April 30, 2007 3:47
Crossing Over Jordan
It's never easy entering fortress Israel from the Arab hinterlands. My trip on Saturday from Beirut to Jerusalem -- which in some perfect, peaceful world would be a quick joy ride on a direct highway -- took 14 hours of delayed airline flights and expensive taxis up and down the Jordan Valley in search of an open border crossing.
The Israeli border agent at the Sheik Hussein bridge freaked when she saw the stamps on my passport, many of which are from countries that don't recognize or are at war with Israel. Iraq? Syria? Lebanon? "Oh my God!" repeated the girl, who couldn't have been much older than 18. She then began a battery of detailed questions concerning my family and professional history. I decided not to mention that one of the family names on my father's side is Adolf.
But perhaps even harder is the psychological shift. Israel is a constant presence and obsession in the Middle East -- the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone talks about but almost never to. That's in part because most of what we see is the business-end of the Israeli Defense Force, not exactly Zionism with a human face. I spent the entirety of the war in Lebanon last summer without ever seeing a single Israeli solider, tank or aircraft. I just saw the bombs explode.
So covering the other side of the Jordan river while Tim McGirk is away on vacation feels like the fulfillment of an unrequited fascination. My instant impression -- as a native New Yorker -- is one of gut-level familiarity, like I'm in Brooklyn on the Med. And as a wayward member of one of the three Abrahamic religions, Jerusalem has it's own spiritual claim on me too.
But this is the modern Middle East, so I have certain expectations about what my welcome here will be like. Namely that most people whom I meet, with whom I'll work, and whom I'll interview, will consider that neutrality is not an option and will subtly or overtly try to win me to their side. And that given where I live and what I do, it will be hard to convince them that I haven't already chosen. Harder still that I don't want to choose.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem
April 27, 2007 5:43
Morocco's Plan: Good Faith or Bad Scheme?
You have to admire many of the things that King Mohammed VI of Morocco has done since he ascended the throne upon the death of his autocratic father in 1999. Morocco's Equity and Reconciliation Commission, which aired the horrendous human rights abuses committed in past decades, is a model of justice that every other Arab state needs to follow. He's been less forthcoming, however, in settling the problem of Western Sahara, "Africa's last colony," which has been back on the U.N.s agenda this week. After a year of study kicked off when the King visited Laayoune in March 2006, the Moroccan government has just handed the U.N. a proposal to revolve the Western Sahara dispute through negotiations.
As a proposal for autonomy, the Moroccan proposal seems reasonable. It says that within the framework as subjects of the Kingdom of Morocco, the Western Saharan people "themselves will run their affairs democratically, through legislative, executive and judicial bodies enjoying exclusive powers." Moreover, the Moroccan government says it is willing to "take part in serious, constructive negotiations" with other parties, presumably including the pro-independence Polisario Front, on the details of autonomy and submit the results to a popular referendum. Western Sahara is a North African desert territory about the size of Colorado with a population of about 267,000 Sahrawis, not including some 100,000 refugees living in border camps in Algeria. Moroccan forces took control of the territory in 1975 after a century of Spanish colonialism, a move contested by the Polisario, which launched a guerrilla campaign until a 1991 ceasefire.
The problem is that the Moroccan government wants the other parties as well as the international community to accept the concept of autonomy up front, before the negotiations begin. The Polisario rejected the Moroccan proposal and continues to demand a U.N.-sponsored referendum on the territory's future in line with the rights of Sahrawis to "self-determination," enshrined in the de-colonialization U.N. Resolution 1514 of 1960.
For a variety of historical, political, economic and security reasons, Morocco's refusal to let go of the Western Sahara is understandable if not grounded in international law. U.N. envoys have tried for years and failed to get Morocco and other parties to agree on the terms of a referendum on independence, autonomy or full integration into the Moroccan kingdom. The current Moroccan initiative is an attempt to revive efforts toward a settlement, albeit one that precludes independence and focuses exclusively on the parameters of autonomy.
Morocco is counting on its strong relations with the U.S., enhanced by coordination in the "War on Terrorism," in its hopes of building the momentum for a final settlement that Rabat believes the initiative has created. But even Washington, at this point, continues to reject Moroccan claims of sovereignty and to call for "Morocco and the Polisario to engage in direct negotiations, without preconditions, to resolve the Western Sahara dispute," as Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns recently put it.
Burns, however, did describe the Moroccan initiative as "a serious and credible proposal" as far as it goes. Morocco deserves credit for making a sincere effort to resolve the conflict. Anything that can get the parties into negotiations is useful. The Western Sahara dispute has been a major spoiler in efforts to build a stronger union of Maghreb states, essential for expanding trade and combatting Islamic extremism of the sort that caused major terrorist attacks in Algiers and Casablanca this month.
The trick will be convincing Morocco that its initiative is a starting point in discussions, rather than the last word. Morocco has wisely shelved any thought of a unilateral approach. But it will be unwise if it thinks the international community will agree to settle the question of "self-determination" in negotiations on Morocco's terms alone. In his bi-annual report on the issue to the U.N. Security Council, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called on Morocco and the Polisario to negotiate "without preconditions" and recommended that Algeria and Mauritania, another neighbor, be included.
Anyone who encourages a settlement will have to keep in mind the lessons of previous frustrated envoys, including former Secretary of State James Baker, who spent seven years as a U.N. mediator. In his 2006 memoir, "Work Hard, Study...and Keep Out of Politics!", Baker complains that Morocco rejected his final effort, Peace Plan for Self-Determination for the People of Western Sahara, despite its being approved 15-0 by the Security Council. "I had given it my best shot," Baker writes, reserving his last thoughts on the issue for the Sahrawis: "I still think often of the people in the camps--victims of forces beyond their control, never returning home, largely forgotten--and of the many others living unhappily under occupation in Western Sahara itself."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
April 26, 2007 9:42
Heading for Trouble
This morning when I left Damascus, there were rumors of riots sparked by Syrian government interference in this week's parliamentary election. The unrest was limited to just a couple provincial cities and quickly put down by security forces.
On my way home to Beirut, the road was filled with tourist buses carrying Iraqi refugees day-tripping to Lebanon in order to renew their Syrian visas. With over a million Iraqi refugees in Syria, most of whom are given three-month visas when they arrive, this has become a big business for tour operators.
On the drive up the backside of the Mount Lebanon range, I saw two Lebanese army tank crews along the highway-- an unusual sight in of itself -- loading artillery shells. Their turrets pointed down into the Bekka valley in the direction of Syria, but also the direction from which an invading Israeli army would approach.
When I arrived in Beirut and went for a haircut, the whole barbershop was talking about the abduction of two kids -- a 25 year-old man and a 12 year-old boy -- possibly in revenge for the killing of a Shia Muslim man in a sectarian street riot in January or by some party hoping to re-ignite the rioting. Mike the barber kept asking me if there was going to be another war with Israel this summer.
Just a few moments ago, the government confirmed that the two kidnapped boys have been found dead.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
April 25, 2007 8:27
Is Syria Preparing for War?
What's he thinking? A poster of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on the walls of the Old City in Damascus.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon came out of a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad yesterday with something like a warm glow. Ban said that Assad had promised to use his influence to solve some thorny local issues that could lead to further regional turmoil, especially the status of a UN tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
But there is reason to believe that the talks didn't go so well. In a release to the Syrian state media, Assad said Syria "will accept what all Lebanese accept." But when is the last time all Lebanese agreed on anything?
Lebanon is currently locked into an five month political crisis between the pro-Syrian opposition led by Hizballah and the pro-American government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. One of the major sticking points in the dispute is the status of the UN Hariri tribunal. Siniora and his allies blame Syria for the killing, and they see the tribunal as the only way to force Syrian intelligence out of Lebanon. But the pro-Syrian opposition has prevented parliament from meeting and voting on a bill that would allow for the tribunal's establishment in Lebanon.
In this light, Assad's statement appears to be more of a kiss off than a sign of cooperation. On the same day as Ban's visit, the Syrian government sentenced one of the country's most prominent human rights lawyers, Anwar al-Bunni, to five years in prison for spreading "false information" about torture in Syrian prisons. Bunni, who signed a declaration calling for normal relations between Lebanon and Syria, ran a civil rights organization started with EU support. It's hard not to see the timing of his arrest as a pointed snub to the West, international organizations, and the Lebanese government.
There are other signs that Syria is preparing for confrontation with the UN, America and Israel. A large Syrian military delegation has been visiting Teheran since April 18th. And the regime appears to be using the recent parliamentary elections -- which were even more tightly controlled by the government than usual -- and an upcoming presidential referendum -- to consolidate power even more tightly in its hands.
It's impossible to know exactly what the Syrians are expecting, but it's easy to guess. A US attack on Iran, combined with an Israeli attack on Syria and Lebanon is one worrying scenario. The other is that the UN Security Council -- spurred on by the US and France -- will establish a UN tribunal in Lebanon by fiat. Syria is unlikely to take either action sitting down.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 24, 2007 4:42
Gates of Iraq
The flap about the wall put up by the U.S. military separating Sunnis from Shiites in Baghdad brought the same unease I felt last week after Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke to the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo. Gates's comments, like the Pentagon's idea to effectively "gate" Iraqi neighborhoods, perhaps reflect a growing Washington realism about the Iraqi venture. Yet they also indicate confusion about how to sort out the bloody mess and foreboding of what will happen if we can't.
The context, of course, to put it charitably, is that the Bush administration made some disastrous miscalculations in invading Iraq. Thus, it is difficult to have much confidence in its revisions of strategy, such as the Baghdad Security Plan, even when they are backed by pros like Gates and the new American ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker. If the Bush team couldn't get it right four years ago, when Iraqi as well as international support for the invasion was at its zenith, what success can we expect now, after around 70,000 Iraqis or more have been killed and some 4 million turned into refugees?
What struck me about Gates's comments in Cairo was his elaboration on previous general statements that he had made since succeeding Rumsfeld about the serious consequences of "failure." Now he spoke in terms of a "failed state in Iraq," of "chaos," that would "adversely impact the security and prosperity of every nation in the Middle East and Gulf region." He went on: "The first and secondary effects of a collapse in Iraq--with all of its economic, religious, security and geopolitical implications--will be felt in capitals and communities of the Middle East well before they are felt in Washington or New York. The forces that would be unleashed--of sectarian strife, of an emboldened extremist movement with access to sanctuaries--do not recognize or respect national boundaries." Listeners could be forgiven for feeling that this wasn't hyperbole, but a frightening preview from an ex-CIA director of what really may happen.
In the next breath, speaking of confusion, Gates was forced to acknowledge that despite his apocalyptic nightmare, "our commitment there is not unlimited"--that being, of course, because the bungling of the war has undermined American support for it. On Monday, congressional Democrats decided to send the White House a spending bill requiring the start of a troop withdrawal by Oct. 1. Gates's message is essentially that we can't afford to fail but don't be surprised if we do.
It would be nice to see the glass as half full, as Crocker suggested in an interview with al-Iraqiya last week, when he spoke of the violence being perpetrated by tiny minorities and praised the Iraqis' "real sense of determination to find a way through these problems." Crocker is no doubt sincere, yet keep in mind that he and Gates have been brought in to clean up the messes made by others in the administration, and both have humbling personal experiences they spoke about last week that underline the limits of American influence in the Middle East. Crocker survived the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983, an act that presaged the failure of a U.S. military-backed effort to end Lebanon's civil war. Gates held talks with the Iran's revolutionary prime minister in 1979 about keeping shah-era relations with Iran on track. Three days later, as Gates noted in Cairo last week, Iranian radicals seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran; that Iranian prime minister, a moderate interested in better relations with Washington, was quickly pushed from office. As with Lebanon and Iran, whatever dreams Bush may still have in Iraq, having them is not as simple as accomplishing them.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
April 24, 2007 1:18
Yarmouk Refugee Camp
The Yarmouk neighborhood in Damascus began its life in 1957 as an unofficial "camp" for Palestinian refugees, though over the years makeshift shelters have given way to full-scale apartment blocks and a dense warren of streets. It is now home to over 100,000 Palestinians and the offices of the major Palestinian political parties. Posters of Yassir Arafat and Hamas gunmen welcome visitors at the entrance to the neighborhood, along with a portrait of Hafez Al-Assad, the late father of Syria's current president, Bashar Al-Assad.
Yarmouk has also become home to thousands of newly arrived Iraqi refugees. My friend Ali's family moved here in December after mujahadeen forced them from their home in Baghdad. The busy shops and crowded streets remind them of Baghdad before the flood, and as average Syrians have started to become openly hostile to newcomers from Iraq, Yarmouk is psychologically safe space. To a certain extent.
The main problem is boredom. Few Iraqis have work. Ali's family has an appointment to be interviewed by the UN for status as asylum seekers -- and possible relocation abroad -- by that isn't until July. Meanwhile, Zamzam -- Ali's 17 year-old sister-in-law -- dropped out of the high school in which she'd enrolled in February, the first time she'd been in a classroom for over a year. Her teachers harassed her for being a refugee, for not obeying rules she never knew existed, and she had trouble understanding Syrian Arabic. The abrupt change from one kind of hostile environment to another was too much. "There's no future for me here," she said when I saw the family this weekend. So where does she want to go? Back to Baghdad, where there is even less.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 22, 2007 9:41
Democracy Syrian-Style
Senior government officials vote under the watchful portraits of President Bashar Al-Assad and his late father, Hafez.
Is there any reason to pay attention to the parliamentary election in Syria?
Not if you like your elections to be exercises in representative democracy. For all the hoopla about transparent plastic ballot boxes and indelible ink to prevent voter fraud, there is little doubt that the contest -- which began today and continues tomorrow -- will produce a Ba'athist victory. Not only were two-thirds of the seats reserved for members of the Ba'ath-led list, but all independent candidates had to be approved by the government of President Bashar Al Assad, which has jailed opposition parliament members for good measure.
But what's been interesting about these elections is how the Syrian government has been marketing them: as Syrian-style democracy, rather than American-style democracy. According to that narrative, American democracy arrives by gunpoint and ends with car bombs and sectarianism. But Syrian democracy is peaceful and strengthens national unity. "These elections show the world that Syria wants peace... not American militarism and Israeli apartheid," said Bouthaina Shaaban, Minister of Expatriates, as she voted today.
How much appeal does Syrian-style democracy have? Probably not much. Turnout was thin at the polling places I visited, except when high officials came to cast their ballots. At one school building where a crowd of around 100 party supporters waited for the vice president to arrive, only about 120 people had actually voted by early afternoon.
But there are not a lot of other choices. One look at what's happening next door in Iraq is enough to sour most Syrians on political experiments. As an LA Times reporter recently returned from Baghdad said to me today: "It's strange covering an election without having to worry about getting shot." Unfortunately, that's the lesson that Syrians may have learned too: real elections equal real violence.
If Syrians have few options than to stick with the government they know, the United States and its allies in the Middle East also have few points of leverage over the Syrian government. They want the Assad regime to stop supporting anti-Israeli terror groups such as Hamas and Hizballah, and to stop trying to regain their lost hegemony over Lebanon. But what can they do? If Israel leveled the country in a military strike, or if the US got a UN tribunal to haul President Assad off to court for the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, just who would they get to run this place? Paul Bremer? The sorry state of democracy is this regime's best defense against hostile foreign powers. As far as Syria is concerned, it's Bashar or bust.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 21, 2007 7:46
Gaza School Blast
When an Israeli intelligence officer told us, with admirable specificity, that Palestinian militants had smuggled 31 tons of explosives into the Gaza strip, I assumed the explosives would be used to fight the Israelis. Was I wrong.
In the last two weeks, those explosives were applied in Gaza against an internet café, a culture center, a library, a popular family restaurant, and a Bible Society which taught computer studies to both Muslims and Christian Palestinians. Today, another target was added to the list: Gaza’s only international school, which gave the kind of quality education that would enable young Palestinians to pursue higher studies elsewhere, to make something of their lives beyond Gaza's stockade-like walls. On the internet, I looked up the American International School in Gaza. Their website showed neatly dressed, proud kids sitting beside a sports field. The kids looked bright and shiny. And the website said “We are all extremely proud to be a part of the vision for the future of Palestine.”
That bright future ended on Saturday morning when gunmen tied up the school guards and went from building to building, laying explosive charges. But first, before blowing up the school, they stole computers and other valuable equipment. Fortunately, it was too early for class and nobody was injured. Those who destroyed Gaza's schools, libraries and computer centers try to pass themselves off as Islamic militants, but it’s hard to see them as anything other than vandals and bullies. The school administrator said he would keep the school open, even if he had to teach kids in a tent. Who knows... then they'll probably steal the tent pegs.
Not all woes of the Palestinians can be blamed on the Israelis. Plenty, yes. After all, they're turning up the heat in this pressure cooker. But time and again, the Palestinian gangsters who pass themselves off as leaders and resistance fighters have shown a depressing knack for causing the greatest harm to their own people –-and to those who try to nudge the outside world into not forgetting the plight of the Palestinians. I’m talking, of course, about BBC journalist Alan Johnston, kidnapped on March 16. Another week passes and still there’s no news, or effective moves by the Palestinian authorities, to free Johnston.
by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
April 19, 2007 7:11
The Iraqi Refugee Crisis
This week the United Nations held a conference in Geneva to renew calls for assistance to the four million Iraqi refugees displaced by the war in Iraq. An American representative at the conference made vague promises of "strong support" for a coordinated international effort to help the refugees. Does this mean the Bush administration finally believes in multi-lateralism?
More likely, it is an excuse to dither. The US accepted about 200 Iraqi asylum seekers in 2006, and will take another 2,000 in 2007. Meanwhile, 50,000 Iraqis flee Iraq every month, according to the UN. There are about over a million Iraqi refugees in Syria and about a million more in Jordan alone.
The United States needs to do more. The moral case is clear. We invaded Iraq, and failed to provide security to its people. Remember the Pottery Barn doctrine enunciated by Colin Powell to President Bush before the invasion: "You break it. You own it." We own this problem, and the whole world is watching us try to walk away from it.
But the US should also do more for Iraq's refugees because it is in our own best interest. Like it or not, our economy and our security are tied to the Middle East. And this tidal wave of refugees spilling out of Iraq is probably one of the biggest threats to the region. Think of all the instability created by the Palestinian refugee crises in 1948 and 1967. If Iraq's refugees become a permanent underclass like the Palestinians, they will be a ready pool of recruits for for radical causes and sectarian conflicts. With a pre-emptive policy of large scale asylum (for appropriate candidates) and massive humanitarian assistance, we could prevent that from happening at a fraction of the what the war is costing us. If not, watch as this war spreads.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 19, 2007 4:54
The Kirkuk Referendum
Speaking of the Kurds, the International Crisis Group has just issued a new report focused on the Kirkuk question, Iraq and the Kurds: Resolving the Kirkuk Crisis.
It partly blames the Kurdish Regional Government's insistence on a referendum on Kirkuk's future for what it says are growing, explosive tensions urgently requiring a new approach. The ICG complains that the U.S. has been neglecting Kirkuk due to its preoccupation with Baghdad's security, but should now encourage the Kurds to back off the referendum plan in favor of "a fair and acceptable process." The U.S. should also press the Iraqi central government and Turkey "to adjust policies and facilitate a peaceful settlement," the report says.
The ICG warns:
"If the referendum is held later this year over the objections of the other communities, the civil war is very likely to spread to Kirkuk and the Kurdish region, until now Iraq’s only area of quiet and progress. If the referendum is postponed without a viable face-saving alternative for the Kurds, their leaders may withdraw from the Maliki cabinet and thus precipitate a governmental crisis in Baghdad just when the security plan is, in theory, supposed to yield its political returns."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
April 18, 2007 1:38
Turkey and the Kurds
Anyone who bothered to notice understood that the Bush administration's plan to re-make Iraq was destined, for better or worse, to put the explosive question of Kurdish political independence or autonomy high on the region's agenda. Just after Andrew Butters filed his piece from Erbil, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey’s chief of staff, was blunt about Ankara's continuing concerns about Iraqi Kurdistan and its support for Turkey's Kurdish rebels. "Should there be an operation into northern Iraq?" he asked at a news conference this week. "If I look at it from an exclusively military point of view, yes, there should be. Would it be profitable? Yes, it would." He noted, however, that any Turkish invasion of Iraq would be a political rather than solely a military decision.
To get his expert take, I checked in with Jon Randal, author of the superb 1997 book, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan. His e-mail:
To the north of the Sunni-Shia vicous killing fields of Arab Iraq, two political time bombs are ticking away needlessly, but relentlessly. The chances of explosion before 2007 is out are not negligible.
One fuse leads to the Iraqi Kurds and their determination by year's end to hold a referendum on incorporating Kirkuk, Iraq's first, but rapidly depleting oilfields which Kurds sometimes claim is their "Jerusalem." For the Kurds, recovering Kirkuk is making up for decades of Saddam Hussein's repression and dispossession.
The other fuse leads to the radical nationalist politics of Turkey, which next month elects a president, then in November a new parliament. Such is the nationalist fervor of Turkish politics that politicians and generals feel free to warn the Iraqi Kurds to forego their claims on Kirkuk--or face the consequences.
Turkish nationalists hold the Iraqi Kurds responsible for not controlling their unwanted guests--several thousand fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party who the Turkish army has been unable to bring to heel in Iraq or Turkey in a sporadic, now 23-year-old war.
Such is Iraqi Kurds' exasperation over what they consider Turkish dictation in Iraqi sovereign affairs that Massoud Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, has pointed out that he, too, can interfere in Turkish affairs. He specifically has mentioned causing trouble among Turkey's restless Kurds who amount to 20 percent of the population.
Turkey's dilemma is compounded by a rear-guard action by its long all powerful military to wrest back those bits of power ceded over the last few years as the price for applying for eventual, but increasinly faroff, membership in the European Union.
The immediate flash point in Turkey itself focuses on the election of a new Turkish president by the national assembly controlled by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the popular Prime Minister and leader of the mildly Islamist AK party. Erdogan probably commands enough votes, but risks upsetting the entrenched secular bureacracy, and more especially the army which has conducted three coups in less than a half century.
The Chief of the Turkish General Staff and the outgoing President mutter barely coded warnings against what they denounce as the encroachment of the AK's brand of political Islam. Even if the presidential hurdle is negotiated, Kirkuk and the PKK remain as rallying cries for Turkish nationalists, a notably outspoken bunch.
In theory, the United States has considerable influence with the Turks, a NATO ally for half a century, and with the Iraqi Kurds, Washington's only real friends in Iraq. But the Bush administration's assets wane by the hour and appeals for right reason may not carry the day.
Oddly, both Iraqi Kurds and Turkey have much in common. They both are secular in outlook. Iraqi Kurdistan is dependent on Turkey as its window on the outside world. Both could gain greatly by cooperating as a firewall against the religious-based violence in Arab Iraq.
Instead, the rhetoric waxes ever shriller. Turkey threatens to invade Iraq to stop Kurdish irredentism deemed a dangerous encouragement to its own Kurds. But in light of the plight of the American military in Iraq, such a decision could cost the Turkish army dearly. More likely, Turkey could close down the only border crossing with Iraq which crosses Kurdish territory. There is renewed talk of building diversionary crossings along Turkey's border with Syria.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
April 17, 2007 10:39
Independence Day in the Golan
The southwestern Syrian province of Golan is normally off limits to most civilians because parts of it -- the famous Golan Heights -- have been occupied by Israel ever since the Six Day War of 1967. But every year on Independence Day -- which falls on April 17th and which commemorates the end of the 25-year French occupation in 1946 -- the Syrian government lifts these security restrictions, and visitors stream into the Golan.
For many, the event is a chance to go picnicking in one of the lushest parts of the country. But it's also pointedly a reminder that Syria is still under foreign occupation. "My father fought the French to liberate Syria," said Mohammed Anwar Idlibe, who carried a black and white picture of his father -- who died last year of natural causes -- dressed and armed as a fedayeen, or guerilla fighter. "I want to continue the resistence of my father to liberate Golan."
Idlibe was part of a demonstration at Ein Tinah, a small hillside town right next to the minefields and fence-line laid by the Israeli army. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Majdel Shamis, a Syrian town directly across on the Israeli occupied side, organized a demonstration of their own that included four galloping horseman with madly flapping Syrian flags.
Another demonstrator originally from Majdel Shamis, Samahr Hassan, recognized her family on the occupied side. "I told them to wear red and wave a flag," she said. Hassan, 20, left the occupied Golan two years ago with the help of the Red Cross in order to attend Damascus University, where she is a student of English literature. "Syria is our motherland, and it was always my dream to come to Damascus," she said. "But it's so difficult. The Golanese are one people divided by this border. It's like having your foot in one place and your heart in another. "
The day is even more bittersweet for those Golanese who fled their homes in 1967 and have never been allowed back by the Israelis. "I thought I would be back in ten days," said As'ad Abu Zaid, 55, a history teacher from Majdel Shamis who now lives in Damascus. "Even when my two brothers and my father died, I couldn't go to their funerals." Abu Zaid borrowed a pair of binoculars and spotted some of his surviving family members. "Just a few meters away, and I haven't met them for 40 years."
Bemused United Nations observers at Ein Tinah, with Israeli-occupied territory in the background. A UN force patrols a "zone of seperation" between Israeli and Syrian forces.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Ein Tinah
April 16, 2007 9:47
Woodward and Bernstein in Syria
On Friday night, I held a screening of All the Presidents Men -- the Watergate movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford -- for a group of Syrian and Palestinian writers whom I've been training to be journalists here in Damascus. As expected, they all got a few giggles out of the impossibly ideal conditions under which the crusading reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein worked when they went up against Richard Nixon. The fact that there was a direct phone number to the White House switch board filled my students with awe. So did the fact that dialing 411 actually led to a directory inquiries operator who actually divulged a working phone number. And the whole idea that an investigative reporting team could topple the presidency seemed like a fairy tale. "If we tried that we would be in jail," said one. Or worse.
I'm not so naive as to try and encourage them to follow the Woodward and Bernstein model of muckraking here in the Middle East. There's no First Amendment and no Bill of Rights in Syria. Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists rated Syria number nine on its top ten list of the most censored countries. And many in Lebanon (which was once occupied by Syria) blame Syria for the assassination of Lebanese journalists. Nevertheless, there is still a fledgling private press in Syria. And despite the fact that local journalists learn to steer clear of sensitive areas, there is still room to do a limited form of real journalism. Syria Today, the independent English-language magazine where I teach, has published articles calling for the reform of some of the basic parts of the Syrian government, including the court system. This isn't North Korea. (Press Enemy No. 1 on CPJ's list.)
So my reason for showing All The President's Men was less ideological than tactical. I wanted my students to see what a working newsroom looked like -- even one with 1970's office furniture. And the movie offers plenty of little lessons for fledgling journalists. For example, how Woodstein made their reputation pursuing a story that no one else wanted. How necessary and how risky it is to use unnamed sources. And the many different ways of asking the same question.
Woodward: "When you handed out the money, how did that work exactly?"
Nixon Campaign Treasurer: "Badly."
Bernstein: "I think what Bob means is that ordinarily, what was the proceedure?"
I'm not sure how much of this sunk in with my students. One of their main concerns was that Woodward and Bernstein rarely stopped to eat. (My guys couldn't even sit through the whole film without a cigarette break.) But I was surprised by how they intuitively understood the political background behind the Watergate investigation. Not that they'd all heard of Watergate, or knew about the Nixon tapes, or what the Attorney General does. But they understood what was going on: the President of the United States used the FBI and the CIA -- the secret police, if you will -- to spy on the opposition and stay in power.
I was even more surprised by their response. "Excuse me, but this is normal," said one student. All governments in the Middle East use state security against opposition groups, he said. What if the opposition is planning a coup? Or infiltrated with terrorists, or Israeli spies?
These aren't abstract scenarios. The Assad regime came to power in Syria after the country had been paralyzed by years of coups and plots. An Islamic opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, launched a terrorist war against the Syrian state in the 1980's. And Syria is still at war with Israel, which occupies Syrian land and almost certainly has spies operating here. As the saying goes, sometimes even the paranoid have enemies.
Now we could have discussed how the Syrian government helped create these conditions -- by funding groups that wage a proxy terror war against Israel -- and how closing legitimate forms of opposition may push opponents to extremes. (A lesson the Israel lobby in the US could learn too, by the way.) But another student left me struggling for words when she pressed the case: "Don't tell us the United States doesn't do the exact same thing." After all the revelations about abuses of power that have occurred in the name of the War on Terror -- kidnappings, torture and illegal wiretapping -- it has become harder and harder to convince people in the Middle East otherwise. Even would-be Woodward and Bersteins don't believe we live up to Woodward and Bernstein standards anymore.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 14, 2007 2:15
The Great Mosque of Damascus
In 7th and 8th centuries, the caliphs of the Umayyed dynasty carried the revelation of the Prophet Mohammed out of the deserts of Arabia and into the fertile crescent here in Syria, turning a new religion into a new civilization. One of them, Al-Walid, built the Great Mosque of Damascus, which to this day is the symbol of the city, a mixture of the scared and the worldly.
When I first passed through Damascus in 2003, backpacking my way to Baghdad, I had a "You're Not In Kansas Anymore" moment when I entered the Great Mosque and was overwhelmed by the the green shrine lights, the smell of damp stone and stale feet, and the feeling that I'd just started a journey for which I was totally unprepared. The place is endowed with an air of mystery worthy not just of its status a one of the holiest monuments of Islam, but as a site where humans have worshiped gods of one sort or another for thousands of years. Here stood a Byzantine cathedral, a temple to the Roman god Jupiter, the Greek god Zeus, and the semitic god Haddad.
But for all its otherworldliness, the Great Mosque is a living, playful place. When it isn't raining, the rectangular arcaded courtyard becomes like a city commons or town square. Children slide upon the slick marble floors in their socks, soldiers on leave walk hand-in-hand looking at girls, and everyone tries not to put their shoeless feet on pigeon droppings. Inside the building, the mosque has none of the hierarchical arrangement of space common in medieval churches, where those of rank and status occupied elevated positions of honor. The undifferentiated space of the Umayyed mosque resembles an ancient colonnaded barn with a vast expanse of carpeted floor. Take a seat wherever you want, pray, read the Koran or the newspaper, just make sure to take pictures because everyone else is snapping away too.
Today the mosque serves as much as a political institution as a religious one. The sermon at Friday prayers is a perfect occasion to receive state-sanctioned divine guidance. Yesterday, a mullah read a prepared (and almost certainly vetted) speech -- simultaneously broadcast on state radio -- which called for Islamic values and national unity under President Bashar Al-Assad.
What's interesting is that Arab nationalism and Islam at one point in time were contradictory things. Pan-Arabists such as the Ba'ath party were once avowedly secular -- because not all Arabs are Muslims -- while Islam is a universal religion, not the property of one ethnic group or country. So contradictory, in fact, that in the 1980's the Syrian government waged a civil war with the Muslim Brotherhood -- an Islamic groups that wanted to turn Syria into an Islamic state -- and kept tight control over all religious activities for a long time afterwards. But now that religious feeling is rising once again in Syria, the government is trying to co-opt religion rather than fight it. President Assad now publicly celebrates religious holidays, kisses the Koran, and has allowed religious schools to open around the country. Al-Walid would be proud. What secular Syrians think is another matter.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 14, 2007 2:41
On Suicide Attacks
It wasn't the intended targets or the number of casualties that struck me about the suicide bombings this week. It was their geographical arc across the Arab world from Morocco to Iraq. In Casablanca, three Moroccans blew themselves up and killed one policeman during a police raid in connection with a March 11 suicide attack at an Internet cafe. In Algiers, an Al Qaeda-affiliated Algerian group claimed responsibility for two suicide attacks on the prime minister's HQ and a police station, killing 33 people. In Baghdad, there was the suicide bombing inside the HQ of Iraq's parliament, which killed an Iraqi MP.
By now we're all too familiar with the phenomenon, largely thanks to Al Qaeda's leaders, who understood the potency of using suicide bombings as global political theater. After staging the most spectacular terrorist attacks in history on 9/11, the group and its imitators kept pace with major followup suicide bombings in Bali, Istanbul, Casablanca, Riyadh, London, Amman and various sites in Iraq. Nonetheless, the breadth of suicide bombings in a single week begs some reflection.
To begin with, there's an understandable but false tendency to see suicide bombings as a uniquely Muslim or Arab phenomenon. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history, Japan's Kamikaze pilots being a well-known example. Until fairly recently, it was the Tamil Tigers, a secular liberation group with Hindu roots fighting the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government, who deployed the most suicide bombers, 168 between 1980-2000. A little-observed fact is that suicide terrorism was introduced into the Arab-Israeli conflict not by an Islamic fundamentalist but two Christian (and, incidentally, American-trained medical doctors) George Habash and Wadih Haddad. On May 30, 1972, those leaders of the "Marxist" Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine sent a three-man squad of allied Japanese Red Army terrorists to Israel's Lod airport, where they killed 26 people (mostly Puerto Rican pilgrims) in a gun and grenade blitz. Afterwards, the PFLP refrained from using suicide operations as a regular tactic.
Shorn of the cultural psychoanalysis they excite and the moral reproach they invite, Arab suicide attacks are a tactic of asymmetrical warfare employed by groups fighting the more powerful, established conventional forces of perceived existential enemies. Suicide attacks began spreading in the Middle East in the early 1980s, mainly launched by the Shi'ite Muslim Hizballah faction in Lebanon fighting Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. The first attack was on an Israeli military base in Tyre on Nov. 11, 1982, killing 86 people, mainly Israeli soldiers. (The Israeli government was so stunned by the attack that, whether in confusion or by design, it announced that a natural gas explosion had caused the deaths.) Later, Hizballah is believed to have carried out the April 18, 1983 attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut and the Oct. 23, 1983 attacks on the U.S. Marines and French paratroopers barracks in Beirut. Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago estimates that between 1982-86, Hizballah carried out 41 suicide attacks yet only eight of the bombers were Islamic fundamentalists; three were Christians, including a woman high school teacher. What they shared, Pape says, "was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting foreign occupation." Using "martyrdom operations" as a successful battlefield tactic and propaganda tool, Hizballah was largely responsible for the eventual withdrawal of Western and Israeli forces from Lebanon by 2000.
It is difficult to discern the exact cause and effect, but Hizballah's success in driving Israelis out of Lebanon influenced other non-Shi'ite Islamic groups to begin thinking about launching suicide attacks. Although Palestinian guerrillas began taking up arms against Israel in 1965, it was not until 1993 that one faction, Hamas, a Sunni group, adopted suicide attacks as a major tactic. Its more than 70 suicide operations from 1993-present have helped ditch the Oslo peace accords and boosted Hamas's popularity to the point that the group won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Bin Laden is said to have been profoundly impressed by Hizballah's operations, and his mentor in jihad was a Palestinian with close ties to Hamas. Bin Laden & Co.'s first suicide operations, attacks on two American embassies in Africa on August 7, 1998, came on the heels of Hamas's first major suicide bombing spree in 1996-97.
Say what you want about the Iraq war, but it is indisputable that it opened the mother of Pandora's Boxes. By some counts, about 700 suicide attacks have already taken place in the span of four years. That is not only Al Qaeda at work, suggesting that post-Saddam Iraq has become a veritable factory for churning out suicide bombers. If, as seems likely, Iraq becomes a failed state and a place where future Bin Ladens will continue to refine their craft, perhaps we have only begun to see the true global threat posed by suicide attackers.
What can be done? The Bush administration is correct when it says that the "war on terrorism" will be a long one. It's also right in saying that extremism has been fueled in part by the lack of openness in the Middle East. But the tendency to use force in addressing the many problems in the region--rather than emphasizing tools like diplomacy, cross-cultural understanding and genuine support for freedom--has made the situation worse. It's probably no coincidence that the periods witnessing the steepest rise in suicide attacks in the Middle East--1982-86 in Lebanon, and 2003-2007 in Iraq--coincided with intense and prolonged foreign military operations in Arab lands. Estimates have put the Iraq war cost to date at some $500 billion. Imagine how the political atmosphere might change for the better if that sum were put to use helping Palestinians build the independent state that they demand and the Bush administration says they deserve.
-By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
April 12, 2007 8:41
Sky-high Scramble
As someone who flies regularly between the United States and Israel, I was startled by a headline from this morning’s Haaretz newspaper. “Israeli Air Force Comes Close to shooting down Continental Plane”.
How close is “close”?
I mean… Were the fighter pilots ready to hit the button on their missile-launchers?
I’ve been on that flight. Continental Airlines out of Newark. Imagine: the plane’s coming in for a landing, passengers are scurrying back from the bathrooms or fumbling with the tangle of headsets and two F-16 fighter planes pull up screeching next to the window.
Many passengers no doubt would have taken this as an exuberant welcome to Israel and clapped at the grand spectacle of it all. (Tourism is a bit off after the Second Lebanon war, and Israelis, who can be a tad rude at times, are trying harder to woo back visitors.) But a few passengers with sharp eyesight might have noticed that the F-16s were loaded with enough weapons to obliterate a large target, such as , oh, I dunno…, a Boeing 777?
Ha’aretz quotes an unnamed officer saying: “This was the closest we ever came to intercepting a civilian airplane.” Well, not really. In 1973, Israeli jets shot down a Libyan commercial airliner over the Sinai, killing 108 people aboard.
This would have been far worse. Just think: Continental is an American airline, and most of its 251 passengers were Americans and Israelis. And the F-16s were sold to Israel by the U.S.A. Ouch!
So, how close was “close”?
Apparently, the Continental pilots failed to check in with the Air Control Tower at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on the plane’s descent to the runway. So IAF jets were scrambled to see if terrorists had taken over the plane.
Now, how exactly did they do that? By getting so close they could peer in the windows of the airliner? Were the Israeli pilots asking each other: Wait a minute, are those bearded jihadi terrorists staring back at us or rabbis? Are they waving or shaking their fists? Third Row back, is that guy wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Long Live Osama bin Laden’ or ‘I love ZZ Top’?
Or, did the Israeli pilots interrogate them by radio, asking them the kind of questions you get at Ben Gurion airport when the immigrations officers want to find out if you’re Jewish (and therefore not likely to be a terrorist) but can’t ask outright? Questions like: “Do you speak Hebrew? Do you have any relatives who live in Israel?”
Anyway, the American pilots persuaded them that they were the genuine item, not some conniving pack of terrorists who boarded the flight disguised as Evangelical tourists or high-tech investors, and the plane landed safely. Welcome to Israel. Shalom.
By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
April 12, 2007 1:10
Iraq: Four Years Later
The International Committee of the Red Cross released a report on the humanitarian disaster in Iraq that coincides with the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. As I went through it, I felt the need to pay a small tribute to the late Margaret Hassan, the incredibly courageous director of CARE International in Iraq until her kidnaping and killing by extremists in 2004.
I spent an evening with Margaret and some of her colleagues in Baghdad in November 2002, a few months before the U.S.-led invasion. She was a British woman who married an Iraqi and spent more than 30 years of her life devoted to improving the lives of people in her adoptive country. Her anguish about the coming humanitarian dangers was palpable; recalling her words now is heartbreaking.
Margaret spoke eloquently on a point that the Pentagon's war planners conspicuously failed to grasp: more than a decade of punishing economic sanctions had so torn the fabric of Iraqi society, that the looming war would leave the country in ruins, it's broken people unable to organize a better future for themselves. She noted how the combination of Saddam's dictatorship and the international embargo had made Iraq a nation dependent on a network of welfare handouts financed by the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. "Iraqis will have little to fall back on," she explained. "Once, people had cash and assets like gold, but they have used these to live under sanctions. If there is a crisis, what will people do? The vast majority of people have no cushion. The quality of life has been totally eroded.”
The plight of Iraqis pained Hassan deeply. Education now in Iraq, she said, was in a catastrophic state. “There are no new textbooks, or ideas being discussed,” she said. “What kind of teaching and learning is going on? This is a serious problem with long-term implications.” She said that schools were operating on three shifts due to overcrowding and that teachers were quitting over the measly pay. She rattled off U.N. stats showing that 16 percent of children in urban areas and 39 percent in rural areas were failing to attend school—and the rate for girls was double that for boys.
Hassan told me that Iraqis were so desperate for cash to feed their families that they would do anything for work. She pointed out the informal depot of job-seekers near her CARE office—a street corner where men looking for work would congregate before sunrise and wait for employers in search of day laborers for a few dinars a day. She bemoaned the fact that in Baghdad, some doctors were driving taxis because it paid better wages. The crime rate in Iraq, she complained, was soaring.
“The nuclear family and the extended family are being destroyed,” she said. “People are being dispossessed of hope and happiness, of everything that makes us human. What worries me is seeing a country of people affected by 12 years of sanctions—their lack of exposure to the outside world, which is moving on, not standing still like we are. Nobody is going to be able to give those 12 years back, even if sanctions are lifted tomorrow.”
She refrained from praising Saddam Hussein, but spoke of her pride in Iraqi achievements over the years that were now been destroyed. She cited the U.N. human development index, in which Iraq had experienced a steep downward slide. “Iraq was a country that was aspiring to move up, not down, and not down so rapidly,” she said. “Iraq was a leader in education. Iraq was a leader in fine arts. People looked up to Iraq. Iraqis have always been a well-educated population when other countries were still riding around on camels. Now we are being dispossessed and others are rising above us. That has dangerous implications for the psyche of the nation.”
Th ICRC's report catalogued some of the grim features of post-Saddam Iraq that are familiar to most newspaper readers--conflicts, murders, displaced people, poor medical care, malnutrition, unemployment. "The conflict in Iraq is inflicting immense suffering on the entire population," the report said, adding, "Civilians bear the brunt of the relentless violence and the extremely poor security conditions that are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions."
What caught my eye was the line about the infrastructure being in a poor state of repair. Sabotage and fuel shortages impeded maintenance on power stations, shutting down, among other things, water treatment plants that are vital to the public health. When I spoke to Margaret in 2002, I learned that she had spent the last decade working to rebuild Iraq's water treatment system. That was Margaret Hassan, one of Iraq's true heroes.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
April 11, 2007 10:39
Elections in Syria: Not Looking So Hot
One nice thing about about democracy in America is that for the most part we are spared having to look at our politicians, unless we have a taste for the absurd and the evening news. Folks in the Middle East aren't so lucky. Around election season in any given city, the streets become filled with posters and banners that carry the portraits of contenders for public offices high and low. The results are not always inspiring.
In part, these would-be glamor shots seem to fit into the clannish, small town feel of urban life in the Middle East, where even though everyone doesn't really know everyone else in their neighborhood, they like to pretend they do. But perhaps it's also an expression of the political realty of the region. Despite the trappings of democracy and constitutional governance, countries in the Middle East are still ruled by men not by laws. Power here is personal.
So even though Syria is holding parliamentary elections next Sunday, the results are nearly foreordained. A majority of seats are reserved for a coalition led by the ruling Ba'ath party. The remaining seats are being fought over by two political lists (temporary line-ups of allied candidates) created by government string-pulling. The parliament itself is is just a rubber stamp anyway. Real power lies with a small group of high officials tied to the family of President Bashar Al Assad, who won a referendum -- a kind of single candidate election -- in 2000 with an official vote of 97 percent.
Which begs the question: Why in such a closed system is the country still gripped with a limited kind of election fever? Why is Damascus covered in campaign posters? Why couldn't a wealthy business man like the one pictured below just pay a few bribes and enter parliament without having to make soft-focus blue-tinted posters of himself looking like he just stepped out of an ABBA video? And why does President Assad have his picture on every government building?
It's as if the whole system of dominance in these oligarchic countries still relies on people feeling as if they have a personal, organic connection to their leaders. And in some ways, leaders in the Middle East can be more accessible than those in the West. Many still hold diwaniyahs -- open receptions where supplicants ask for favors and supporters pledge their fealty.
Of course, all of the supposed intimacy between rulers and ruled is a game of smoke and mirrors, a mass-mediated political drama, just like all those televised town hall meetings on an American campaign trail. The difference is that when we tire of our leaders, we can send them packing, turn off the television, or tune out the news. But in a Middle Eastern security state, you may tire of watching your leaders, but your leaders never tire of watching you.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 9, 2007 7:51
Smelling of the Breeze
Egyptians on Monday celebrated their rite of spring, known as Sham El Nessim. It means "Smelling of the Breeze," one of the most wonderful names of any holiday I can think of. Sham el Nessim is a unifying national holiday. Traditionally, it is observed on the Monday after Egyptian Copts celebrate Easter, but it is not a Christian ritual. In fact, it supposedly dates to Pharaonic times, well before Islam arrived in Egypt.
Sham el Nessim is a day to take a deep breath and spend time with the family. For generations, well-to-do Egyptians have taken lunch at tourist hotels like the Mena House, which overlooks the Giza Pyramids. The main thing to do is simply to go outdoors and enjoy the spring air. In cities like Cairo, people cram into every available patch of green space, including the medial strips between traffic lanes. In the afternoon, my daughter and I took a walk along the Nile River embankment, one of the most popular places to go, and watched thouands of Egyptians enjoying simple family picnics. Out on the river, others were enjoying afternoon outings on high-masted sail boats called feluccas.
Lots of folks were eating salted fish and spring onions, main staples for the occasion. We didn't notice any color-dyed eggs, as in the Easter tradition, another feature of Sham el Nessim. Coloring eggs, as a symbol of fertility, dates to ancient times in Egypt as well as other parts of the world. Drinking apricot juice is another custom. In contrast with some religious observances like Ramadan, which have become increasingly overrun by commercialism, Sham el Nessim is still a modest affair. Children are typically presented with some new clothes and perhaps a toy (like the party hats sold by our friendly pavement vendor, below), but that's about it.
The weather gods were kind to Egypt this year. After several days made windy, dusty and hot by the perennial Saharan sandstorm known as the Khamsin, we Cairenes were lucky to have blue, relatively unpolluted skies. Tradition has it that the air of Sham el Nessim is particularly auspicious for your health. Some Egyptians sleep with onions under their pillow, believing it can bring them luck on the day of smelling the breeze. A nice custom, a nice occasion and a nice day to be an Egyptian.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
April 9, 2007 12:26
Ba'ath Birthday Party
Yesterday, Damascus seemed as ordinary as ever for a rainy Saturday. I had the usual claustrophobic interviews in smoke-filled offices, drank the usual tiny cups of Turkish coffee, and heard the usual complaints about the Bush administration. Only when I returned home and turned on Syrian state television (the only working channel on my set), did I remember that this was the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Ba'ath Party, the country's ruling political organization.
The event used to be cause for major celebration in Syria, but not anymore. While the government news anchor heralded "60 years carrying the torch of Arab progress" and other "Onwards and Upwards"-type nostrums, the footage told a different story. No parades, no bunting, not even a live shot of President Bashar Al Assad, who clearly had better things to do. The main event consisted of a reception at some second tier government building with a bunch of party hacks, almost all of whom had already celebrated their own 60th birthdays and looked none the better for it.
The Ba'athists who make headlines these days are mostly the die-hard Iraqi followers of now dead Saddam Hussein. But Ba'athisim -- a kind of pan-Arab socialism -- was once a vital ideological force. The driving idea was that the nation-states of the Middle East are artificial entities created by the imperial west to divide Arabs and make them weak. However, when individual Ba'athist leaders such as Saddam or Hafez al Assad (Bashar's father) took power, they spent more time building security states and invading their neighbors than planning egalitarian Arab revolutions. Arab unity took another big beating when Egypt, the Palestinians, and Jordan all signed separate peace treaties with Israel.
Without Ba'athist ideology as a guide, Syria is now suffering from an identity crisis, a kind of societal schizophrenia, with (as I see it) at least three different personalty traits battling for dominance. On the one hand, the Syrian regime shows signs of being pragmatic, yearning for legitimacy, a peace deal with Israel and access to global markets so it can reform its economy and provide its growing population with jobs. But other times, Syria behaves like an an un-reformable rogue state, hell bent on resisting American and Israeli dominance of the Middle East by any means necessary. Meanwhile, outside the tight leash of state security, Syria is in the early stages of an Islamic revival that at its fringes is being radicalized by the American occupation of Iraq.
Which Syria will cary the day? The answer depends as much on what happens in the rest of the Middle East as in Syria itself. Will there be a regional peace deal between Israel and the holdout Arab states led by Saudi Arabia? Will Washington start engaging Syria? Or will the chaos of Iraq and confrontation with America push Syria farther down the road of mischief and radicalism? Nothing seems certain except that the Ba'ath party is not going to lead the way. Sixty years of torch carrying is quite enough.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus
April 7, 2007 10:35
Jesus in the Rose Garden
Down the ancient lanes of old Jerusalem on Saturday, thousands of Christian worshippers surged towards the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Jesus Christ is said to have risen bodily from his tomb. Many of the devout carried candles for the "Holy Fire Ritual" in which Orthodox priests descend to Christ's tomb and emerge with a flame that they say appears spontaneously --miraculous proof, believers say, that Christ has not forgotten his followers.
Soon, the gloomy church is ablaze, incandescent with light, as worshippers press forward to light their candles from the so-called heavenly fire. Sometimes it isn't just the candles that catch fire --beards and hair crackle spectacularly in the chaos as the Christians stampede towards the flame-bearing priests. Skeptics say that the "Holy Fire' ritual is hocus-pocus, a 1,200 year old sleight-of-hand whose secret is passed on from one generation of high priests to the next. B