An Overlooked And Undercounted Group Of Arab American And Muslim Voters May Have Outsized Impact On 2024 Presidential Election

BY YOUSSEF CHOUHOUD

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY

Though domestic issues tend to motivate most U.S. voters, the war in the Middle East may be the dominant issue in mind for an increasingly important voting block: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans.

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, members of these communities have watched the rising death toll and heard vivid accounts of the horrors befalling Palestinians in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to bombard the enclave with the support of the Biden administration.

For some Arab Americans, a community that overwhelmingly voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential election, that support may have negative consequences on Biden’s attempt to regain the White House in 2024. In fact, numerous Middle Eastern and Muslim American leaders have called for their communities to “abandon Biden” in the upcoming presidential election.

The question, then, is what effect such defections could have on Biden’s chances of winning reelection.

As a whole, the number of Middle Eastern or Muslim Americans is quite small. According to the 2020 census – the first year such data was recorded – 3.5 million Americans reported being of Middle Eastern and North African descent, about 1% of the total U.S. population of nearly 335 million citizens.

But the outcome of the 2024 presidential election may come down to results in a few swing states where Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans are concentrated, such as Michigan, Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

In the 2020 presidential election, for instance, Biden won the state of Michigan by a total of 154,000 votes. The state is home to overlapping groups of more than 200,000 registered voters who are Muslim and 300,000 who claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa.
Working around statistical erasure

As a social scientist, I specialize in statistical analysis and research on how race, ethnicity and religion affect political outcomes in the U.S. I know from firsthand experience that any effort to gauge the attitudes and behaviors of Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans requires a bit of analytic gymnastics.

For starters, since 1977, the U.S. government has categorized those with ancestral ties to the “original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East” as “white,” according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

That stipulation is found in that agency’s Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting and is used in U.S. census reports.

As a result, members of this community are subsumed within an expansive grouping of “whites” that effectively renders them invisible in nearly all administrative data and public opinion polls.

Similarly, Muslims are not captured in official data, as the U.S. does not record its citizens’ religious affiliations.

Even public opinion surveys that record religious denomination typically offer little to no insight into this community. When it comes to more prevalent religious groups – Catholics, Protestants, white evangelicals – their opinions are frequently reported and the subject of many polls.

But Muslims are nearly always relegated to the “other non-Christian” religious category, along with similarly small faith communities.

This is not to say that relevant data on Muslims and Middle Easterners in the U.S. is unavailable. For example, Emgage, a nonprofit Muslim advocacy group, collected such data on eligible voters and turnout in a dozen states during the 2020 presidential election.

By combining the data from Emgage with data collected by AP VoteCast, the Cooperative Election Survey and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one can reach a few general conclusions about these communities.
Impact of defections on 2024 presidential campaign

The Arab American Institute, an advocacy group, says that since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Arab American support for the Democratic Party has plummeted from 59% in 2020 to just 17%.

Among Muslim Americans the drop is worse, from 70% in 2020 to about 10% at the end of 2023.

If these poll numbers hold true until Nov. 7, the 2024 presidential election would be the first time in nearly 30 years that the Democrats were not the party of choice for Arab American voters.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that these voters would go to the GOP. In 2020, then-President Donald Trump proved to be an unpopular choice among Arab and Muslim American voters, in large part due to his executive order 13769.

Signed on Jan. 27, 2017, the order immediately prohibited the entry of immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and came to be known by critics as the Muslim ban. Though the order survived numerous legal challenges, it was eventually overturned by Biden shortly after he took office in January 2021.

Trump has already promised during campaign stops to reinstate his policy.

Not surprisingly, Biden won overwhelming majorities in these communities in 2020.

But it is not out of the realm of possibility that the votes cast by Middle Easterners and Muslims for the Republican and Democratic candidates for president in 2024 drop by 50% from 2020, as those voters decide to stay home or vote for a third-party candidate.

In Michigan, for example, that could mean Biden would lose about 55,000 votes, or about a third of the 154,000-vote margin of victory he earned over Trump in 2020.

Michigan is not the only state where no-shows in these communities could jeopardize Biden’s prospects for victory.

Decreased turnout among Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim Americans alone would be enough to erase Biden’s 2020 margins of victory in Arizona – 10,457 votes – and nearly do the same in Georgia, where Biden won by 12,670 votes.

Of course, Arab Americans are not the only ones likely to penalize Biden at the ballot box next November over his foreign policy. But even if they were, the numbers show that a presidential election may swing on a lesser-known but potentially crucial voting bloc.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

This Toxic View Of Migrants Is A Threat To Europe’s Unity

BY YOSSI MEKELBERG

African migrant workers via Daily Express

EUROPEAN UNION (ARAB NEWS)--Election after election in the European Union confirms what we have known for some time — that Europe is becoming an extremely unfriendly place for migrants. Some countries are taking a particularly nasty approach to refugees and asylum seekers in desperate need of a haven, even if only a temporary one.

In less than a year, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia have all elected or re-elected to power staunchly anti-migration parties. In Germany the relative success of the ultra-nationalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party added a brightly flashing warning sign indicating that Europe has declared itself a place where migrants are not welcome, whatever their circumstances, or regardless of the self-interest of those many European countries whose economies need a constant supply of migrant workers.

Here lies the big conundrum of migration. Humans will not stop migrating, be it for economic reasons, or especially when they face threats posed by oppressive regimes, wars or natural disasters. The aging population of Europe needs migrants to keep its economy moving and maintain the generosity of its welfare society. Yet the current view in Europe of migrants is negative, with little attention paid to the complexity of the issue. If affluent nations could only put aside their prejudices and biases, and create a more rational discourse about the impact that newcomers have on their societies and economies, they would be certain to conclude that sustaining their prosperity requires certain levels of immigration. Moreover, if they wish to properly regulate and manage migration they will also have to invest substantially in the less developed parts of the world.

The recent formation of an ultra-nationalist populist coalition government in Italy, which comprises the anti-establishment Five Star movement and right-wing League, both populist parties that thrive on defying the establishment and the role of Europe in their migration or fiscal policies, has generated further fear for the survival of the European Union as we know it. It has prompted George Soros, one of the wealthiest investors, businessmen and philanthropists of our generation, to launch a public campaign warning of the dangerous nexus between the EU’s current migration policy, or lack of one, and the future of the bloc itself.


"If affluent nations wish to properly regulate and manage migration they will also have to invest substantially in the less developed parts of the world.

Yossi Mekelberg"

Soros, a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust and made his fortune in Europe and the US, is not afraid of, or any stranger to, political controversy. As someone who witnessed and survived the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s, and was part of Europe’s miraculous recovery, he is one of the most enthusiastic of Europhiles, and argues against countries pursuing “self-serving, discordant migration policies, often to the detriment of their neighbors.” He fears that the policies of the new government in Italy could lead to a backlash against Brussels, which would achieve the opposite of what it intended, and strengthen the view that membership of the EU is a recipe for Brussels meddling in the sovereign affairs of a member state. This might end in growing support for parties that promote anti-European and anti-migrant policies, two notions that seem in the current political atmosphere to go hand in hand.

Soros, who has become a target for many nationalists in Europe, and especially the prime minister of his country of birth Viktor Orbán, is right to on the one hand highlight the importance of immigrants for Europe, and on the other hand to show sympathy for countries such as Greece and Italy, which due to their geography have borne the brunt of the migration crisis. This at a time when other more northern countries closed their borders almost hermetically and accompanied this with vile xenophobic rhetoric. Instead of punishing the Italian people, most of whom are instinctively pro-European, for making this regrettable choice at the ballot box, the more constructive approach would be to change the overall European policy on migration.

The current policy places a much heavier burden on countries from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East that are closest to the main migratory routes. EU policy places the responsibility of dealing with the asylum application on the country where the refugee first lands. It takes only a quick glance at the map to recognize the burden this places on countries such as Italy and Greece. It is essential to amend this anomaly. Moreover, Europe’s first-destination countries require financial and technical help from the rest of the EU to cope with the influx.

The third pillar of dealing with the migration challenge is the creation of economic conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa that are favorable to job creation and entrepreneurs. Something like a Marshall Plan for Africa, as Soros suggests, might be difficult, since it would require an estimated €30 billion per year for the foreseeable future. However, for Europe to move away from its toxic migration discourse, which is no fault of the migrants themselves, it is an investment worth making. Any such plan would require all the major economies, led by Germany and France, to play their part. They should accept that an integrated migration policy must include welcoming migrants to compensate for the low birth rate in Europe, and assisting those countries most affected by large numbers of migrants.

But last, and crucially, if Europe does not take action to improve economic and political conditions where most of its migrants originate, the phenomenon of excessive and intractable mass migration to Europe will continue to negatively dominate EU politics — at the risk of compromising the EU’s values, leading to even further divisions and crises, and even its disintegration.


Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg

Egypt Court Drops Murder Charges Against Mubarak

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 86, greets medics, army personnel and his supporters, as he leaves a helicopter ambulance after it landed at Maadi Military Hospital following his verdict in Cairo, Egypt.

CAIRO, EGYPT (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — An Egyptian court on Saturday dismissed murder charges against former president Hosni Mubarak in connection with the killing of protesters in the 2011 uprising that ended his nearly three-decade reign.

The ruling marks another major setback for the young activists who spearheaded the Arab Spring-inspired uprising nearly four years ago -- many of whom are now in jail or have withdrawn from politics -- and will reinforce the perception that Mubarak's autocratic state remains in place, albeit led by a new president, former military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

Saturday's verdict concludes Mubarak's retrial along with his two sons, his security chief and six top security commanders, who were all acquitted. Also on trial was businessman Hussein Salem, a longtime Mubarak friend tried in absentia. He too was acquitted.

Mubarak, 86, was also acquitted of corruption charges that he faced along with his sons Alaa and Gamal. It was not immediately clear whether Mubarak would now walk free since he is serving a three-year jail term for corruption charges he was convicted of in May. He has been in detention since April 2011, but it is unclear if the past 3 1/2 years will be considered as time served.

Mubarak was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012 on charges related to the killing of protesters, but the verdict was overturned on appeal the following year. Mubarak has spent virtually all the time since he was detained in hospitals due to his poor health. On Saturday, he was brought to the defendants' cage on a gurney. He wore dark glasses, a navy blue tie and a matching cardigan.

Nearly 900 protesters were killed in the 18-day uprising that ended when Mubarak stepped down, handing over power to the military. The trial, however, was concerned only with the killing of 239 protesters, whose names were cited in the charges sheet.

Presiding judge Mahmoud al-Rashidi made clear that the dismissal of the charges did not absolve Mubarak of the corruption and "feebleness" of the latter years of his 29-year rule and praised the January 2011 uprising, saying that its goals — freedom, bread and social justice — were legitimate.

However, al-Rashidi said Mubarak, like any other human, erred at times and suggested that his old age should have spared him a criminal trial. "To rule for or against him after he has become old will be left to history and the Judge of Judges, the Righteous and the Justice (God) who will question him about his rule," said the judge, who threatened to jail anyone attending Saturday's 45-minute hearing if they reacted in any way to the ruling before he adjourned the session.

Mubarak's successor, the Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, is also jailed and faces a slew of charges, including some related to the killing of protesters, which could see him sentenced to death. Morsi was elected in Egypt's first democratic presidential election in 2012 but was overthrown by el-Sissi a year later amid massive protests calling for his resignation.

Since then the government has launched a sweeping crackdown on Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group and other supporters. It has also jailed scores of secular activists, including some of the leaders of the 2011 uprising, for violating a draconian law regulating street protests that was adopted a year ago.

Arab States Risk Backlash By Joining Syria Strikes

 By the official Saudi Press Agency, Saudi pilots sits in the cockpit of a fighter jet as part of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on Islamic State militants and other targets in Syria that began early Tuesday. Arab countries’ prominent role in initial airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria shatters the notion of what a typical American-led military operation looks like and won the Mideast allies' praise from U.S. President Barack Obama for their willingness to stand “shoulder-to-shoulder" with the United States. It is a reflection of their growing concern about the threat posed by Islamic extremists, and a chance to flex some military muscle toward regional rival Iran _ a key supporter of governments in both Syria and Iraq. The strategy is not without risks.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Arab nations that joined the United States in striking the Islamic State group in Syria were unusually open about it, throwing aside their usual secrecy and wariness about appearing too close to Washington. Saudi Arabia even released heroic-looking photos of its pilots who flew the warplanes.

Their boasting reflects the depth of Gulf nations' concern over the threat of the extremist group sweeping over Iraq and Syria. It also shows their desire to flex some military muscle toward regional rival Iran, a key supporter of the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

But the Sunni monarchies run the risk of a backlash by hardline Islamists angered by seeing them help strike Sunni fighters who many of them see as battling a Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Notably, militant websites sympathetic to the Islamic State group lit up on Wednesday with the photos of the Saudi pilots, alongside calls for them to be killed.

Even beyond the ranks of hardliners, many around the region are suspicious of U.S. motives in yet again launching military action in an Arab nation. Many among the Syrian rebels grumble that the United States and Arab nations ignored their pleas for action against Syrian President Bashar Assad for years and are acting now only in their own interest against the radicals.

Moreover, the U.S. expanded the strikes beyond the Islamic State, hitting al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, in a bid to take out a cell called the Khorasan Group believed to be plotting attacks against the United States. That has other Syrian rebel factions with Islamic ideologies — and there are many of them — worried they too could be hit by the Americans.

"For four years, we called on the West to help us topple the regime, but it's clear the target is the Islamic factions," said a Damascus-based opposition activist, Abu Akram al-Shami, speaking via Skype. "This will affect the revolution on the ground."

The countries whose air forces carried out strikes were all Sunni-led states run by hereditary monarchs with longstanding ties to the American military: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain. Another Gulf monarchy, Qatar, played a supporting role, according to the Pentagon. President Barack Obama — who had been eager for Arab backing in the campaign — praised them for their willingness to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States.

Perhaps most vulnerable to a backlash is Jordan, which borders Syria and has a strong community of Islamists and ultraconservative Salafis who have sympathies with the Islamic State group. Jordan was the homeland of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant who founded al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, which eventually evolved into the Islamic State group, years after he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq.

Mohammed al-Shalabi, a prominent figure in the jihadi-Salafi movement in Jordan, told The Associated Press, that while the Islamic State group has "made mistakes" — killing journalists, for example — it is still part of the Muslim nation and U.S. strikes against it will only build support for it.

"The U.S. is hated in the region because of its support for Israel. People will now feel sympathy with (the Islamic State group) against the U.S.," he said. "This war is not in Jordan's interests," the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Zaki Bani Rsheid, told the Al-Ghad newspaper. He warned that the war would only boost the power of Iran across the region and that Jordan's participation could bring "responses targeting its internal security and stability."

In a move some saw as an attempt to soothe Salafi anger, a Jordanian court on Wednesday acquitted and freed a radical Muslim preacher known for his pro-al-Qaida sermons, Abu Qatada. Analysts said the preacher could help give legitimacy to the campaign against the Islamic State group — or at least help keep Salafis quiet over it.

The action in Syria makes for the largest grouping of Arab military forces against a common target since the broad-based coalition formed to evict Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, according to analysts at the Austin, Texas-based geopolitical intelligence company Stratfor.

Their participation marks the growing concern among Gulf countries — particularly Saudi Arabia and the Emirates — about the rise of Islamist groups in the wake of the Arab Spring, ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood movement to al-Qaida affiliates.

"The Islamic State represents a direct threat to the national security of these countries," said Hossam Mohamed, a political analyst at the Regional Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, the two richest of the group, boast some of the region's best-equipped militaries, including Western-made fighter jets, attack helicopters such as the AH-64 Apache, and transport and refueling aircraft.

The Emirates in particular has been playing a more active military role in trying to shape regional conflicts. It has deployed troops as part of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and, along with Qatar, contributed warplanes to the alliance's aerial campaign over Libya in 2011 that helped lead to the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi. American officials have also said it carried out airstrikes against Islamist rebels in Libya last month, but the Emirates has not confirmed doing so.

American and French sorties targeting the extremists have flown from air bases in Qatar and the Emirates, and from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, which is assigned to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has agreed to host training facilities for Syrian rebels on its territory.

It remains unclear how much of a military role the countries will play going forward. Their participation may turn out to be token, the Stratfor analysts said — or "these airstrikes could develop into a small but growing assertiveness among the region's Arab monarchies."

Beyond striking the extremists, however, Saudi Arabia and its allies are looking further. They want to pressure Iran and, they hope, eventually turn the campaign against Assad, whose ouster they seek, said Mustafa Alani, an expert on security and terrorism at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center.

"They are not hoping to topple the regime by military strikes. Military strikes are only a means to generate pressure on the regime to accept a diplomatic political solution," Alani said. "The idea is to weaken the regime to send a clear message."

Associated Press journalists Lee Keath in Cairo, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Mohammed Daraghmeh in New York, Taymour El-Alfy in Cario, and Diaa Hadid in Beirut contributed to this report.

Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at www.twitter.com/adamschreck

Arab League Agrees To Combat Islamic State Group

A Shiite fighter stands guard over followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr attending open-air Friday prayers in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Sept. 5, 2014.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The Arab League agreed Monday to take urgent measures to combat extremists like the Islamic State group as one of its suicide bombers killed 16 people at a meeting of Sunni tribal fighters and security troops in Iraq.

The resolution, issued after late-night meetings of Arab foreign ministers a day earlier, doesn't explicitly back American military action against the group. U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking an international coalition to challenge the Islamic State group and is expected to outline his plan Wednesday to the American people.

But the resolution, issued as a separate statement from a comprehensive one dealing with Arab affairs, reflected a new sense of urgency among the 22-member states to challenge the militant group that has seized large swaths of territories in Iraq and Syria.

The resolution calls for immediate measures to combat the group on the political, defense, security and legal levels. It didn't elaborate. The resolution also backed the United Nations resolution issued last month that imposed sanctions on a number of the group's fighters and called on countries to adopt measures to combat terrorism. The council resolution was adopted under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, meaning it can be militarily enforced.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected in the region this week to discuss details of the coming U.S. policy. Mustafa Alani, the director of the security and defense department at the Gulf Research Center in Geneva, said the resolution shows Arab countries remain uncertain about the U.S. policy regarding the Islamic State group. He said they also worry about the U.S. taking a selective approach to handling the issue by choosing to single out Iraq for action but not addressing the turmoil in Syria.

"There will be no signing on a white paper," Alani said. Arabs are looking for "equal efforts in changing the situation in Syria. Without it, it is a lost war." The Islamic State group, which broke away from al-Qaida, has declared a proto-state straddling the border of Iraq and Syria. Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region have been critical of the U.S.' reluctance of entering the Syrian civil war— in which Iran, a major non-Arab rival to the region, has been a main backer of the government of President Bashar Assad.

The Saudi government said after its weekly Cabinet meeting Monday that it supports the "firm" Arab League position. Iraq is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis after the Islamic State group's offensive, which included militants committing beheadings and mass killings while targeting minorities in the country.

In Monday's attack, the bomber drove an explosives-laden Humvee, apparently seized from the Iraqi military, into the gathering of a major Sunni tribe, the Jabour, and security forces in Duluiyah, some 80 kilometers (45 miles) north of Baghdad, a police officer said.

The explosion killed 16 and wounded at least 55 people, the officer said. A health official confirmed the casualties. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

The town of Duluiyah briefly fell to the Sunni-dominated Islamic State group for few days in July but the Jabour tribesmen, who have aligned themselves with the Iraqi forces in the battle against the extremists, took it back.

After the suicide bombing, militants crossed a small river on Duluiyah's outskirts and attacked the town, setting off fierce clashes. In an online statement, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for Monday's attack, saying two Saudi suicide bombers had targeted a police building and the gathering of Sunni militiamen. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified, but it was posted on a Twitter account frequently used by the militant group. Iraqi officials confirmed only one suicide attack.

The rampage by Islamic State fighters has become Iraq's worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops. Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias have been fighting against the militants with assistance from U.S. airstrikes, which contributed to some progress on the ground.

After U.S. airstrikes, Iraqi security forces on Monday retook the Anbar provincial town of Barwana, across the Euphrates River from the town of Haditha, about 220 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, parliament was scheduled to vote Monday on a new government, a key step in facing the Islamic State group. But it was still unclear whether the session would go ahead as planned since political rivals continued negotiating on the proposed lineup for Cabinet by Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi.

El Deeb reported from Cairo.

Associated Press writers Murtada Faraj and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.

Arab Strikes In Libya Shows Impatience With US

n this photo provided by Egypt's state news agency MENA, speaker of the Libyan Parliament Ageila Saleh Eissa, left, meets Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi at the presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2014. A delegation of Libyan officials are visiting Egypt amid increasing fears among Libya's neighbors and Western countries that the North African nation is sliding deeper into turmoil, particularly after mysterious airstrikes against Islamist militias prompted allegations that outside powers were trying to swing the fight.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Egypt and the United Arab Emirates secretly carried out airstrikes against Islamist militias inside Libya, the United States publicly acknowledged Tuesday, another sharp jolt to American-led attempts over the past three years to stabilize Libya after dictator Moammar Gadhafi's overthrow.

One official said Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia for months have been supporting a renegade general's campaign against Libyan militant groups, but that the Saudis don't appear to have played a role in recent strikes. The Libyan government is too weak and disorganized to fight the militants itself. Another official said the U.S. was aware that Egypt and UAE were planning strikes and warned them against it. Neither U.S. ally notified Washington before launching the strikes, officials said.

"Outside interference in Libya exacerbates current divisions and undermines Libya's democratic transition," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. She said Libya was in a "very fragile place."

But U.S.-led international efforts to secure the country clearly are fraying as impatience in the region grows. Libya is undergoing its worst violence since rebels ousted Gadhafi in 2011. Tripoli's international airport is largely destroyed and diplomats, foreign nationals and thousands of Libyans have fled. The U.S. embassy there is closed, nearly two years after the U.S. ambassador was killed while visiting Benghazi.

Since then, powerful militias have seized power and the central government has proved unable to create a strong police force or unified military. In recent months, Islamist fighters have confronted a backlash, losing their power in parliament and facing a counteroffensive by former Gadhafi and rebel Gen. Khalifa Hifter. Washington doesn't support the general. But some of Libya's neighbors, fearful of the growing power of the Islamist extremists, are helping him.

Although Britain, France, Germany and Italy joined the U.S. in expressing their concerns about the airstrikes, Egyptian officials denied involvement and the Emiratis haven't commented. The airstrikes reflect growing international division, with Egypt and the UAE, two of the region's most powerful, anti-Islamist governments, deciding they needed to act to prevent Libya from becoming a failed state and a breeding ground for jihadist activity throughout the Arab world.

A U.S. official said recent airstrikes were done without authorization from Libya's government. The officials weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity. The Egyptian and UAE role in the strikes was first reported by The New York Times.

Asked about American influence with its partners in Libya, Psaki lamented the "very complicated political situation" in the country. She said the U.S. remained committed to seeing democracy prevail in Libya even if that will "take some time." She acknowledged U.S. frustration with the pace of Libya's transition.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon's spokesman, called for nations to refrain from adding to Libya's violence, as did the newly appointed U.N. envoy to the country, Bernardino Leon. He said an inclusive political process with all Libyans represented in parliament, government and other state institutions can end the instability, but "foreign intervention won't help Libya get out of chaos."

The strikes happened as Islamist-backed militias were engaged in ongoing fighting for control of the Tripoli airport. They occurred on two days in the last week. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri called reports of an Egyptian role "unsubstantiated rumors."

"We have no direct connection to any of the military operations on the ground in Libya," he said. But Egypt has been closely involved in Libya's ongoing contest for power for several months, according to several Egyptian officials. They said the effort began with intelligence collection about training camps, hideouts and barracks for extremist groups in the east such as Ansar al-Shariah, which the U.S. blames for the 2012 attack on its diplomatic facility in Benghazi.

That operation included an Egyptian elite force called "Rapid Intervention," which was formed by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to combat terrorism inside and outside Egypt. Officials with knowledge of the operations say Egypt has been working with Saudi, Emirati and Libyan military officials to support Hifter's counteroffensive. They weren't authorized to speak publicly about the covert efforts and demanded anonymity. An American citizen who serves as a spokesman for the general, David Anthony LeVeque, confirmed that Egypt was assisting the fight against extremist Islamist factions. He said the Islamists were getting arms from Qatar.

Three years ago, the Emirates and Gulf neighbor Qatar played the most prominent Arab roles in the military intervention that led to Gadhafi's ouster. Both sent warplanes as part of the NATO-led effort. Qatar in particular supplied weapons to rebels.

But the two countries, both important U.S. allies, are in opposing camps now, jostling for influence in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Adam Schreck in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sarah El Deeb and Jon Gambrell in Cairo, and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

Kurdish Pleas For Weapons May Finally Be Heard

U.S. Soldiers with the 5th Special Forces Group, 101st Airborne Division and Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council working with parachute riggers assigned to the 11th Quartermaster Co., Special Troops Battalion, 82nd Sustainment Brigade to palletize water for a humanitarian airdrop in Iraq Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, Kurdish officials have beseeched the Obama administration to let them buy U.S. weapons. And for just as long, the administration has rebuffed the Kurds, America's closest allies in Iraq.

U.S. officials insisted they could only sell arms to the government in Baghdad, even after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki broke a written promise to deliver some of them to the Kurds, whose peaceful, semi-autonomous northern region had been the lone success story to come out of the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Now, the administration is confronting the consequences of that policy. The Islamic State group, which some American officials have dubbed "a terrorist army," overpowered lightly armed Kurdish units in a blitzkrieg that has threatened the Kurdish region and the American personnel stationed there.

In June, the Pentagon dispatched 300 military advisers to Iraq. Dozens of them are operating out of Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, which is now under threat from the Islamic State. In a bitter irony, the extremists used American armored vehicles and weapons they had seized from the hapless Iraqi military to defeat Kurdish fighters who were blocked from acquiring just such equipment, U.S. and Kurdish officials said.

The U.S. sought to halt the extremists' advance Friday with airstrikes, but Kurdish officials also say Washington has promised to begin sending them arms. Pentagon officials say their policy hasn't changed — they will only sell arms to Baghdad.

That raises the question of whether the CIA has begun providing weapons in secret to the Kurds, something U.S. officials will neither confirm nor deny. The CIA declined to comment on whether it was sending arms.

But whether or not a covert program is underway, a growing number of voices are calling for the U.S. to begin openly and speedily arming the Kurds. "If Baghdad isn't supplying the Kurds with the weapons that they need, we should provide them directly to the Kurds," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

"The only way to confront this threat is to arm Iraqi security forces and Kurdish forces, and yet we're doing nothing to support either one of those," said retired Gen. Michael Barbero, who used to run the mission training the Iraqi military. "It just doesn't make sense to me. It's an existential threat, so why we are not in there at least equipping and arming them?"

White House spokesman John Earnest said Friday the U.S. has begun stepping up its help to the Iraqi military and the Kurds. "We have a strong military-to-military relationship with Iraq's security forces, and the Iraqi security forces have shared some of those assets with Kurdish security forces," Earnest said. "We have also demonstrated a willingness to increase the flow of supplies, including arms, to Kurdish security forces as they confront the threat that's posed by ISIL."

In an interview published Saturday in The New York Times, Obama praised the Kurds and how they've governed their region of Iraq. But he said the U.S. does not want to get into the business of providing an air force for either the Iraqi government or the Kurds.

The president said he was telling the various factions, "We will be your partners, but we are not going to do it for you. We're not sending a bunch of U.S. troops back on the ground to keep a lid on things."

Karwan Zebari, spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdistan region in Washington, said in an interview that U.S. officials have assured him that guns and ammunition would be forthcoming. "Last night, they said, 'We will be moving expediently with providing you some military assets,'" he said Friday.

The U.S. has not wanted to stoke the Kurds' desire for, and Baghdad's fear of, an independent Kurdish state. Officials tried to steer some of the aid to the Kurds, but it didn't work. Under the Pentagon's foreign military sales program, some $200 million worth of American weapons that was supposed to be earmarked for the Kurds by the Maliki government was never delivered to them, Barbero said.

"This policy of one Iraq, everything goes through Baghdad, ignores the reality on the ground," Barbero said in an interview. Zebari and Barbero said Kurdish forces have been outgunned by ISIL troops driving in armored American Humvees and firing American machine guns seized from the Iraqi army.

"It's not that the peshmerga forces are scared or not willing to fight," Zebari said, referring to the Kurdish militia. "They are coming at us with armored Humvees and we're throwing these AK-47 bullets at them. It doesn't do anything. At some point you run out of bullets."

The Kurds have some tanks and armored vehicles, but not in Sinjar, a city far from the Kurdish seats of power in Irbil and Suliminiya. That city fell swiftly to an onslaught from Islamic State fighters, leading thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority to flee to a mountaintop, where the U.S. has airdropped supplies to stave off deaths from hunger and thirst.

Many of the peshmerga soldiers defending Sinjar had just six magazines of ammunition, said a former CIA official with close ties to the region who spoke on condition of anonymity because he got the information in confidence.

U.S. airstrikes are not "the endgame," Zebari said. "What has changed for the peshmerga on the ground? Nothing. We still need that military equipment."