A young Syrian rebel speaks

Anthony Shadid was there:

As we prepared to leave, Iyad turned to me and said: “We’ve already won. We’re victorious now. I lived a life of terror, fear and killing, and now I’m free.”

Before the uprising, Iyad said, his life had been boring, even suffocating. He had a degree in business and economics, but jobs were scarce. The incentive to revolt was more ambiguous, though; he’d had enough of the humiliations, the propaganda, the hypocrisy, and now, finally, he could do something about it. No one encouraged him to go down to the first protest in Homs in March at the Khalid bin Walid mosque. No one had to. “I’m a person now,” he said. “I can say what I want. I love you if I want to love you, I hate you if I want to hate you. I can denounce your beliefs, or I can support them. I can agree with your position or disagree with it.” We shed the last of our belongings for another ride. “We’re not waiting to live our lives until after the fall of the regime,” he went on. “We started living them the first day of the protests. We began our lives.”

Book alert for students in HIST 4505

Issue resolved: Gregory of Tours:  Glory of the Martyrs will be available at a reasonable price.

Young supernova

From Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Battle in the Early Middle Ages: Expertise and controversy

"Historian on the Edge" provides us with an expert summary of his views on early medieval warfare.

I say "expert" rather than "authoritative" because as he points out, there are no authorities on this subject, only controversialists.

Highly recommended for students in my upcoming fourth-year seminar.

Image:  Conan as barbaric warrior.

Qs and Ks and other ways of transliterating Arabic

The Arabist explains:

 I was meeting with a bunch of business people who know no Arabic and little about the Middle East. The conversation turned to Libya and one of them turned to me and asked why there were so many spellings of Qadhafi's name. What follows is what I said, which is very much what Kal of TMND argues, except I put it in laymen's terms, without the phonetics.

In Arabic, Qadhafi's name is spelled القذافي which if you drop the article, means ق - ذ - ا - ف - ي or q - dh - a - f - i. The "q" letter is almost unique to Arabic (sometimes called "the language of the qaf" — sorry, it's the language of the dhad, not qaf!) and often transliterated as a "k", since its pronounciation can be difficult for non-Arabic speakers. It is standard in classical Arabic and places like Fes in northern Morocco, but northern Egyptians, urban Syrians and others often pronounce this letter as a glottal stop, while southern Egyptians and Bedouins most often pronounce as a "g", as in "go". (This is why in Syria upscale Damascenes call the regime "the government of the Qaf", because pronouncing the letter is a country bumpkin thing to do, and Eastern Sunnis and Alawites — long dominant in the regime — often do it). Hence you see Qadhafi, Kadhafi or Gadhafi. The "dh" sound also has no equivalent in many languages as a standalone letter, and to top it off is made emphatic by a shedda — a kind of accent that indicates the letter should be doubled, which is why academics use the unwieldy "Qadhdhafi." And the "dh" is often not pronounced as such — in most colloquial Arabics, it is pronounced "d". I'm not sure why it might be pronounced "th", but perhaps this was used in Qadhafi's passport because it is close to the English sound in "the", which sounds very much like "dh". I always write Qadhafi because it's simple and faithful enough without being completely anal, like Qadhdhafi.

Sultanistic dictatorships

From the Globe and Mail's Chrystia Freeland:

“When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” That’s a line from Game of Thrones, a new HBO television series, but it could just as easily refer to the no-holds-barred battles we are watching in Libya and Syria. What is hardest to grasp is how these regimes are both strong and brittle. Their rulers are ruthless dictators prepared to do whatever it takes to stay in power – and for decades that can work. Until, suddenly, it does not.

We are not very good at understanding the win-or-die dynamic of these sorts of political systems: Not so long ago, everyone – from the U.S. State Department, to Harvard, to the London School of Economics, to Vogue magazine, to blue-chip Wall Street money managers – treated the Assads and the Gadhafis like rulers capable of gradual liberalization and even democratization.

Part of the problem is that the Cold War habit of mind, with its division of the world into two rival, ideologically cohesive camps, dies hard. Its legacy is our tendency to look for a new, black-and-white division, this time into democracies and dictatorships. But modern dictatorships come in many different varieties. The ones that are collapsing in the Middle East are examples of what are known as “sultanistic” dictatorships.

According to Jack Goldstone, a professor at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University in Virginia, the defining characteristic of such a dictatorship is that it has no purpose apart from maintaining the leader’s personal authority. “A sultanistic regime is one in which the leader of a country has managed to gain control of all the levers of state power,” Mr. Goldstone said. “No one has any secure rights, and the leader rules with absolute authority.”

Richard Snyder, a professor of political science at Brown University in Rhode Island, said sultanistic regimes – which he prefers to call personalistic dictatorships or neo-patrimonial dictatorships – are all about the guy on top. “People get goodies for being close to the ruler. That’s the essence of it,” he told me.

Sultans establish their power by making sure no one else has any – or at least any that is independent of the sultan himself. That means that sultans intentionally hollow out their own government institutions.

Successful sultans, Mr. Goldstone said, also work to make and to keep their societies divided: “The ideal arrangement is to be supported by many elite groups, none of which are inclined to support one another.”

The corrosive sense of personal humiliation that inspired so many participants in the Arab Spring was not accidental – it is central to how sultanism works. “Under a sultanistic regime, because nobody has any rights, they all feel humiliated and subject to the whims of the ruler,” Mr. Goldstone said.

But modern-day sultans have an Achilles heel. The techniques they use to establish and maintain power make them very, very strong when they are in charge – Mr. Goldstone said sultans have more personal authority than medieval monarchs did – but also make their regimes extremely brittle. If a revolution starts, it can succeed swiftly.

“The armed forces need to decide, ‘How many of our own people do we need to shoot to keep the boss in power?’ ” Mr. Goldstone said. “If the boss looks strong, the whole regime looks strong. But if the boss starts to look weak, it crumples fairly quickly.”

That is the good news. The bad news is that the brittleness of sultanistic regimes is a mixed blessing: It helps the revolutionaries when they are in the streets, but it complicates the task of nation-building after they win.

A smart dictator eviscerates his country’s institutions; rules by personal fiat, not by law; and creates a divided society in which sycophancy and corruption are the paths to prosperity. Citizens of such societies lack even a shared set of values; they live in what Mr. Snyder calls “a belief vacuum.”

That is why it will be neither a failure nor a betrayal if the best the Libyan rebels manage to establish is a weak democracy that is unstable, divided and inefficient. Effective democracies take generations to build.

It is easy to cheer the fall of the sultanistic dictatorships. Now is the moment to remember to be patient when their humiliated and divided people find it is a struggle to build a government that is not quite so bad.<\blockquote>

 Update:  Sultanistic?

The falls turn orange

There was a time in this fair land when surveyors were national heroes

Not to  mention engineers.

I'm talking Colonel By, children.

There is a World Heritage site in the province of Eastern Ontario that most Canadians are oblivious to -- the Rideau Canal that connects Kingston on Lake Ontario to Ottawa on the Ottawa River.  It was built in the 1820s and 30s as a military route that would be less vulnerable to American attack.  The job was entrusted to an English army engineer who accomplished the task of connecting lakes and rivers with canals and dams, thanks to the efforts of many navvies (= "navigators"), in short order (only to find himself being investigated for overspending).

And it is still all there in all its 19th century glory!

All but three of the locks are worked by human beings turning iron cranks by hand.  One of the explanatory signs canal-side calls this "brute force," but really there is nothing  brute about it.  The locks are so well-engineered that they move quite elegantly, and it really doesn't look like that much work -- though I am sure that it builds core strength in the university-age people who are there for the summer season.

In lovely contrast to the iron, timber and stone tech is the landscape that it goes through.  Parts of the canal system goes through intensively cultivated areas, but lots goes through what almost looks like wilderness.  Only very occasionally do roads cross the canal, and so if you are on a boat you feel like you are in a world apart from busy 21st century Canada.

Image:  Crabs or hand winches at Davis Lock; photo thanks to Paul Watson.

The legend of Jack Layton

People outside of Canada will probably not be aware that Jack Layton, leader of the federal New  Democratic Party (social democrats, pro-labor) and since the recent federal election Leader of the Official  Opposition in Parliament, died this week of prostate cancer.

Layton and his NDP made unprecedented gains in  the election, pushing past the Liberals and nearly destroying the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec.  A lot of the credit seemed to go to Layton, who seemed to appeal to those who could stomach neither Harper's Tories, Ignatieff's Liberals nor the separatist BQ.   The NDP oddly ended up, after decades of near-exclusion from Quebec, with most of its seats in that province.


How much could really  be expected of Layton in these circumstances?  Hard to say, given the Tory majority, the  difficulties of any national party in representing both Quebec and the rest of the country, and other factors.  But Layton and his party were not contemptuous of the grass roots, and that quality inspired an outpouring of grief and celebration.  Including a state funeral that was by normal rules not strictly something he was entitled to.    (I think the PM saw which way the wind was blowing and quickly put himself ahead of it.  More striking in some ways is the fact that the CN Tower and Niagara Falls will be lighted up NDP orange for a limited time.  All I can say about this is "!"

Other people besides me have realized that Jack Layton is now legend.  Struck down at his time of greatest triumph, we'll never know what he might have done or how he might have failed.  This, however, will not prevent some of them from answering those questions with great certainty and even in mythic language.

Iranian absurdity: "Islamic" ban on waterfights

It appears that water fighting and water guns are becoming sensitive issues in Iran.

Earlier this month, a number of young people were arrested in Tehran after taking part in a water fight in public. They were accused of violating Islamic principles and norms.

A few days later, 17 people were reportedly arrested in Bandar Abbas for splashing water at each other. The young people in Tehran and Bandar Abbas used water guns and bottles.

Following the two incidents, General Ahmad Rouzbahani, head of Iran's morality police, warned that police "will act forcefully" against similar behavior and would not allow such events to happen in public places, or anywhere across the country."

Meanwhile, a woman in the Iranian capital who didn't want to be named told "Persian Letters" that last week in a shopping center in Shahrak Gharb, a shop owner refused to sell her a plastic water gun her 5-year-old daughter had seen in the shop window.

More at RFE/RL

The woman said the shop owner said that they had been ordered not to sell water guns. When she insisted that her daughter would not carry it in public and that no one would know she got it from his shop, the toy-shop owner said, "I don't want my shop to be closed for selling a water pistol.

He added that "the police have got the number of these pistols I have in stock and I am not allowed to take a single one for any of my relatives. They said they would check me every now and then."

"There are bikinis for your daughter and yourself, there are no bans on them but water pistols are another story," the woman quoted the shop owner as saying.

It's not clear why the shop owner had the pistol displayed in the shop window if he didn't want to sell it. It could be that he hadn't had time to remove it.

And as usual, Iranians are using humor to cope with the sometimes absurd situations they find themselves in. Here is a joke that is circulating about the recent incidents:

"A man walks into a shop and asks for a bottle of water. The shop owner wraps it in a newspaper and gives it to him. The man asks: 'Why did you wrap it in newspaper? It's only water, not alcohol or anything. (Alcohol is banned in Iran and when people buy it from dealers on the black market, it's often wrapped in newspaper and put in a dark bag.) The shop owner says: 'I know, but it's becoming very dangerous. You could end up in prison and your sentence could be heavier than for carrying alcohol."

-- Golnaz Esfandiari, Mehrdad Mirdamadi

RFE/RL

Mark Twain, the Middle Ages, and Baton Rouge

A brilliant little essay from Jeff Sypeck.

Go away and just see what happens

Often enough when I go away camping in August, and am paying no attention, something dramatic happens.  In 1989, I re-entered the world of news to hear that Hungary was taking down its stretch of the Iron Curtain.  In 1991, the coup against Gorbachev took place, followed quickly by the collapse of  the Soviet Union.

A lot of stuff happened this August, but for all the import of British riots and American Russian roulette with the economy, I think the beginning of the trial of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo wins the prize.

Cairo is the place, it is Paris in 1791.  Mubarak is Louis XVI and his judges are...?

When Louis fled France in rejection of the new constitutional monarchy, and was captured doing so, Thomas Paine told the revolutionaries  that how they treated the ex-king would determine the course of the new  republican regime.  He particularly warned against blood vengeance against the traitor-king, which would lead to more blood, and even more.  He was emphatically right.

Hosni Mubarak deserves to answer to a court for his actions, but the trial has its dangers.  The course and meaning and the consequences of the Egyptian revolution may well be determined in that courtroom.  Whether the Arab Spring keeps its potential for humane progress or descends into vengeance -- we shall see.

For a less hopeful set of developments, see these reports and reflections in Syria Comment.

Steve Muhlberger on the Combat of the Thirty -- a Chivalry Today podcast

Earlier this summer Scott Farrell of Chivalry Today interviewed me on the Combat of the Thirty against Thirty of 1351 and the contemporary re-enactments by members of the SCA at its Pennsic War.

Here is that interview.

This year I did not take part, but I did get the T-shirt. Really.