November 29, 2007 7:57
After Annnapolis: Tough Road to Peace
Bush, Olmert and Abbas were all unfailingly correct in Annnapolis; they moved with slow-motion caution, like a troupe of mime artists tip-toeing over broken glass. Even still, their actions enraged the hardliners back home.
In Gaza, Islamic militants of Hamas brought 250,000 protesters out onto the streets, and it was hard to tell who made them the maddest: Bush, Olmert or their own Palestinian president. The rage wasn't only visible inside the Hamas stronghold of Gaza; similar mass protests also broke out in the West Bank, where Abbas is supposed to be popular (though his popularity can't be helped by the TV images of his police slamming into protesters with a viciousness that made some Palestinians almost nostalgic for Israeli cops.). Conclusion: the idea of Palestinian coexistence with the Jewish state is still a tough, if not impossible sell.
Olmert faced similar fury from Israeli ultra-nationalists. A key to any negotiated accord with the Palestinians is the withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the Palestinian territories. And one can only hope that after Annapolis, the Bush Administration won't take the continued expansion of these settlements so light-heartedly. The religious nationalists see otherwise; for them, any removal of settlers from Biblical Judea and Samaria is a sin against Jewish destiny, and Olmert is the villain.
The smile fixed on Olmert's face for his many photo-ops with Bush and Abbas in the U.S. will fade as soon as his plane lands at Ben Gurion airport. The bad news awaiting him is that the powerful, right-wing Ne'emanei Eretz Israel announced on Thursday that it plans to defy Olmert -and the Israeli military-and set-up three new, illegal outposts in the West Bank, and to return to five other hilltop stockades that they had vacated earlier. "This is our answer to the prime minister's plan," says Daniella Weiss, a settler leader. "The gravest thing about the Annapolis peace conference' is Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's barefaced talk of a Palestinian state.” She urged the settlers to “take to the open spaces.” She added, “Instead of waiting in fear for the next evacuation, God forbid, it is far better to be building the next community. Anyplace in Israel where we do not reside in, is home to terrorists," said Weiss.
Annapolis was the easy part. It will be far harder for Olmert and Abbas to sell a peace plan to their own people.
By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
November 29, 2007 5:21
Annapolis Scorecard
Below, a more user-friendly version of my time.com instant analysis of the Annapolis conference. As you'll see, I was surprised by the relative success of the meeting and Bush's seeming determination to get something done in his last year in office. The verdict on that will be known in January '09, but for the time being, here's some credit where credit is due:
Mid-East Peace Conference
Caution is advised in judging the peace conference's achievements. But here's a scorecard of how the various players did.
President Bush
He was the biggest surprise. His speech opening the conference was one of the best of his political career, certainly his finest on the Middle East. Discarding the hubris and fantasy of his early Iraq addresses, he asserted America's leadership in ending the region's core conflict through the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush pledged "to devote my effort during my time as President to do all I can," knowing that many in the room have been critical of his lack of any such commitment until now. Bush spoke of the promise — and obligations — of peace for both the Palestinians and the Israelis, and he demonstrated keen awareness of the risks of continuing the present stalemate. "If Palestinian reformers cannot deliver on this hopeful vision," he warned, "then the forces of extremism and terror will be strengthened, a generation of Palestinians could be lost to the extremists, and the Middle East will grow in despair." At last, Bush seems to get it, but whether he follows through remains open to question.
Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice
She gets the Most Valuable Diplomat award. She pulled off a tour de force in getting Bush's nod to probe a risky diplomatic effort despite internal Administration opposition, getting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas talking again during eight shuttles to the region and then setting up the biggest Middle East peace conference, aimed at a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement, ever held on American soil. At the last minute, Rice showed her diplomatic agility by cajoling the Israelis and Palestinians into announcing a "joint understanding" that was more substantive than anybody had expected. The hardest part is certainly still to come, but Rice has defied her critics. She responded to criticism ahead of the meeting by insisting she would do it "my way," and for the results thus far, we can simply say, "Bravo."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
He scored his biggest political success since succeeding the late Yasser Arafat in 2004. Annapolis was crucial to Abbas's survival. Due to frustration over the lack of results in past peace efforts, Abbas lost control over much of his own Fatah group and then took a drubbing at the hands of the fundamentalist Hamas group in last year's parliamentary elections — then, last spring, Hamas seized military control of Gaza. Abbas could be rescued only by a serious revival of the peace process. He has now been offered a lifeline in the form of a one-year window — and unprecedented international support — to achieve a viable Palestinian state through negotiations. Abbas's good intentions are not in question; but his political staying power will remain so.
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
He gets a prize for political courage, because he had the least to gain, short term, in going to Annapolis. Israel is vastly superior to the Palestinians in military strength; its security wall has helped produce a relative lull in terror attacks on Israelis (except those unfortunate enough to live within rocket range of Gaza); his coalition partners had threatened to bring down his government if he made concessions on Jerusalem or Palestinian refugees; and, he faces a personal criminal inquiry into alleged fraud. But Olmert has exhibited wisdom and pragmatism, dating back to 2003 when he publicly acknowledged giving up his dream of a Greater Israel. He said he feared the day when Israel would be faced with a choice: either deny Palestinians a vote and be condemned by the world as an apartheid state, or give Palestinians a vote and lose the Jewish state. Olmert has showed that he has the guts to take on the past. The hope is that by going to Annapolis, he has the courage to take on the future, too.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
Ahmadinejad is undoubtedly the biggest loser. Having made the cause of Palestinian militancy his own, Ahmadinejad urged that Israel be "wiped off the map." He also stirred international controversy, and exasperated some in his own government, by questioning the fact of the Holocaust. But Iran was left badly isolated when the U.S. managed to bring 49 parties to Annapolis, including Tehran's only real Arab ally, Syria. Ahmadinejad's embarrassment shows. Speaking by phone on the eve of Annapolis to Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, he said that he "wished" the Kingdom had boycotted the conference. Then Ahmadinejad's office announced that Iran would hold its own Middle East conference, "within the next week or two." It will take longer than that to know whether the envisioned year of negotiations is going to bear any fruit. But the thing about the Middle East is that today's losers can wind up tomorrow's winners. If Annapolis fails to achieve its promise, Iran may become the biggest victor of them all.
— Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 27, 2007 12:24
Annapolis: The Spoiler Question
Despite the lack of concrete results and lowered expectations for early breakthroughs, the Annapolis peace conference has to be considered a historic event. It's the first multilateral meeting that includes the Israelis and the main Arab parties since the Madrid conference sessions in the early 1990s. It's the first international meeting between the Israelis and Palestinians in a peace conference setting since the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000. My sources say that quick follow up meetings are planned, which is an encouraging sign that Annapolis won't be a mere photo op. There will be another meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in the U.S., and one between Israelis and Syrians in Russia, if all goes well.
Especially since the process is so fragile, and the main negotiators so politically weak, a key question now is whether the anti-negotiations bloc--Hamas, but also Hizballah and their Iranian backers--will play a spoiler role. A single Hamas suicide bomb attack in a Tel Aviv restaurant, or another border war with Hizballah, could quickly shift the focus from peace to security. Indeed, the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 were largely derailed three years later precisely by such violence, a Hamas campaign of suicide bombings and intense Israeli-Hizballah clashes in southern Lebanon. The upshot was an electoral defeat for then Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a strong advocate of a negotiated solution, and victory for the Likud party's hard-line candidate, Benjamin Netanyahu.
One way to defeat the spoilers, of course, is to just ignore their attempts, as hard as they may be to do politically, if they strike out with violence. Many believe that progress in the peace negotiations will bolster the political strength of the peacemakers. But there's a feeling in some quarters that at least some of the opponents can be neutralized through engagement, including with Hamas. Although the fundamentalist group won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, the U.S. and other countries have sought to embargo it until it recognizes past Israeli-Palestinian agreements and renounces violence.
A surprising call to engage Hamas came from the 75 or so "wisemen/women" who wrote a pre-conference letter to President Bush and Condi Rice, including retired senior U.S. officials or Middle East experts like Brent Scowcroft, Thomas Pickering and William Quant, American Jewish peace advocates like Rita Hauser and a former Israeli peace negotiator Shomo Ben-Ami. "We believe that a genuine dialogue with the organization is far preferable to its isolation," they wrote. "It could be conducted, for example, by the UN and Quartet Middle East envoys. Promoting a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza would be a good starting point."
They went on: "If Syria or Hamas is ostracized, prospects that they will play a spoiler role increase dramatically. This could take the shape of escalating violence from the West Bank or from Gaza, either of which would overwhelm any political achievement, increase the political cost of compromises for both sides, and negate Israel's willingness or capacity to relax security restrictions. By the same token, a comprehensive cease-fire or prisoner exchange is not possible without Hamas's cooperation. And unless both sides see concrete improvements in their lives, political agreements are likely to be dismissed as mere rhetoric, further undercutting support for a two-state solution."
In a Friday Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Israeli Knesset member, former Justice Minister and ex-peace negotiator Yossi Beilin called on the Israeli government to seek a cease-fire with Hamas, which he described as a "religiously fanatical organization that has used the worst kind of terrorist violence against Israelis," as soon as possible.
Beilin says a deal would include "the total cessation of mutual violence; arrangements at the border to allow goods and services to pass in and out of the Gaza Strip; the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier abducted in June 2006; and a commitment by Hamas to prevent all attempts to undermine next week's meeting in Annapolis and the resulting process."
He explained: "Hamas's control of Gaza gives it a political and geographical platform from which to disturb -- even to spoil -- any peace talks. Already Hamas permits the constant firing of Qassam rockets into Israel, and it threatens to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel. If it continues to be sidelined, Hamas will probably try to thwart the upcoming meeting in Annapolis, and the process the participants hope to ignite, by escalating the violence to such a degree that the parties will find it difficult even to meet, let alone negotiate peace. In other words, precisely because Israel and the PLO are ready to sit down and talk, Hamas cannot be ignored. Unfortunately, a broad coalition has formed of those who believe that it not only can be ignored but should be."
Saudi Arabia is still keen to revive the Mecca Agreement that it brokered between the pro-negotiations Fatah party and Hamas, which recently undermined the deal by staging by taking military control over Gaza. When I asked Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on Sunday night how Hamas could be included in a peace process given its rejection of Israel's legitimacy as a state, he effectively argued that Hamas would have no choice but go along with a successful outcome. "You are entering into negotiations where there is a group of Israelis who say they don't want Palestinians in their land and want a Jewish homeland only," he said. "You have that kind of position on both sides. We hope reasonable people, people of peace and good faith, will win the day."
Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance--The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S., makes a case that even Iran could be persuaded to play a constructive role-- at the price of recognizing the Tehran regime's role in the region. He argues that Iran managed to play a spoiler role after the 1991 Madid peace conference at a time when U.S. influence was high in the region and Iran's was low, and now the tables are turned.
"Excluding Iran from regional diplomacy fuels rather than diminishes Tehran’s propensity to act the spoiler," Parsi told me on the eve of Annapolis. "Rather than pursuing an already failed policy, Washington should use the carrot of Iranian inclusion to win much needed behavioral changes from Tehran." He notes that Iran attended U.S.-driven international conferences on Afghanistan and Iraq.
He went on:
"Iran has acted quite constructively when included--see its role in Afghanistan in helping the US for instance. Iran’s key aim is to regain a position of preeminence in the Middle East. It’s not a position Iran can grab--its a position it needs to be granted. It needs buy-in from its neighbors and from the U.S. The U.S. has already branded the conference as an effort to create an anti-Iranian alliance. If peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians was at the center and the U.S. had invited Iran, then the ball would be in Iran’s court. It would be a win-win for the U.S. If Iran declined and the rest of the region attended, then the U.S. would still look good. If Iran accepted, then significant foreign policy changes could be demanded from Iran."
Parsi underscores an essential point: peace in the Middle East will require a comprehensive, inclusive approach. As satisfying as it would be in some quarters to achieve triumph over opponents, that approach has failed with horrific consequences.
--By Scott MacLeod/Paris
November 26, 2007 2:07
On the Mind of Saud al-Faisal
I spent Thanksgiving weekend, after a traditional Turkey dinner with family and friends at home, following the road to Annapolis. Last night in Paris, I spent an hour talking with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, catching up with him after the Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo and just before he left for the peace conference. It is certainly worth knowing what's on his mind. His country sponsored the 2002 Arab peace initiative, a landmark offer of full peace with Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from Arab territories. That is doubly significant, considering that Saudi Arabia has no occupied lands itself, is the custodian of Islam's holiest places, and possesses the world's largest petroleum reserves. Saud, one of the longest serving foreign ministers in the diplomatic business, is the son of a Saudi king who fought with his grandfather Ibn Saud in the 1920s in founding the modern Saudi state. He will be the highest-ranking Saudi ever to attend a peace conference with Israelis.
Saud was in surprisingly good spirits. It had been a long week but I didn't see any sign of the back problems that often bring him a lot of distress. Not that he isn't usually the consummate diplomat. I arrived 20 minutes early for our rendezvous and, dressed in a smart business suit rather than Saudi attire, he immediately began the interview. There's been a lot of political gossip about the Saudis straddling the fence about going to Annapolis, but Saud made it clear that they always intended to go, so long as the conference didn't become an embarrassing joke. We didn't discuss it last night, but the Saudis have been very wary of what they perceive as an Israeli effort to make political capital out of meeting the Saudis without having any intention of using the connection to help make peace.
That's probably one of the reasons he was gruff on the subject of shaking Ehud Olmert's hand in Annapolis. To most people, including me, that seems unnecessarily impolite. Whatever Olmert might get out of it, it would certainly help convince a skeptical Israeli public that the Arabs truly want peace. Despite his gracious manner, however, Saud plays hardball. He thinks the Saudi-sponsored Arab peace plan of 2002, which the Israelis ignored for five years, speaks for itself. One hopes that the Annapolis conference doesn't degenerate into one-upsmanship speechmaking, as the 1991 Madrid conference did to a certain extent. But by using the reference to the German humiliation at the Versailles peace conference, Saud signaled that the Arabs have little patience for any dancing around the issue of occupation. He couldn't have been clearer or more blunt: "Either Israel wants peace or territory. It can't have both."
It didn't make it into the published interview, but at one point I asked Saud if he was concerned that Olmert and Abbas were too weak politically to make a deal, whatever good intentions they may or may not have. He focused only on Olmert, showing some exasperation with the issue. "We have always been faced with the question, either Israel has a strong government that doesn’t want peace, or a weak government that can’t make peace. I hope we have moved away from that. If he is weak, let him be strong with peace. Not strong with a position for conflict and further wars."
What's clear from that and other things he said is that the Saudis are putting all their hopes and expectations on the Bush administration eventually cajoling, persuading or pressuring the Israelis into making the significant moves that the Arabs are demanding in exchange for the Arab peace plan's promise of full normalization with the Arab world. Saud expressed optimism about the conference, saying the Arabs were pleased that the parties had agreed to seek a comprehensive rather than piecemeal peace, and were impressed by Condi Rice's promise of full U.S. engagement in the peace process after a six-year hiatus in U.S. mediation efforts. Clearly Saud is less sure about what happens after Annapolis. His comments reinforced my belief that Annapolis is a significant step towards peace and that the stakes have never been higher.
Check out my pre-conference analysis of Annapolis here.
--By Scott MacLeod/Paris
November 23, 2007 2:34
The Arabs Are In
News from the Arab League meeting in Cairo on Friday morning (I guess this is something of a scoop, because I haven't seen it on the wires yet):
The Arabs are going to Annapolis. Including the Saudis, whose attendance at a high level has been the subject of intense speculation in Washington, Israel and Arab capitals.
A source tells me that all the Arab governments who have been invited to Bush's Middle East peace conference next week, and presumably that includes Syria, will attend. That means Saudi Arabia will be represented by its foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal.
There'll be more to say later...
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 21, 2007 4:19
Long Live Annapolis!
The invitations have gone out. There will be an Amercan-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, next Tuesday, the first such gathering in seven bloody years and four months.
The International Crisis Group’s excellent “policy briefing” issued yesterday on Annapolis makes a convincing case for why Condi Rice’s efforts are serious and significant, and how the conference can be turned into a meaningful step toward peace. The ICG is not blind to the difficulties; to the contrary, in agonizing detail it describes the political weakness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and their utter failure to come up with a pre-conference understanding on the contours of a peace agreement—including the “final-status” issues like borders, Jerusalem and refugees. Yet, with the help of the ICG’s analysis, it’s worth taking stock of what has been accomplished and how this progress provides an opportunity that should not be minimized or missed.
I haven’t been alone in expressing skepticism about Rice’s peace push or about her past excuses for the Bush administration’s appalling neglect of its international responsibility to uphold the peace process between 2001-2006. But it’s thanks almost entirely to Rice’s diplomacy that the administration has in fact dramatically and properly changed its basic approach to the conflict and now appears, in the ICG’s words, “committed to an intensive effort.”
Once, an administration driven by neo-conservative ideologues believed that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was fighting the authoritarian rot in the Arab world that they believe produces hatred for the U.S. and Israel in the form of the 9/11 attacks and suicide bombings against Israelis. Rice has shifted the challenge back to where it should have remained: addressing the injustice experienced by Palestinians in their expulsion from what became Israel in 1948 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Palestinian territories since 1967.
Maybe when Rice writes her memoirs well learn more about how she prevailed against the neo-cons, but it has been clear, as the ICG notes, that the Annapolis idea “brought to the fore latent tensions within the administration.” The ICG says that Rice’s opponents were “far more skeptical of any political breakthrough and preferred sticking to the strict sequential approach: first the Palestinians must reform their institutions and their ways, then they can discuss politics.” Indeed, there’s plenty of evidence for that.
In a statement in July when Bush announced the Annapolis plan, then-White House press secretary Tony Snow downplayed its importance. “I think a lot of people are inclined to try to treat this as a big peace conference,” he said. “It’s not. This is a meeting to sit down and try to find ways of building fundamental and critical institutions for the Palestinians that are going to enable them to have self-government and democracy.” In May, the Forward quoted hawkish White House Middle East advisor Elliott Abrams telling Jewish groups that Rice’s diplomacy was “just process” and that Bush would put an “emergency brake” on any Arab or European attempts to “put Israel in a corner.” In a major speech before a pro-Israel group just a month before Annapolis, Vice President Cheney chose to focus on “the ideological struggle that's playing out in the Middle East today-- the struggle against radical extremists” and devoted all of three sentences in a 5,000-word speech to Rice’s efforts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His references reflected the administration’s long-dominant neo-con approach, emphasizing that that Annapolis was designed “to review the progress towards building Palestinian institutions” and “seek innovative ways to support further reform” with no mention of Israel’s need to accommodate Palestinian rights and interests.
Rice is now in control of the Arab-Israeli file (just as she is, I’m reliably told, of the Iran policy as well). In contrast to Cheney’s thinking, Rice is decrying Israel’s occupation, arguing, as she said in a Nov. 4 speech in Jerusalem, that “the prolonged experience of depravation and humiliation can radicalize even normal people.” (In his July 16 statement announcing the plans for Annapolis, Bush also, twice, termed Israel’s presence in the West Bank an “occupation.”) Rice is also bluntly warning Israelis that they need a two-state solution, not to do Palestinians a favor, but for their own national wellbeing. She’s warning them that time is running out on moderate Palestinians who are willing to forgo the aim of conquering all the land they believe they lost in ’48 and ’67 and accept a historical, compromise deal. “My fear,” she said at that same dinner, “is that if Palestinian reformers cannot deliver on the hope of an independent state, then the moderate center could collapse forever and the next generation of Palestinians could become lost souls of unbridled extremism.” In a perhaps unintended repudiation of her own administration’s six-year disengagement from the peace process, Rice went out of her way to praise the Clinton administration’s “extraordinary efforts” in peacemaking.
Another achievement is that Rice has mobilized the full authority of her high office in her mediation effort, doing the dirty work herself on eight Middle East missions in 11 months. She shunned delegating to some special envoy, who could take the fall if the high-risk gamble fails. And quite possibly because of her intense personal involvement, she managed to get Israeli PM Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas to agree to negotiate final status issues—“no mean feat after years of diplomatic paralysis and violent conflict,” as the ICG puts it.
The ICG notes some other positive signs as well, largely products of Rice’s efforts. Prodded by Rice to begin exploratory talks last January, the ICG notes that “Abbas and Olmert seemingly share a personal bond, common purpose and desperate need for success. Their talks have exceeded in substance anything between past Israeli and Palestinian leaders.” Both men have set their own informal deadline for reaching an agreement—the end of Bush’s term in office. Avoiding a widely understood fault in Clinton’s negotiating strategy, Rice has actively sought the support of Arab states in the peace process. Indeed, from the days when Israel was wary of the Arabs as a bloc and preferred a divide and conquer approach to negotiations, it is Olmert who seems most desperate to have Saudi and Syrian participation at Annapolis. The Arabs are not happy that Olmert has not made more pre-conference gestures, but they’ll show up.
Though pointing out that perceived failure at Annapolis could discredit both leaderships, while further undermining faith in diplomacy and the two-state solution, the ICG also notes that Rice, however belatedly, has launched a process that is still well ahead of the timetable that occurred during the Clinton years. The group notes that Clinton mediation became bogged down in the “confidence-building” process and turned to brokering a final-status agreement with only six months left in his presidential term. “Not only does the Bush administration have more time to achieve its objectives, but little need be wasted determining how to do so,” the ICG says. “Annapolis comes six months earlier in Bush’s tenure, and the parties do not start from scratch.”
Rice has now proved that she’s in this to succeed. She seems to have been galvanized into her own re-think of the Middle East crisis by her disastrous handling of Israel’s attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006; as images of dead children filled the world’s TV screens, she called the war “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” and stubbornly refused to demand an Israeli cease-fire.
Many questions remain over how committed Bush is to backing Rice up. It’s also not entirely clear that Rice understands there will be no success if the outcome is not a viable Palestinian state that satisfies the need for sovereignty and dignity—as opposed to a Bantustan that some people call a “state”--and that further pressure on Israeli political leaders and assurances for an anxious Israeli public will be necessary to make that happen. There’s also a question whether Rice will show fortitude when the going really gets tough. Will she take her eye off the ball as Clinton did—the ball being a final settlement of the dispute—at the first sign of trouble from violent opponents of peace?
Much may depend on how Rice proceeds the “day after” Annapolis, how she handles the three challenges that the ICG identifies as factors that led to Clinton's ultimate failure at Camp David seven years ago: The U.S. needs to closely supervise the negotiations and introduce bridging proposals as necessary; encourage and ensure that negotiations are accompanied by rapid, visible changes on the ground, such as a freeze in Israeli settlements and Palestinian restoration of law and order; and seek the inclusion of rather than triumph over important stakeholders like Syria and Hamas.
If Annapolis fails to produce a deal before Bush leaves office, the worst-case scenario is that Rice’s fears about collapse and extremism come to pass. If she sustains her efforts, she’ll achieve a different legacy: in putting American diplomacy back in the service of negotiating a just, honorable Middle East settlement, she will have made it easier for the next secretary of state to carry on until that mission is accomplished.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 19, 2007 11:57
Mideast Civil War: MESA vs. ASMEA
Not all of the Middle East's conflicts are being waged in the blood-soaked lands of this region: the battles are raging in America's ivory towers, too. The latest evidence is the jousting between MESA and its new rival, ASMEA.
Founded in 1966, the Middle East Studies Association, whose annual conference is wrapping up on Tuesday in Montreal, is a grouping for 2,600 academics and other specialists on the region. It defines its mission as one that "promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom." MESA has been notably active in the latter sphere, lately leaping to the defense of professors involved in high-profile disputes related to their critical views of Israel. These include Normal Finkelstein of De Paul University, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University. Critics of MESA and its membership broadly accuse it of being overly sympathetic with Arab causes and reflexively critical of American and Israeli policies.
To the rescue of impressionable American minds that might be influenced by MESA and its fellow travelers is a new group that will challenge MESA's tendencies: the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, founded by Bernard Lewis of Princeton University and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University. Critics of this faction, in turn, broadly call them Orientalists and opportunists, too quick to cover Washington's Middle East policies. Lewis and Ajami were important intellectual supporters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. ASMEA will host its first conference next April in Washington.
Lewis told the Chronicle of Higher Education that "the study of the Middle East and of Africa has been politicized to a degree without precedent...there is an acute need for objective and accurate scholarship and debate, unhampered by entrenched interests and allegiances. Through its annual conference, journal, newsletter, and Web site, ASMEA will provide this."
That's reminiscent of the outlook of Campus Watch, another post-9/11 group formed expressly to monitor the teaching of Middle East studies in the U.S. and Canada with a view to addressing "five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students." Supporters have hailed CW as an "antidote to academia's incessant anti-Americanism." CW's critics have denounced it as a "noxious campaign... intended to silence... perfectly legitimate criticism, by tarring it with the brush of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism..."
So the civil war in the American academy rages on. Enlightenment is certain to be the first casualty.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 17, 2007 12:33
What the IAEA Now Says About Iran's Nukes
The Bush Administration quickly seized on the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear program as further evidence that Tehran is not cooperating and must therefore be targeted for a third round of U.N. sanctions. The White House says that Iran is "stringing along the IAEA during this process."
Though citing disclosures that Iran still needs to make, the report describes a good deal of Iranian cooperation under an IAEA agreement to clear up questions about the clandestine origins of Iran's present nuclear program. The IAEA isn't satisfied that it knows everything to confirm that Iran has no secret plan to develop a nuclear weapon. It bluntly warns Iran that until it provides greater transparency by allowing more intrusive inspections under the IAEA's Additional Protocol, a political cloud will continue to hang over its nuclear efforts.
But the report stops well short of accusing Iran of stonewalling. The Israeli government lashed out at the report, saying that it "fails to expose (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad's intentions that are well known" to IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei. Iran hailed the report, insisting it proved that Iran has been truthful in its claim to be developing a program for energy rather that bombs. Ahmadinejad called on the West to "bravely apologize to the Iranian nation."
The nine-page report, which will be discussed by the IAEA board next week in Vienna, presents a detailed history of Iran's development of highly advanced technology for producing the fuel from enriched uranium needed for nuclear power reactors or atomic weapons. Citing information provided by Iranian officials and at times supported by IAEA inspections or independent sources, the report chronicles Iran's illicit efforts to obtain so-called P-1 and P-2 centrifuge technology on the international black market, starting with "a hand-written one-page document reflecting an offer for certain components and equipment said to have been made to Iran in 1987 by a foreign intermediary."
In nine instances, the report describes information and statements provided by Iran as being "consistent" with IAEA findings. It says that "the agency has been able to conclude that answers provided on the declared past P-1 and P-2 centrifuge programs are consistent with its findings." In the report summary, the IAEA says it had been able to verify that Iran had not diverted known nuclear material for other purposes, that Iran had provided the agency with required accountancy reports pertaining to declared nuclear material and activities and that Iran had provided "sufficient access" to nuclear officials and responded in a "timely manner to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications."
The report says, however, that the IAEA is continuing to verify Iran's declarations; to clarify still-unexplained uranium particle contamination at an Iranian technical university, to seek information about Iranian activities concerning polonium-210, which can be used to trigger a nuclear device, its Gchine uranium mine, and development of an enhanced P-2 centrifuge; and to explore other activities that could have military applications. The IAEA says that Iran should deal with such issues in the next few weeks. The report complains that Iran's current cooperation has been "reactive rather than pro-active."
The report cites a memo dated Feb. 28, 1987 that Iran provided as acknowledgment of the existence of its secret program, written by the then head of Iran's atomic energy organization to the then prime minister. The IAEA suggests that the memo recommended the purchase of the centrifuge technology and the prime minister approved the recommendation with an endorsement signature. Iranian officials told the IAEA that only the atomic energy organization, and no military institution, was involved in the birth of Iran's centrifuge program. The report says, however, that it had been unable to determine the originator of the 1987 memo.
The report says that the IAEA has not been able to confirm Iran's contention that "the supply network"--an apparent reference to Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan's black market nuke operation--rather than Iranian officials had initiated a sale of new technology in 1993. But it says information about deliveries and technical assistance provided by Iran was verified by some of the network's operatives.
The agency concludes that based on interviews with officials from Libya, which utilized Khan's black market network as well, the 1993 offer involved P-1 technology that had originally been ordered by Libya but was diverted to Iran between 1994-96. The report says that Iran had provided names, locations and activities of the workshops involved in the domestic production of centrifuge components, most of which it says are owned by military organizations.
The report goes on to describe a covert meeting in 1996 in Dubai, where Khan maintained a front organization, in which Iranian officials were presented with a full set of P-2 centrifuge designs as compensation for the poor quality of P-1 centrifuge components purchased earlier. Iran told the IAEA that it initiated no work on the more advanced P-2 program until 2002, shortly before Iran's secret efforts were exposed by Iranian dissidents.
The report says the agency does not have credible procurement-related information that reveals the actual acquisition of P-2 centrifuges or components through the period. But after extensive inquiries, it expresses satisfaction with Iran's rundown of its declared P-2 program. Said the report: "Based on visits made by Agency inspectors to the P-2 workshop in 2004, examination of the company owner’s contract, progress reports and logbooks, and information available on procurement enquiries, the Agency has concluded that Iran’s statements on the content of the declared P-2 R&D activities are consistent with the Agency’s findings."
Regarding Iran's current activities, the report says the IAEA had verified that Iran crossed the threshold of putting 3,000 centrifuges into operation--in line with Ahmadinejad recent pronouncement that Iran had achieved the capacity for industrial-scale fuel production. Agency tests, however, indicates that the centrifuges are operating below capacity and below the level of Iran's public claims.
Noting that Iran remains in defiance of U.N. resolutions demanding that it suspend its enrichment program due to mistrust over Iran's intentions, the report urges Iran to reinstate its compliance with the IAEA's still-voluntary Additional Protocol. Because Tehran suspended compliance two years ago, the report says, "the agency has not received the type of information that Iran had previously been providing [and] as a result, the agency's knowledge about Iran's current nuclear program is diminishing."
That situation, the report suggests, undermines Iran's efforts to prove its good intentions. "Confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program requires that the agency be able to provide assurances not only regarding declared nuclear material, but, equally important, regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," the report concludes.
Saying the IAEA "has no concrete information...about possible current undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," the report says that "the agency is not in position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran without full implementation of the Additional Protocol. This is especially important to restore confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 16, 2007 12:38
A Saudi Hero: Abdul Rahman al-Lahem
Spare a thought for the human rights struggle in Saudi Arabia, and for the remarkable Saudi human rights lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem.
That's not to shift the emphasis away from the shocking treatment of al-Lahem's client, a 19-year-old Saudi woman. In 2005, she was gang-raped by seven Saudi men in an assault in the Eastern Province. The attackers were from the Sunni Muslim majority, the woman a Shi'ite. In their trial, the men were handed sentences from 10 months to five years in prison. But the victim herself was sentenced to 90 lashes of a whip, on the charge that she violated Sharia law by being in the company of a man who was not a close relative.
AL-Lahem took her case to a Saudi appeals court, and a revised sentence came in on Thursday. Al-Lahem had argued that the rape sentences were too lenient, and the lashing sentence for the victim was unjust. "This is not justice," he was quoted saying. "This is jungle Sharia"--referring to the harsh reading of Islamic law common in the Kingdom. The court increased the rape sentences to up to 10 years. But, bizarrely, it also doubled the sentence for his client to 200 lashes and added a six-month prison term for her.
According to the Arab News's intrepid human rights reporter, Ebtihal Mubarak, the judge in the Qatif court immediately removed al-Lahem from the rape victim's case and confiscated his license to practice law. The Judicial Investigation Department of the Ministry of Justice then summoned al-Lahem to a disciplinary hearing next month, apparently to face charges that he allegedly advertises his services in violation of Saudi regulations.
The case of the rape victim is typical of the work that has brought al-Lahem wide acclaim as one of Saudi Arabia's most courageous human rights campaigners. Few have done more to defend the basic rights of women in the Saudi courrts. In most of his cases, he takes on the powerful Wahhabi religious establishment that dominates or strongly influences many government institutions, including the judicial system and the religious police. Many of his clients are victims of abuse at the hands of the latter. One of his highly publicized cases was defending a Saudi couple with children who were forcibly divorced against their will after the wife's family accused the husband of lying about his tribal affiliation. He failed to prevent the divorce and then had to spend nine months trying to get her moved from a prison into a social services shelter. (Explanation: because she refused to move in with her family after the forced divorce, she was given the choice of going to the shelter or a prison; she initially chose the latter, to keep a safe distance from her intrusive brothers and to better publicize her plight.)
Al-Lahem started having run-ins with Saudi rulers as well. He was jailed starting in 2004 for about six months. He apparently irritated the authorities for speaking out about Saudi human rights abuses on al-Jazeera and in Arabic newspapers. He also was representing three leading reformists who were jailed because they called for a constitutional monarchy and rejected official demands that they apologize for doing so. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud, who favors gradual reform in the Kingdom, freed al-Lahem unconditionally a week after ascending the Saudi throne in 2005. But despite the intense political, religious, social and legal pressures that are brought to bear on rights activists in Saudi Arabia, al-Lahem's important voice refuses to be silenced.
UPDATE: Human Rights Watch, citing a court official, says that the victim's sentence was increased, because of “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.” Human Rights Watch called on King Abdullah to immediately void the verdict and drop all charges against the rape victim and to order the court to end its harassment of her lawyer.
From an HRW statement Saturday Nov. 17:
“A courageous young woman faces lashing and prison for speaking out about her efforts to find justice,” said Farida Deif, researcher in the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. “This verdict not only sends victims of sexual violence the message that they should not press charges, but in effect offers protection and impunity to the perpetrators.”
CORRECTION:A human rights source in Saudi Arabia says that the ethnic identity of the convicted rapists was misreported in this blog post as well as by many other news organizations. They were Shi'ite Muslims, not Sunnis, as reported. The ethnic identities added an additional element to the report because of a history of some Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in the Kingdom. Many thanks to my source for alerting us to this and apologies to readers for our apparent mistake.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 15, 2007 10:23
Tug of War in Southern Lebanon
Earlier this year, I visited the Indian contingent of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) -- the multi-national army monitoring the cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel -- and was impressed by their seriousness and attention to the detail. The Indian unit, known back home as the 15th Punjab, is the oldest and most decorated unit in the Indian Army, and had brought their battalion silver along with them to prove it.
But perhaps the 15th Punjab takes some things a little too seriously. Earlier this week, they sent me this press release:
"Continuing its winning stint for the tenth consecutive time, the indomitable gallant peacekeepers of 15 PUNJAB Infantry Battalion Group added another feather in their cap on 13 Nov 2007, by clinching the hotly contested Inter Contingent Tug of War competition. "
"Displaying team spirit, stamina and a technical edge over all other teams, the Indians were clearly miles ahead in terms of temperament, and physical strength. After the win, the team members were congratulated by the sporty Belgians and many of them were seen doing the impromptu Bhangra [a traditional dance], which followed after this deserving win. It is pertinent to note here that 15 PUNJAB Infantry Battalion Group has in the past 10 months won the UNIFIL Inter Contingent Lawn Tennis, Volleyball, Cross Country, Pool, Badminton, Commando & Obstacle crossing, Shooting & Patrolling competitions."
Lawn Tennis? Badminton? The 15th Punjab was once part of the British Army, but I don't think even the British Army plays badminton anymore.
But the 15th Punjab isn't a bunch of country clubbers. Their last mission was fighting Islamic insurgents in Kashmir. Southern Lebanon must be boring them batty. Let's hope it stays that way.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
November 15, 2007 12:48
Annapolis: The Day After
Is it too soon to declare Annapolis a failure?
I hate to say it, but after speaking with several plugged-in diplomats all over the region the past two weeks, I have to report that none of them sounded the least bit optimistic about the Middle East peace conference due to start in just 10 days. One of them even said it was not certain that Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas would come up with any agreed declaration to present at the conference--much less the rough outline of an eventual historic peace deal that many, perhaps especially the Palestinians and Arab parties, hoped would constitute a promising framework and timetable for final Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Despite Rice's eight shuttle missions to the Middle East this year, the odds for success were never high. Both Olmert and Abbas say they want a deal before Bush leaves office in '09. But both are politically weak. There is deep mistrust on both sides since the breakdown of peace talks and the outbreak of the second intifadeh in '00. They are seemingly far apart concerning what they want and what they are willing to give on the key issues of borders, refugees and Jerusalem. The Bush administration's six-year withdrawal from active mediation, despite the U.S.'s position as the internationally recognized co-sponsor of the peace process, didn't help, either.
So, what to do now?
Condi Rice seems determined to persevere, perhaps have the two sides announce whatever progress they can, declare that to be a good step forward, and then have them return home for further bilateral efforts. Others like former U.S. mediator Dennis Ross believe that Rice should postpone the conference until the way forward is clearer, and then limit the eventual conference's aims to vague principles that refrain from asking Olmert and Abbas to commit to things there are politically difficult for them for the time being. What both approaches have in common, though, is an obsession with the process rather than a focus on the peace.
Ross is correct that it makes little sense to have a peace conference that promises no meaningful followup. But his idea of postponing the conference, and then tip-toeing around the hard parts, also makes little sense, if the aim is to actually achieve something. Wait for what, another 10 years? Another 60 years?
If making peace is the top priority of the Bush administration that Rice claims that it is, it may be time for Rice to withdraw from her role as a passive mediator shuttling among Israeli and Palestinian parties and instead put forth the American leadership's bold vision--based on the prevailing international consensus--of what a final peace settlement should look like. Then the skulls of the parties might be seriously banged together to produce a compromise in negotiations based on that framework. Certainly Israel will have to come under pressure to go along, if only for one simple reason: the rapid expansion of illegal Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank means that the more time that passes before an agreement is reached, the greater the chances there will be nothing left to negotiate about. Certainly, Palestinian violence will have to be dealt with firmly, too; but, is it wise to continue giving Hamas a veto over a peace settlement, by insisting that Palestinian attacks cease before a political compromise can be reached?
Indeed, it's worth repeating what Rice herself has recently said about the feared consequences of not achieving a settlement very soon, namely that Israel risks losing moderate Palestinian interlocutors for a two-state solution, and could then be confronted with an increasingly radical Palestinian majority in the land that it rules. That's a scenario that will be dire for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region, especially considering other grave situations elsewhere, including Iraq, Iran and Lebanon.
Our concern is growing that without a serious political prospect for the Palestinians that gives to moderate leaders a horizon that they can show to their people that indeed there is a two-state solution that is possible, we will lose the window for a two-state solution.Because of the threat of violent extremism, the two-state solution is, frankly, more urgent now than ever... my fear [is] that if we do not act now to show the Palestinians a way forward, others will show them a way forward. If the Palestinians are losing hope, especially among the young, we have a great danger before us. The prolonged experience of depravation and humiliation can radicalize even normal people... My fear is that if Palestinian reformers cannot deliver on the hope of an independent state, then the moderate center could collapse forever and the next generation of Palestinians could become lost souls of unbridled extremism.
Assuming that Olmert and Abbas prove unable to get final negotiations solidly on track after nearly a year of Rice's urgings to do just that, there seems little point in giving them more time, or hoping that more determined leaders will someday replace them in office. Clearly, Israelis and Palestinians are in need of leadership and support if they are to get to where they claim they want to be. If Bush believes in peace so much, why hold back from laying down guidelines on where the borders should be, how the '48 refugees should be dealt with, and how Jerusalem can be shared? Why should a president who was bold enough to invade two countries and topple their governments be shy about saying how he thinks Israelis and Palestinians could achieve a fair deal? It's not rocket science, by the way. Barak and Arafat came reasonably close before things turned ugly in '00; unofficial Israeli-Palestinian negotiations sorted out all these issues in the so-called Geneva Initiative of 2003. Strong U.S. leadership rather than mere mediation may be the only thing that makes sense now, if the aim is truly to break the impasse.
Don't take my word for it: As I blogged last month, a bipartisan group of American "wisemen/women" are proposing exactly such an approach in the event of an Annapolis stalemate. The group includes: Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter; Lee H. Hamilton, former Congressman and Co-chair of the Iraq Study Group; Carla Hills, former U.S. Trade Representative under President George H.W. Bush; Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, former Senator; Thomas R. Pickering, former Under-Secretary of State; Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to President Gerald Ford and President George H.W. Bush; Theodore C. Sorensen, former Special Counsel and Adviser to President John F. Kennedy; Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System.
Here's the essence of what the group proposed, in a letter to Bush and Rice on Oct. 10:
The international conference should deal with the substance of a
permanent peace: Because a comprehensive peace accord is unattainable
by November, the conference should focus on the endgame and endorse
the contours of a permanent peace, which in turn should be enshrined
in a Security Council resolution. Israeli and Palestinian leaders
should strive to reach such an agreement. If they cannot, the Quartet
(US, EU, Russia and UN Secretary General)—under whose aegis the
conference ought to be held— should put forward its own outline, based
on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Clinton parameters
of 2000, the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and the 2003 Roadmap. It
should reflect the following:
Two states, based on the lines of June 4, 1967, with minor,
reciprocal, and agreed-upon modifications as expressed in a 1:1 land
swap;Jerusalem as home to two capitals, with Jewish neighborhoods falling
under Israeli sovereignty and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian
sovereignty;Special arrangements for the Old City, providing each side control
of its respective holy places and unimpeded access by each community
to them;A solution to the refugee problem that is consistent with the
two-state solution, addresses the Palestinian refugees' deep sense of
injustice as well as provides them with meaningful financial
compensation and resettlement assistance;Security mechanisms that address Israeli concerns while respecting
Palestinian sovereignty.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 14, 2007 10:07
Fighting Terror the Hard Way
While I was in Kurdistan, I picked up a bootleg DVD version of The Kingdom, the action movie with Jamie Foxx leading a band of maverick FBI agents into Saudi Arabia to hunt down a terrorist mastermind responsible for killing American oil service workers. The movie is good fluffy fun, despite (or perhaps because of) the improbable scenes where Saudi police allow hottie Jennifer Garner to run around the world's most conservative society in a tank-top.
Film reviewers have made much of the fact that one of the main characters -- a Saudi family man/supercop -- represents a more nuanced portrayal of Arabs than is typical of Hollywood racial typecasting. But at it's core, The Kingdom is an old fashioned celebration of American power. If the governments of sandy, Muslim countries don't tackle terror themselves, we'll do it for them -- the hard way.
Though the Iraq disaster may have humbled neo-conservatives and their cheerleaders, their interventionist spirit is still alive, and not just on the big screen. Today's New York Times Op-Ed by Max Boot, a defense analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, called for the U.S. to reorient itself for a global counter-insurgecy against Islamic terrorism that can't be won by force alone. Boot wants the State Department to focus on building foreign governments and developing institutions, while the Army should create a whole new corps of special advisors and police to train the security services of faithful allies in the war on terror.
All of this is sound advice, but I wish Boot had given it before the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. At the time however, he was busy praising Donald Rumsfeld and the new American way of war -- precision munitions, blitzkireg invasions, and few boots on the ground -- that made our military un-defeatable by any force in the world, except the bands of insurgents who we are actually fighting now.
Perhaps the U.S. still has time to put these new counter-insurgency doctrines to good use in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I'm not sure how these theories can be applied to the rest of the world. Just what new governments of which countries will the United States be building from scratch in the near future? Egads! Is he thinking about Iran? Barring another American invasion, the countries that need our help in the greater Middle East are ether very fragile such as Lebanon (where the arrival of American "advisors" could spark a civil war) or ruled by dictatorships such as Pakistan, where we can't exactly train President Musharraf's police to help maintain emergency rule.
It would be nice to think that special FBI teams can fly around the world and win the war on terror for us. In The Kingdom, the Feds get their man, pumping lead into the dastardly kaffiyeh-wearing Abu Hamza. But one wonders how many jihadis would be created if in real life machine gun-toting American police shot up a neighborhood in Riyadh. Perhaps the film aknowleges this, when the wounded Abu Hamza whispers to his grandson: "We won't stop until we've killed them all!" Or perhaps the filmmakers were just prepping us for a sequel.
The problem is that whether we send in the cops, or we send in State Department aid officers, a large number of people in the Middle East no longer trusts us. We can't just reorganize the government to fight the global Islamic insurgency. We also need to reorient our policies -- our support for dictatorships, our petro-politics, and our uneven role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- that weaken moderates and inflame the small but growing number of radicals. That might not be the "hard" way to fight terror, but it's the right way.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
November 14, 2007 12:34
The Debate Inside Iran
Rummaging through files for a story on Iran today, I came across some important remarks a month ago by Hasan Rowhani, a leading Iranian politician and former chief nuclear negotiator, that shed some light on the growing U.S.-Iran confrontation.
Find the main remarks below, but basically Rowhani voices strong concern about Ahmadinejad's defiant approach to the international community, and the damage that this is causing to Iran's standing in the world and potentially to its economy through the U.N. Security Council sanctions.
Rowhani's comments are important because of who he is. As the head of the Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator under Khatami, he was a key figure in Iran's decision to suspend uranium enrichment for three years. He remains the Supreme Leader's personal representative on the SNSC, which has just been taken over by an Ahmadinejad loyalist. And he is a close political ally of former President Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who continues to be one of the most powerful figures in Iran's regime.
Bush administration officials pondering a military strike on Iran's nuclear program must therefore consider what Rowhani's comments mean. First, despite all of Bush's broad-brush talk about Iranian "evil," in fact there is a spectrum of views and personalities in the Iranian regime, some radical, some moderate. Second, Iran as a whole cares a great deal about its standing in the world, indicating that there is an opportunity for diplomacy with Tehran. Third, Iran is not as oblivious to international pressure as Ahmadinejad's rhetoric makes it seem; Condi Rice's sanctions alternative to Cheney's military option stands a chance of bearing fruit, if not in the final two years of Ahmadinejad's presidential term, then afterwards.
Here's Rowhani, speaking to the Moderation and Progress Party leadership, as reported by the Tehran daily newspaper Aftab-e Yazd on Oct. 12:
“Right now we are facing unprecedented threats in the international arena. A country's diplomacy is successful when it will not allow the enemy to bring other countries to its side against our country's national interests. An Iranian proverb says a single enemy is too many and a thousand friends are not enough. If all the countries of the world were with us it would not be enough, while a single country against us is too many. We must not do anything to increase our enemies.""If some people do not sense the enemy and the hostility, or if some think they have no enemies or the enemy is weak, this will only help the enemy exert pressures. Being ignorant of one's enemies goes against reason and good sense. America's rulers are truly mischievous people, and their aggression in the region has clearly shown this. Unfortunately our enemies are on the increase. Yesterday it was just Britain with America, but today France is standing with the United States with even greater passion."
“The enemy has prepared itself and is plotting against us every day. It has made the United Nations and Security Council its refuge and uses them to increase its pressure on us. The effects of these pressures are evident in economic and political relations. Our conditions are becoming more difficult by the day. Some might say it is not important, but its economic effects are clearly palpable in people's lives. There is no need for the Central Bank to announce the inflation rate. The people know the real rate of inflation better than the Central Bank. The Central Bank calculates with its own particular formula, but people feel it in their very existence."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 13, 2007 7:06
Naqoura
On Friday, I went down to the headquarters of the United Nation Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and had trouble finding the visitor's entrance into the walled compound at Naqoura, a border town on the southernmost edge of the country. My driver Khalid pointed down an empty road seemingly towards nowhere. "What's that way?" he asked two young men standing across from the last gate.
"Filisteen," one replied cheekily, using the Arabic word for Palestine, rather than Israel. These guys were Hizballah pickets.
So it is in southern Lebanon. The Security Council sent a multinational force of some 15,000 soldiers to monitor the boder between Lebanon and Israel, but is itself monitored by Hizballah, and for the matter by Israel, whose jets regularly buzz UNIFIL positions. Needless to say, Hizballah and Israel keep a close eye on each other as well. Everyone is watching everyone else.
And that includes me. I made the rounds in Naquora to keep an eye out for stories, and while I was there caught a medal ceremony honoring the departure of the French unit in charge of protecting the base. (The French had been at Naquora for 29 years, long enough to build a miniture Eiffel Tower.) But I came away with nothing to show for the trip but a few chocolate eclairs.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
November 12, 2007 5:47
Egypt: A (Small) Victory for Human Rights
Here's something you don't see every day: Human Rights Watch commending the Egyptian authorities for a "positive step" and "a major achievement."
HRW's praise comes after last week's conviction of two Cairo policemen, Capt. Islam Nabih and Cpl. Reda Fathi, on charges of illegally detaining, beating and then raping a 21-year-old mini-bus driver, Imad Mohammed Ali, a.k.a Imad al-Kabir.
The story gives a frightening glimpse into the way authoritarian regimes instill fear in their populations. It also gives an insight into the way the Internet can scare dictatorships.
The case may never have become known if one of the policemen hadn't made a cellphone video recording of al-Kabir screaming for mercy while being violated. The cop apparently did this so he could show al-Kabir's fellow bus drivers what happens to you if you interfere with the authorities in Egypt. Al-Kabir had gotten himself arrested while trying to restrain policemen from beating his cousin, a butane gas bottle seller, in an unrelated incident. Egyptian bloggers got hold of the video, posted it on Internet sites including YouTube and turned the torture case into an international incident. HRW commended the judiciary for prosecuting the case with "vigor and honesty."
As HRW also noted, however, Egypt still has a long way to go in addressing human rights abuses. Systematic torture remains a serious problem in the country. Holding these Egyptian policemen accountable in a 10-month trial is a good start. Whether the convictions also set a precedent for changing the Egyptian regime's approach to power remains to be seen.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
November 9, 2007 10:49
Oil Deals in Iraqi Kurdistan
A political agreement between Kurdish, Shia and Sunni political parties over how to share Iraq's oil wealth is crucial to the future of Iraq's federal structure, indeed the unity of the country itself. Yet a draft version of a new oil law -- which would give Kurds the right to sign their own oil contracts in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq -- has languished for about a year in parliament in Baghdad.
So Kurds have been taking matters into their own hands. This week, the Kurdistan Regional Gvernment signed seven new contracts with foreign production companies to develop oil and gas fields in their territory. This is the second big round of contracts signed by the Kurds, and has been met with complaints from Baghdad and Washington, as well as much speculation in the media as to whether or not these oil deals would help fuel the push for Kurdish independence.
But in fact these oil contracts, and oil development in northern Iraq in general, reveal just how tightly Kurds are bound to federal Iraq, whether they like it or not. First of all, Kurdistan isn't going to be bathing in black gold anytime soon. It'll take about five years before these particular agreements start producing actual oil and gas. And even once the gushers start, Kurds can't just go it alone in the international oil markets. In order to sell their oil, they need Iraq's pipelines to Turkey and Syria. These neighboring countries -- which are hostile to the whole idea of a separate Kurdish state -- aren't about to allow Kurds to build their own pipelines, unless Kurds made it seriously worth their while. But Kurds will have a hard time sharing the wealth. They signed these contracts in accordance with Iraq's yet un-passed oil legislation, which divides the revenue between the federal government and the regions. Kurdistan's take is just about 17 percent.
The reality is that the Kurds went ahead with these contracts because the development of their region -- the one safe, sucessfull part of the country -- is actually in limbo. Foreign investment that was supposed to come pouring into the region has largely been a no show in the absence of the oil law. Most of the new wealth in Kurdistan comes from trade and government spending, but even that is erratic, since the Kurdish budget comes from Baghdad. That is when it comes. When I was in Kurdistan earlier this month, the Kurdish peshmerga soldiers hadn't been paid in about 60 days.
As with oil, Kurdistan faces a series of unresolved issues with the Iraqi state, especially its boundaries with the rest of Iraq, and the status of Kirkuk. Resolving them doesn't necessarily set the stage for the break-up of Iraq. But leaving them unresolved sets the stage for the breakdown of Iraqi Kurdistan.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
November 9, 2007 1:46
Trouble in Paradise
The dreamland of Dubai, as its developers portray it
Two stories this week help illustrate the growing pains behind Dubai's successful effort to market itself as a 21st Century paradise:
From time.com:
Last July 14, Alexandre Robert, a 15-year-old French-Swiss youth living in Dubai with his hotel-manager father, was offered a ride home by an Emirati acquaintance from a beach club, where he was with a French friend. In the car were two local men. According to Alexandre, he was placed in the middle backseat, while the men drove the teenagers beyond the neon-soaked skyline and into the desert, where the three local men took turns raping him at knifepoint in the dark. His French friend was ordered to wait outside the car, and has told police he was not attacked. When the men finally deposited the distraught boys back in the city, they threatened to attack Alexandre's family if he dared report them to the police... The police doctor who examined Alexandre declared that there was no physical sign of rape, and suggested that Alexandre was instead concealing his homosexuality. Homosexual sex is a criminal act in Dubai, punishable with one year in jail.
From Reuters:
At least seven people were killed and about 15 injured on Thursday when a bridge under construction in Dubai collapsed near luxury hotels and high-rises in the Gulf trading and tourism hub. A transport official said the incident in the new part of the city, where thousands of upscale homes are being built along the Gulf coast and on man-made islands, appeared to be the result of human error during construction.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo