jubail