February 29, 2008 2:43
US Gunboat Diplomacy in Lebanon Again
You would think by now that the Bush Administration would realize that the days of gunboat diplomacy -- when the US could influence the course of international events with a display of military muscle -- are on the wane. The Iraq war showed everyone in the Middle East both the vast superiority of American weaponry, and the limits of war as an extension of politics. And yet, the White House has just sent an American warship, the USS Cole, to patrol off the coast of Lebanon as a "show of support for regional stability", according to news reports citing an anonymous US official.
In reality, the Cole is a show of support to Administrations allies in Lebanon and Israel, and a warning to Syria, Iran, and the Lebanese militia Hizballah to stop meddling in Lebanon's political crisis. It's perhaps also a warning for Hizballah to think twice about retaliating against Israel for the assassination of its operations chief, who was killed by a bomb in Damascus earlier this month.
But the arrival of the Cole is also a display of the limits of American power. Unpleasant though it may be, the campaign against the American-supported Lebanese government is a broad-based popular movement that is led by Hizballah, but which also includes several other groups who resent Lebanon's corrupt political elite and their masters in the West. A gunboat isn't much good for crowd control.
Nor would it be much use in the shadow war of terror attacks against Lebanon's pro-American politicians. Perhaps in the wake of another assassination, the Cole could launch missile strikes against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, which the US blames for these attacks. But does the US public really want to get directly involved in yet another regional conflict with no end in sight? To list just one of the many way in which such a struggle could get ugly, there are thousands of American civilians in Lebanon (including myself) who would make easy kidnapping targets.
This may sound wildly paranoid, but it has happened before. When the US sent troops to Lebanon in the 1980's to help extricate Israel from its disastrous invasion, the US got sucked into the Lebanese Civil war, with spectacularly deadly results. After an American battleship, the USS New Jersey, launched a barrage against pro-Syrian forces in Lebanon, which responded by blowing up the US Marine Corps barracks, and taking a whole series of foreigners captive, an episode that so paralyzed the Reagan administration that it illegally sold weapons to Iran in hopes of gaining their release. Does no one in the Bush White House remember the Iran Contra Scandal?
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 27, 2008 5:30
My Last Ashura
Ashura, the most important Shia Muslim holiday, came and went last month and I'd forgotten to post the photographs I took at a ceremony organized by Iraqi refugees in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The Dahieh, as this dense working class area is called, is one of the strongholds of Hizballah, the Lebanese Shia Muslim political party and militia, and so it is a particularly welcoming place for Iraqi Shia fleeing sectarian violence in there own country. Though Lebanon is a much more difficult place to be a refugee than nearby Syria -- where the cost of living is less and where the country's pan-Arab ideology makes it more welcoming to brother Arabs down on their luck -- illegal Iraqi immigrants living in the Dahieh can hold jobs and even open businesses, since the district operates largely outside the writ of the Lebanese government. And they can also find a lot of like-minded Shia with whom to worship. Except on Ashura, that is.
In Lebanon, HIzballah has largely banned the practice of Haidar, ritual cutting and bloodletting that some Shia practice on Ashura as a way of commemorating the death of their founding leader, Hussein, during the battle of Karbala in Iraq in 680 CE. The defeat at Karbala -- a schismatic battle for leadership among Muslims after the death of Mohammed -- was the founding moment of Shia Islam. The victors went on to rule the majority of Muslims for hundreds of years, while the losers and their followers have been an often persecuted minority ever since. In Lebanon, Haidar is openly practiced in one city in southern Lebanon, Nabbatiyeh, but in very few other places. The ruling clerics of Iran, the leaders of Hizballah and many other Lebanese Shia are embarrassed by the medieval-looking practice, and have taken the more progressive attitude that Ashura might be better honored by donating blood than by spilling it.
This is to the disappointment of Iraqi Shia, many of whom hail from the centers of Shia theology and culture in Najaf and Karbala itself, and believe that they know how to put on a better Shia show than the Lebanese. Many of them are also eager to revive traditional practices that had been repressed under Saddam's regime, which was dominated by Sunnis.
So last month, an Iraqi Shia community center -- a Husseiniya -- in the suburbs held its own underground Ashura ceremony, in the basement late at night. The PG-rated portion of the evening -- during which scores of boys beat themselves with chains and slapped their chests pink -- ended around midnight. Once they left, a rump faction of the older men shut the doors -- like a British pub lockdown after-hours -- and waited until a few hours before dawn.
Then, after wolfing down tea and Turkish Delight, they passed out long knives, and donned tunics made from white bed sheets, all the better to show bloodstains. Cutting their scalps with straight razors, and hitting their heads to make the blood rush, they shouted "Haidar!" which means lion, and is one of the nicknames of Ali, the father of Hussein the martyr of Karbala. The Haidar ceremony continued for perhaps an hour, until the celebrants collapsed from exhaustion and emotion, many of them breaking into tears.
My trip to Nabatiyeh for Ashura last year had quite an effect, as I wondered about what it was like to be part of a group whose Founding Fathers were the losers of history, and about the connection between blood rituals and masculinity in all societies. But this year, having spent the night on a basement floor, and the early morning in a confined space full of men waving sharp objects and spattering blood all over me, I just wanted to go home and take a warm bath in rubbing alcohol.
When I emerged from underground, day was just breaking and Hizballah security men in black fatigues were fanning out along the avenue to prepare for the party's own Ashura demonstrations and a speech by their leader, Hassan Nasrallah. One of them searched me for weapons and noticed the bloodstains on my backpack. "I see you've been with the Iraqis," he said, in a perfect Midwestern American accent. "They take Ashura very seriously. I mean, it is serious. But not THAT serious."
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 27, 2008 1:01
Hussein: What's In a Name?
Hats off to John McCain for immediately repudiating conservative radio talk show host Bill Cunningham, who seemed to impugn Barrack Obama for his Muslim heritage at a political event on Tuesday. Introducing McCain at a Republican campaign rally with a pep talk, Cunningham attacked Obama as a hack politician and repeatedly referred to him as Barrack Hussein Obama in an obvious effort to draw attention to Obama's Muslim heritage.
Obama has every right to be proud of his Muslim heritage and his middle name. The Prophet Mohammed's grandson was named Hussein, who himself became one of the revered figures in Islam. Throughout history probably millions of newborn Muslim males have been named Hussein, one of the most popular Muslim names after Mohammed.
From the beginning of Obama's presidential campaign, the hate preachers and fear mongers have thrown out his middle name and referred to his Muslim background--Obama's Kenyan father's family was Muslim, but Obama was raised in the U.S. as a Christian. This is done not as gestures of respect for Islam or Obama but in efforts to smear Obama by associating him with terrorists and dictatorships. Look for the smear campaign against Obama to continue until the November general election for president if he defeats Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic Party's candidate.
To their credit, Americans, across the whole country, aren't buying it. The outpouring of support for Obama as a candidate of color in the Democratic primaries is evidence that at heart America is a tolerant democracy that celebrates its multiculturalism. The U.S. is a country that is capable of recognizing prejudice and dealing with it--even if we still have a long ways to go.
McCain not only repudiated Cunningham but took responsibility for Cunningham's conduct. With candidates like Obama and McCain leading the race for president, it's a sign that Islamophobes in the U.S., who had their heyday after 9/11, may be on their way to being marginalized. That will be a good thing for America and for the Middle East.
--By Scott MacLeod/Doha
February 25, 2008 10:25
Tales From the Arabian Heights
Check it out: Dubai's ambitious ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum has some serious competition.
He is extremely determined to build the world's tallest skyscraper in his booming city state. Last summer, I traveled up a site elevator the week the Burj Dubai hit 509 meters and surpassed Tapei 101 as the highest building on the planet. Seven months later, it's risen to about 600 meters. It's expected to go another 100-200 meters, though the exact plan is being kept secret. Some wags here say the Burj's slim design kind of resembles an extended middle finger, as if Dubai is telling would-be challengers to back off.
Now, however, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud is reportedly planning a tower in Jeddah that will be twice that height. Envisioned to reach 1,600 meters, it's being called the Mile High Tower. According to the Middle East business magazine MEED, a final decision on the project is imminent and tenders could follow in the coming few months. Alwaleed previously built Kingdom Tower, currently the tallest building in Saudi Arabia. It's a mere 302 meters, but it does have the distinction of resembling the world's largest bottle opener.
Hey guys, have fun with it.
--By Scott MacLeod/Dubai
February 22, 2008 3:45
Iraq: First, the Good News...
Moqtada al-Sadr has come a long way since 2004. With the Shi'ite leader stirring up rebellion against the U.S. military presence in Iraq, and believed to be somehow involved in the lynching of a pro-American rival cleric, the U.S. effectively put a price on his head. "The mission of US forces is to kill or capture Moqtada al-Sadr," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then America's most senior general in Iraq, said at the time. Now al-Sadr and the U.S. increasingly have a meeting of minds.
Al-Sadr, largely to staunch the decline in his political support by reining in his undisciplined Mahdi Army, called a cease-fire six months ago. On Friday, in a statement read at mosques around Iraq, he renewed that truce for another six months. Al-Sadr's move has been one of the main factors behind the success of the Gen. Petraeus's "surge" over the past year--and U.S. commanders know it. In a glowing statement--quite a contrast to Sanchez's death threat against al-Sadr four years ago--the U.S. military praised the renewed truce for giving more opportunity for Iraqi national reconciliation and for focusing Iraqi army efforts on chasing Al Qaeda extremists. "Those who continue to honor al-Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr's pledge will be treated with respect and restraint," said the statement. "Those who dishonor the al-Sadr pledge are regrettably tarnishing both the name and the honor of the movement." Who would have thought the U.S. military would ever be doing al-Sadr's PR? Seems the idealists are out, and the pragmatists are firmly in command.
The bad news is that the other shoe has dropped in northern Iraq: Turkish forces numbering as many as 10,000 launched a major incursion on Thursday evening. Ankara has been threatening such a move since last October after PKK Kurdish guerrillas stepped up attacks inside Turkey, including one that killed 13 Turkish soldiers. There will now be fears of a long-term Turkish military presence in northern Iraq that stokes up Kurdish nationalist feelings throughout that region as well as in eastern Turkey, and northern ethnic regions of Syria and Iran. This, in turn, puts further strains on Iraq's efforts to resist pressures that could lead to breaking the country apart into Kurdish, Sunni and Shi'ite mini-states.
No doubt one of the reasons the Turkish army has held back was the approach of winter. Snow continues to blanket northern Iraq, but the weather will be getting warmer soon and become more attractive for anti-PKK ground operations. The new offensive seems to signal a failure of Iraqi government efforts to tackle the PKK problem itself. That's not much of a surprise, given that the Iraqi government has to rely on the regional Kurdish authorities to take the initiative against the PKK, a problematic task given widespread Kurdish sympathy there for the group. The incursion also indicates an end of sorts of Turkish patience with American diplomats. Though expressing sympathy for Turkey, U.S. officials have strongly warned that a Turkish military attack could nonetheless destabilize Iraq and even backfire on Ankara by stoking greater Kurdish fury inside Turkey itself.
We'll have to wait and see how Turkey's military offensive goes and how long the troops actually stay in the region. But for now, the Iraq mess continues.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 21, 2008 8:41
The Departed
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Earlier this year, an 18 year-old boy Lebanese named Mickael Ain Malak died in a snowboarding accident on the slopes north of Beirut. His death seemed like a tragic but explicable example of the dangers facing adventurous young men who play risky sports; and it's understandable also that his family should be stricken with grief. What seems unusual however, is how they chose to express it: with a whole series of posters and billboards in several parts of East Beirut that show the photograph of a smiling young Mickael wearing his snowboarding gear, giving the viewer a big thumbs up.
Beirut is a city covered with portraits of the dead. But mostly these portraits are of martyrs. Practically every region, every town, every neighborhood, every sect and political party has its favorite martyr, who are the latter day saints of Lebanon's holy and unholy wars. And often there are more than just one. On roads leading into southern Beirut, the streets lamps are adorned with a display of Hizballah fighters killed during the 2006 war with Israel, whose individual faces have been photoshopped onto the same uniformed body used over and over in the different posters. But most of the photos are of politicians or public figures, and most of them have been assassinated.
The bilboards of Mickael seem me to be one of the first examples of private grief taking on the rituals normally used to express public grief. It's true that families often post death notices on shopfronts and street corners in Beirut. But there was an overtly political tone to the Ain Malak bilboards. "Who's Next?" read about a dozen of them posted on the main highway north. For inhabitants of a city living under the threat of a terrorist bombing campaign, it almost looked like someone was blaming the Syrians for killing Mickael. Leaflets invited the public to attend the boy's funeral, much as the public had been welcomed to the victims of recent assassinations.
I don't know how deeply to read into one sad event. Lebanon is a country that is full of grief, and more often than not, unresolved grief. Killers walk the streets, criminals hold public office, plots remain uncovered, victims disappear forever, and wars never really end. Perhaps these rituals are like a cultural meme, taking on a life of their own in a society that has become defined by its dead.
Mickael's portraits covering those of a Christian politician murdered in 1990 along with his wife and children/ Photos by ALB
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 19, 2008 5:24
Shell Shock in Shatila
The alleyways of Shatila. / Photo by ALB
One of the defining characteristics of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, besides the dank concrete warrens where sun never shines, is paranoia. When photographer Kate Brooks and I visited Shatila on Friday, mothers would snatch their children away from her camera, telling them that if they got photographed the government would find them and take them away. We spent most of the day with a family that has been too afraid to go outside the camp on a picnic or day off for the last two years. This is a wildly exaggerated reading of the dangers of living in Lebanon.
Except that it's not. If even the paranoid sometimes have enemies, the Palestinians of Lebanon have plenty. Since Abdullah Sulhani, the patriarch of the family whom we met, fled his home in Galilee in 1948 -- the year of Israel's founding -- there have been at least six wars in Lebanon, including the 1975 to 1990 civil war, and more often than not, Palestinian civilians have gotten stuck in the middle of them. Abdullah's daughter, Ahlam, who was born in Lebanon in 1949, is still picking shrapnel out of wounds from artillery fire she received in 1975. She and the rest of the family survived the famous Shatila massacre of 1982 by sheer luck, fleeing to the edge of the camp almost as soon as the slaughter began. (However, most of her neighbors were killed, and when she returned home after the battle she found blood in the living room and a bound and executed body in the closet.) One of her brothers was later shot in the head by a sniper while washing his hands in the foyer of the apartment. Their building itself has been destroyed five times.
As you can imagine, Abdullah and his family would like to leave Shatila, but there's no where for them to go. He still has the keys to his house in what is now Israel, and tax records from the British mandate of Palestine, stored carefully in a plastic schoolgirl's binder. But they aren't worth much more than souvenirs. Surviving mostly from rent they get from Syrian laborers living on the upper floors of the building, the family doesn't have enough money to live elsewhere in Lebanon. Nor are they particularly welcome in Lebanon anyway. The country's fragile sectarian political system has been unable to absorb such a large mostly-Muslim refugee population, so neither Abdullah, nor his children, nor his grandchildren, nor his great-grandchildren have citizenship, despite the fact that all of them except the first generation were born on Lebanese soil. And though some Lebanese still harbor bitter memories of how Palestinian parties used Lebanon as a base for staging attacks against Israel (which led to the Israeli invasion of 1982) there is no excuse for the laws that bar Palestinians from 70 different professions.
The Lebanese say they didn't create the Palestinian problem and they can't solve it on their own. Israelis are adamant that allowing Palestinians refugees to return would mean the end of Israel's existence as a Jewish state. Many Palestinian refugees abroad suspect that the Palestinian leaders in Israel and the occupied territories would be willing to trade away the right of return for a better deal in the peace process. Certainly, a lot of people wish the Palestinian problem would just go away.
But it won't. The 400,000 Palestinians make up some 10 percent of Lebanon's population, about 200,000 of whom live in the 12 United Nation camps such as Shatila, and like Abdullah's family, they suffer from a kind of collective post-traumatic shock syndrome. They are a population that is ready to either explode or implode. The children of Shatila run wild and their play is brutal, full of rock throwing and bullying. The adults are full of despair. "I'm sixty years-oId, and I don't have a single good memory," said Ahlam.
---Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 18, 2008 11:17
Any Magic Solution for Saudi Justice?
You don't know whether to laugh or cry as you read the Arab News report about Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf's testimony in the Shura Council yesterday. Peppered with complaints about rising inflation in the Kingdom, al-Assaf explained, with a straight face, that "there is no magic solution."
A good thing, too, because if al-Assaf used some magic potion to bring down the price of goods, he might find himself in an Islamic court being charged with sorcery. And if he was convicted, he could have his head chopped off by a sword in a public square, the punishment for witchcraft.
Al-Assaf, a fine public servant, by the way, better be more careful with his choice of metaphors nowadays. There is an illiterate woman named Fawza Falih on death row in Saudi Arabia right now, facing execution for witchcraft. Among the charges is that she used magic to make a man go suddenly impotent.
Human Rights Watch stirred up interest in Falih's case by writing a letter last week asking King Adullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud for a stay of execution. HRW points out that last November, an Egyptian pharmacist working in Saudi Arabia was executed for having tried to separate a married couple through sorcery. Accusations of witchcraft in Saudi Arabia are no joke.
One hopes that King Abdullah will deal sensibly with Falih's case. To his credit, he has fairly consistently sought a way around these ludicrous human rights violations when they occur. Part of his problem is that the Islamic courts responsible for these miscarriages of justice are controlled by hard-line Islamists who are a powerful constituency in Saudi Arabia. Some go so far as to describe the Saudi regime as a coalition between the secular-oriented al-Saud royal clan and the al-Sheikh tribe of Wahhabi diehards. That's not to absolve the al-Saud of any blame; as the guardians of the government, the royal family needs to take more aggressive steps to align Saudi Arabia's human rights record with international norms. Yet, the Al-Saud, or most of its influential leaders, realize very well that Saudi Arabia doesn't have a very good future if it makes a habit of executing alleged witches, or, say, imprisoning rape victims who commit the "crime" of being in the company of a man.
From HRW's account, Falih's case seems a pretty easy one for the King to dispense with. HRW chronicles numerous violations of Falih's rights even in terms of Saudi Arabia's own legal rules. Among them were blocking her access to a lawyer, and ignoring the fact that she had retracted a confession. That is quite apart from the absurdity of a Kingdom accusing one of its subjects of using magic to cause such a malady as male impotence.
Needless to say, there are no women judges in Saudi Arabia. Hey, now that's a crime! As for the impotent gentleman; well, wouldn't you love to hear his wife's version of the story?
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 15, 2008 5:18
Waiting For Hizballah's Revenge
As more is becoming known about the secret world of Imad Mughniyah following his assassination in Damascus this week, more fingers are attributing his killing to Israel. (Also, see Tim McGirk's post preceding this one.)
Although Israel denies carrying out the assassinaton, ex-CIA official Bruce Riedel, one of the U.S. government's most senior counter-terrorism experts in several presidential administrations, reportedly is saying that Mughniyah's killing "proves Israel has infiltrated Hizballah."
Riedel says, according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: "Israeli intelligence services have motive and they have proven their ability to strike in Damascus in the past. This is a significant operation, whether or not the Israelis want to publicly admit to it. He (Mughniyeh) has topped the US and Israel's most-wanted list for a quarter of a century."
Riedel, whose comments are being cited on Hizballah's own website, says the killing of Mughniyah suggests that Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah could be vulnerable to assassination via the same informant who pinpointed Mughniyah's location in Syria.
"It definitely includes Hassan Nasrallah. The Mossad is looking for Nasrallah and he knows it, that's why he conducts his operations from underground. He's wondering who tipped off Mugniyah's location. That same individual could also reveal his own whereabouts."
Riedel downplayed the possibility that U.S. spies killed Mughniyah, even though he had been hunted by American intelligence for years and was believed responsible for the killing of the CIA's Station Chief in Beirut, William Buckley. Riedel says car-bombing is more consistent with the Mossad's modus operandi and that U.S. intelligence has become "busy with many other issues"--an apparent reference to the quest for Bin Laden. On the other hand, "ever since the summer of 2006 Hizbullah has returned to the forefront of Israel's concerns," Riedel says. "Mugniyah also acted as a go-between with Iranian intelligence and Hamas."
For its part, Hizballah as well as Iran appear absolutely convinced that Israel carried out the killing. It's reasonable to assume that Hizballah will eventually take revenge for Mughniyah's death. Indeed, Israel is reported to have already put its embassies and other foreign interests on alert and reinforced its troops along the Lebanese border. In his eulogy Thursday, Nasrallah warned that Hizballah could strike back anywhere in the world because Israel had strayed beyond the "traditional battlefield" by killing Mughniyeh in the Syrian capital.
Hizballah retaliation may have followed Israel's assassination of former Hizballah leader Abbas al-Musawi in Lebanon on Feb. 16, 1992. Almost precisely one month later, on March 17, 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed in an attack for which Argentine authorities indicted Mughniyah. Two years after that, another major bombing leveled a Jewish organization, the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association; Mughniyeh as well as senior Iranian officials were indicted for that attack as well. Argentine prosecutors believe that those bombings may have been Tehran's retaliation for an Argentine decision to halt aid to Iran's nuclear program. A total of 114 people died in the attacks.
Mughniyah's killing and his funeral in Beirut Thursday peeled back some of the secrecy surrounding the man who had been America's No. 1 most-wanted terrorist before Osama bin Laden emerged on the scene. In his 284-page history of the group, Hizballah: The Story From Within, Hizballah deputy leader Naim Qassem made no reference to him. The photo of Mughniyah in a military uniform that appeared on Hizballah's al-Manar television channel and on its website was the first new image that the world and even many Hizballah activists had seen of Mughniyah in decades.
His importance in the Hizballah hierarchy was evident in what amounted to the state funeral he was accorded. The Hizballah statement revealing his death said, "With pride and honor, we announce the martyrdom of a great resistance leader who joined the procession of Islamic Resistance martyrs...after a life full of Jihad, sacrifices and accomplishments lived with a longing to martyrdom..."
At the funeral, Nasrallah avoided mention of Mughniyah's alleged involvement in major terrorist attacks but described him as an important military commander who had played a decisive role during Hizballah's fight against Israel's most recent invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Nasrallah went so far as to equate Mughniyah with two other Hizballah leaders whose "martyrdom" had given the group decisive momentum to drive Israeli forces out of Lebanon. Mughniyah's death, he predicted, will now help drive Israel "out of existence." Hizballah revealed that Mughniyah's two brothers, Jihad and Fouad, had previously died in the conflict with Israel.
Mughniyah's close relationship with Iran also became more apparent after his death. Immediate condolences were publicly offered by senior officials, starting with Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, who called him a "prominent fighter...an example for the young generation to follow." Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki attended Mughniyah's funeral, sitting between Naim Qassem and Mughniyah's father, and gave a statement of condolence from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The President called Mughniyeh a "gallant and lofty cypress...a mighty and righteous son of the Muslim and Arab Ummah, a brave soldier in the fight for independence for Lebanon, the defender of the honor of all nations in the region...a mighty hero."
The fact that Mughniyah was killed in Damascus strongly suggests he also maintained a close working relationship with President Bashar al-Assad's regime. The assassination is deeply embarrassing for Syria, revealing not only Mughniyah's presence in the country but its inability to provide adequate protection for him against what may have been an Israeli intelligence operation.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 15, 2008 10:38
Killing 'Mr Terror'
The Israelis are cagey about whether they killed Imad Mughinyah, a man they referred to, without excessive hyperbole, as "Mr. Terror". The nearest we got was when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert deigned to have lunch in the Knesset canteen on the day the Hezballah chief was blown up in Damascus. Olmert never shows up in the canteen unless he's got good news, and he wants to bask in a rare display of fondness by Knesset members, usually a surly bunch.
The Israelis may be coy about confessing to Mughinyah's killing. And indeed, there's a long list of possible suspects, including the Americans. But in the Arab world, the Israelis are taking the rap anyway. Hezballlah Leader Hassan Nasrallah has sworn revenge. These are threats that Isrealis are taking seriously, as well they should. On Thursday, Israel issued travel warnings to its citizens living abroad, and in northern Israel, the army is braced for a possible barrage of rockets.
As a serving Israeli intelligence officer told my Time colleague, Aaron Klein: "This is a nightmare that has finally ended." In recent years, this officer says, "Whenever we got a tip-off that Mughinyah was visiting southern Lebanon, we'd be on alert for a possible kidnapping. This went on for many, many years." The Israelis suspect that as Hezballah's chief of operations, Mughinyah had a hand in the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in July 2006, an incident that triggered a 34-day war between Israel and Hezballah. During that war, Mughinyah was also allegedly responsible for organizing the militia's battle defenses in southern Lebanon. Israeli intelligence described him as Hezballah's go-between with the Iranian regime, which may explain why Iranian President Ahmedinejad was so livid about the assassination.
Will Hezballah seek revenge? Based on past evidence, probably. And overseas Israeli and Jewish targets are the most vulnerable. When Israel killed former Hezballah leader Abbas Mussawi in 1992, the militia retaliated by setting off two bombs in Buenos Aires, one in 1992, at the Israeli embassy, and two years later in a Jewish community center, killing over a hundred people. Israeli and Argentine investigators considered Mughinyah to have been the mastermind.
But for now, killing Mughinyah has severely paralyzed Hezballah"s operations. As one serving Israeli intelligence officer told us. "It's like destroying Langley (the CIA headquarters)," he added: "If Nasrallah spent 60% of his time protecting himself, he now knows that he has to has to spend 90%. You won't see Nasrallah in public for a long time." Sure enough, the hirsute Hezballah leader decided it wasn't a good idea to attend Mughniyah's rain-sodden funeral in Beirut, preferring, instead, to televise his threats against Israel from somewhere in hiding.
---by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
February 14, 2008 9:33
Another Pointless Demonstration in Lebanon
Rain on the parade in Beirut/ Andrew Lee Butters
The organizers of today's demonstration to mark the third annivesary of the assination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri had been hoping for a huge turnout, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands, to keep pressure on Syria, which they blame for Hariri's and and a string of other assassinations. Instead, what they got was a relative washout: tens of thousands of damp demonstrators, who left quickly once it began raining in earnest.
Though the weather was partly to blame, as was the general feeling of insecurity caused by a series of riots and attacks that have occurred in recent weeks, today's diminished turnout wasn't that much of a surprise. In the heady days of the so-called Cedar Revolution, demonstrations following the Hariri assassination, helped force the end of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. But since then, a regular procession of mass demonstrations in central Beirut -- by both opponents of Syrian influence in Lebanon, and by Syria's Lebanese allies -- have had less and less impact on the country's political events.
Both the American-backed anti-Syrian coalition which is now running the Lebanese government, and the Syrian-backed opposition led by Hizballah (the Shia Muslim political party) have been playing a numbers game, claiming that their respective demonstrations represent true public opinion. The March 14th coalition -- named for the date of the big rally that ended up pushing Syria out -- stage their demos on the anniversary of Hariri's assassination and sometimes after other assassinations as well. The Hizballah opposition began a campaign of demonstrations last winter, which settled into a ongoing siege that has turned downtown Beirut into a grimy protest campground.
All these demonstrations have ultimately been futile. Not only is there's no proven method for authoritatively estimating crowd size, but even if there was, the two sides are so firmly entrenched in their positions, it's doubtful their either would bow under numerical pressure. That's because neither side of Lebanon's political divide really cares about preserving Lebanese democracy.
The ruling March 14th coalition Lebanese government is clinging onto power -- with American encouragement -- despite the fact that there are no longer any Shia members in the cabinet. (They all resigned.) In doing so, the government, which has a slim majority in parliament, is violating the traditions of the Lebanese constitution (if not the law itself) whereby the country is governed by the consensus and the participation of all its major religious groups. Democracy may be a wonderful thing in the United States, but for better or worse, Lebanon isn't a pure democracy. It's a consensual democracy, and its traditions are there to try and prevent the kind of sectarian problems that lead to civil war.
On the other hand, the Hizballah-led opposition demands a greater role in the democratic process than has traditionally been given to Shia, including enough seats in the cabinet to have a veto power over all decisions. Which could be fair enough, given that the Shia are the fastest growing part of Lebanon's population. But Hizballah also maintains its own militia with weapons from Syria and Iran, and acts as a kind of state-within-a-state, making decisions of war and peace all on its own. Hizballah didn't ask for consensus before it launched a special forces operation to capture Israeli soldiers in 2006, an act which sparked a devastating war.
The reality is that Lebanon is run by politicians that only really reach out to the people when they need warm bodies to fill central Beirut. But by repeatedly calling people to the street, Lebanon's politicians risk giving the street a life of its own. Each of these rallies heightens tensions that could spiral into sectarian violence. Today's anti-climactic wet demonstration was hopefully a sign that Lebanese are catching on. Too bad warmer weather is on its way.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 14, 2008 9:10
Danish Cartoons, The Sequel
Here we go again. Our free-press-or-die friends in Denmark have republished a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist. The cartoon, showing the Prophet wearing a bomb for a turban, was printed not only by Jyllands-Posten, the paper that started the cartoon controversy back in 2005. Jyllands-Posten was joined by two other major papers, Politiken and Berlingske Tidende, along with a dozen or other smaller publications.
Jyllands-Posten's original rationale was to draw attention to what it viewed as Muslim intolerance and intimidation. Some author was having difficulty commissioning drawings for a book on the Prophet. Illustrators cited their fear of being targeted by Islamic extremists if they drew depictions of the Prophet, considered a blasphemous act in some Islamic teaching. Jyllands-Posten ordered up the cartoons to show that Danish liberalism would not be intimidated into self-censorship. Whether the newspaper's editors had initially intended to be provocative or not, they swiftly apologized for causing any offense to the Muslim world.
The Danish papers re-published the Prophet-as-Terrorist cartoon on Wednesday to demonstrate support for free speech in the wake of an alleged plot by alleged Muslim militants to murder the cartoon's author, Kurt Westergaard. Politiken, which itself had once criticized Jyllands-Posten for publishing the cartoon originally, argued that "the paper deserves unconditional solidarity when it is threatened with terror."
Journalists, commentators or cartoonists have every duty in a democracy to seek publication of whatever they please. You could go so far as to say that even if a publication causes grave offense to Muslims, or Jews, or Christians, or whoever, or even exposes state secrets, the media's first impulse should always be to publish and be damned. If the inclination rather is always to look around to see who might object to such and such an article, editorial or illustration, self-censorship rather than free debate would rule the day.
Yet, the Danish papers are as wrong to publish the cartoons this time as Jyllands-Posten was back in 2005. In their understandable and admirable passion to defend free expression, they are sadly oblivious or indifferent to other factors arguing for restraint.
In the dangerous atmosphere of Islam-Western tensions especially since 9/11, a cartoon that appears to ridicule the Prophet Mohammed can only be seen as an act of hate-speech by Danish Muslims and millions of their co-religionists around the world. Is insulting another religion and its followers a noble--or effective-- way of defending the precious value of free speech? A related problem with the cartoon is how it equates Islam with terrorism, stamping all Muslims as terrorists. This displays an utter ignorance about the faith that further undermines the righteous insistence of publishing the cartoons as an act of free expression. In addition, press responsibility entails judgments about the potential consequences of publishing. The original cartoon controversy led to widespread bloodshed and economic damage as well as heightened political and cultural tensions from Nigeria to Indonesia. Some estimates put the death toll in cartoon-related protests and incidents at more than 100 people. Due to Islamic world boycotts of Danish products, the livelihoods of many Danes suffered as a result of the controversy.
OK, many will argue that the fault for all this is not the cartoons, but the intolerant Muslim reaction to them. They would say that Muslims should not have protested, or burned Danish embassies, or taken steps to assassinate the cartoonists. Many Muslim leaders acted responsibly, and indeed in Denmark some imams sought and failed to reach an understanding on the issue before it blew out of control. Yet, certainly the minority of Muslims who responded with violence deserve unambiguous condemnation. Assuming there was a genuine plot to kill the cartoonist, the alleged perpetrators should be dealt with firmly under the rule of law and newspapers should write extensively about that.
If publishing the cartoon is meant to defend a front in the clash of civilizations, there are other constructive ways to do so. Surely, for instance, Danish newspapers employ some stylish writers capable of writing very eloquently in defense of free expression and Western cultural values. There is a lack of imagination in simply republishing the cartoon once again. What if the Danish papers find the need to defend free speech again next week, or next month, or next year. Just keep republishing that Prophet Mohammed cartoon over and over again, to prove that they can?
The Danish newspapers wanted to send a message that they will not permit Islamic extremists to dictate their agenda. Ironically, by reacting so rashly to a plot for which the evidence still appears slim, those newspapers have allowed the three men who are suspects in the case to do exactly that--to once again stoke Muslim anger and perhaps once again to embroil Denmark in a controversy with the Islamic world. As they righteously defend free speech, the Danish editors are handing extremists exactly what they seek--an opportunity to spread more hatred between Islam and the West.
Understanding, tolerance and peace are ideals no less dear than freedom of the press. If we're smart and good-spirited, there's no reason we can't pursue all of them. A more creative way of tackling Muslim intimidation would be for Danes to promote cross-cultural dialogue where issues are discussed and consensuses are achieved. Danish newspapers also might also want to write a little more on how to better achieve integration of fellow Danish citizens who are Muslims, rather than continuing to alienate them further by insulting their Prophet.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 13, 2008 4:18
Who Killed Imad Mughniyeh?
Imad Mughniyeh was a man of the Middle East's shadows. He was a terrorist mastermind behind political causes. For him, though, it was as much about the fight as the cause. He shunned the light. He never gave public speeches or lectures. He is not known to have given any press interviews, not even to sympathetic or politically aligned journalists. Western reporters like me who sought the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizballah's help to arrange a rendezvous were politely but sternly advised not to go there.
As Robert Baer, who hunted Mugniyeh for years as a CIA officer, describes Mughniyeh, ““He is the most dangerous terrorist we’ve ever faced. He is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable. He only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn’t just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail that we have been after since 1983."
So, did the CIA or some other American intelligence agency finally do Mughniyeh in? Working closely with Iran and at least loosely attached to Hizballah, he was accused of everything from bombing the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut to the kidnappings of American journalists, academics and the Beirut CIA Station Chief. More recently, some have claimed that Mughniyeh collaborated with Bin Laden. After Al Qaeda's top guns, Mughniyeh has the highest price on his head of any terrorist wanted by the FBI--$5 million. Besides Baer's efforts, many other operations have been tried. In 1996, the U.S. government caught wind that Mughniyeh might be on a Pakistani ship off the coast of Qatar. A major operation to grab him was mounted by the U.S. Navy and Marines--which would have been sweet revenge, given Mughniyeh's suspected involvement in the deaths of U.S. navy and marine personnel in Beirut. But the mission was aborted when it could not be verified that Mughniyeh was aboard. A year earlier, the U.S. sought to have Mughniyeh arrested as he arrived on a flight to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis reportedly refused to let the plane land, lest they become embroiled in the U.S.'s fight with Mughniyeh and his friends.
Hizballah immediately blamed Israel for Mughniyeh's assassination in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday night. Israel's Mossad spy agency is a reasonable suspect, given Israel's determination to bring him to justice for his alleged involvement in the 1990s bombings in Argentina of the Israeli embassy and a Jewish cultural center. Israeli intelligence has a good history of eliminating terrorist masterminds, even when they are present in unfriendly Arab capitals.
In the John Le Carre world of Middle East terrorism and politics, however, it's impossible to rule out the wildest of conspiracy theories, including that Mughniyeh's friends in Syria or Iran may have found his continued existence to be an inconvenience. Or, they may have believed it was politically useful to demonstrate that they can be relied on to control terrorism in the Middle East--as long as the U.S. doesn't try to go after the regimes in Damascus or Tehran.
Some consider Mughniyeh to have been the Bin Laden before there was a Bin Laden. He cut his teeth working for Yasser Arafat's PLO in Lebanon, but came into his own during the Iranian Revolution, signing up to bring Khomeini's brand of Shi'ite Muslim rage against America and Israel to Lebanon. Mughniyeh the Operative had more in common with two former Palestinian terrorist leaders, Wadiah Haddad and Sabri al-Banna, alias Abu Nidal. Before Bin Laden came along, those two men had orchestrated some of the worst terrorist atrocities of our times. They worked in the shadows and regularly cooperated with the intelligence services of the Middle East's outlaw regimes, like Mughniyeh would do. As it happens, Haddad fell ill from suspected poisoning while living in Baghdad; some of his friends suspected Saddam Hussein's regime, doing a favor for the Americans. Abu Nidal died in Baghdad, after "committing suicide," according to Saddam's spokesman. That was just as the U.S. was cranking up threats to invade Iraq.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 11, 2008 2:16
Storm Clouds Gather
Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Druze minority, is prone to hot air, tossing off bon mots and insults from his remote ancestral fastness in the Chouf mountains. (Memorable quotes include calling Bashar al Assad a "half ape", Condoleezza Rice "oil-colored" and Tony Blair "a peacock with a sexual complex.") But one thing he's good at is sensing the way the wind blows, accommodating himself to the Syrians in the 1980's and 1990's when they occupied Lebanon, and then jumping ship for the Bush administration, which helped push Syria out in 2005.
So its more than a little disturbing when Walid the weathervane says the forecast calls for civil war. In a speech on Sunday, Jumblatt sounded resigned to its inevitability. Addressing himself to Hizballah and the rest of the Syrian-backed opposition that has threatened to return to the streets if the current American government doesn't step down, he said:
"If you think we will stand arms crossed, you are imagining things. If you want chaos, we welcome chaos. If you want war, we welcome war. We have no problem with weapons and no problem with rockets, we can take the rockets from you. We may have to burn everything, but our existence, our honor, our survival and Lebanon are more important."
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 11, 2008 12:29
The Arab Republic of Aboutreika
A-BOU TREI-KA!
A-BOU TREI-KA!
A-BOU TREI-KA!
Egyptians pinned most of their hopes on one player in tonight's final of the Africa Nations Cup in Ghana, and he didn't let them down. Mohammed Aboutreika glided in like an antelope and scored the winning goal in the 77th minute of the match. My fellow patrons at the Falluja coffee shop in downtown Cairo leapt to their feet with shouts of joy. Within a few seconds the Egypt fans were rhythmically chanting their hero's name, a scene that was being repeated in dozens of other shoe-box cafes in the neighborhood and thousands of others across Cairo and up and down the whole country. Tonight, Egypt has something to be happy about. Egypt 1, Cameroon 0! Tonight, Egypt belongs to No. 22, Mohammed Aboutreika.
Starting with their 3-0 half-time lead over Cameroon in their opening match back on Jan. 22, Egypt was a Cinderella team. True, they were the defending Cup champions. But they won the 2006 tournament on their home turf, as hosts. Few imagined they could pull off a repeat, especially against squads such as Ivory Coast and Cameroon, with their top-rated international players, way over on the far western side of the continent. It seemed like a miracle when they clinched the opener 4-2, and the Pharaohs never looked back. They went on to trump Sudan and Angola, earn a draw against Zambia and defeat Ivory Coast in the semi-final last week.
The 29-year-old Aboutreika had a hand in every victory. But he captured the hearts of Egyptians and the rest of the Arab world with something more than fancy footwork. After he scored a goal in Egypt's 3-0 win over Sudan, he pulled up his No. 22 jersey to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, in Arabic and English, "Sympathize with Gaza." It was a declaration of political and humanitarian support for the Palestinians, who had just broken down the fence on the Egyptian border in defiance of an Israeli and Egyptian government blockade. Aboutreika was yellow-carded for unsportsmanlike conduct. Neither he nor Egyptian fans seemed to care.
Not that Aboutreika wasn't already a hero before the Gaza exploit. A midfielder for Egypt's hugely successful and popular al-Ahly team, he's been the top-rated player in the country for four straight years. An outfit called the International Federation of Football History and Statistics said a recent poll it sponsored named Aboutreika the world's most popular footballer, with more than 1 million votes, well ahead of the likes of Ronaldinho.
It is Aboutreika's character as much as his playing that endears him to his fans. His gesture to the Palestinians was in keeping with his active involvement in humanitarian causes, such as his role as a World Food Program Ambassador Against Hunger. In Egypt, he's known as a devout, humble man who has not let success go to his head. He has been photographed with his mother, who wears a traditional hijab, or headscarf. "He's a great player, but he's also honest and knows his god," a kid in the cafe wearing a Billabong sweatshirt tells me. Once, as the new young star for the Egyptian Tersana team, Aboutreika refused to sign a contract that elevated his salary way above those of his teammates. "We need to stop this habit of praising an individual player," he told reporters after the 2006 Cup victory. "It isn't Aboutreika, but the whole team who got the Cup. Without the others' efforts, I can't ever make anything." His first words after tonight's victory: "It's one of the greatest days of my life."
Egypt, blessed with such an athlete, is desperately in need of a little joy. Everyone agrees that the country has been sliding backwards lately. The flood of Palestinians into Gaza exposed an embarrassing decline in the Egyptian government’s ability to influence developments in the Middle East, even on its own border. The regime has been arresting journalists, bloggers and Islamic fundamentalists in another big domestic crackdown on dissent. Meanwhile, ordinary Egyptians are grumbling about the higher price of such things as electricity, water and bread. Even government employees have been going on strike. "We wanted a reason to be happy," says Salah, one of the customers at the Falluja coffee shop. "Egyptians are feeling choked. Everything is no good."
Except, that is, a certain No. 22 footballer who sent Egyptians by the millions into the streets tonight. After the winning goal, Gamal, a brick layer next to me, sits down and kisses his fingers. "Thanks to God," he says. "It's a victory for my country, my people." As I passed Tahrir Square on the way home after the match, gathering crowds were waving the Egyptian flag and whooping it up. And they were chanting, "A-bou Trei-ka! A-bou Trei-ka! A-bou Trei-ka!"
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 9, 2008 12:21
Iraq Reading
Some recommended weekend reading on Iraq:
The International Crisis Group has a new report discussing what it describes as "the dramatic decline in bloodshed in Iraq" and how to capitalize on that. The ICG believes that while the U.S. military's "surge" of thousands of extra troops contributed to the decline, it is largely due to Muqtada Sadr's unilateral cease-fire in August 2007. That, in turn, appears to have been the result of growing dissatisfaction within Sadr's support base with the radicalism and indiscipline in the ranks of Sadr's Mahdi Army.
See the full ICG report here: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5286&l=1
The ICG says that while militants in Sadr's camp are eager to end the cease-fire, Sadr's move opens the possibility of a more genuine and lasting transformation of his movement into a strictly non-violent political actor.
To facilitate that transformation, the ICG advises the U.S. and Iraqi governments to circumscribe military operations against the Mahdi Army and show tolerance toward Sadrist activities that are strictly
non-military, such as those involving education, media, health services and religious affairs. The ICG also encourages a freeze in recruitment into the U.S.-backed militias that were set up to fight the Mahdi Army. Instead, the ICG says, the Iraqi government should concentrate on building a professional, non-partisan security force that integrates Mahdi Army fighters.
Easier said than done, no doubt. Last week's TIME story on Iraq by Michael Duffy and Mark Kukis (our man in Baghdad) illustrates how the surge is a limited and fragile success. Not least because of the failure to date of national reconciliation efforts.
Duffy and Kukis:
Iraqi security forces remain unable to mount operations without the logistical help of U.S. forces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is on the run, but it has not been routed, and it still enjoys free rein in some parts of the country. Murder, death threats and kidnappings are still commonplace; more than 100,000 sections of concrete car-bomb barriers now snake around Baghdad's neighborhoods. And in something of an understatement, even Petraeus calls the progress toward political reconciliation "tenuous." The largest Sunni bloc in parliament, known as the Accordance Front, walked out in August. In January, the parliament passed a measure that would extend to former Baathists and supporters of Saddam a measure of eligibility for service in the new government, which is largely controlled by Shi'ites. The move was long overdue, and no one knows whether the measure will ever be implemented; Sunnis are skeptical, and so, at times, is Washington. "We nudge. We push. We prod. We pull. We cajole," says U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker. But he adds that the Iraqis "have to make the decision."And that's the trouble... Several thousand troops involved in the surge have quietly begun to pull out. For now, Petraeus and Odierno are sticking by their plan to draw down U.S. forces by roughly 4,000 troops a month through July. Left unchanged, that would return U.S. forces close to their pre-surge level. But both men caution that it could be halted if violence flares up. Petraeus says further withdrawals depend on a matrix of unknowns: military and economic conditions, and whether the Iraqis are showing signs of governing themselves.
Uncertainties of that size make it impossible to know where the U.S. will be in Iraq in six months, and that's something the presidential candidates would be better off not trying to predict. Iraq is an undoubtedly safer, better place than it was 12 months ago. Yet the ultimate outcome in Iraq is out of the hands of Petraeus and the U.S. military. After a yearlong surge, the U.S. is about to move from the relatively safe ground of betting on its troops to betting on Iraqis. And that's a very different kind of wager.
(The TIME story: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1708843,00.html)
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 7, 2008 8:30
The Missing Suicide Bomber
Behind the tragedy of the Dimona suicide bombing, there was one small element of farce. Imagine if you were a bomber, and you slipped out of the hole in Gaza’s fence wearing your explosives vest. You’ve made your way across the Sinai desert, evading Egyptian police roadblocks, haggling with Bedouins over the price of a clandestine crossing into southern Israel, then you hear on the TV that your bosses in the Aksa Martyr’s Brigade –-the same guys who cavalierly sent you on a suicide mission—are telling the world you’re dead, that you’ve heroically blown yourself up in Dimona. Worse still, they’ve flashed your Martyr’s Last Will and Testament video across all the TV networks.
So now every Israeli knows your face, and you’re a dead man.
And your mother’s not too happy about it, either.
This is what happened to Luai al-Aghwani, 21, from Gaza, who was announced to be one of the two Dimon suicide bombers. It turned out that the real killers came south from Hebron.
Now his mother’s looking for him. “I want to know what happened to my son,” she told reporters. The last she saw of him was five days before the bombing. “He woke up one morning, wore two coats on top of each other and walked out of the house,” she added. “When I asked him why he was wearing two coats, he just smiled and walked away.”
So, a bit of advice for Luai: Stop wearing two coats. Forget Israel. Forget blowing yourself up. Bury the explosive vest in a sand dune, catch a bus to Cairo, enjoy a good meal, maybe take in a belly dancing act –-whatever it takes to remind you that there’s more to life than quick martyrdom and the slaughtering of innocents. And call your mother. She's worried about you.
---by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
February 6, 2008 10:31
Barak: Think I'll Stick Around
Ok. So Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak didn't resign, even though he said he would. Is anybody surprised? There is no lack of chutzpah among Israeli politicians. In fact, they have taken chutzpah to stratospheric levels, redefining the word, and leaving shame in the dust.
Barak, to remind my readers, said that he would resign from government once the Winograd Report came out. But the Winograd Report came out -and , quite damning it was to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Though he chose not to see it that way. Another fine example of unabashed chutzpah). And Barak found that his cushy chair as Defense Minister was just too comfortable.
Here's his excuse: "I deliberated, considered and decided. I know my comments make some happy and disappoint others. I know that I am liable to pay a political price, but I'm prepared for that.
Barak knows he would pay an even bigger political price if he walked out of the cabinet, so that's why he clung on. Him leaving, and taking the Labor party with him, would pull the plug on Olmert and bring on early elections. And every poll shows that Barak would lose those elections. This way he can stay on, keep practicing his weighty, oracular silences, and hope that the political fortunes start blowing his way. Such are the general's strategies for victory.
---by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
February 5, 2008 4:32
Food in the Levant: Still Missing Something
Naranj, a new restaurant in the old city of Damascus. / Photo by Manaf Hassan
There's a saying in the Middle East that the best food is always found at home. Unfortunately, that doesn't help those of us whose mothers live over 2,000 miles away. Restaurants in the Levant often display little of this region's varied culinary heritage. In Lebanon, the big restauranteurs put their money into showy architecture and "concept" restaurants that serve foreign cuisines like sushi, Argentine steaks, and gasp, buffalo wings. In Syria, huge banquet halls have opened in the old city of Damascus, turning lovely courtyard homes into Oriental food factories producing a numbing formula of mezze salads and mixed grill without innovation and with indifference.
There are exceptions, usually small lunch places that serve the kind of thing your momma would make if she were Lebanese: dumplings cooked in yogurt, curries and spicy stews that hint of the trade routes of yore. Modernized Middle Eastern cuisine is harder to find. One Beirut restaurant, Bread, serves a pan Mediterranean fusion, but uses only local ingredients, (a kind of Lebanese Chez Panisse) so that even its Italianate and Frenchy dishes taste indigenous. The other night I had Toulouse sausages cooked with chestnuts and frikeh (roasted green wheat) -- a perfect winter meal.
But hands down the most impressive new restaurant in the region opened late last year in Damascus, on Straight Street, at the meeting point of the Christian, Muslim and Armenian quarters in the old city. The owners of Naranj, as it's called, departed from the usual oppressive formula in a number of heartening ways. The huge plasma televisions that blare music videos throughout meals are gone. Staff are attentive and friendly, thanks to a company policy that pays a living wage and encourages promotion from within the ranks. (The drinks manager used to mop the floors.) But most importantly, the restaurant owners fanned out to villages all over the country where they collected and updated recipes that you won't see in any other restaurant in town. A dip of pureed beets made a welcome break from the ubiquity of humous, and though I usually don't eat fish east of the Bekaa valley (having had some bad experiences with masgouf in Iraq) the fish and seasoned rice dish here called Sayadeyeh was light and savory. Burgil and chick pea pilaf (with or without a lamb shank sticking out) is another specialty, and even though its an old Armenian standby, the kebab with cherries here just tasted different. Sadly, the deserts are uninspiring, but perhaps this is subjective: over four years in the Middle East and and I still can't get excited about pastries with varying degrees of similarity to baklava.
I wish I could say that Naranj and its approach to Syrian cuisine is part of wider cultural trend, but reforms in Syria have by and large come to a grinding halt. Business is still booming, at least for a certain segment of the Syrian upper classes, but that's in large part because of external investment from Gulf countries that have more oil money than they know how to spend. And though Syria is celebrating its designation by UNESCO as Arab capital of culture for 2008, this is really a non-event. The buzz so far has been about a big fireworks display and a lip-syncing Lebanese diva. In Lebanon itself, the movement to create a innovative restaurant scene has suffered -- like so many other things -- from the war with Israel in 2006, the current political crisis and terror campaign that have driven talented young Lebanese overseas. (The restaurant Bread -- located in a safe neighborhood -- stayed afloat during the war thanks in part to foreign journalists with few other places to eat.) Without peace and sustainable freedom, every aspect of life in the region -- from food to politics -- is always going to be half-baked.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 4, 2008 10:49
Hersh on the Strike Against Syria
I normally don't post stories from other journalists, but since the subject of Israel's air strike against Syria in September has been a source of discussion on this blog, I thought I would point everyone in the direction of Sy Hersh's latest in the New Yorker: Air Strike in the Dark. The article investigates claims by anonymous sources inside the White House and Israel, speaking to the press in the weeks after the attack, that the target site in Syria was a North Korean sponsored nuclear weapons development program. Hersh finds those claims unsubstantiated.
Here's the nut graph:
'...in three months of reporting for this article, I was repeatedly told by current and former intelligence, diplomatic, and congressional officials that they were not aware of any solid evidence of ongoing nuclear-weapons programs in Syria. It is possible that Israel conveyed intelligence directly to senior members of the Bush Administration, without it being vetted by intelligence agencies. (This process, known as “stovepiping,” overwhelmed U.S. intelligence before the war in Iraq.) But Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations group responsible for monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said, “Our experts who have carefully analyzed the satellite imagery say it is unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility.”'
Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut