Region

TRIPOLI — Assailants gunned down a Libyan deputy minister overnight, officials said on Sunday, in the first killing of a government member since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Deputy Industry Minister Hassan Al Droui was shot dead during a visit to his hometown of Sirte, east of Tripoli, which was also Qadhafi’s hometown, security and hospital officials said.

And in another sign of the instability plaguing the country, the toll from tribal clashes in the southern town of Sebha rose to 27 dead, with another 72 people wounded in the unrest.

“Hassan Al Droui, the deputy minister for industry, was killed by unknown attackers overnight, during a visit to his native city of Sirte,” a security official told AFP.

“Unidentified gunmen sprayed bullets on Mr Droui in central Sirte,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

A medical official at the city’s Ibn Sina Hospital said Droui had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.

The Libyan government denounced a “cowardly criminal act” and said in a statement it would “spare no effort to track down the perpetrators and prosecute them”.

Droui was a former member of the National Transitional Council, the political arm of the rebellion that brought an end to Qadhafi’s 42-year rule.

He was appointed deputy minister for industry by the transitional government’s first premier, Abdelrahim Al Kib, and kept his job when Prime Minister Ali Zeidan took office.

Sirte, which lies on the Mediterranean coast about 400 kilometres east of Tripoli, was the last regime bastion to fall into rebel hands in the 2011 uprising during which Qadhafi was killed.

Since the collapse of Qadhafi’s autocratic regime, Libya has been plagued by sporadic violence, including a string of assassinations targeting top army and security officials and the brief abduction of Zeidan.

Deadly tribal clashes

The number of casualties from clashes between rival tribes in the southern town of Sebha and nearby Murzuq and Al Shati rose to 27 dead and 72 wounded, a government statement said on Sunday.

Fighting broke out in the area on Saturday pitting gunmen from the Arab Awled Sleiman tribe against tribesmen from the Toubou minority.

Local sources said the clashes were sparked by the death on Thursday of a militia chief linked to Awled Sleiman, adding that the tribe accused the Toubou of murdering him.

The Toubou are black oasis farmers by tradition who also live in southern Libya, northern Chad and Niger, who have repeatedly said they were being marginalised.

A previous toll from the town’s local council had said that 19 died in the fighting and another 27 wounded.

Fresh fighting broke out in Sebha on Sunday morning, witnesses reported.

But in the afternoon the streets appeared to be calm, they said, adding that troops and policemen reinforcements were deployed in the town.

The government said in a statement it sent reinforcements to secure residential areas and strategic installations in Sebha and that a “committee of elders” was trying to end the unrest.

The fighting was the worst between the rival tribes since they struck a ceasefire agreement in March 2012 following deadly battles that killed at least 150 people and wounded 400 others.

The Toubous have long complained of marginalisation by Libyan society, while Arab tribes have accused the minority of employing foreign fighters, particularly from Chad.

The tribal clashes in Sebha could have a knock-on effect on production at several nearby oilfields in the mostly desert south.

Libya is currently struggling with a months-long oil crisis, which erupted when security guards at key oil terminals in the east shut them down, accusing the authorities of corruption and demanding a more equitable distribution of oil revenues.

Oil Minister Abdelbari Al Arusi said last month that lost production from the blockades had cost Libya about $9 billion (6.6 billion euros) in revenues.

PARIS — It started as a challenge to Bashar Assad, scrawled in graffiti on a school in a small Syrian border town. Security forces swept into the school and rounded up a handful of boys.

The March 2011 protests to free the teens metastasized, sending Syria into a full-blown civil war, complicated by a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Cold War overtones thrown in for good measure. More than 120,000 people have died and two million have fled their homes.

Syria’s descent into turmoil explains the low expectations for the peace conference in Geneva in a week. In Paris on Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry and 10 other foreign ministers are pressuring the opposition to attend the talks.

— March 2011: Protests erupted in Daraa, Syria, over security forces’ detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 18, security forces opened fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as did the crackdown by President Bashar Assad’s forces.

— June 2011: Police and soldiers in Jisr Al Shughour joined forces with the protesters they were ordered to shoot, and the uprising claimed control of a town for the first time. Elite Syrian troops, tanks and helicopters regained the town within days.

— August 2011: President Barack Obama called on Assad to resign and ordered Syrian government assets frozen.

— July 2012: A bombing at the Syrian national security building in Damascus during a high-level government crisis meeting killed four top officials, including Assad’s brother-in-law and the defence minister.

— Summer 2012: Fighting spread to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and its former commercial capital. Rebels seized control of some neighbourhoods, but the battle for control rages to this day and much of the city is in ruins.

— August 2012: Obama said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” that would change his thinking about military action.

— November 2012: The Syrian National Coalition was created, bringing together the main opposition groups. The council was hampered from the outset by crippling infighting and accusations that its members are out-of-touch exiles.

— March 2013: After advancing in the north, rebel forces captured Raqqa, a city of 500,000 on the Euphrates and the first major population centre controlled by the opposition. That month, the number of UN-registered refugees topped one million, half of them children.

— May-June 2013: Regaining the offensive with the help of thousands of Hizbollah fighters, Assad’s forces re-captured the strategic down of Qusair near Lebanon’s border.

— June 2013: US officials concluded that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons against the opposition. Obama authorised direct support for the rebels.

— August-September 2013: A chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs killed hundreds. Obama, blaming Assad’s government, said the United States had a responsibility to respond and puts it up to a vote in Congress. Russia proposed instead that Syria give up its chemical weapons, and military strikes were averted.

— September 2013: Eleven rebel groups left the Syrian National Coalition and form their own alliance intended to create an Islamic state.

— October 2013: Syria destroyed the equipment to produce chemical weapons.

— January 2014: Infighting among rebels, pitting a variety of Islamic groups and moderate factions against the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, killed nearly 500 people in a week. The first batch of toxic chemicals was shipped out of Syria.

KHARTOUM — Around 10,000 people have fled north to Sudan from South Sudan where government troops and rebels have battled for the past month, the UN’s refugee agency said on Sunday.

“Ten thousand, this is something we are confident with, that these are confirmed people who have crossed the border, who have been fleeing the conflict,” Nicolas Brass, external relations officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told AFP.

The influx marks an ironic turn of events in relations between Sudan and South Sudan, which became independent in 2011 after an overwhelming vote to separate under a 2005 peace plan that followed 22 years of civil war.

Millions of southerners fled north during the civil war, but about 1.8 million had returned to the South since 2007.

As recently as last September, a survey by the International Organisation for Migration found that almost every single one of about 20,000 ethnic southerners still living in squalid Khartoum-area camps wanted to go home.

But that was before fighting began in mid-December with clashes inside South Sudanese army units, sparking a sharp upsurge in ethnic violence.

The new UNHCR figure makes Sudan the second-largest recipient of refugees from the battles between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those of his ex vice president Riek Machar.

About 32,000 refugees have fled to Uganda and a total of around 10,000 others have gone to Ethiopia and Kenya, while more than 350,000 are internally displaced within South Sudan, the United Nations says.

Brass said most of those who have crossed into Sudan are women and children who have reached the Kordofan region where they are “in need of basic assistance”.

The UNHCR is working closely with Sudanese authorities who are leading the aid response, he said.

“We’ve been sending emergency shelter and non-food items” including mosquito nets, sheets and mattresses, Brass said, adding that the 10,000 figure is based on information from local authorities and UNHCR partner agencies.

A UNHCR source said in late December that the agency was investigating reports that hundreds of South Sudanese had fled north.

Last week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said aid workers were preparing to respond to a possible influx of 10,000 people from South Sudan.

Khartoum’s humanitarian aid commissioner was quoted by official media on Friday as saying only 168 “brother Southern Sudanese citizens” had crossed into Sudan.

Brass said the UNHCR is working with the government to prepare for the arrival of thousands more.

BAGHDAD — Violence in Iraq killed 34 people Sunday, including eight who died in clashes and helicopter fire west of Baghdad and more than a dozen in car bombs in the capital.

The bloodshed is the latest in a months-long surge of unrest, with more than 6,800 people killed last year and over 400 dead already this month, which comes ahead of April general elections.

Militants attacked Iraqi soldiers in the Abu Ghraib area west of the capital, after which at least one helicopter opened fire.

The violence killed at least eight people and wounded 17, but accounts of the incident differed.

One security official said all of the dead and wounded were civilians killed by helicopter fire, while a second said the casualties may also include militants, and that the toll was for the entire engagement.

A medical official said the majority of the dead and wounded were civilians, but that soldiers were also killed.

In the Allawi area of Baghdad itself, a car bomb targeting army recruits gathered at a taxi and bus station killed nine people and wounded at least 17.

The attack followed a suicide bombing targeting army recruits in the capital on Thursday that killed 23 people.

Militants opposed to the Iraqi government frequently target security forces with bombings and shootings.

In the Kadhimiyah area of Baghdad, another car bomb exploded in a main square, killing five people and wounding 16, while a roadside bomb in the Mansur area killed one person and wounded at least four.

And south of Baghdad in the town of Latifiyah, security forces killed two militants and arrested two-dozen others.

Violence also hit areas north of the Iraqi capital on Sunday.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, killing five people and wounding 36, an official said.

In Tikrit, gunmen killed a major in the SWAT forces and his guard, while gunmen in Mosul killed a tribal leader and a cleric, both of whom had backed anti-government protesters.

And a cameraman and his driver were wounded in Mosul by a magnetic “sticky bomb” attached to their car, the latest in a series of attacks on journalists in Mosul.

Five journalists were killed in the last three months of 2013 in Mosul, a mostly Sunni Arab city that remains one of the most dangerous areas in Iraq, with militants frequently carrying out attacks and reportedly extorting money from shopkeepers.

Iraq has come in for repeated criticism over shortcomings in media freedom, and ranks first in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Impunity Index, which tracks unsolved murders of journalists.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was emerging from a period of brutal sectarian killings.

More than 440 people have been killed in fighting and attacks so far this month, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

BEIRUT — Rebel-on-rebel clashes have killed nearly 700 people over the past nine days in northern Syria in the worst bout of infighting among the opponents of President Bashar Assad since the country’s civil war began, activists said Sunday.

The fighting between the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and several Islamist and more moderate rebel brigades has broken out in cities, towns and villages of at least four opposition-held provinces in the north. It has added yet another layer of complexity to Syria’s nearly three-year conflict, while also overshadowing the broader battle against the government over the past week.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group said Sunday that at least 697 people have been killed since the rebel infighting began January 3. The toll includes 351 fighters from the Islamist and mainstream opposition brigades, 246 from the “Islamic State”, and 100 civilians.

The “Islamic State” muscled its way into opposition-held territory in northern Syria last spring, coopting some weaker rebel brigades and crushing others. Initially welcomed by some residents for bringing a measure of order, the extremist group over time alienated many other rebel factions and large chunks of the civilian population by using brutal tactics to implement its strict interpretation of Islamic law. It has also kidnapped and killed its opponents.

The rebel infighting comes less than two weeks ahead of a planned international conference in Switzerland that aims to broker a political solution to the Syrian civil war. But the prospects for success at the peace talks appear slim at best, and it remains unclear whether they will indeed take place.

Assad has said he will not hand over power, while the Western-backed opposition in exile, known as the Syrian National Coalition, is in disarray and not yet decided whether it will attend the gathering. Even if it does, it is in no position to wrest concessions from Assad, whose forces have seized the momentum in recent months.

At the start of two days of meetings Sunday in Paris, top envoys from 11 countries that support the coalition were pressuring the group to attend the peace conference, saying the talks were the only way to end the carnage.

In Damascus, meanwhile, Assad made a rare public appearance, attending prayers at Al Hamad Mosque to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad. Syrian state TV broadcast video of Assad shaking hands with a crowd of admirers as he walked through the mosque.

While the rebel war-within-a-war has grabbed the spotlight over the past nine days, the fight against the government has raged on across the country.

In the central city of Homs, government shelling killed more than 20 people Saturday in the rebel-held Waer neighbourhood, the observatory said. It warned that the death toll could rise because dozens of people were critically wounded in the bombardment.

Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, also reported the shelling in Waer.

Syrian rebels also have targeted towns and neighbourhoods loyal to Assad with indiscriminate mortar fire. On Sunday, Syria’s state media said rebel-fired mortar shells killed two people in the pro-governmental Zahra area of Homs.

The Syrian conflict began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests against Assad before shifting into an armed insurgency after a brutal government crackdown. It has killed more than 120,000 people, forced more than two million to flee the country and devastated the nation’s cities, economy and social fabric.

In Damascus, United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos called on the international community to do more to help Syrians suffering from the conflict.

“The world must do more for all the people who are displaced,” Amos said. “Many families are living in abandoned buildings, schools or in makeshift shelters, without enough food, clean water or medicine. We must help them to get through this very cold winter.”

Amos was in Damascus for talks with government officials ahead of a donors’ conference in Kuwait set to open Wednesday for Syrian humanitarian relief.

BEIRUT — Syria has become a major amphetamines exporter and consumer as the trauma of the country’s brutal civil war fuels demand and the breakdown in order creates opportunity for producers.

Drugs experts, traders and local activists say Syrian production of the most popular of the stimulants, known by its former brand-name Captagon, accelerated in 2013, outpacing production in other countries in the region such as Lebanon.

Reports of seizures and interviews with people connected to the trade suggest it generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues in Syria, potentially providing funding for weapons, while the drug itself helps combatants dig in for long, gruelling battles.

Most other economic activity in Syria has ground to a halt in the past two years due to the violence, shortages and international sanctions.

Consumption of Captagon outside the Middle East is negligible, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), but it is a significant drug in the Arab Gulf, and nascent markets were detected in North Africa last year.

Sitting at a crossroads in the Middle East, Syria has long been a transit point for drugs coming from Europe, Turkey and Lebanon and destined for Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf.

The breakdown of state infrastructure, weakening of borders and proliferation of armed groups during the nearly three-year battle for control of Syria has transformed the country from a stopover into a major production site.

Even before the conflict, Saudi Arabia received about seven tonnes of Captagon in 2010, a third of world supply, according to UNODC figures.

A member of a prominent drug trading family in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where much of that country’s drug production and smuggling takes place, told Reuters that demand from the Gulf kingdom had increased since then, and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were also big consumers.

The trader said production in Lebanon fell 90 per cent in 2013 from two years earlier, and wholly attributed the drop to a shift in production to Syria. He said some production might also have moved to Syria from Turkey during the past year.

Khabib Ammar, a Damascus-based media activist, said Syrian fighters involved with the drugs trade were buying weapons with the money they made, though Reuters could not independently verify claims that Captagon profits were being used to fund either side of the conflict.

Syrian government forces and rebel groups each say the other uses Captagon to endure protracted engagements without sleep, while clinicians say ordinary Syrians are increasingly experimenting with the pills, which sell for between $5 and $20.

Regular seizures

The drug was first produced in the West in the 1960s to treat hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression, but by the 1980s was banned in most countries because of its addictive properties and no longer has a legitimate medical use. Its active ingredient, fenethylline, is metabolised by the body into the stimulants amphetamine and theophylline.

Lebanese psychiatrist Ramzi Haddad said the drug had the typical effects of a stimulant. “It gives you a kind of euphoria. You’re talkative, you don’t sleep, you don’t eat, you’re energetic,” he said.

Production is cheap and simple, requiring “only basic knowledge of chemistry and a few scales”, he added. Syrian and Lebanese authorities regularly seize homemade laboratories used to make the pills.

National drug control offices in the region also report Syria’s increasing role in the trade.

Colonel Ghassan Chamseddine, head of Lebanon’s drug enforcement unit, told Reuters the pills are hidden in trucks passing from Syria to Lebanese ports where they are then shipped to the Gulf.

“It comes from Syria. Most of the Captagon production is there, according to our information,” he said.

Official figures show Lebanon seized more than 12.3 million Captagon pills in 2013. Chamseddine said most of that came from a few large busts in the Bekaa Valley, which borders Syria. One seizure of 5.3 million pills implicated a Syrian family that he said has been smuggling drugs for 10 years.

The Lebanese trader said the main players in Lebanon’s Captagon trade are established families in the Bekaa who started off smuggling hashish and cocaine decades ago. They either produce the pills themselves or provide the materials and equipment to partners inside Syria and then help smuggle the pills out of the country, he said.

Turkish authorities have also identified a rise in Captagon production in Syria. In May, they seized seven million pills en route to Saudi Arabia, according to Saudi media. The head of Turkey’s anti-drug-trafficking directorate said the pills were made in Syria with materials from Lebanon, but he couldn’t confirm a connection to rebels there.

Dubai police also reported making a seizure of a record 4.6 million Captagon pills in December.

Mutual denials

Syrian state media regularly mention Captagon pills as one of the items government forces seize alongside weapons when they capture rebel fighters or raid their bases.

A drug control officer in the central city of Homs told Reuters he had observed the effects of Captagon on protesters and fighters held for questioning.

“We would beat them, and they wouldn’t feel the pain. Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows,” he said. “We would leave the prisoners for about 48 hours without questioning them while the effects of Captagon wore off, and then interrogation would become easier.”

The opposition retorts that the government is aiming to sully its reputation and say it is the pro-government “shabiha” gunmen that run the Captagon trade.

Opposition activist Ammar said consumption was limited to government supporters and fighters who use the cover of the revolution to pursue lucrative criminal activities.

“These days, the criminals and addicts do whatever they want,” he said. “They’ve increased because of hunger, poverty and lack of work.”

A psychiatrist named George said he treated Captagon users at his clinic in the government stronghold of Latakia.

“The use of Captagon and other pills increased after the revolution even among civilians because of psychological and economic pressures,” he said.

He said the government exaggerated the drug’s prevalence among opponents, but added that it was likely both the shabiha and rebel Free Syrian Army were users, “especially when they are assigned night duty or other long missions”.

A resident of the central city of Homs said the use of Captagon and hashish had become widespread and open in the past year in his neighbourhood, an area populated mostly by Alawites, the same Muslim sect that President Bashar Assad belongs to.

“It’s young people in general, and most of them are in the National Defence Force and shabiha organisations,” he said.

PARIS — Syrian President Bashar Assad and his family have “no future” in the war-torn country, the opposition said Sunday after meeting with its support group, the Friends of Syria.

“We all agreed that there is no future for Bashar Assad and his family in Syria,” said Ahmad Jarba, the leader of Syria’s opposition National Coalition. “His departure is inevitable.”

Speaking after a meeting in Paris with the US-led Friends of Syria, he said the group was fully unanimous on the issue.

“We are at a crossroads today in the framework of international decisions regarding the Syrian revolution,” Jarba said.

“We have passed a milestone on the way to the end of the regime.”

However, Jarba did not announce whether the opposition would take part in peace talks with representatives of Assad’s regime due to start on January 22 in Switzerland.

The coalition, which is under intense pressure to confirm its participation and failed to reach a decision after two days of debate in Istanbul last week, has said it will decide on the issue on Friday.

“We emphasised over and over to the opposition representatives that not taking part in the talks would lead to a failure of the discussions or would prevent them from taking place,” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “I hope we convinced them.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius implicitly acknowledged that it was still uncertain that the opposition would be represented at the so-called Geneva II peace talks to be held in Montreux, Switzerland.

“It is important that the Geneva II meeting takes place and succeeds,” Fabius said. “The only solution to the Syrian tragedy is a political solution.”

In a statement issued at the end of Sunday’s talks, the 11-nation Friends of Syria urged the opposition to “respond positively” to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s invitation to send a delegation to the Montreux talks.

“We invite them to form... a delegation of opposition forces to participate in the political process,” the statement said, adding: “We pledge our full backing to the opposition during the Geneva II conference.”

The Friends of Syria groups Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

For its part, Damascus has insisted that Assad would lead any transition agreed at the Geneva talks.

“If anyone thinks we are going to Geneva II to hand the keys to Damascus over, they might as well not go,” Information Minister Omran Al Zohbi said in December.

The Geneva communique reached in June 2012 envisaged a transition for Syria, but did not specify whether Assad should leave.

The conference in Montreux is designed to find a political solution to end the civil war in Syria, which has claimed more than 130,000 lives and displaced millions of people since March 2011.

FALLUJAH — Residents of a militant-held city on Baghdad’s doorstep began slowly returning on Saturday amid a tense calm, while the UN Security Council backed Iraq’s efforts against Al Qaeda-linked extremists.

Most businesses reopened in Fallujah while government security operations in nearby areas were put on hold after heavy overnight rain restricted the use of aircraft and heavy vehicles, a day after police and tribesmen retook militant-held areas in the nearby Anbar provincial capital Ramadi.

Gunmen seized all of Fallujah, just 60 kilometres from Baghdad, and parts of Ramadi last week, the first time militants have exercised such open control in major cities since the insurgency that followed the 2003 US-led invasion.

Both cities lie in Anbar province, a sprawling desert region bordering Syria where US and Iraqi officials have warned for months that jihadists have been able to establish training camps and rear bases.

The United Nations and NGOs have said civilians lack access to essential supplies such as food and fuel because of the crisis, while Washington has piled pressure on Baghdad to focus on political reconciliation, in addition to ongoing military operations.

The main route linking Baghdad to Fallujah was packed with vehicles, an AFP journalist said, as residents of the former insurgent bastion began making their way back after fleeing days earlier.

Most of the city’s businesses had also reopened on Saturday, the journalist added.

But tribal leaders said a combination of anti-government tribesmen and fighters loyal to the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were deployed on the outskirts of Fallujah.

A policeman stationed in Anbar said operations against militants between the two cities had been temporarily put on hold because of the overnight downpour.

The UN Security Council voiced support for the government campaign to retake the two cities, while concern mounted over the battle for Anbar.

It urged “Iraqi tribes, local leaders, and Iraqi security forces in Anbar province, to continue, expand and strengthen their cooperation against violence and terror, and it stresses the critical importance of continued national dialogue and unity”.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki called for Iraqis to support the armed forces.

“It is up to us to stand on the side of our armed forces and our security services,” he said.

On Friday tribesmen and police retook two areas of Ramadi from Al Qaeda-linked militants, tribal military commander Mohammed Khamis Abu Risha told AFP.

“We fought ISIL alongside our sons from the local police forces and returned them to their stations,” Abu Risha said.

“They only control 10 per cent of Ramadi territory,” he said of ISIL.

ISIL has been active in the Anbar fighting, but so have anti-government tribesmen.

At the same time, security forces have recruited their own tribal allies in the fighting that has raged in Anbar for more than 10 days.

The army has so far stayed outside of Fallujah during the crisis, with analysts warning that any assault on the city would likely cause significant civilian casualties.

“The Iraqi army does not have the sort of precision weapons, intelligence and fire discipline to assault Fallujah without causing civilian casualties,” said Jessica Lewis, a former US army intelligence officer who is now research director at the Institute for the Study of War.

In an assault, “the Iraqi security forces will most likely level Fallujah by overusing artillery and stand-off weapons.”

The recent crisis, along with a months-long surge in bloodshed nationwide, come just months ahead of national elections and are among the biggest challenges to face Maliki during his eight years in office.

CAIRO — Egypt’s army chief General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi gave his clearest signal yet on Saturday of his interest in becoming president, a move that could turn the clock back to the days when the presidency was controlled by men from the military.

Sisi, who ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected leader Mohamed Morsi last July after mass protests against his one-year rule, is widely expected to seek the top job but has not yet announced plans to run.

“If I run then it must be at the request of the people and with a mandate from my army... We work in a democracy,” he said, speaking at an army seminar in Cairo.

After the army overthrew the Islamist Morsi, it appointed an interim president and outlined a roadmap for democratic transition.

Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood supporters, who accuse the army of staging a coup, have held frequent protests calling for his reinstatement. But the security forces have launched a wide crackdown against the group, arresting thousands on charges of violence.

Egypt is set to hold a referendum on a new constitution on January 14-15, a major milestone in that roadmap which will clear the way for presidential and parliamentary elections. Analysts and politicians say it is unlikely that Sisi will announce plans to run before the referendum is complete.

‘National responsibility’

The referendum marks the first time Egyptians have voted since Morsi’s removal and is seen to be as much a public vote of confidence in the roadmap and Sisi as in the charter itself.

The state MENA news agency quoted Sisi on Saturday as urging Egyptians to “assume national responsibility and turn out in force to vote in the constitutional referendum in order to correct the democratic path and build a modern democratic state”.

There is little doubt the popular Sisi would win the presidential election. He is seen as a strong man capable of bringing stability to Egypt after more than three years of turmoil. He has had songs dedicated to him and his face appears on chocolates and posters on the streets of Egypt.

While Sisi enjoys broad support from Egyptians who are happy to see an end to Islamist rule, he is reviled by Morsi’s supporters who view him as the mastermind of a bloody military coup against the country’s first freely elected head of state.

Sisi’s candidacy would further deepen the divisions between the many Egyptians who believe a firm hand is needed to steer the country through crisis and Islamists bearing the brunt of a state crackdown on dissent.

Security forces have launched a massive crackdown against Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which it calls a terrorist group, arresting its leaders and forcing others underground.

In an interview with pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat on Saturday, the chairman of the constituent assembly which drafted the constitution said he expected Sisi to run for president in response to the popular demand.

“We must adhere to popular opinion who want the man and this is a commission for the man. There is no escape from that... The people say they want Sisi and we must submit to that,” Amr Musa told Al Hayat.

WASHINGTON — Five years after pledging to remake the US relationship with the broader Middle East and improve America’s image in the Muslim world, the Obama administration’s regional strategy appears to have come unhinged.

President Barack Obama has been confronted by fast-moving and ominous developments from Afghanistan to Tunisia, amid a bitter public power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and has adjusted his first term’s grand plan to restore Washington’s standing and influence.

Now, it’s a smaller vision that seems to rely on ad hoc responses aimed at merely keeping the United States relevant in an increasingly volatile and hostile atmosphere.

His administration has been forced to deal with three years of civil war in Syria. A Western-backed opposition is struggling to topple an autocratic government and repel Islamist fighters who also are destabilising neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq, where Al Qaeda has resurged less than three years after Obama withdrew US forces.

The US is struggling to identify a coherent position in Egypt after the military ouster of the country’s first democratically elected president. The administration tried its best to avoid calling the power transfer a coup.

It is losing patience with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is refusing to sign a security agreement with the US. The pact would allow the US to leave some troops in the country to help train and assist Karzai’s army in keeping the Taliban at bay after America’s longest conflict ends
December 31.

Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal against resistance from both sides, in a quest dismissed by some as quixotic.

Yet apart from Kerry’s efforts, Obama’s national security team seems to have settled on a largely hands-off, do-no-harm approach to developments in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Egypt.

This has attracted criticism and concern, not least from traditional US allies such as the Saudis, who, like the Israelis and many members of Congress, are wary, if not outright opposed to the administration’s engagement with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Administration officials, of course, are quick to deny suggestions of indecision, weakness or, worse, political expedience.

They say the president is adopting carefully crafted, pragmatic and diplomatic initiatives for each hot spot — initiatives designed to reduce what current officials believe was President George W. Bush’s reliance on military might and pressure tactics.

While the crises engulfing the Middle East cannot be blamed on Obama, there are growing fears that the US’ Mideast policy has become rudderless and reactive, and may be contributing to worsening conditions and a rise of Islamic extremism, notably in Syria and Iraq.

The administration has been accused of neglecting those countries while focusing on an elusive Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

“The deterioration in this region is just astounding,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters at a news conference in Jerusalem just three days into the New Year as Kerry was making his 10th peacemaking trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“Israel is surrounded by regimes falling apart on all sides. The Iranians are marching toward a nuclear capability. Syria is becoming a cancer infecting the whole region. And I yearn for peace. But more than anything else, I yearn for leadership — leadership for my country to be accounted for at a time when the world needs American leadership.”

An Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is “an important goal and aspiration and would be great for the world”, he said, criticising the administration in the same city where Kerry was engaged in peacemaking.

“But I’ll be honest with you, as Syria falls into chaos with 130,000 dead, and the King of Jordan and Lebanon deal with the effects of a raging war in Syria, as Iraq begins to fall apart, as the Iranians enrich, we have to put this in the context of the world at large,” Graham said.

Criticism from Republicans such as Graham and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who echoed his colleague’s sentiments at the Jerusalem news conference, is to be expected. But it is coming from other quarters as well.

Senior members of the Saudi royal family have disparaged the United States on Syria and voiced their scepticism of the rapprochement with Iran.

Saudi frustration has become so intense that the kingdom took the unprecedented step of turning down a seat on the UN Security Council to protest inaction on Syria, and last week announced a $3 billion gift to the Lebanese army to help it battle extremists.

While publicly welcoming Kerry’s peace efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has campaigned against his diplomacy with Iran and tried to scuttle it.

Some, including current and former US officials, worry that even the perception of disengagement is problematic and counterproductive. Their litany of complaints stretches from North Africa to Central Asia, and includes:

— a failure to carry through on threats to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for its use of chemical weapons.

— not taking a tougher stand on the ouster of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

— not insisting on keeping a residual force in Iraq or offering greater support to the Iraqi government earlier.

— an inability to seal the deal to keep some troops in Afghanistan after 2014.

— seeking out a partnership with Iran while de-emphasising engagement with nascent democracies in Tunisia and Libya.

The administration has adopted an “uncertain tone” in Iraq that has left a negative impression that is seen “so often in this region”, James F. Jeffrey, an ex-senior State Department official and ambassador to Baghdad, wrote in an essay this past week.

The administration is “seemingly signalling to everyone that ‘Job One’ is not getting us in any sort of military engagement — not just some new Vietnam, but any new cruise missile raid, or small continuing military presence in Afghanistan, or perhaps a few dozen uniformed US [counterterrorism] experts to advise Iraqis on how to take down Al Qaeda in Fallujah”, Jeffrey said. “The result has been an extraordinary collapse of our credibility in the region, despite many commendable administration actions.”

Jeffrey makes the case that the administration seems to be trying to insulate itself from criticism and in doing so is actually sending the wrong message.

“What goes missing with such a focus is empathy for the impact our words have on foreigners — our allies, partners, and foes around the world,” he wrote. “They are also an audience, and the former two keep ‘voting with their feet’, from turning down Security Council seats to any given Tel Aviv news conference. Until this all changes, chaos will continue to threaten us, in the Middle East and elsewhere.”

The administration adamantly rejects such complaints.

“The policy of the administration is that diplomacy should be the first option,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday. She noted that Obama and Kerry have restarted the Middle East peace talks, opened direct talks with Iran and moved to rid Syria of chemical weapons without military strikes.

Just this weekend, she pointed out, Kerry will be meeting with Syrian opposition supporters and Arab League officials in Paris to discuss Syria and the peace process.

“To argue that we are not actively engaged in diplomatic efforts around the world is completely inaccurate and is baseless,” Psaki said.

“The issue with some of these [complaints] is it seems to equate engagement with military action, and engagement should not be measured by military action. Diplomacy is our first priority... It’s never in our interests to have troops in the middle of every single conflict in the Middle East or to be permanently involved in open-ended wars in the Middle East.”

Observers such as Jeffrey suggest that reasoning is too narrow.

The administration “conflates any military action with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as if it’s all a slippery slope — and it isn’t,” he said. “They haven’t sorted out the difference between total war and using military forces intelligently — from the air, from ships, using special forces, using aid, giving weapons, helping people with advice. That’s what we need to do. And there is no easy answer.”