Bint Al-Beltway

"Take me back to . . . . when I could talk about the Soviets"

2009-10-31T17:33:00.003-04:00

Edward Luttwack has an interesting piece in Foreign Policy this month . . . interesting given his Cold War-era publication record. A quick summary so that you don't have to read his collected works yourself: "We're not spending enough money to arm against the Soviets - close all the schools; close all the hospitals; conscript all the males over age 15 and melt down the statue of liberty - we could use the extra copper for munitions."

Luttwack's new article (ironically) argues that the U.S. should adopt a more restrained form of empire - one fashioned on the Byzantine model. He chooses Byzantium over Rome, characterizing the latter as a system based on "ruthless expansion, domination and total war," which he insists bears no resemblance to the U.S. All this without batting a rhetorical eyelash. Does he lack the imagination to picture what "expansion, domination and total war" would resemble in the post-Enlightenment period? Are Alexander's adventures in India really so different from those of Kermit Roosevelt in Iran? Maybe Bush didn't play the fiddle during Hurricane Katrina but the comparisons I've read of Rome and the US have been relatively convincing . . .

Luttwack's 1982 article "Why we need more waste, fraud and mismanagement in the Pentagon" basically bemoaned the 'micro-managers' in the defense community who were arguing that current levels of defense spending might become unsustainable and eventually pose a security risk (which of course is exactly what brought down the Soviets). One might argue (very convincingly) that the over-production of defense materiel by the superpowers contributed to many of the security challenges in the world today. These include the obvious - the black market weapons trade, nuclear proliferation, civil conflicts in the developing world, etc.

But I would argue this over-production also created private industry defense giants, whose mad scramble for self-preservation in the post-Cold War environment of budgetary restraint drove them to offload deadly weapons on oppressive regimes like a drug dealer handing out crack samples. These unscrupulous practices have created a globe of militarized states with regimes so paranoid they threaten to drag their neighbors into major conflict on a fairly regular basis. Had Luttwack gotten his way in 1982 Lichtenstein would probably have invaded Belgium and perusing Orwell's classics would be like curling up with a Jane Austen novel.

Long story short - Luttwack now seems to be arguing for restraint (the sort of traditional realist kind: carry a big stick - preferably one with a nuclear warhead attached to it).

Top Ten Ways to Convince Muslims the US is on a Crusade

2009-10-06T16:18:00.002-04:00

An unbelievable piece from Chris Rodda at the Huffington Post. Below is just #9 - read the whole post here:

9. Have top U.S. military officers appear in a video showing just how Christian the Pentagon is

In addition to inadvertently providing propaganda material to our enemies, public endorsements of Christianity by U.S. military leaders can also cause concern among our Muslim allies.

When Air Force Maj. Gen. Pete Sutton decided in 2004 to appear in uniform at the Pentagon in the Campus Crusade for Christ Christian Embassy promotional video, a video full of government officials and high ranking military officers saying things like "we're the aroma of Jesus Christ," he probably didn't give any thought to the potential ramifications of publicly endorsing this fundamentalist religious organization. But, not long after appearing in this video, Sutton was assigned to the U.S. European Command, Ankara, Turkey, as Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation. Here's what happened, according to the Department of Defense Inspector General's report on the Christian Embassy video investigation.

"Maj Gen Sutton testified that while in Turkey in his current duty position, his Turkish driver approached him with an article in the Turkish newspaper 'Sabah.' That article featured a photograph of Maj Gen Sutton in uniform and described him as a member of a radical fundamentalist sect. The article in the online edition of Sabah also included still photographs taken from the Christian Embassy video. Maj Gen Sutton's duties in Ankara included establishing good relations with his counterparts on the Turkish General Staff. Maj Gen Sutton testified that Turkey is a predominantly Muslim nation, with religious matters being kept strictly separate from matters of state. He said that when the article was published in Sabah, it caused his Turkish counterparts concern and a number of Turkish general officers asked him to explain his participation in the video."

In addition to the Christian Embassy video, MRFF has uncovered a slew of other videos of uniformed military personnel endorsing fundamentalist Christian organizations and military ministries, many of which have missions that include proselytizing Muslims. These videos are easily found on the internet, providing plenty of potential propaganda material for recruiting by extremists.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/top-ten-ways-to-convince_b_291308.html

Saudi Businessmen and Global Warming . . .

2009-10-06T15:50:00.003-04:00

The FT has been really great at covering this long-running Saudi billionaire's feud. Today's article points out just how ridiculous these families really are. In addition to being generally despicable they're also clearly a major source of global warming - is someone saving them a seat at the UN Climate Change Summit?

Here's an excerpt.

"The High Court eased the order to allow the embattled billionaire $4m spending money a year after a colourful hearing in which Mr Sanea rejected fraud allegations and outlined living expenses including a private zoo and utility bills of $800,000 a month."

"He spends $800,000 on electricity, gas, telephone, water and satellite bills every month," Mr Beazley told the judge."

How about not ordering so much pay-per-view porn? There's a start . . .
Here's the whole article.

My article on negotiations with Israel

2009-09-16T14:47:00.000-04:00

Beyond Muscle: Using Financial Leverage for Middle East Peace

In late August, the U.S. and Israeli governments appeared to have settled on a grand strategy to advance Middle East peace, one that traded a tougher U.S. stance on Iran for freezing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. But subsequent reports on plans for additional Israeli settlement construction and announcements by Tehran outlining its terms for talks at a September 9th, meeting of the P5+1 (that's the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) working group, indicate that the specific details of a bargain are still far from settled.

As negotiations on Israeli settlements commence in this environment of uncertainty, the Obama administration will need all the bargaining chips it can marshal. The key is to find a form of leverage that is costly enough to impact Israeli behavior without threatening their security and is also relatively cheap for the administration to apply. Defense "offsets" — incentives granted by private companies to facilitate the purchase of military goods — satisfy all these conditions, and may be especially effective in the struggle for Middle East peace.

Like most industrialized nations, U.S. defense manufacturers routinely grant offsets to purchasing governments, usually in the form of agreements to co-produce specific weapons or invest in commercial enterprises. It has long been U.S. practice not to allow offsets on products and services purchased with U.S. military assistance funds — except when it comes to Egypt and Israel. The billions of dollars in additional defense assistance that Israel has secured through this legislative loophole may prove to be a significant source of leverage in the Middle East peace process.

For example, Israel is hoping to pen a deal for $20 billion worth of U.S.-built F-35s that could include offsets of nearly $10 billion — that's in accordance with Israeli policy requiring offsets of 48% of the overall contract value. These offsets would accrue mostly to the Israeli defense department, possibly via agreements that Lockheed Martin would purchase Israeli-built computer components for the assembled planes. Israeli press reports suggest the offset provisions are holding up the deal, signaling Israel's continued pursuit of offsets even in its most strategic procurement decisions. These funds represent a significant tool the Obama administration should use to press Israel on the settlement issue.

There is precedent for trying security assistance to Israeli settlement policy. In the 1990s Congress frequently reduced multi-billion dollar loan guarantee programs by the amount the Israeli government spent on settlements in the occupied territories. This logic applies to offsets as well, since they may indirectly finance projects that support settlements by providing Israel with financial flexibility to commit additional resources to build more settlements or by funneling the profits from offsets into acquiring controversial crowd-control devices and other materials that many countries (including the United States) refuse to export to Israel.

Egypt's offset history may also represent a bargaining chip in negotiations with Israel. Although official Egyptian policy is not to request offsets from the U.S., partly due to major cost overruns and inefficiencies in previous offset agreements, industry trade groups such as Epicos report that Egyptian authorities regularly demand "discounts" and "concessions." If Israeli offsets are threatened, officials may demand that similar reforms be implemented with regard to Egyptian procurement processes, hoping to make the process too politically costly for the United States to implement.

This presents the administration with a win-win situation. Slashing offsets does not restrict the principle funds promised to Israel after Camp David, and it represents a reform to the defense procurement process that would prevent the controversial transfer of U.S. defense jobs to the Israeli defense sector. If the Israelis express willingness to move on the settlement issue rather than forego offset benefits, a more viable peace strategy will result. If, on the other hand, the Israelis will not revise their settlement policy, the United States can simply end these subsidies to their defense industry. Under this latter scenario the U.S. would also restrain "concessions" granted to the Egyptian defense establishment, in keeping with the equilibrium established under Camp David. The Egyptian military is a powerful political player implicated in a wide spectrum of abuses — weakening their institutional power would hardly be a difficult sell.

The U.S. has important and legally binding relationships with both Israel and Egypt. Offsets, however, are neither mandated by treaties nor are they justifiable on security or economic grounds. Israel's acute desire to obtain the F-35 and its refusal to accept settlement restrictions gives the U.S. significant space for negotiation that might not emerge again in the foreseeable future. In the normally labyrinthine world of Middle East politics, obscure contract details may in fact provide a clear source of leverage in the struggle to secure progress toward peace.

Shana Marshall is a PhD. student at the University of Maryland and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

Taliban issue little blue book "Code of Conduct"

2009-07-27T07:19:00.002-04:00

"The Taliban in Afghanistan has issued a book laying down a code of conduct for its fighters.

Al Jazeera has obtained a copy of the book which further indicates that Mullah Omar, the movement's leader, wants to centralise its operations.

The book, with 13 chapters and 67 articles, lays out what one of the most secretive organisations in the world today, can and cannot do.

It talks of limiting suicide attacks, avoiding civilian casualties and winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the local civilian population."

It doesn't outline Mao's three levels of warfare - but aside from that it's essentially the same "hearts and minds" content that we see in the COIN manuals of most Western countries.

Al Jazeera has the whole story here.

In Italy, wedding bouquet throw crashes plane

2009-07-14T11:01:00.003-04:00

A Western cultural corollary to the gun fire that usually follows similar ceremonies in 'traditional' societies. Maybe brides should just start firing pistols instead. Article here.

New Info on (no longer) secret CIA program

2009-07-14T08:40:00.001-04:00

NYTimes has story, "CIA had plan to assassinate Al-Qaeda leaders."

How to be tough on Egypt AND Israel

2009-07-13T10:25:00.010-04:00

The JPost has an opinion article from last week that suggests the Obama Administration is being too easy on Egypt (I won't even address the author's suggestion that the Administration is being tough on Israel, which is patently false and a ludicrous suggestion). But, the idea that the US should be tougher on Egypt is a valid one, and since the only way to do this is by withholding military assistance funds, this would necessitate cutting back assistance to Israel as well. The Camp David Accords locked in US military aid to Israel and Egypt at a ratio of 3:2, and if we could legitimate changing one, it would take us a long way in legitimating a change in the other as well.

The JPost author suggests this ratio may not reflect actual aid to both countries, indicating that the amount Egypt receives may be larger and what Israel receives may be less. Although he is probably correct in magnitude he is incorrect in direction. Israel probably receives about twice as much in actual dollars as the ratio suggests. This is because (in contrast to other countries that receive FMF - foreign military financing funds) Israel is allowed to demand 'offsets' of its spending on military procurement - offsets that frequently exceed 100% of the actual contract value. The US Bureau of Industry and Security sites more than $2 billion in offsets from US contractors alone between 1993 and 2006 (although their information comes from reports submitted by the contractors - not exactly what I would consider an objective source of reliable information). I'd estimate it at about twice that much - since the 7 or so prime contractors that provide about 80% of US offsets have an interest in minimizing the appearance of their overall impact, both on the domestic US defense supplier base and on upsetting political equilibria in conflict zones. Much of these offsets are fed into Israel's domestic defense capability either through coproduction, licensing agreements or technology transfers.

If we started adding this into the Camp David ratio we could probably withold some FMF from both Israel AND Egypt - now that's being tough.

Britain halts some arms exports to Israel in response to Gaza conflict

2009-07-13T08:40:00.001-04:00

. . . . . yeah, like 5 out of almost 200 contracts: not exactly a penalty. Times Online has the story here.

Apparently the shelf-life of American Exceptionalism is . . . . really long

2009-07-11T09:23:00.003-04:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I never read Gelb's "Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy". From the reviews/excerpts such as this one in the NY Review of Books, it's the standard dose of ahistorical American Exceptionalism pumped up with some pro-intervention 'cooperative security' niceties. The proposals reflect the fact that Gelb once had access to official military and intelligence information (the sort that imbues its readers with the false sense of supremacy that has led so many policy-makers to intervene in conflicts they think can be easily won - roughly the idea that all the world's problems not only resemble nails but that we have stockpiles of such technologically advanced hammers that we cannot possibly fail).

The author picks out some good phrases, such as:

"Gelb thinks that Obama is situated to deliver an impressive display of war that adds heft to diplomacy, and of diplomacy that reconciles us to war. The reason Obama can do this is that "to Arabs and Iranians, America is still number one."

One assumes of course, that Gelb wrote this when the wars (both in Afghanistan and Iraq) were both going well - although I can never remember a time when conditions in both were concurrently improving. Although the Iraq War (by most accounts) seems to be improving, the situation in Afghanistan certainly has not. If anything, Obama is in a position to deliver the rather hopeless message that most observers already understand, mainly that US diplomacy has suffered significantly b/c its war-fighting ability has been proven ineffective in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus there's nothing with which to back-up that diplomacy.

Not to mention Gelb's rather baseless observation that "to Arabs and Iranians, America is still number one." We may indeed still act as if we're number one, which will fool most of the people most of the time, but other players are stepping into the small vacuums that are popping up throughout the globe (most notably the efforts of countries like Qatar (in Lebanon), Syria (between Turkey and Armenia) and others in presenting themselves as alternatives to US-allied peace brokers Egypt and Saudi Arabia).

Gelb's book is Ikenberry-esque in that he too cautions against the US tendency for isolationism (esp. after periods of such spectacular foreign policy failures). But the review follows up its examination of the book with some excerpts from Gelb's previous rhetoric on US foreign policy, which make his claims to 'common sense' incredibly suspect:

"In a discussion moderated by Senator Daniel P. Moynihan some twenty-five years ago, Leslie Gelb said with a genial irony that covert wars brought no real impairment of democracy: "The fact of the matter is that almost any covert operation that might be considered controversial is going to be debated publicly." This was said when the US was supplying arms to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, and mining the harbors of that country; the facts had lately come to public view, but the facts were not discussed until discovered by accident. The same held true with the American policy on torture under Bush and Cheney, which spread from Guantánamo to prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gelb, in 1984, was challenged by Morton Halperin:

The critical moment for debating a military intervention is before it begins. Clearly, once you help people start a war there are weighty arguments in favor of continuing to support them.

Senator Moynihan also disagreed with Gelb:

I suggest that in the United States we openly discuss a very limited number of such operations, that the far greater portion are not discussed, but are hermetically sealed.

Moynihan plainly thought this a bad thing for constitutional democracy.

Gelb had the last word, in a way; but it was a puzzling last word: "I disagree," he said, with

the proposition that we ought not to interfere in the internal politics of other societies. I believe that is exactly what foreign policy is. All foreign policy is the extension of one's internal policies into the internal politics of another nation.

The subject was, to repeat, the arming of the contras in Nicaragua, but it was also the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The comment sheds considerable light as well on Gelb's eagerness to continue pressure in the Middle East in the form of military and covert operations."

"Shock and Audit" MJ Report on Defense Budget

2009-07-09T21:36:00.003-04:00

The Defense Dept. never ceases to amaze. After roughly 7 hours of tense discussion on defense budgetary priorities (tense b/c I had the gall to question whether the actual goal of defense spending was to preserve human life, in which case it has on most counts been a miserable failure) I come across this Mother Jones gem. Even after an afternoon spent delving into future budget predictions that basically have us burning excess defense articles for fuel after the entire country goes bankrupt and we've descended into anarchy, this stuff is still shocking.

Like that the cost overruns in our defense budget exceed China's total defense budget by a factor of three - that's right, all the myriad discrepancies between what Lockheed tells us that plane will cost and what it actually ends up charging us all amounts to three times China's total defense budget!! And yes, nice try, but that is an accurate figure - China analysts believe this to be a reliable indicator of their activity - not that I could say the same for our auditors, since the "black budget" and the VA budget and lots of other little budgetary pieces never make it into our official defense budget anyway. Our defense spending, on the other hand, comes in at around $850 billion. That's about the size of four medium-sized country GDPs (like Israel+Norway+Denmark+Chile).

And, official projections for the F-35 (those are the projections that usually understate actual costs by about 20% or so) put those program costs at over $1 trillion - about the size of the national deficit. So, I hope we can dismantle some of these planes and distill some of their constituent elements for basics like food and fuel . . . . cause if we keep letting pathological organizations and defense contractors make all the budget decisions we're halfway to hell in an aircraft carrier.

MEP article on Syria and Financial Crisis

2009-07-09T21:35:00.000-04:00

Better link to MEP article . . .

Workshop Intriques: Weapons Espionage

2009-07-08T09:47:00.002-04:00

Saw Issandr Al-Amrani's recent post about the JPost article on Egyptian military's purchase of Russian air defense systems. Since the Russians are unlikely to accept anything less than hard currency from the Egyptians for payment it begs the question of where Egypt would get the money for such a purchase, the price of which would undoutedly be very high since the S-400 is presumed to be the best air defense system available.

Well, the logical answer is that they would use US military aid (the Foreign Military Financing Funds that the Egyptians still get every year as an incentive for signing the Camp David Accords in 1979). But, would the US sign on to Egyptian purchases of Russian weaponry, given that there is some built in expectation that the Egyptians would use that money to purchase US defense material and at the very least would not buy material from the Russians?

A possibility I never considered (although now it seems entirely logical) is that the Americans would actually support such an Egyptian-Russian transaction on the premise that the Egyptians would give the Americans a few of the SAMs so they could use them in field tests (as opposed to having to resort to simulations and other computer generated tests. This would be especially beneficial to the US given that many of the countries that have bought these Russian weapons are those likely to be engaged in confrontation with the US in the future.

A former air force guy told me this is pretty common practice, but still something I didn't consider before, and introduces interesting motivations and mechanisms to questions/discussions of patterns of arms sales and military assistance.

Syrian reaction to success of Hariri/Future Party

2009-07-02T08:36:00.002-04:00

This response sounds pretty reasonable to me (basically the Syrians concede that even if the pro-Syrian opposition would have won much of the world would have isolated the new Lebanese regime - a fact driven home even more by the fallout after the re-election of Ahmadinijad and Biden's statements during his earlier visit to Lebanon).

Nonetheless, the fact that the elections were peaceful and there were no (to my knowledge) accusations of Syrian interference, this might be a good time to step us talks between the US and Syria. Granted, not interfering was probably in the interests of the Syrian regime, which is embroiled in it's own domestic problems ranging from managing Iraqi refugees to riding out the economic downturn. But it's still another step by Damascus in a long series (not reacting to either the Israeli bombing of a supposed nuclear facility last year or the US cross-border bombing raid, intelligence sharing in the wake of 9-11 (yes, snubbed by the Bush Administration), etc.)

These steps seem to me to garner (at the absolute least) the end of US economic sanctions, which are completely meaningless and only serve to symbolically isolate the regime, in addition to the end of US efforts to bock Syria's ascension to the WTO.

I would say that even the most reserved regime would be losing patience with US efforts to isolate the country, and that Syria may be looking for an opportunity to demonstrate it's regional importance (and opportunities abound: Iran, Iraq, Palestine, etc.). This would be a sad reversal of the current trajectory. One can only hope that Mitchell et al are cooking up something to take to Damascus in the near future . . . .

Dubai reigns in real estate oligarchs

2009-07-02T07:57:00.002-04:00

An FT article on the merger of several partially state-owned real estate development firms in Dubai says the move is a "decision to merge the real estate entities . . . to break down the business empires of his [Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum] lieutenants." One can only hope that Sheikh Issa [real estate developer and part-time torture connoisseur] gets his comeuppance as part of this deal. It's a distant second to the jail term he should be serving, but it's probably all that one could hope for in a country run by a monarchy.

50 Individuals in India control 20% of country's GDP

2009-07-02T07:50:00.002-04:00

I think this is probably the highest concentration of wealth on the globe; FT has the story here.

US Ambassador to Syria

2009-06-26T09:15:00.002-04:00

US will appoint ambassador to Syria soon - about time! Story from AFP here.

NPR: Syria and Iraq Revive Business Ties

2009-06-26T09:11:00.001-04:00

Great info from Syria experts Landis and Harling from ICG . . .

US-UAE Nuclear Deal

2009-06-16T10:04:00.001-04:00

The US-UAE Nuclear Deal: Turning the Straight of Hormuz into a Nuclear Tijuana?

Somehow government bureaucracies manage to suck all the intrigue out of their reports, turning would-be political thrillers into sterile dossiers full of euphemisms and obscure acronyms. The US Bureau of Industry and Security, for example, produces a monthly “Major Case” list that with a little spicing up might draw in some readers from the ranks of the government foreign policy elite. This would be a great advantage since the Bush Administration officials who signed a deal to build a nuclear reactor in the UAE seem to have missed the fact that the small Gulf nation is a major transshipment point for illicit trade with Iran, the international community’s current non-proliferation cause célèbre. The Emirates is mentioned in ten of the department’s pending cases for May 2009: nine of these for acting as a way station for shipments of sensitive technologies and dual-use items to Iran (destination number ten is Iraq, not exactly a comforting anomaly). The agreement may be a good way of rewarding the UAE for not joining its neighbors Oman and Qatar in seeking a unilateral rapprochement with Iran and bypassing the US in regional peace initiatives (moves that not only brought the two gulf nations closer to Syria but also weakened the credibility of former regional heavyweights and US-allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia). But is nuclear technology an appropriate carrot in a region that IAEA Chief Muhammad El-Baradei last week called a “ticking bomb”? The problem, El-Baradei insists, is with the current NPT regime, which has allowed upwards of 20 countries to develop civilian nuclear programs that could be weaponized in relatively short order. One part of re-dressing this failure, he told the UK Guardian, is to “ensure that the gaps that might exist for misuse of that technology is plugged.” It seems this 11th hour Bush deal has the potential to make the UAE one of the biggest “gaps,” turning the Straight of Hormuz into a nuclear smuggling thoroughfare.
There is no hard evidence that the governing royals are implicated in these BIS smuggling cases, but there is no real evidence to the contrary either. Oman and Qatar, both of whom have strong political and economic ties with Iran, do not appear in the case log at all, challenging the supposition that the UAE’s proximity to Iran makes it prone to abuse by privateers. And the UAE has long been criticized for its de facto policy of allowing cheap imports from Asia to be relabeled in the UAE to take advantage of the Arab Free Trade Area, a policy that the regime’s allies no doubt benefit from quite handsomely. The institutions that have grown up to accommodate and facilitate these smuggling rings will be difficult to dismantle, and may only be driven further underground by government efforts to do so. This may press many smugglers and traffickers of the more mundane variety to seek out opportunities to work in higher-value markets such as those for nuclear technologies. The UAE surely has legitimate security concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, but if used within the legal bounds of the US deal, the civilian technology involved in this transfer would not magically make them impervious to an attack. They would have to use this technology transfer as a starting point to engage in their own clandestine nuclear weapons program, a policy contradiction made all the more ludicrous by the fact that the UAE is not exactly strapped for energy resources as it sits on nearly 100 billion barrels of oil.
Although the deal was concluded by the Bush Administration, it must still be approved by Congress, which requires the Obama Administration to submit the deal for consideration. Under different circumstances the UAE case might be strong: it contributed to establishing an IAEA administered nuclear fuel bank, an important step in removing state-control of nuclear fuel; it is a strong US-ally and it has invested heavily in alternative energies. However, recent events caution against the deal. Particularly notable is the gruesome 45-minute tape that shows Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the UAE Crown Prince, torturing a grain merchant accused of pilfering $5,000 worth of product. Although disturbing, the real smoking gun of the tape is the presence of a uniformed Emirati police officer who actually takes part in the torture. If the legal arms of the state are under such complete tutelage of the royal family, is it not reasonable to assume that many of the smugglers are as well? The Wall Street Journal reported that both Westinghouse and General Electric are vying for the reactor contract. GE for one has substantial financial interests tied up with the UAE Royals, including a recently launched partnership with Mubadala Development Company, a venture capital group backed by the Crown Prince and his full-brothers including, you guessed it, Sheikh Issa from the torture tapes. For these and a host of other reasons, the US deal is unlikely to garner the Obama Administration much respect from the Arab world outside the Emirates, which is to say about 99% of the region’s population.
Regional realities and the lessons of history also advise against the deal. Many states have expressed plans to establish civilian nuclear programs, including Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. If the US aids the UAE in their program, what is to stop the rest of the region from demanding similar concessions in exchange for cooperation on regional peace deals and other joint efforts? The fact that these states may not be openly pursuing weaponized versions of these programs is of little comfort, especially given the tendency for regional political realities to shift. And by “shift” I do not mean peaceful leadership changeover so much as the US tendency to supply a given strongman with sufficient means to exterminate millions of people only to discover some years down the road that the individual has become politically unpalatable. Implementing such policy reversals once the region has been nuclearized will make disarming Saddam Hussein look like a leisurely stroll in the dessert. Crude continental balance-of-power politics once compelled France to supply sensitive nuclear assistance to Israel, Pakistan and Egypt and led Italy and Germany to assist Iraq with its program while the British supplied dual-use items; unconfirmed cases include German assistance to the apartheid government in South Africa, and Italian assistance to Argentina. This menace of regional tensions is again implicated in the case of the UAE, partly due to Bush-era tactics that divided the region into those who were “with us” or “with the terrorists.” However this time the balancing takes place in a global environment made infinitely more complex by previous generations of proliferation. Sandwiched between Iran and Saudi Arabia, will the Emiratis prove more reliable non-proliferators than the states of Western Europe? I give it roughly a snowball’s chance in Dubai.

Reading Beyond the Lines

2009-05-25T19:16:00.002-04:00

Political Science, and in particular international relations, can be a dodgy subject because practitioners often deal in documents or sources that are less than reliable. These then get picked up by other sources and after a few references are so lost in the chain of evidence that few people think to question their legitimacy.

For example, just reading a story on Syria from the JPost that includes the following "citations":

"Syria's actions are evidence of the reality of a Middle East Cold War"

Anytime someone uses the word "reality" in close proximity to some incredibly complex historical phenomenon like "Cold War" that's being transferred to a different regional and temporal context it makes me a little skeptical

The rest of the article contains the following appeals to evidence, without citation or significant elaboration. All these are meant as condemnations of the Obama Administration's recent efforts to engage with Syria, but when compared to the policies/practices of other countries in the region (esp. US allies like Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) they just read like hypocritical exercises in shaping the opinions of policy-makers and issue publics.

"it is well known" (regarding the domiciling of Hamas and IJ leaders in Damascus, which is true, but to suggest that allowing Khalid Meshaal to reside in Damascus somehow makes Syria unfit for engagement is ridiculous)

"reports have surfaced" (on Syrian construction of a biological weapons facility)

"It is known" (about Syrian stockpiles of the nerve agent sarin)

"It is thought by Western governments" (about a biological warfare program)

"the latest news is that" (about Damascus 'recommencing' its practice of facilitating the entry of 'Sunni jihadi fighters into Iraq' - which I'm guessing is coming from the NYTimes article a few weeks ago, except that the intel sources cited in the article didn't suggest that the Syrian authorities were facilitating the movement, just that it was increasing)

If this is what passes for hard evidence we are all in a lot of trouble.

Michel Kilo to continue opposition work after being released from Syrian prison

2009-05-20T08:37:00.001-04:00

France 24 has the story here.

How many times can you answer a question about Palestine with "Well, Iran . . . "

2009-05-19T10:51:00.003-04:00

Unfortunately, if you're Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic, pretty much every time. He was one of three guests on the Dian Rehm Show this morning (along with Daniel Levy and David Makovsky) in a segment on Mideast Peace. The transcript isn't available yet, but it was something to this effect: In response to a question about Isreali public support for a two-state solution Goldberg responded:

It's unclear whether Iran will even allow there to be a solution to the conflict, it controls Hezbollah . . . . . [the rest was hard to get since I was nearly stricken deaf by the first part]

Two issues: first, responding to a question about the issue of a two-state solution with a reference to Iran is counterproductive. The I/P conflict has gone on for nearly half a century, long before Iran started a nuclear weapons program. So blaming this issue for stalling the peace process is disingenuous to say the least.

Second, Hezbollah has outgrown its Iranian "suppliers" to become a participant in a unity government in Lebanon where it commands significant support from the Lebanese population. To treat it as a surrogate for Iranian interests in the region is misleading and ignores the last 15 years or so of political change in Lebanese domestic politics.

Goldberg also responded to questions about the "Arab Public" (distinct from Arab leaders, who reflect the opinions of their publics just about as much as Glenn Beck reflects mine) with stories about personal meetings with (probably Egyptian) intelligence officers who told him how concerned they were about the Iranian threat!

First, someone who specializes in torturing members of the public probably isn't going to give you a unbiased account of their sentiment. And,

Second, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are losing major ground in the region to Qatar and Oman (and to a lesser extent Syria). The two gulf nations have made significant inroads in regional peace initiatives (Lebanon comes to mind immediately) and Syria is getting some positive signals from the White House (exempting the continuation of the sanctions, which was unfortunate and probably unnecessary, since they are largely symbolic and make little difference in trade between the two countries anyway). Qatar and Oman have better relations with Iran than the other Gulf States and Syria is gaining legitimacy as an important player in lots of regional initiatives. This suggests that Saudi Arabia and Egypt may be losing influence with their US ally, especially given Egypt's democratic backsliding in recent years. Of course the Egyptian and Saudi regimes are going to play up fears of the Iranian threat - this would help them prevent a rapprochement between the US and Syria and prevent closer ties from developing between the US and other gulf nations.

New Crackdown on Shiites in Morocco

2009-05-18T07:30:00.002-04:00

NPR has a story on recent Moroccan police activity in Tangier and across the country, targeting individuals suspected of being Shiite. Seems that the authorities were trying to get an idea of the number of Shiites in the major city centers, since sources say that most of the high profile Shiite leaders were not questioned. Fits well into the "Shiite Crescent" narrative currently plaguing all the states in the region (the suspected Hezbollah cells in Egypt, the disgruntled Shiia minorities (sometimes majorities) in the Gulf, etc.) Unfortunately, it also adds fuel to the "Iranian-Israeli confrontation" perspective currently making the rounds in Washington. And as history shows, Arab leaders have no qualms about killing tens-of-thousands of their own people to get a handle on social unrest. It is also true that Israeli intelligence cooperates with the Moroccan authorities. When I was in Tangier there were stories circulating of a pending attack by Islamic militants on American sites in the city, reports which local and mainstream international news sources indicated were provided by Israeli intelligence. I hope this isn't an Israeli effort to beef up the argument for a military confrontation with Iran, or that if it is, I hope someone with enough authority also possesses enough judgment to see through it.

Sure, those nukes will be just fine . . . .

2009-05-17T12:00:00.003-04:00

Perhaps I'm alone in enjoying a leisurely perusal of the Bureau of Industry and Security's monthly "Major Cases" list available at http://www.bis.doc.gov/news/index.htm#annual It's got all sorts of delicious little morsels of corporate wrong-doing, like for instance Chiquita Banana's financing of terrorism in Columbia for which they've been convicted in the US Department of Justice. But, that's really another post. What I love most about the Major Case report is the number of times "UAE" and "Iran" appear in the same case log. Essentially, every sensitive technology or piece of dual-use equipment that makes its way into Iran does so via the UAE. And it's probably with pretty high-level approval as well. Oman, the UAE neighbor, appears in a NYTimes article today on just such charges. That's why the Bush Administration's decision to sign a deal with the UAE on nuclear technology is so . . . well, stupid. FP has a story to this effect here. This comes (again, ironically) just as El Baradei points out in this Guardian article that the ME region is a nuclear powder keg just waiting for some short-sighted policy to ignite the . . . . oh wait, this UAE deal must be it.

The Middle East Comes to Town: The New America Foundation

2009-05-17T11:01:00.003-04:00

My dissertation advisor, Professor Shibley Telhami, is first to speak on this panel. The consummate diplomat, he still feels it necessary to point out the danger in allowing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to be overshadowed by concerns over Iran's nuclear program. This is certainly a tactic employed by not only those who want to delay a solution to Israel/Palestine (which would enhance Israel's position, since it can continue to build settlements in the meantime) but also those who want a military solution to the issue of Iran. This is a powerful confluence of interests - and it will take the voices of all those in favor of a rational, diplomatic solution to both issues (separately) to drown them out. When I was at the Israeli Embassy one year ago, I was fed this same issue linkage that's now being trotted out by every hawk and Netanyahu apologist in town. The Palestinian conflict was referred to as "secondary" and dismissed as a topic of legitimate concern in the face of obvious Iranian designs to nuke Israel. Iran, and its anti-Israeli rhetoric, would be seriously ostracized in the region if there were a real solution to the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Again, we see a radical minority in all three polities (Israel, Palestine and the US) stonewalling a real solution. Most Israelis want a two-state solution, and they want the settlements stopped. Most Palestinians and Americans want the same. Someone in the administration needs to stand up and say "Enough!" No more hiding behind the Iranian threat - institute the changes embodied in previous peace accords (even unilaterally) and weaken Iran's political legitimacy in the region. This is the first step - unfortunately it's not one that any elected leader seems brave enough to take (until of course he's out of office, aka Olmert).

Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq

2009-05-12T14:31:00.002-04:00

A really interesting and convincing effort to analyze the question using quantitative data by Eli Berman from UC San Diego, Jacob N. Shapiro from Princeton University and Joseph H. Felter from Stanford. Details Iraqi responses to different types of violence (coalition/insurgent/sectarian) and tries to tease out trends and statistical relationships. No doubt involved countless hours of scrutinizing data and coding techniques, but the result seems to have been worth it. The pdf is available here.

Financial Times: An Assured Assad

2009-05-11T23:39:00.000-04:00

You can read the article here.

WaPo: Iraq Militant Group's Pipeline Through Syria Revives After Long Gap

2009-05-11T22:58:00.005-04:00

WaPo: "What we think right now is that we just don't know how much their senior leaders know about the foreign fighter network," said the senior U.S. military official, who discussed intelligence matters last week on the condition of anonymity. "As you can imagine . . . if they knew, it's not something they would be talking about."

"But we do think that the knowledge of these networks exists at least within the Syrian intelligence community," he said. "What level, if it's low or high up, we just don't have a good gauge on."

Me: This is interesting, given the conventional wisdom on the split within the Syrian regime between the "old guard/hard-liners" (who made their political and economic fortunes under Bashar's father and were reluctant to support the new President because his economic policies shifted the patronage pipeline to a new group of elites), and those closer to the President himself, (composed jointly of modernizing government elites, many family members with significant capital assets and a healthy dose of traditional opportunists). It might be this "old guard" who have the personal contacts and institutional experience to track cross-border movements like this, and they might not be too eager to lend support to Bashar's regime (especially in support of Damascus' efforts to engage in a political dialogue with the US). If such a dialogue did take place and tangible benefits resulted, this would seriously compromise the resistance/nationalist/socialist rhetoric that this "old guard" relies on for public support.

The US bombing last fall on the Syria/Iraq border was allegedly targeting this very traffic, but in Syria the rumor was that there were Syrian intelligence officials at the sight that evening and they had some knowledge of the raid beforehand. It's hard to believe that US planes could cross into Syrian airspace completely undetected. It may be that they were aware of the raid, and that the Syrian security apparatus estimated that such an attack would weaken Bashar's public support (since a similar attack during his father's tenure would no doubt have triggered a stern response, a model that the security officials correctly estimated Bashar would not follow). However, it seems to have back-fired. The Syrian people took to the streets in protest and the American School was closed (and lots of Americans and Europeans who taught there were forced to leave the country). But instead of demanding action, most political elites used the raid as an example of Syrian restraint and the illegality of US military actions.

Despite the apparent "subversive Syrian intel" angle, I think the most interesting thing to come from the article is this:

WaPo: The flow of foreign fighters through Syria reached a high of 80 to 100 a month in mid-2007, the senior military official said, most of them would-be suicide "martyrs" increasingly recruited from extremist communities in North Africa by jihadist Web sites and networks abroad.

Me: So, although most of them passed through Syria, few if any of them are actually Syrian. I think this says a lot about the influence that domestic politics and economics can have on the creation or 'production' of terrorists. There are two possibilities: (1) the Syrian regime has been sufficiently cruel and barbarous to its indigenous religious opposition, preventing the rise of a uniquely Syrian terrorist network operating in Iraq or (2) the US allied regimes of North Africa (including Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia, although perhaps not Algeria) are for whatever reason not as effective at preventing the spread of extremism. This could be for a number of reasons, not all of them having to do with torturing religious opposition. For all its faults, Syria has significantly less income disparity and overall poverty than the countries of North Africa, and its government's refusal to adhere to US imperatives provides for a certain release valve. If Syrians cannot object to their own political system at least they can object to the US (and by extension Israel). Such talk is not tolerated in North Africa, and far from preventing the rise of extremism, it seems to channel it into concrete expressions of political violence.

You can read the article here.

Another Cabinet Shuffle in Syria

2009-05-11T18:52:00.002-04:00

Conspiracy Theorists Rejoice! The release of four pro-Syria Lebanese Generals implicated in the Hariri assassination has been followed by the replacement of the Syrian Minister of the Interior. The position is usually reserved for what analysts would characterize as a member of the "old guard," that is the more hard-line politicians that make us the security-intelligence apparatus. The Justice Minister was also replaced (by Ahmad Younis, I think a former head of the Syrian Military Academy). According to this IWPR article, the shuffle was disappointing as most had hoped for more substantive change.

Fatah's Abbas to Visit Damascus Today

2009-05-11T14:28:00.002-04:00

At least this means Khaled Meshaal (Chairman of Hamas Political Bureau) and Abbas will be in the same country. Not getting much news coverage, perhaps everyone is waiting for the post-meeting roundup. This is another reason why Damascus might have been a better locale for Obama's address than Cairo, since actually getting Fatah and Hamas leaders in geographic proximity is undoubtedly a first step toward a unity government and eventual peace with Israel. Also a direct challenge to Egypt's continued insistence that it is the best partner for catalyzing regional peace. Syria News Wire has a link here.

Sheikh Issa Torture Tapes

2009-05-09T12:23:00.002-04:00

Grain merchant in the UAE tortured almost to death by Crown Prince's brother (Sheikh Issa) over equivalent of $5,000. Because the grain merchant doesn't actually die in these tapes, I'm sure this classifies as mere "enhanced interrogation methods." Really disturbing.

Crime in Syria - on the rise in face of economic downturn

2009-04-30T10:24:00.003-04:00

Syria is well-known for its safety, and its citizens are quick to tell you that crime (even in Damascus) is relatively unknown. The occasional reports of assaults on women using public transportation probably belies a larger problem that goes unreported or gets downplayed by local authorities. But now it seems that crime is increasing in earnest in the country's northern industrial center: Aleppo. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has an article here that links the rise in violence to the economic downturn, particularly damaging in Aleppo where many industries have been shuttered because of the government's dismantling of trade protection in recent years. This has probably been exacerbated by the rise in consumerism brought on by the blossoming of the luxury goods market serving the country's upper class. The simultaneous decay in industrial production unique to the northern region and the rise in conspicuous consumption that has spread from Damascus will most likely continue to spark an increase in crime in a country that prides itself on personal safety.

Syrian Opposition: not a lot of political credibility

2009-04-29T17:34:00.002-04:00

Want to know what an "implantable device for treating impotence by delivering a vasodilator agent to the erectile bodies of the penis" has to do with Syrian politics? Just visit: http://www.alenfetah.com/en/02.asp Watch out Khaddam and move over Ahmad Chalabi - this guys got real credentials . . . .

Lieberman: Syria is no peace partner

2009-04-29T10:06:00.002-04:00

This comes as no surprise, but is certainly disappointing. It would be an interesting project to track the number of times peace deals/negotiations have been derailed by electoral cycles as compared to authoritarian overturn . . .

Syria no peace partner: Israel FM
Sat Apr 25, 8:20 am ET

BERLIN (AFP) – Syria's support of Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups make it no partner for peace, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in an interview published on Saturday.

"We need to look at the reality. Until today, Syria is hosting the headquarters of terror organisations such as Hamas and the (Islamic) Jihad," he told the Berliner Zeitung daily, referring to two radical Palestinian organisations.

"Syria supports Hezbollah and its arms trafficking into southern Lebanon. Syria supports Iran's nuclear programme. That is why I cannot see in Syria a real partner for any type of agreement," Lieberman said.

Syria and Israel engaged in indirect peace talks in May last year following an eight-year hiatus, but the talks were suspended after Israel launched a deadly offensive against the Gaza Strip in December.

Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said earlier this month that Syria was ready to resume the indirect talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new right-leaning government on the basis of a total pullout from the Golan Heights which Israel occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Lieberman raised a wave of international criticism when he last month announced that Israel would not continue the latest round of US-sponsored peace talks launched in 2007.

'UAE arrests suspect in Hariri probe'

2009-04-20T06:12:00.000-04:00

Apr. 19, 2009
Associated Press

One of the suspects in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister has been arrested in Dubai, an Arab diplomat said.

Purported Syrian intelligence officer Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq was named a suspect by a UN commission investigating the 2005 assassination.

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in a truck bombing that many Lebanese believe was carried out by the country's long dominant neighbor Syria. Syria denies involvement.

Initially Siddiq was a witness who gave evidence to UN investigators. His information, however, was later discredited, and at the UN commission's recommendation, he was arrested in France in October 2005 as a suspect in the murder.

He disappeared from house arrest in France in March 2008, according to French authorities.

The United Arab Emirates' Foreign Ministry could not confirm he was living in the country and did not know if he was arrested.

The Arab diplomat said he was arrested Friday in Dubai and that Syria has requested his extradition. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Syrian media reports have said Siddiq is wanted there for allegedly giving false testimony implicating Syria in the assassination.

Only four other suspects in the killing are in custody. They are pro-Syria generals who led Lebanon's police, intelligence service and an elite army unit at the time of the assassination. They have not been formally charged.

An international tribunal in the Netherlands took up the case in February.

Condition of Syrian Workers in Lebanon

2009-04-15T10:50:00.002-04:00

IRIN has a good piece on Syrian workers in Lebanon, although it doesn't point out anything that wasn't already common knowledge it does show that thawing relations in the upper echelons of government doesn't necessarily trickle down to the population. Although there are probably more Syrian workers in Lebanon than Asian workers (of which there are many who work as domestic help) I don't know of any organizations that focus on Syrian labor rights, although there are quite a few working on the conditions of Asian workers who are often abused and held hostage by their Lebanese employers.

Syrian NSF issues statement on Break with Brotherhood

2009-04-10T08:21:00.000-04:00

"The Council discussed the decision of the Muslim Brotherhood to cease their opposition activities to the repressive regime and their subsequent withdrawal from the NSF, and stressed the continuation of the NSF on its path and the strength in its composition of various national groups that represent all segments of the Syrian people, including the Islamic trend which belongs to the Syrian people and is not representative in the monopoly of one faction or another. The NSF is committed to the implementation of its project for change and retirement or withdrawal or fatigue or disability or repentance of this or that party will not stop its progress. The current state of the Syrian people under the oppressive regime is a clear and obvious signs as to the where Syria is heading in the regional and international political equations, and Bashar al-Asads' misleading terms and slogans begging for better relations with Israel and America on the basis of mutual interests in "comprehensive peace" can not fool everyone!

The Council stressed the NSF's objectives and commitment to its national goals, and vowed not to stray away from its main national battle with the tyranny of the regime and refused to be involved in side battles that will only waste energy and create divisions and confusion among the ranks. The battle of the NSF with despotism is not a temporary slogan as much as a goal and a final effort that will need all national forces of the Syrian people to unite for freedom, security, and stability."

Syrian Overseas Opposition Further Divided

2009-04-08T13:56:00.002-04:00

The overseas Syrian opposition has never been very credible, for the usual reasons (out of touch with everyday Syrian politics; the Chalabi-factor; no basis for legitimacy, etc.) But now it has been weakened even further. The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, which has never been very influential inside Syria after its followers were massacred in Hama in 1982 by the late President, has broken ranks with exiled (secularist) VP Khaddam, whose opposition to Bashar's presidency made him a liability in the early post-succession period. It seems that Syria's continued status as a "resistance" state really has paid off, since the MB is now standing behind the regime in its opposition to the Israeli incursion in Gaza and its support for MB co-religionists Hamas. Josh Landis has links and analysis here.

Josh Landis on Syria for the Arab Reform Bulletin

2009-04-08T08:33:00.000-04:00

Syria: The Nexus of Economy, Diplomacy, and Reform

Joshua Landis April, 2009

The winds of change coming out of Washington have rekindled talk of liberalization and reform in Damascus. The Obama administration’s abandonment of a regime change approach to Syria has emboldened officials in Damascus to speak out about economic vulnerabilities—and the impact of U.S. sanctions—with refreshing candor. Long delayed economic reforms, particularly the launching of Damascus’s stock exchange, have been pushed through. President Assad has also promised to put political liberalization back on his agenda because he no longer believes Western powers seek to destabilize Syria.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari, who coordinates economic planning in Syria, broke with the government’s party line on the economy in a recent interview with Reuters. Rather than repeating bromides about how Syria’s economy would not be affected by the world downturn, he warned Syrians that they would indeed face tough times. He explained that “Syria’s foreign trade makes up 70 per cent of GDP and this means that the country’s dependence on external factors is very large.” Mohammed al-Hussein, Syria’s finance minister, took Dardari’s warnings one step further, saying that 2009 would be a “difficult” year. The country’s banks were secure, but the industrial, transport and tourism sectors would suffer, he predicted.

Projections of an economic downturn are loaded with political significance in Syria. During the Bush administration, Syrian officials kept up a brave front in order to counter thinking in Washington that economic pressures would enable Israel and the United States to drive a better bargain on the Golan. U.S. sanctions were unimportant and ineffective, Syrian officials scoffed. Abdullah Dardari began to promise in 2005 that by 2010 he would have Syria’s economy purring along at 7 percent growth, the magic rate at which most economists believe Syria will begin to dry up its growing pool of unemployed laborers and youth. Damascus could afford to wait out Washington without abandoning its precious regional assets or “cards” that, if played wisely, it believed would win back the Golan and allow Syria to project its influence in the larger Middle Eastern arena.

So when Dardari admitted that Syria would fall far short of 7 percent growth, foreign analysts took note. More importantly, Dardari as much as confessed that U.S. sanctions were taking a toll on Syria. In a shot across the bow of Syria’s foreign ministry, he demanded that “the U.S. should lift its economic sanctions on Syria before relations improve between the two sides.” “The lifting of sanctions will likely have a positive effect on increased foreign investment,” he explained and would “remove a psychological barrier” to companies that now hesitate to put money in Syria. Only $700 million in foreign direct investment came to Syria last year; 2009 is likely to see even less.

According to Dardari, Syria’s infrastructure must undergo massive improvements on the order of $50 billion over the next ten years in order to grease the wheels of commerce and keep its main industries (textiles, cotton spinning, plastics, cement and canning) from being done in by cheap imports. Syria’s manufacturing sector has been battling on a number of fronts for the past few years, well before the current global crisis. For decades, it avoided competition from imports thanks to a program called “national protection.” High tariffs on imports gave local producers a false sense of security as they sold inferior products at high prices. But recent economic reforms have opened Syria’s doors to a wide array of new imports; tariffs between Arab states have been eradicated altogether, forcing Syrian manufacturers to compete with inexpensive imports for the first time.

Among notable recent developments was the launching of Syria’s stock exchange, which opened on March 10 after years of delays. Six companies were listed but only one traded a total of 15 shares on the first day. Volume was disappointing throughout the first weeks because fewer than 100 accounts have been registered with the five approved financial brokers. More importantly, cumbersome restrictions have been placed on the exchange to prevent “speculation” and promote “investment.” Securities cannot be sold on the same day of purchase and a 2 percent daily price movement limit has been imposed on stocks in an overzealous attempt to protect investors. These are some of the kinks that must be worked out, but Syrians were enthusiastic about having a working bourse after fifty years of socialism.

President Bashar al-Assad assured Syrians in March that the pace of reform would pick up now that Syria is “less affected by difficult international circumstances.” What is more, he suggested that reforms would not only be economic, but also political. When asked to elaborate, Assad responded: “For example by expanding political participation, creating another chamber in addition to the parliament, such as a freely elected senate with a legislative role to give more space to the opposition, by further liberalizing the political media and the Internet to promote dialogue, and finally by enacting a law regulating political parties. But all that will come about gradually, at our own pace.” Most Syrians may not hold their breath for political change, but they are gratified by the new climate of engagement with the United States, hoping that it will have important economic repercussions and perhaps bring some relaxation of the political atmosphere.

Joshua Landis is co-director of the Center for Middle East Studies and assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Gates Proposes Cuts in Big-Budget Defense Items

2009-04-07T07:49:00.003-04:00

I hope this is an example of a perfect storm: global economic crisis + US bogged down in assymetric wars in Iraq and Afghanistan = common sense in defense priorities. My guess is that the big contractors will start screaming about job-loss (even though it's a well-documented reality that maintaining one defense job costs much more than a non-defense job of equal pay). These huge contractors get vast sums of government money for R&D and use government facilities free-of-charge. If companies did this in other industries they would be nationalized (and the argument that this would make them less efficient is ridiculous, since they already complete everything late and over-budget anyway). I hope Congress finally stands up to these huge defense interests (even though these companies were smart enough to place production of defense components in nearly each of their districts so as to make cutting projects nearly impossible). Can't believe I'm rooting for a Bush-appointee, but I'll say it, "Go Gates!"

You can read the WSJ story here.

Tunrout in Egypt's General Strike: Apathetic or Afraid?

2009-04-06T14:23:00.003-04:00

Analysts disagree as to whether the protest's dismal turnout was due to apathy (of which Americans are probably the most guilty, since unlike in the Egyptian case mass protests in the US could bring about some response other than police massacres) or fears of reprisals. AFP is reporting small demonstrations and a few arrests, but nothing substantial.

Iran's reformist presidential candidate?

2009-04-06T10:17:00.002-04:00

I would be interested to know if Mousavi's comment on returning to the principles of the revolution included the adjective Islamic? If he characterizes the principles of the revolution as Islamic then he's playing to the Council of Guardians who could probably just have him tarred and feathered if they decided his beard was too short. On the other hand, if he just said "principles of the revolution" this means something entirely different, since most of the principles of the revolutionaries (feminists, leftists and intellectuals) had little to do with Islam.

The Daily Star has an article here on Mousavi, which seems to suggest that he is playing to religious sentiments. The Middle East Report devoted its most recent issue to looking back at the revolution, and confirms the strong participation of decidedly non-religious elements. One can only hope it's these principles on which Mousavi is waxing nostalgic . . . .

Obama replaces war games with diplomacy: what a novel idea

2009-04-06T10:01:00.003-04:00

POMED's wire service reports:

"On Thursday (4/2), H.Con.Res.94, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a bill which would encourage the negotiation of an "Incidents at Sea Agreement" between the United States and Iran, was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The bill calls for negotiations on not interfering with ship formations, maintaining safe distances, not permitting simulated attacks, as well as other measures. Such an agreement would mark formal engagement between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and decrease the likelihood of an accidental military incident between the two in the Persian Gulf."

Agreements like this should exist between all countries, which would have prevented the incident between Iran and the UK last year. If military ships are going to be operating very near the territorial waters of a country with which you don't have good relations some sort of legal framework for acceptable behavior always helps to avoid possible hostilities.

I hope this song doesn't launch a generation of portly rappers from Dubai releasing records called "Bedouin Bling" . . . .

2009-04-04T08:14:00.002-04:00

NPR's Marketplace has the story here:

Rapper feels 'Arab Money' isn't funny

Iraqi expat and hip-hop artist Yassin Alsalman used to be a big fan of Busta Rhymes. That was until the rap star released a controversial song called "Arab Money." Sean Cole reports.

2009-04-02T11:41:00.002-04:00

Why do Arab leaders feel compelled to use stupid casual sex analogies to questions that would clearly be better answered using standard prose? Thankfully they replaced Shara with Mouallem before anyone was able to get a tape recorder in his immediate vicinity.

"Farouk al-Shara, the Vice-President of Syria, was, as Foreign Minister, his nation’s chief negotiator at Shepherdstown. When he was asked whether Syria’s relationship with Iran would change if the Golan Heights issue was resolved, he said, “Do you think a man only goes to bed with a woman he deeply loves?” Shara laughed, and added, “That’s my answer to your question about Iran.”

Syria Making Serious Efforts at Peace with Israel

2009-04-02T11:15:00.003-04:00

The excerpts from Assad's exchange with Hersh offer yet more evidence that the regime is trying to engage seriously with Israeli peace and contribute productively to issues in the region. Assad has become famous for his ability to speak the language of Western ideals (which is why grouping together Assad and Ahmadinijad is like comparing Chavez to Kim Jong Il - just because Assad and Chavez don't worship at the altar of American imperialism doesn't make them raving lunatics. Ahmadinijad and Kim Jong Il on the other hand are fairly scary characters). So far Netanyahu's rhetoric is not very promising and neither is Lieberman's, but when responding to criticism Obama made about Syria in the run up to the Presidential election Assad said, “We do not bet on speeches during the campaign.” Hopefully that goes for Israeli campaigns too . . .

Winning the War on War?

2009-03-30T12:23:00.003-04:00

Professor Joshua Goldstein recently presented his newest research project, "Winning the War on War," as part of the Middle East Seminar Series at the University of Maryland.

His talk is advertised with the following blurb:

"The number and size of wars is near an all-time low. From the killing of tens of millions in the World Wars, to millions in the Cold War, hundreds of thousands in the 1990s and tens of thousands today, war appears to be waning. Is this a stable trend or merely an interlude, and what explains the decline in war over recent decades?"

The most interesting part of the talk was Goldstein's point that the oft-quoted statistic that the majority of deaths in the 19th century were military but that the majority of deaths today are civilian is the result of a measurement error and in fact civilians have always been the source of most casualties. He frames the research project as a response to reports that emphasize the increasing incidences of civil conflict and generally increasing global levels of violence that are assumed to characterize contemporary society.

There were of course a lot of critiques of Goldstein's thesis, among them that levels of indirect deaths from conflict did not reflect this general downturn in battle deaths; that large conflicts are being replaced by smaller ones that are more diffuse and more difficult to track; and that although wars may be less lethal they are not less disruptive to society. I would agree with all of these, although Goldstein does point out an interesting quantitative trend.

I would argue the source of the trend is the increasing sophistication of technology that allows militaries to avoid civilian casualties - but which may also make war more likely (Iraq would certainly be evidence of this). And that this increasingly sophisticated technology probably isn't driven by international norms regarding the sanctity of civilian life so much as the increasing participation of communications and IT companies in the production of defense material. They can't exactly get new contracts for weapons that are less-precise and involve less engineering and technological implements. . . .

Perhaps as weapons get increasingly accurate incidences of attacks will increase. Casualties may also decrease, but living with the imminent threat of being a target won't, and therefore neither will the indirect effects of war like psychological trauma and low levels of economic investment.

Pink Taxis in Beirut: Women-Only!

2009-03-30T09:38:00.002-04:00

I think there should be more businesses that cater to women and are operated by women. If male religious leaders and chauvinist politicians are going to continue to dictate the terms of life for women then we should just create our own society and shut them out as much as possible. Besides, women are in charge of something like 80% of family budgets so any business catering to them is bound to do better. Although this might put a lot of Syrian secret police out of a job now that demand for male-driven taxis in Beirut will go down . . . . .

Article here:

Write some new legislation already! If Congress can give the President unlimited power in waging war, why not in canceling contracts?

2009-03-30T09:22:00.005-04:00

If the Administration can get GM's CEO to step down why can't they get the AIG financial services division employees to give up their bonuses?

Can't they just have a shareholder meeting and vote on these contracts? And isn't the government now the single largest shareholder?

Ending Diplomacy Before It's Begun?

2009-03-05T08:23:00.002-05:00

The Times reports that:

"At a Gaza donors’ conference in Egypt on Monday, Mrs. Clinton told the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates that she did not believe that Iran would respond positively to the Obama administration’s offer of direct talks."

Everyone knows (presumably including Secretary Clinton) that the UAE is embroiled in a conflict with Iran over ownership of a small chain of islands, and that the UAE would be interested in de-railing any US rapprochement with Iran. So why make a comment like this? Was it calculated? - to signal to Israel and other allied states (Egypt and Saudi Arabia) that their interests were still more important than healing the rift between Iran and the US? True, Iran has made far fewer "good faith" demonstrations than has Assad's regime in Syria (which has lost significant domestic capital each time it did so). Either way, comments like these damage diplomatic efforts - even before they've begun . . . .

Does proliferation of private security/military contractors play a role in official troop mutinies?

2009-02-26T10:13:00.002-05:00

The mutiny of Bangladeshi border guards may be related to discontent fueled by an increase in the global use of private security and military contractors (many of which have come from Bangladesh). As of December 2008, there were an estimated 1,000 Bangladeshis serving under private contracts in Iraq. And, back in 2000 China's official state news agency, Xinhua News, reported that the Bangladeshi government was considering handing-over some policing jobs to private security companies. The same story reports that, as of 2000, there were over one hundred security companies operating within the country.

The AP reports that: "Among the guards' demands are more food rations and a chance to participate in lucrative, high-paying U.N. peacekeeping missions." The ability to vie for participation in these missions may be the nearest thing border guards have to the lucrative private contracts being snapped up by their co-nationals. Although air transport and similar support services as well as security guards supplied for UN missions have come from the private sector, the UN has so far been loathe to employ private forces for combat purposes.

High-Level US politicians visit Syria

2009-02-24T11:23:00.002-05:00

Finally more than whispers and rumors - confirmed visits of US officials to Syria:

"Kerry has long been an advocate for engaging with the Syrian regime," Jones added. "He believes that the Bush administration policy of not speaking to the Syrian regime was counterproductive. Yes we have many differences. But he believes it's important to impress on the Syrians how they can play a constructive role in the region if they change their behavior." Kerry believes the Untied States should return a U.S. ambassador to Damascus, Jones added. Kerry, who has previously visited Syria in 2005 and 2006, is accompanied on the trip by two staff foreign-policy advisors, Frank Lowenstein and Perry Camack, who holds the Middle East and North Africa portfolio for the committee.

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is currently on a trip to Syria*. He is accompanied by Alan Makovsky, the senior Middle East advisor to the committee, a former advisor to the late former chairman Tom Lantos, and a former special advisor to then U.S. Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross. Asked about the trip, a committee spokeswoman said the committee doesn't discuss the travel of any member of Congress.

Read the whole post here at FP

First Indiana goes blue, then this? I think it might be safe for me to move back . . . .

2009-02-24T11:17:00.004-05:00

February 24, 2009
Lugar Report Calls for New Cuba Policy
by Jim Lobe

Monday's call by Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar for a major reassessment of Washington's nearly half-century effort to isolate Cuba increases the likelihood that U.S. President Barack Obama will make substantial changes in policy toward Havana beyond those he promised during his election campaign, according to experts.

"What's significant is that this is the senior statesman for foreign policy in the Republican Party, someone who doesn't have a long track record of advocating for changes in Cuba policy, who has decided to come out and really put his stamp on this issue by saying that the U.S. embargo doesn't favor our national interest," said Daniel Erikson, a Cuba specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank.

"The fact is that Lugar has preempted Obama with his own proposals for changing the policy and in so doing creates a context that is much more favorable to changing the policy beyond the narrow of issue of lifting restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances" to the island, added Erikson, author of The Cuba Wars, a recently published book on U.S.-Cuban relations.

"What you are seeing is momentum-building," agreed Geoff Thale, a Cuba specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a human rights group that has long opposed the trade embargo. "With the policy already under review by the administration, Lugar is creating political space for Obama to take stronger action than he otherwise might."

In an introduction to a staff report he released Monday, Lugar, the ranking Republican and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Washington "must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests."

"After 47 years … the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of 'bringing democracy to the Cuban people,'" Lugar wrote, "while it may have been used as a foil by the regime to demand further sacrifices from Cuba's impoverished population," he noted, adding that the report, entitled "Changing Cuba Policy – In the United States' National Interest," "provides significant insight and a number of important recommendations to advance U.S. interests with Cuba."

The report itself, published on the first anniversary of the transfer of power from former President Fidel Castro to his brother, Raul, and based in part on four-day trip to Cuba by a staff delegation last month, called for the resumption of bilateral talks on drug interdiction and migration, enhanced cooperation on alternative energy development, and easing restrictions on travel and trade.

It also urged Havana's reintegration into western-dominated international institutions, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, among other steps Washington could take as part of process of "sequenced engagement" designed to "develop trust" between the two nations.

Lugar's statement and the report's release come amid growing speculation among Cuba specialists regarding the new administration's intentions. During the presidential campaign, Obama had promised to lift restrictions imposed by former President George W. Bush in 2004 on the freedom of Cuban Americans to travel to the island and to send money to their families there. He also indicated, however that he would retain the trade embargo as leverage to encourage political and democratic reform.

During her confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had taken a harder line on the embargo during her primary campaign against Obama, said the administration would conduct a review of Cuba policy, but, one month after his inauguration, key officials who would be expected to oversee such a process – including the likely assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Georgetown University professor Arturo Valenzuela, and his counterparts on the National Security Council – are not yet in place.

Nonetheless, Obama is expected to formally lift the Cuban-American-related curbs before the scheduled Summit of the Americas in Trinidad in mid-April, and possibly by mid-March.

Some observers believe he will combine that move with lifting other curbs on travel, including educational and cultural exchanges that brought thousands of U.S. citizens to the island in the late 1990s, and trade, notably requirements that Cuba pay in cash in advance for agricultural imports from the U.S., imposed by Bush.

"I think he will go beyond the Cuban-American curbs and at least go back to the circumstances [that prevailed] at least at the end of the [Bill] Clinton administration," said William LeoGrande, a Cuba specialist and dean of the School of Government at American University. "Remember, it was a Republican-controlled Senate that approved the sale of food and medicine to Cuba back in 2000, so I don't think there is significant political risk."

In the last several weeks, lawmakers, including Lugar in the Senate, have quietly introduced bills that, if passed, would lift all travel restrictions on trips to Cuba by U.S. citizens, a step that could inflict a decisive blow against the embargo.

Such legislation passed in both the House of Representatives and Senate in 2003 and 2004 but was dropped when Bush threatened to veto the bills. Most congressional observers believe they are likely to pass again, over the strong objections of the hard-line anti-Castro lobby centered in south Florida and New Jersey, provided that Obama clearly signals his support.

"Much depends on the Obama's attitude," said LeoGrande, who noted that the hard-liners had gained some influence with new Democratic, as well as right-wing Republican, lawmakers in recent years who have accepted campaign funding from the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC.

"If he were to say, 'It's time for a change; I support efforts by Congress to end the travel ban,' that will give political cover to some who might be a little worried about their vote. But if he says, 'I'm just lifting restrictions for Cuban Americans and I'm not in favor of going much further,' then nothing's going to happen."

Obama is likely to get more encouragement from the business community, according to Jake Colvin, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), an association of several hundred of the large U.S. multi-national companies, which called after Obama's election for the "complete removal of all trade and travel restrictions on Cuba."

Lugar's statement, he said, would be "very positive" for his constituency. "He's been very helpful on unilateral-sanctions reform, but he's never been out front on Cuba. This shows there's increasing interest on the part of new and important actors in the Congress."

The staff report argued that U.S. interests have been harmed by efforts to isolate Cuba in several ways. Not only has it failed to contribute to the island's democratization, but it has also created tensions with both Latin America and Europe, which have chosen a policy of engaging Havana. The report recommended that Washington consider establishing a bipartisan commission to forge a new, multilateral strategy on Cuba with Latin America and the European Union.

Indeed, unless Obama moves to relax the embargo before the Trinidad summit, he could suffer political damage in Latin America, according to Erikson. "Latin Americans are not going to view Obama as a change agent if he still has in place the Bush-imposed sanctions on Cuba by the summit," he said.

Le Monde: Dubai's Broken Dreams

2009-02-03T08:07:00.002-05:00

The Gulf countries are poster children for the 'contradictions of capitalism.' The financial crisis that laid bare the system's inadequacies for all to see have hit these countries especially hard:

Few experts warned this wealth was not real but virtual´; Dubai’s broken dreams

Samir Aita

January 2009

The Gulf States were expecting a “correction” in the housing market (1); what surprised them was its scale. Local stock markets fell by 50% in six months – and 70% in Dubai, the new wonder of neoliberal capitalism (2). On 20 November, as a huge display of fireworks and Hollywood A-listers heralded the opening of the lavish new Atlantis Hotel, thousands of Asian workers were being bussed off Dubai’s construction sites and out of town.

A legal judgment in a case brought by small savers led to the closure of the Kuwait stock exchange from 14-17 November. In Dubai, property sales collapsed (3). Companies like Nakheel, Emaar, Damac and Omniyat, which have been developing massive skyscrapers and ecological islands, announced lay-offs and suspended new projects.

The director of global banking at the influential British bank HSBC wondered if the landing would be soft or hard, even in ultra-rich Qatar, and speculated that now might be the time to introduce more market regulation and more rigorous risk-management (4).

The US financial services company Citigroup was more forthright. Its expert Mushtaq Khan recently announced that the Dubai dream might be over (5). He said: “Dubai’s two specific concerns are its real-estate sector and how it will refinance the debt it has built up in recent years.” The emirate has borrowed to fund housing projects and foreign acquisitions. The subject is so sensitive that Citigroup’s chairman, Winfried Bischoff, recently met the emir of Dubai, Muhammad bin Rashid al-Maktum (6). Off the record, one banker said: “We haven’t reached the bottom. My holidays in December were cancelled, even though it’s a matter of only seven working days. As far as we’re concerned now, ‘long term’ means three months. We’re desperate for liquidity and have repossessed properties, but the authorities won’t let us put them on the market.”

Although the workings of the Gulf bubble differ from the United States, all the ingredients are there. Supply constriction has caused dizzying inflation (more than 400% in five years). Most mortgages were issued directly by property development companies (rather than through banks), without proper assessment of client risk. Investment was highly leveraged; developers, constructors, managers and sovereign wealth funds all took out huge loans; and risks were spread across derivative products, both conventional and Islamic. In anticipation of a frenzy of future projects, the sector paid inflated prices for construction materials and even – in an attempt to circumvent administrative delays – for manpower.

The whole edifice was predicated upon a continuing rise in the prices of property, raw materials and oil. But everything collapsed, leaving uncertainties about the losses suffered by the sovereign wealth funds and about how much they have borrowed against future receipts.

Meanwhile, Gulf Bank of Kuwait, the country’s second largest, collapsed after massive losses on the foreign exchange market. At a public debate in Qatar, televised by the BBC, the motion that “Gulf Arabs value profit over people” was supported by 75% to 25%, and Mansoor al-Jamri, the editor of Bahrain’s daily Alwasat newspaper, was loudly applauded when he accused the Gulf states of buying their people’s silence through state hand-outs. “I am always hearing in the media and from officials how this is not the right time for the participation of the people. They say, ‘we will give you free education and free housing, but just shut up and don’t criticise.’ The governments have a philosophy based on oil wealth, but instead of letting it trickle down to the people, they use it to silence the elite or bypass their citizens” (7).

Samir Aita is an economist and chairman of A Concept mafhoum

(1) Soren Billing, “Dubai real estate correction ‘very close’”, 28 September 2008.

(2) See Akram Belkaïd, “Fantasy cities for a future that might not come”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, August 2008.

(3) Dylan Bowman, “Half of Dubai agents sold no homes in last month”, 17 November 2008.

(4) At the Financial Leaders Forum, Doha, 16-17 November 2008.

(5) Camilla Hall, “‘Dubai dream’ May Be Over on Lower Oil Price, Citigroup Says”, 18 November 2008.

(6) Gulf News, Dubai, 19 November 2008.

I hope Abul Ghayt gets some beachfront property in Martha's Vineyard for this since he just crucified himself and his government on behalf of the US

2009-01-29T09:22:00.002-05:00

Egypt attacks Iran and allies in Arab world

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service

Jan 28, 2009 10:06 EST

CAIRO, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Egypt aired its grievances against Iran, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah, saying they worked together in the fighting over Gaza to provoke conflict in the Middle East.

"(They tried) to turn the region to confrontation in the interest of Iran, which is trying to use its cards to escape Western pressure ... on the nuclear file," Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in an interview with Orbit satellite channel broadcast on Wednesday.

Aboul Gheit also said that Egypt undermined Qatar's attempts to arrange a formal Arab summit on Gaza earlier this month, arguing that it would have damaged "joint Arab action".

"Egypt made the summit fail... This summit, if it had taken place as an Arab summit with a proper quorum, would have damaged joint Arab action. We can see what others do not see," he said.

The interview was broadcast on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning and the state news agency MENA carried excerpts.

The comments are the first acknowledgement by Egypt that it actively sought to prevent the Doha summit on Jan. 16, which was the subject of a bitter tug-of-war between rival Arab states.

It also indicated that a reconciliation meeting in Kuwait last week between Egypt and Saudi Arabia on one hand, and Qatar and Syria on the other, had only a short-term effect.

Qatar failed to win enough support to hold a formal Arab League summit on Gaza but it went ahead anyway with an informal consultative meeting of Arab leaders.

The wrangling reflected deep divisions between Arab governments. On one side Saudi Arabia and Egypt, wary of the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, favoured discussing Gaza at a separate economic summit in Kuwait a few days later.

Diplomats say Egypt resents the Qatari challenge to its traditional role as leading Arab mediator and dislikes the influence of the satellite television channel Al Jazeera, which is based in Doha and owned by the Qatari government.

"Some people imagined that a satellite channel could bring down the Egyptian state, without realising that Egypt is much stronger than that," Aboul Gheit said.

"Egypt is very big and has extensive influence despite attempts to influence this stance and role, whether in the Al Jazeera channel or other channels," he added.

The Egyptian minister also criticised Hamas for what he called its coup against the forces of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip in 2007. (Writing by Jonathan Wright; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

The Rationalization of the Syrian Firewall?

2009-01-29T09:17:00.001-05:00

Sasa from Syria News Wire reports:

Blogging unblocked in Syria
21 January 2009

One step forward, one step backwards. It looks like Blogger has been unblocked but WordPress has been blocked in Syria.

But the picture is very confusing. It doesn’t seem to be a national ban. Different ISPs are doing different things. SCS is currently providing free access to Blogger. But some WordPress blogs are blocked, and other WordPress blogs are free.

The revolving door of blocking and unblocking has happened before.

It makes a mockery of the ‘ban’. Why have a ban for some subscribers and not others? And anyway, the ways around the restrictions are easy even for the technophobe.

And if different ISPs are doing different things, it does raise the question - is this ‘ban’ coming from officials, or is this the companies making the decision? It’s a bit like self-censorship among journalists - there is no official list of banned subjects, just the list made up by every writer.

A few years ago Syria went through access bans on Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. It was a similar revolving door. One would be banned, another would be freed. But in the end, someone realised the restrictions were based more on paranoia than policy, and everything was un-blocked.

Let’s just hope this is the beginning of the same thing for Syria’s blogs.

Has the dialogue already begun?

2009-01-27T09:45:00.002-05:00

The Jerusalem Post reports that President Assad of Syria, in an interview with Al-Manar, stated that indeed some sort of dialogue has been initiated between the US and the Syrian regime:

"I believe that the dialogue began seriously weeks ago through officials close to the administration. They were sent by the administration for dialogue with Syria."

Read the rest of the article here.

BBC: Syria and the new Arab 'Cold War'

2009-01-27T09:25:00.002-05:00

Another sign that the vacuum created by the contraction of US legitimacy in the Middle East is being replaced by those Arab states NOT allied with the US. The Gaza offensive has done more to legitimize the Syrian regime than decades of "land and sovereignty" speeches. This may be the best time for the US to approach the Syrian regime, when the latter no longer feels isolated and reactionary. Although the US is unlikely to get everything it asks for in a negotiation, the Syrian regime has been relatively cooperative even without carrots (taking in Iraqi refugees, cooperation in the aftermath of 9-11, reacting peacefully to the Israeli strike last September and the more recent US attack near the Iraqi border with Syria). Damascus is again becoming a center for Pan-Arab sentiment, weakening the 'moderate' Arab states allied with the US. But this isn't necessarily bad news for the US, which might benefit from a more domestically legitimate partner in the Middle East peace process.

Syria and the new Arab 'cold war'

By Catherine Miller
BBC News, Damascus

It was standing room only at Damascus Opera House this week. Middle class Syrians packed the hall for a concert called We Shall Endure - a message from Damascus to Palestine.

Many had come for the star attraction, Marcel Khalife, one of the most famous musicians in the Arab world.

But they were also there to express their grief and anger about the war in Gaza.

"We have the same blood as the Palestinians," said one young woman. "Any drop of blood they shed, we feel it too."

That sentiment has prompted an overwhelming response from Syrians.

The opera house audience paid five times the normal price for a ticket with all proceeds going to Gaza.

And the Syrian Red Crescent has gathered more donations than any other Arab country.

Regimes out-of-step

The Syrian Government is authoritarian, and critics say it has little regard for the opinions of its citizens.

But during the war in Gaza it spoke for people here and many across the Arab world when it threw its weight behind the militant group Hamas and denounced Israel as a terrorist state.

That put it at odds with so-called moderate Arab countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Some say the bitter dispute between Arab governments made it easier for Israel to pursue its own agenda.

"The Arab people are more developed than the Arab governments and regimes," said Khalife after the performance.

"There is no problem with any Arab from the Gulf to Morocco. The problem is with the regimes not with the people."

On their knees

Syria is home to about 500,000 Palestinian refugees, who were displaced in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.

In Palestine Camp, the neighbourhood where the majority live, the green banners of Hamas flutter over the market place and the walls are plastered with posters of Palestinian gunmen brandishing their weapons.

"The Europeans and the other Arab states hate Syria because it stands with the resistance," said one man, seething with anger.

"They want Syria to be on its knees like those other Arab countries who eat and drink with the money of the West."

A crowd gathers and everyone agrees.

"If the rest of the Arab world was like President Assad," said another, "the Palestinians would have won long ago."

Proven wrong

Egypt is seen as the villain here. It is condemned for failing to open its border to Gaza and relieve the besieged people there.

"They cannot understand why Egypt has no leadership in the region and is choosing to go against the wave," says Tarek, an Egyptian working in Damascus.

He says he tries not to give away his accent to avoid discussions about Egypt's perceived betrayal.

The political elite is in tune with the street.

Samir al-Taqi, director of Orient Centre for International Studies, a think tank close to the Syrian government, says Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries who put their faith in the good intentions of Israel and the US have been proven wrong.

He believes Syria's role in the region has been strengthened.

"The Israelis and the Americans have weakened the arguments of their allies and empowered those of their enemies.

"There is disappointment from those regimes who had followed them and there's a certain hope about the resistance."

Whipped up

But others say it is too early to say who has won what has been described as an Arab Cold War.

"This struggle is far from over. It's a vicious and bitter struggle being played out," says Peter Harling, an analyst in Damascus for the International Crisis Group.

In recent months, Syria has been working hard to come in from the diplomatic cold and had opened indirect negotiations with Israel. After the war in Gaza, it suspended those talks.

"It's very difficult having whipped up the Arab street and Syria's population in particular to move back towards any kind of dialogue with Israel."

Arab governments have now made some attempts to patch up their relationships. But the mood in Damascus is uncompromising.

For people here, the ruins of Gaza are proof that the Syrians and their militant allies who kept their weapons and their distrust of Israel were right.

Sooner or later, they feel, the rest of the Arab world will have have to join them.

"Sick Soldiers Point Finger at US Contractor"

2009-01-09T09:22:00.003-05:00

If Cheney is in fact the anti-christ, what does that make KBR?

France 24 reports:

"According to Eller’s complaint, KBR dug an open air burn pit at Balad (airbase in Iraq) and burned hazardous medical waste from a camp hospital in open air close to the lodgings of US soldiers. “The pit was less than half a mile from my lodging and even closer to the hospital,” said Gogel."

I say we throw Cheney in there too - although he would undoubtedly add to the toxicity levels.

The Media and the Middle East

2009-01-09T08:17:00.002-05:00

I think most analysts would agree that the American media is one of the largest obstacles to a reasonable US foreign policy in the Middle East. The conflicts (Palestinian-Israeli, Lebanese-Israeli, Iraq, the Kurdish question, etc) and national governments (notably overly sympathetic coverage of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) are portrayed so differently to Americans that it is nearly impossible for citizens to make informed decisions or judgments on Middle East issues.

It's shameful that in a such a wealthy country, with a well-educated population, people should still be denied the basic tools necessary to make their own informed decisions - and even worse that the majority of them will never know that this has been denied them in the first place. It's impossible for US citizens to demand more comprehensive coverage of international issues if they don't know what comprehensive coverage looks like in the first place. Just one day of live streams from Al Jazeera or even a European station such as France 24, would change the way most Americans understand global affairs.

Here's some recent articles on media and the Middle East:

The Atlantic's Goldberg on why Al Jazeera shouldn't show pictures of dead Palestinians

Israel's leftist media under fire

Why Al Jazeera viewers get better coverage of conflict

Add one part failed politician to one part right-wing legal expert and you have a recipe for a NYTimes op-ed!

2009-01-05T15:18:00.003-05:00

Will someone please explain to John Bolton that international law and diplomacy do serve some purpose other than hamstringing US unilateralism. The fact that someone involved in the Bush administration is even TALKING about curbing executive power makes me want to dedicate the rest of my academic life to blogging about how poorly qualified this man is to speak on issues of politics. Every time he opens his mouth a new black hole is formed somewhere in the void to slowly begin sucking reason and rationality out of the dialogue of humankind.

At the LATimes, the real enemy is bad op-ed page editors

2009-01-05T13:40:00.003-05:00

Yesterday's LATimes has an op-ed by two Israelis (Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren) entitled: In Gaza, the real enemy is Iran: Israeli attacks must not stop until Iran's proxy, Hamas, is defeated.

By this logic, the real enemy of Israeli settlers are the Jewish diaspora (and fundamentalist Christians) living outside Israel that send them money and other resources to colonize Israel for the coming of the messiah. It's the same process: if we assume that Hamas doesn't represent the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians, but is rather just a proxy of Iran to destabilize the region, then we cannot conclude differently when it comes to Jewish settlers and their co-religionists outside the region who encourage illegal settlement growth. Thus, what Oren and Halevi should have said (but didn't) is that "In the world, the real enemy are religious extremists: and financial support for those extremists must be made illegal, WHEREVER it happens."

A New Middle Eastern Cold War

2009-01-05T13:32:00.003-05:00

From Forbes.com
A New Middle Eastern Cold War
Michael Young

I think Young’s take is largely correct (click the link above for his article), and I’m sure if he had space he would have elaborated on many of his statements. Here’s what I would add:

Egypt has little credibility with Hamas (or Palestinians in general) since their separate peace with Israel made it more difficult for other Arab regimes (notably the Palestinians themselves) to negotiate the return of their territories. Egypt also has little credibility with democratic activists in the Arab world since, despite their glowing reviews in the US media, Mubarak’s regime is just as despotic as any other in the region. The Egyptians may have gotten peace with Israel and money from the US, but they’ve lost most of their credibility with their Arab neighbors. Instead, much of their foreign policy now looks Southward – toward Sudan and the rest of their African neighbors.

Young also states that, “By most accounts, Iran and Syria pushed Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based head of Hamas's political bureau, to undermine any accord by continuing to fire rockets at Israel, making the Gaza confrontation virtually inevitable. The idea was not only to discredit the Egyptians, but also to welcome Barack Obama with a crisis making any American opening toward Iran and Syria more costly for the United States.”

I had to read this statement a few times, thinking I was misunderstanding Mr. Young, since it’s irrational for either Syria or Iran to desire to make it MORE difficult for Obama’s administration to reach out to their respective regimes. Young’s theory does make sense, however, if we assume a power struggle within the Iranian and Syrian regimes between the old guard hardliners (in Syria the old bureaucratic elite and the military and in Iran I’m assuming this would be Ahmadinijad and the Ayatollah) and a nascent group of moderate technocrats (in Syria this would include President Bashar and a number of his ministers – in Iran this would probably include only opposition figures outside the government without any real political weight).
If this is a correct reading, and indeed there are struggles within Iran and Syria for control of their countries’ foreign policies, this is even MORE reason for Obama’s administration to engage in talks, since a rapprochement with concrete benefits would weaken the hardliners in both regimes.

Young also states, “As Arabs watch events in Gaza, their first impulse is to condemn their own leaders. For decades, Arab regimes diverted valuable resources to build up vast security apparatuses justified as necessary to combat Israel. Yet Israel won all its wars, some Arab states made peace with it, but the security apparatuses remain.”
I would agree, with the caveat that this is probably their second impulse – rather they would first blame Israel and the international community for failing to make peace, which has given their regimes the necessary scapegoat for maintaining bloated security sectors. The Egyptians, who have made peace with Israel (at great domestic political costs that still resonate 30 years later) must still maintain a large security presence at Israel’s behest to stop smuggling across their border. Arabs can see through their regimes’ rhetoric, but Israel still bears most of the blame in their calculus.

What I find striking in both Young’s analysis and the analysis of most other Middle East observers is their insistence at singling out Iran and Syria as the most powerful backers of movements like Hamas and Hizbullah. To this duo of states I would also add the entire Arab population, which while mostly disenfranchised and powerless, are still a force that must be reckoned with sooner or later. Focusing on states like Syria and Iran at the expense of the region’s people is symptomatic of the failures of US policy. By engaging with the movements that Arabs see as the last front fighting against complete US/Israeli tutelage, more powerful actors like Iran and Syria could more easily pursue reasonable foreign policies while abandoning empty rhetoric about ‘sovereignty’ and ‘resistance’ and their massive militaries.

Rubin: "The Arab-Israeli Conflict is Over"

2009-01-02T13:46:00.004-05:00

Professor Barry Rubin writes in the Ottowa Citizen: "Resistance" is a favourite code word coined by Syria's regime for a program of battling for decades, sacrificing many thousand lives, using terrorism, fighting wars, and staying intransigent until final, total victory is achieved."

Replace "Syria" with "US" and "Resistance" with "War on Terror" and I actually agree with most of Rubin's article.

He points out, truthfully, that all the Arab leaders exploit the Palestinian situation to paint themselves as besieged moderates, fighting off invading armies of Islamic radicals from neighboring 'rogue' states. Predictably this gets their regimes lots of money from the West, and lets them off the hook on reforms, since stability is paramount.

Rubin's main point is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is no longer Arab in character, but includes only the Palestinians and the Israelis. It's true, most Arab regimes have abandoned the Palestinians to their fate - but their populations haven't. Arab citizens continue to demand justice for the Palestinians - perhaps democracy in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be the first step toward solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Thanks to Ricardo for the link!

Juan Cole on Fox News (Radio)

2008-12-30T09:03:00.003-05:00

So, asking John Bolton to keep up with Juan Cole in a debate on Gaza is a bit like inviting a 12th Century English peasant on Jeopardy, but Cole manages to make some good points despite the absence of a worth adversary.

Syria Edges Closer to Europe

2008-12-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

From the Institute for War and Peace Reporting

(19-Dec-08)

Officials from the Syrian government and the European Union took a step closer to signing a partnership agreement when they met in Damascus at the weekend, but analysts say more reforms – political as well as economic – will be needed to clinch the deal.

On December 14, the two sides initialed a revised version of the original partnership agreement that dates from 2004 but has remained unsigned because of political differences, such as allegations that Damascus was implicated in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.

Syria’s deputy prime minister for economic affairs Abdullah al-Dardari insisted the prospective deal would not entail Damascus making concessions on points of principle.

“We would never sacrifice any of our interests for an agreement,” he told the pro-government website Syria News on December 15.

The meeting was a sign of just how far Syria’s relationship with European states, France in particular, has warmed in recent months. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the outgoing head of the EU, has praised recent Syrian actions such as opening diplomatic relations with Lebanon and engaging in indirect peace talks with Israel.

“Syria regards the latest step [initialing of agreement] as a political victory,” said a Damascus-based political analyst who asked to remain anonymous. “After several years’ isolation, it’s very important for Syria to become a normal partner in the international and regional community.”

The analyst warned that the final agreement, which is now expected to be signed in the first half of 2009, could be derailed because there were still many conditions that needed to be met.

The agreement is mainly about trade and economic cooperation, but it comes with certain conditions, principally progress in the area of economic reform. The analyst said it was unlikely that the EU would sign the final agreement unless reforms on the table.

“For now, Syria has done nothing obvious to make it deserving of such a deal, since it hasn’t entirely stopped intervening in Lebanese affairs, nor has it made other concessions to the international community,” said the political analyst. “But the European Union would not have taken this step unless it expected that Syria was going to make certain reforms.”

The analyst said he doubted the regime would give any ground when it came to political changes, but predicted that the EU might not press as hard on this issue.

“Europeans fear any political reform in our region, maybe more than the regimes themselves,” he said. “They believe in guaranteed stability more than the less certain results of democratic reform”.

However, an economic analyst also based in Damascus said economic reform could not take place without political changes as well.

“To apply the agreement, comprehensive economic reform is needed at all levels, but that can’t happen without political reform,” he said. “The Syrian regime has lost the last four years, perhaps not deliberately, but because it tried to pursue economic reforms without instituting political reform, in an effort to protect special interests.”

These “special interests”, he explained, were those of the lucky few who had benefited from being on the inside track of privatisation as Syria tried to shift from socialism to market economics.

“Our economy used to be monopolised by the government,” he said. “When the regime started to liberate the market, the economy became monopolised by a handful of wealthy and powerful figures. This has prevented a wider swathe of society from enjoying the benefits of a more open economy”.

Even the purely economic reforms are going to be hard to manage. The limited economic opening that has taken place so far has led to a flood of imported goods, rising inflation and falling real incomes, and mounting unemployment.

After the document was initialed, al-Dardari warned that its terms could prove a threat to some industries in Syria and weaken others, although he insisted it would lead to the creation of new industries as well.

The agreement envisages a range of measures to open up the Syrian economy, for example by lifting custom tariffs on agricultural products and creating a free trade relationship with EU member states. The economic analyst said it was hard to imagine the government doing so, and that it would be unwise to abandon protectionist measures all of a sudden.

“The European Union is a market of 430 million people and our goods have to be not only keenly priced but also of a higher quality to be able to penetrate it,” said the economist. “Many Syrians could be hurt by increased competition, and the government needs to put in place some safeguards for the Syrian people before the full agreement takes effect.”

(Syria News Briefing, a weekly news analysis service, draws on information and opinion from a network of IWPR-trained Syrian journalists based in the country.)

The Upside of Living in the Woods

2008-12-30T07:56:00.003-05:00

The upside of the fact that my mother lives in the woods is that she cannot get cable, which means she also can't get Fox News, which ergo means I don't have to be subjected to that drivvle (although she did admit - only to me - that she voted for Obama). My friend sent me a post from some bloggers who "Watch Fox News So You Don't Have To" which is possibly the greatest service to mankind since Prometheus.

They have some nice highlights of John Bolton's appearance on Hannity and Colmes. This man talks about major war with such flippancy that you'd think he actually seen combat himself at some point in his life. Predictably (the biggest war mongers are always the ones who sat on their asses in the National Guard during Vietnam). Bolton famously commented, "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy." A stupid statement that would come back to haunt him as hopefully every stupid comment he has made to date will do as well.

Here's the highlights:

"I don't think there's anything at this point standing between Iran and nuclear weapons other than the possibility of the use of military force, possibly by the United States, possibly by Israel. I don't see the Bush administration doing it. So it could well come down to Israel.”

"I would use military force against Iran's nuclear program because I think that the world gets a lot more dangerous once Iran has nuclear weapons."

On Fox News radio he also calls the latest Israeli attack on Gaza (which has killed over 350 and wounded nearly 1,400) "a good start."

Nice.

2008-12-28T11:06:00.009-05:00

Haaretz analysis of Assad

2008-12-26T21:44:00.002-05:00

Haaretz correspondent Aluf Benn has written an analysis of the international community's recent warming to Bashar Al-Assad. Of course it's standard fare for Israeli and American journalists to point out the recalcitrance of Arab governments without a thought toward the baselessness of the actions of their own governments, and Benn offers just another example. He writes:

"Olmert depicts revival of the Syrian track as a courageous diplomatic move. It can also be seen differently: In a combination of bullying moves, cautious diplomacy and military restraint, the cunning Assad has driven a wedge between Israel and the U.S., and is being welcomed in Europe without making even one small gesture toward Israel or the U.S. The arms are continuing to flow to Hezbollah, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad command centers in Damascus are thriving."

I think the fact that Assad has pursued diplomatic channels in response to both the Israeli attack on an alleged nuclear facility, and more notably, the US bombing of Syrian territory that killed 8 people, are both major "gestures" toward both Israel and the US.

Is there a bureaucrat anywhere without blood on his hands?

2008-12-26T11:59:00.004-05:00

In October I thought the Republicans would either assassinate Obama or rig all the Deibold voting machines to ensure a GOP victory. Then, after the Obama appointments starting rolling out, I realized they didn't have to do either. Any Republican would be happy with the figures he has named to top posts (and indeed, most Republicans are issuing statements to this effect), including the recent appointment of Admiral Dennis C. Blair as new Director of National Intelligence. Bradly Simpson (a Professor at Princeton) wrote this excellent book on the US adventure in Indonesia based on declassified government documents, in which Blair was a key figure. The book is great (I actually found it discarded in the hallway at Maryland when one of my professors was cleaning out his office) and details, among other things, the complicity of academia in the US foray into Indonesian politics and the Chilean-esque role of economists in dictating US foreign policies. Here's a brief memo he writes on Blair's appointment.

Syria doesn't appear in the City Paper too often, but when it does, you know it's gonna be good

2008-12-22T08:07:00.002-05:00

This appeared in the "News of the Weird" section:

"Also in July, a Syrian truck driver hauling a 32-ton load from Turkey across Europe and using GPS to get him to Gibraltar, at the Southern tip of Spain, missed his destination by about 1,600 miles; he wound up at Gibraltar Point in Skegness, a bird-watching outpost in the British Isles."

Some things never change

2008-12-15T10:54:00.004-05:00

"Though the American media occupy themselves with Assad's current shift toward moderation—Syria's participation in the peace talks, its more civilized attitude toward Syrian Jews, and its seeming abstinence from anti-Western terrorism—the question remains: Given Syria's history up to this moment, do any of these policy changes really matter?"

And the best part: this is from an article published in the Atlantic in 1993!! Could've been written yesterday.

I love jokes that trivialize international conflict - cause if we didn't laugh about it we'd all end up crying

2008-11-22T12:03:00.002-05:00

"The Syrians and the Iranians will never give up the resistance - they will continue fighting down to the very last Lebanese."

It's not verbatim, but it's the overall gist. Heard it from the head of a think tank based here in Beirut.

Indiana may have went blue - but too many people in the American South are still red-blooded racists

2008-11-17T05:37:00.002-05:00

This is quite possibly the most disturbing article I have read in a long time. And best part is, it's not about the Middle East, it's about the American South. Glad I'm in Syria and Lebanon, where people aren't so racist . . . .

I'll cut and past the entire article because it's that shocking:

Election spurs 'hundreds' of race threats, crimes
Nov 15, 05:18 PM EST
By JESSE WASHINGTON - AP National Writer

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.

She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.

"I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it," said Millner, who is black. "But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.

"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.

Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."

"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out, it's in remission."

If so, America's remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.

The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama's victory.

Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.

The student's mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: "Whether you like it or not, we're in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision."

Other incidents include:

-Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.

-At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

-Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

-Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

-University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

-Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

-Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.

-A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'

-In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

Emotions are often raw after a hard-fought political campaign, but now those on the losing side have an easy target for their anger.

"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins." "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."

"We saw the same thing happen after the 9-11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by 'the white man.'"

"It's as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you've had a bad day at the office," Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."

---

Associated Press writers Errin Haines, Jerry Harkavy, Jay Reeves, Johnny Taylor and researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

Spoke too soon - some decent coverage in the Lebanese Daily Star

2008-11-12T08:32:00.002-05:00

In an article from November 8th, The Daily star reports that Hariri’s Future Parliamentary Bloc/March 14th movement supported by the West (and opposed to Syrian interference) has denied any links with the 10 men and 1 woman of Fatah Al-Islam that carried out the car-bombing that killed 17 on the outskirts of Damascus in early September. Spokesmen for the movement claimed that the truth of the confessions was questionable, and that it was a strategic move by Syria to shift pressure away from the Assad regime in the lead up to the release of findings from a continuing UN investigation into the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, expected December 10th. Spokesmen for the March 14th movement also claimed that the more likely explanation is that there are connections between Fatah Al-Islam and Syrian intelligence. Fatah Al-Islam gained notice during 2007, when it fought a deadly 15-week battle with the Lebanese military in the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon. The bombings in Tripoli are also believed to have been planned and carried out by Palestinians living in Lebanon’s refugee camps.

Coverage of Suspects Confession in Damascus Car-Bombing

2008-11-11T13:44:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately, the only decent media report I can find on the suspects arrested in the Damascus car-bombing is from an Israeli newspaper. Makes you wonder why there's no decent coverage from the Arab papers.

Lebanon cementing ties with Russia

2008-11-11T13:41:00.000-05:00

Lebanon just asked the Russians for help to liberate the occupied Shebaa Farms area (the deal for buying Russian tanks is already in the pipeline); and now Saad Hariri has stated he wants to establish relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Interesting to see how this plays out in US policy circles.

Update on September car-bombing in Damascus

2008-11-11T13:33:00.000-05:00

A new wave of arrests have been made in Lebanon in connection to the car bombing in Damascus this past September. About one week ago, the Syrian state television aired the confessions of 10 individuals (including one woman) who claimed responsibility on behalf of Fatah Al-Islam. Among them were Palestinians, Syrians and I believe some Iraqis as well. Syrians I spoke to are skeptical and don’t buy the government’s story, but some important figures (including Sami Moubayed) believe it to be mostly true. The Syrian state news also claimed that the woman admitted to having (at least financial) ties with the Hariri group (supporters of the March 14th movement and it’s current heir Saad Hariri). Lebanese claims of Syrian ‘terror’ within their borders are ubiquitous – so any claims the Syrians could make against the Lebanese would be political heroin. The Lebanese have now arrested suspects they found in Tripoli (where a recent bombing targeted the Lebanese armed forces) and a nearby Palestinian refugee camp.

The Rumor Mill . . .

2008-11-11T13:23:00.001-05:00

Heard a scary story yesterday. Apparently, a (Jewish) American has gone missing in Syria. This is the story I heard, and I have no way of corroborating it. When he arrived in Damascus he phoned up his best friend – a Syrian also living in Damascus. Unfortunately, his friend happened to be the individual who sold the car and the two cells phones to the group that assassinated Imad Mughniyeh in Kefr Sousa (a group the Syrian government believes has ties to the Mossad). Since he had ‘ties’ with the group anyone associated with him is tainted as well. Apparently his wife has been searching for him, and is getting the runaround from the authorities. If anyone has heard anything about this let me know!

Damascus Film Festival

2008-11-11T13:21:00.000-05:00

Despite the proliferation of high-end shopping centers and restaurants in Damascus movie theatres are still absent. The only cinema in town (by Sham Palace) rarely gets Western movies, and usually shows ones from Egypt or Turkey. However, in the past 3 years or so, there has been the Damascus Film Festival – this year held for a week in November, that shows Western films (from the US and Europe) several times a day at several different outlets. It’s really a grab bag of genres, from independent Italian films to movies like “What Happens in Vegas.” Could be a prelude to finally allowing the importation of Western cinema on a regular basis – which would make sense given the increasingly visible presence of every other form of imperialist vice.

Everybody loves dictator jokes . . . .

2008-11-11T13:20:00.000-05:00

One day, a Syrian lawyer decides he is fed up with the human rights situation in his country. Having had enough, he takes to the street. He carries a wooden crate to the city square, stands on top of it and begins to shout:
“Where are our civil rights?”
“Where is our freedom?
“Where is our free press?”
“Where are the schools and hospitals we were promised?”
“Where are our free and fair elections?”
“Where are you taking me? Wait, wait, where are you taking me?”

A joke about Simba (this is the code my friends use to talk about the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad because the name Al-Assad means “The Lion” and Bashar is the son of the original lion, the late Hafez Al-Assad).

So, in Syria, they practice military conscription – and it’s difficult to get out of. Those privileged enough to be members of the Alawi sect (the President’s sect) get to serve their military terms in Damascus, but almost as a rule, Damascenes who must serve in the army are sent into the hinterlands – the equivalent of sending someone from New York to live in Bangladesh for 2 years.

So – for quite some time there’s been an influx of people from the reef (the countryside) moving to Damascus after they serve their terms in the military – because for these people the military is often a source of social mobility. Well, Bashar Al Assad has a strange characteristic – the back of his head is completely flat. So those Syrians who are not lucky enough to be members of the Alawi sect say that this happens to all Alawites because their mothers hit them on the back of the head with a frying pan and say, “Get your ass to Damascus.”

I guess everyone's father is an embarrassment sometime . . .

2008-11-11T13:14:00.001-05:00

The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff for Obama has gotten a lot of coverage in the Arab press because of his Israeli ancestry, his father’s membership in the Irgun (an Israeli terrorist organization that launched attacks against British troops during the mandate period) and of course since that isn’t enough his father (Benjamin Emanuel) also took the liberty of characterizing all Arabs as manual laborers. The exact quote is: “Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.” Nice asshole –really nice.

The American Elections in Arab Eyes

2008-11-05T08:39:00.001-05:00

Excitement over Barak Obama's presidency is almost a foregone conclusion in the Arab World. Naturally, a candidate that has expressed a desire to reach out to the Syrian and Iranian regimes, after the disastrous isolation pursued by the Bush Administration, would elicit approval and hope among Arab citizens. The excitement of a highly-contested election is also predictable, since most elections in the Arab world are pre-determined by a complex network of bureaucratic and legal maneuvers that ensure the continuation of incumbent regimes. The highly criticized constitutional amendments in Egypt in 2007 were just such an example of a ruling party orchestrating election laws to ensure their own success in future contests. Add this to the notorious examples of elections with 99% approval ratings for the ruling parties in other Arab states, and the possibility of an unknowable election in a country whose policies impact the region perhaps more than their own domestic elections is predictable.
However, after decades of being disappointed by promises of engagement and holding despots to account, many of the region’s citizens are rightly disillusioned with any candidate for the US presidency. One of the dominant narratives in the region regarding Senator Barak Obama’s presidency is that his connections with Islam (his father is a Muslim) and the color of his skin will drive him to ‘prove’ himself – that is, to be even more zealous in his pursuit of the US national interest than McCain would have been. Because he is black – and he has ancestral ties to the Muslim religion, he will have to demonstrate to the American public that he is as “American” – that is, as white and as Christian – as they are. This was visible in the early Summer and Fall months of the campaign, as Obama was forced to reiterate his Christian faith in the face of comments made by his former preacher that blamed US foreign policy for the September 11th attacks. The famous statement about the “chickens coming home to roost” played right into fears about Obama’s belief in the superiority of the American cause. Arab citizens here closely followed the campaign – and didn’t miss the potential ramifications of attacks like these - most visible in Obama’s rhetoric toward Israel – a painful reminder to Arabs that the prospects for peace are constrained by the necessity of the US maintaining close ties with the Jewish state. Any time to argue that Obama will ‘moderate’ his views on the Palestinian issue now that he has secured the presidency are met with the example of Jimmy Carter – who has been incredibly vocal on behalf of Palestinian rights . . . . now that he’s no longer president .
Other Arabs I have spoke with (particularly older individuals) fear that Obama is too inexperienced, although it is difficult to say whether they truly believe this is the case or are merely reiterating what seems like a cogent qualification that other critics have leveled against Obama. The old adage that “All these people, ie: Arabs, understand is force” – is sadly reinforced by observations like these. Despite all our railing against Arab regimes that pursue stability over democracy and civil rights, there is a surprising number of Arab citizens that echo the preference for security over liberty. Obama simultaneously represents both: the potential to engage with Arab regimes and push for meaningful reforms but also the possibility of acting as a destabilizing force whose naïve belief in the goodness of humanity could be worse than Bush’s maniacal pursuit of a “New Middle East.”

Thousands of Syrian Cab Drivers Breathe Easier

2008-11-05T08:11:00.002-05:00

Syrian singer George Wassouf was released from a Swedish prison today after being found with cocaine last week and missing a concert date. Had they kept him in prison I think the demonstrations in front of the Swedish embassy would have made last week's protest against the US-bombing raid pale in comparison . . . . and they probably wouldn't have been organized by the Syrian government either.

Lebanon's very own George W. Bush

2008-11-03T09:01:00.002-05:00

Beyond the immediate similarities between Saad Hariri and George W. Bush (the fathers of both formerly held the highest political office in their respective countries) - they also share an affinity for uttering incredibly ignorant statements. Although I'm no apologist for the Syrian regime, they have made some reasonable moves in the past. But in Friday's Daily Star (the Lebanese daily) Hariri remarked that Syria should take the high road regarding US and Israeli aggression (with respect to last week's raid on the Iraqi border by US troops and the Israeli bombing of the supposed nuclear facility last September, respectively) and file complaints with the UN. Of course, Syria did file complaints with the UN over both incidents. Guess the US isn't the only place blessed with leaders who somehow manage to avoid even the most obvious and mundane realities.

Members of Syrian Political Opposition Sentenced to Prison

2008-11-03T08:58:00.001-05:00

Below article is from Human Rights Watch:
Syria: Harsh Sentences for Democratic Opposition
Damascus Declaration Trial a Transparent Bid to Silence Critics

(Damascus, October 30, 2008) – Syria’s sentencing of a dozen leading democracy advocates to more than two years in prison is the latest evidence of Syria’s repression of opposition groups, Human Rights Watch said today. The democracy activists, including doctors, lawyers, writers, and an artist, were sentenced on October 29, 2008 to 30 months in prison on politically motivated charges.

Human Rights Watch attended the sentencing session and called for President Bashar al-Assad to immediately quash the convictions and order the prisoners’ release.

In a sentencing session that barely lasted 20 minutes, the First Damascus Criminal Court, presided over by Muhieldeen Hallaq, convicted the 12 activists on vaguely defined charges of “weakening national sentiment” and “spreading false or exaggerated news which would affect the morale of the country.” The authorities had detained the democracy activists, including former member of parliament Riad Seif, after they participated in a meeting last December of the National Council of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change, an umbrella group of opposition and pro-democracy groups.

Founded in 2005, the Damascus Declaration is a coalition of political parties and independent activists whose stated goal is to build internal support for peaceful democratic change in Syria.

“In a transparent bid to silence its critics, the government is jailing democracy activists for simply attending a meeting,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The trial was a mere cover to legitimize the government’s repression of opposition groups and peaceful critics.”

Human Rights Watch said that the detention and trial of the activists was marred from the beginning. Syrian security forces held the activists initially for up to 40 days in incommunicado detention. Eight of the 12 detainees told the investigative judge that State Security officials beat them during their interrogation and forced them to sign false statements “confessing” that they planned to take money from foreign countries in order to divide the country by giving the Kurds a separate state. One of the detainees, `Ali al-Abdullah, suffered injury to his ear as a result of the beating he endured. The court did not order any independent investigation regarding the allegations of ill-treatment.

During the trial, the activists confirmed their involvement in the Damascus Declaration, but pleaded not guilty and denied the charges against them. In their defense session on September 24, the defendants expressed doubts about the trial since it was their “freedom of expression that was on trial.” Another detainee, Walid al-Bunni, a physician, told the court during his defense that “getting into the details of my defense is useless, but I will ask: what is the basis of the accusations?”

One of the defense lawyers told Human Rights Watch that the defense team will likely appeal the sentence within the required 30 days. He summarized the judgment by saying “membership in the Damascus Declaration is now criminalized.” The wife of one of the sentenced detainees who had been jailed in the past for his activism expressed her disgust at the trial. “We don’t know what to feel anymore. I don’t care if the sentence is for 2.5 years or 10 years. My husband should not be in jail in the first place.”

Syria has a long record of prosecuting political activists who peacefully express their opinions. On May 13, 2007, the Second Damascus Criminal Court sentenced four prominent activists, including prominent writer Michel Kilo and political activist Mahmud `Issa, to periods varying from three to 10 years in prison for “weakening national sentiment” after they signed a declaration calling for improved Lebanese-Syrian relations.

Syrian security services have a significant influence in the trials of political activists, whether before the criminal courts or exceptional courts. While they often exercise such influence behind closed doors, in some instances evidence has emerged in public, as in the 2007 trial of Dr. Kamal al-Labwani, founder of the Democratic Liberal Gathering. In that trial, the head of National Security sent a letter to the Minister of Justice asking him to charge Labwani with “communicating with a foreign country and inciting it to initiate aggression against Syria” even though the prosecutor had not initially included such a charge. The court ended up sentencing Labwani to 12 years in jail under a charge that was added at the request of National Security.

Background on the ‘Damascus Declaration’ and Syria’s crackdown on critics

The Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change (“Damascus Declaration”) is a coalition of political parties and independent Syrian activists created in October 2005. It consists of individuals and groups from different political backgrounds (Arab Nationalists, Kurds, liberals, leftists, Islamists) who issued a statement of principles, including the establishment of democracy in Syria, lifting of the state of emergency, protection of minority rights, release of all political prisoners, abolition of Law No. 49 (which makes membership in the Muslim Brotherhood punishable by death), and upholding of international human rights standards.

The National Council was established as a follow-up body for the Damascus Declaration. On December 1, 2007, more than 163 activists from the Damascus Declaration held a meeting to elect the leadership of the National Council. They elected as president Dr. Feda’ al-Hurani, a physician and daughter of Akram al-Hurani, a prominent Syrian politician who was highly influential in Syrian politics from the beginning of the 1940s until his exile in 1963.

Starting on December 9, 2007, Syrian security services began a crackdown on individuals who attended the meeting, arresting more than 40. While they released most without charge within a few days, they kept 12 members in detention and referred them to trial. These 12 are:

1. Walid al-Bunni, 44, physician;
2. Yasser al-`Eiti, 40, physician and poet;
3. Feda’ al-Hurani, 51, physician;
4. Akram al-Bunni, 51, writer;
5. Ahmad To`meh, 51, dentist;
6. Jabr al-Shufi, 60, Arabic-literature teacher;
7. `Ali al-`Abdullah, 58, writer;
8. Fayez Sarah, 58, writer and journalist;
9. Muhammad Hajji Darwish, 48, businessman;
10. Marwan al-`Ush, 52, engineer;
11. Riad Seif, 61, former member of parliament; and,
12. Talal Abu Dan, 55, artist and sculptor

Article 38 of Syria’s Constitution guarantees the right of every citizen to “freely and openly express his views in words, in writing, and through all other means of expression.” As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Syria has an international obligation to uphold the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly as well as the right to a fair trial.

Quotes from the defendants during their September 24 defense session

“I am not optimistic for the judgment … as I think that we are not being tried by this court, but from a power that relies on the state of emergency and the security services.”
– Riad Seif, 61, former member of parliament

“To end the state of emergency and the martial courts and to improve public freedoms – especially freedom of expression – are necessary conditions to improve the living situation of the Syrian citizen.”
– Dr. Feda’ al-Hurani, 51, physician

“I was tried for political reasons before. But this trial is different, because it is a trial of individuals who wanted to exercise their right to express their mind.”
– Akram al-Bunni, 51, writer

“Our arrest and trial is the best indication of the authorities’ refusal of any peaceful and gradual reforms required to resolve Syria’s problems.”
– `Ali al-`Abdullah, 58, writer

“The right to freedom of expression is a sacred right, and to give it up is to give up one’s humanity, and I defend my right and the right of any Syrian citizen in his freedom of expression.”
– Yasser al-`Eiti, 40, physician and poet

“The heart of this case is whether the authorities will accept the culture of dialogue and recognize different opinions.”
– Jabr al-Shufi, 60, Arabic-literature teacher

“It is difficult today to judge someone for his thoughts after democracy has become the way to determine people’s opinions and ideas.”
– Ahmad To`meh, 51, dentist

“Getting into the details of my defense is useless, but I will ask: what is the basis of the accusations?”
– Walid al-Bunni, 44, physician

“This is a trial of thoughts and concepts more than a trial of individuals. I don’t see that this court is trying me – rather it is trying every free mind in this country.”
– Talal Abu Dan, 55, artist and sculptor

“Even though I know that the court is not neutral, I say: any judgment is akin to a medal on my chest that I gift to my sons. Therefore I do not ask for clemency but for justice.”
– Muhammad Hajji Darwish, 48, businessman

Possible Coordination between CIA and Syrian Intelligence in Bombing Raid

2008-11-03T08:39:00.004-05:00

Although I haven't heard this anywhere else, Professor Moshe Moaz suggests possible collaboration between CIA and Syrian Intelligence in the raid that killed 8 Syrians in the Syrian-Iraqi border town last week. Short story here in the Jerusalem Post (which is blocked in Syria - but accessible from Beirut). The reasoning is that there was no Syrian military response to the raid - which would probably have triggered at least some sort of skirmish had the Syrian regime not pre-approved the operation. So far the only response to the killings have been a mass demonstration (tens of thousands of protesters) and the closing of the American School and American Cultural Center until further notice. The embassy also closed for one day due to increased security concerns. Most of my Syrian friends believe the protest was orchestrated by the government. This is quite commonplace, government officials pass out signs and pictures to protesters, who are mainly gathered from among employees of public sector factories, civil servants and students at the state-run universities.

Department of the Interior Employees Exploring the Privates of their Private Sector Counterparts

2008-09-10T23:49:00.002-04:00

So, in addition to windfall profits, government subsidies and shady tax write-offs, oil company employees are also into hookers and blow. Nice.

Dictator Jokes

2008-09-09T23:25:00.003-04:00

I love dictator jokes - and although I'm not creative or thoughtful enough to weave them into an amazing text on seditious politics I can record them here so we can all get a laugh.

Joke #1

So, Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak (the first two make a posthumous appearance but after all it's a joke) are all in a cab together headed to a conference on the future of Egyptian reform. They come to a fork in the road and the cab driver asks which way to go. Nasser says "left," Sadat says "right," and Mubarak says, "no just stop here."

Joke #2

The Yemeni ambassador travels to the villa of his Italian counterpart for a diplomatic visit. The Yemeni ambassador is impressed with the opulence of the Italian's residence and asks him how he managed to build such a place on a diplomat's salary. The Italian responds, "Look out the window. See that bridge over there? Well, I skimmed a little off the budget for that bridge and built myself this house." The Yemeni ambassador nods in approval. A few months later the Italian ambassador pays a visit to his Yemeni colleague. He's surprised to find him living in a palatial mansion. "How did you afford such a place?" the Italian ambassador asks. "See that bridge over there?" the Yemeni ambassador asks pointing out the window. "I don't see any bridge," the Italian responds. "Of course not" the Yemeni says, "if I had built the bridge I never would have been able to afford this house."

That's all my tired mind can come up with right now - but I'll post them as them come flooding back . . . .

The Roots of 'Foreign Subversion' Conspiracies in the Middle East? - Actual Foreign Subversion

2008-09-07T16:31:00.003-04:00

"Foreign Subversion" is probably the first English phrase any Arab politician learns, and is the explanation for everything from peasant resistance to childhood vaccines (they obviously cause sterility) to curbing media freedom (Israel will infiltrate Syrian Facebook groups). Next to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it's the number two reason Arab regimes give for maintaining archaic restraints on human freedom. "Irrational appeals to conspiracy theories" could just be another footnote in some Orientalist publication on the Arab Mind, but turns out, they're not so irrational after all.

Statistics Don't Lie But Corporate Interests Groups Do

2008-09-05T09:00:00.003-04:00

I am SO sick of business interest groups running these ridiculous commercials that criticize the US for supposedly having "the highest corporate tax rates among OECD countries." Everyone knows (including the jerks who are running these advertisements) that loopholes in the US tax laws in fact result in much lower tax rates for corporations in the US than in European countries and Japan. Most corporations don't even pay income taxes (the result of a perverse interpretation of the 14th amendment that allows corporations to be granted rights as 'individuals' under US law). What taxes they do pay comes from the paychecks of their employees (and I think we've all seen in the last few years that the more money executives make the more they can pay their accountants to hide it in offshore accounts). It disgusts me that these groups can run these commercials that are in essence lying to the public (especially to the public that hasn't had the fortune of a higher education in economics). Here's a link that explains in detail why US corporate tax rates are NOT in fact higher than those elsewhere in the developed world.

When it's good to just keep your trap shut

2008-09-04T18:34:00.002-04:00

A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry warned that, "Europe should be very careful in its relationship with Syria." Sounds a lot like the British foreign ministry in the 50s convincing the US government not to negotiate with Mossadegh - and we all know how well that turned out . . . .

Despite the fact that the article is about French-Syrian talks, you can read all about the Israeli government's constructive input here.

NYTimes: Israeli Settlements Grow at Double the Rate of Last Year

2008-08-26T10:06:00.003-04:00

When US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice found out that Israelis are constructing illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank at twice the rate they were last year (not only in violation of EVERY peace accord ever negotiated but also in violation of the US plan for peace), she said this 'did not advance the cause of peace' and 'ought to be avoided.' That's like telling Robert Mugabe that 'we'd appreciate it if you didn't send death squads into the street to murder supporters of the political opposition' or saying to Bashir (Sudan) 'it would be nice if you would stop ordering your paramilitary troops to plunder, rape and pillage the black Africans in the South.' How about Condi grows a pair of stones and demands that the settlement construction be stopped or we won't send all those new missiles and sensitive technologies to Israel that we just agreed to (which is probably responsible for sparking the Syrian purchase of new, more advanced missiles from Russia). If our leaders won't even stand on the side of justice when an ally abrogates every peace agreement they ever signed, then it's time for new leaders.

Here's the full article

Big Brother gets in on the Telecom Game

2008-06-15T07:22:00.003-04:00

If you've traveled before and bought a SIM card for your international phone (since the US refuses to join the GSM revolution and provide customers with phones that can be used elsewhere) you probably had to give them a photocopy of your passport. Well, now Egyptians have to provide identification to use their phones as well.

"The National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority requested that mobile phone operators block service to anonymous subscribers as a public security measure. Vodafone, Mobinil and Itisalat have reportedly started disabling text-messaging capabilities for anonymous subscribers. The measure has affected several hundred thousand customers who did not register their names and addresses when they bought phone lines."

Critics claim this is to monitor political opposition - so phones used to send mass SMS messages to organize protests/strikes, etc. can be monitored. Regimes are always a little behind politically motivated youth in discovering technologically sophisticated ways to engage in political opposition - looks like they're finally catching up.

Buried in the back pages of the NYTimes - this is why peace is elusive

2008-06-15T06:39:00.003-04:00

"Israel announced plans to build 1,300 more houses in East Jerusalem, angering Palestinians who warned that such plans threatened chances for a peace accord by the end of the year. The announcement brought to more than 3,000 the number of houses that Israel has approved for construction since the renewal of the peace talks on land that Palestinians think should be part of a Palestinian state. Palestinian negotiators condemned the latest plan, while Israeli officials said that most of the proposed housing would be on land that Israel has already annexed."

Yes, East Jerusalem is supposed to be Palestinian Jerusalem (the other half of Jerusalem for the Jewish population). This in addition to the leaked White House memo that gave Olmert the go-ahead to build more Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

I visited the Israeli Embassy about one month ago (shortly before I left for Egypt). The meeting was meant to be a briefing of the political situation in Jerusalem for the undergraduate students with whom I was traveling as a teaching assistant. Instead of a briefing we got an introductory class in propaganda (which was either extremely insulting: ie, the Israeli diplomat thought we were all so ignorant of Middle East politics as to believe the BS he was spouting, or extremely flattering: ie, the same diplomat thought some of us had some connections with the foreign policy establishment that would merit him taking the time to try to indoctrinate us). Either way, the theme of the talk was that the conflict with the Palestinians was a tertiary matter and that Ahmadinijad's Iran was a modern day incarnation of Nazi Germany (and yes, he did make this explicit comparison). He basically said that if we don't get off our pacifist-Middle class-social justice-seeking petards and bomb Iran the whole world will soon be in flames. Where do they find these people?

Fixing Egypt's Educational System

2008-06-15T06:03:00.002-04:00

One of the legacies of Nasser's social policies was a state-funded educational system that is free to all those who achieve qualifying scores (which makes the dreaded secondary school exams in Egypt the biggest event in many students' lives). Their scores on these exams determine which school they attend (Cairo University being generally considered the best of the public schools) and which faculties they will be placed in (Engineering, Computer Science being the most coveted, Law and Education being closer to the bottom). The upside is that education is free for all (in contrast to the US system where higher education costs are skyrocketing). The downside is that the schools are overcrowded (about a quarter of a million students in each of the major state universities); the faculty are severely underpaid (which either means they can't get good faculty or they have to moonlight with menial jobs to make ends meet). When I recently visited some of Egypt's universities during exam time even the hallways of the universities were filled with desks to accommodate students.

Another result of the overstretched state education system is that students have to supplement their public education with extra fee-based courses (like computer certification programs run by private businesses) in order to set them apart from their colleagues. There is also a recent proliferation of for-profit private universities being established by wealthy entrepreneurs to serve Egypt's upper class. I visited one of these universities recently (Future University: pictured here) and it had state-of-the-art equipment for its medical and engineering schools and very nice lecture halls with stadium seating. Of course these schools are only available for the uber-wealthy - with tuition being around $5,000/year, much more than most Egyptians take home in a year.

Dumbing Down Democracy

2008-06-13T08:50:00.002-04:00

I've seen a couple of condemnations of this NYTimes article floating around the blogosphere. The primary criticism is that it seems to suggest that Egyptians harbor some nationalist pride that is hurt when foreign leaders criticize their own government. My estimation is that this is incorrect - it isn't that Bush criticized some beloved figure in Hosni Mubarak - it was that Bush deigned to criticize the Egyptian government for actions the US is also guilty of (human rights abuses in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, supporting Israel's blockade of Gaza, funding corrupt Arab regimes, financing secret prisons in Eastern European countries, etc.) I have spoken with a few government officials and numerous academics: the bottom line is that Bush's remarks are condescending (his speeches are littered with words like "teaching," "tutoring," "nurturing," and "fostering)." If the Bush administration is setting any example at all it is to flout international law and consensus and pursue unilateral foreign policy without regard to international norms. One government official said Bush: “spoke as a professor trying to give lessons.” And this was directly after leaving Israel to celebrate its 60th Birthday (at a time when Egyptian support for Israel's blockade of Gaza is a particularly contentious subject in the domestic political scene).

Strikes in Egypt - Gaining Ground or Losing Out?

2008-06-13T07:27:00.003-04:00

There seems to be two distinct views of the recent waves of strikes in Egypt. One side cites the relatively low turnout of the planned strikes that took place several weeks ago. This side also points to the decline of the public sector (where most union activity historically took place) and the resentment of the official state-sponsored labor unions run by discredited regime touts. The private sector, so goes the reasoning, is much less amenable to unionization not only because it can be grounds for dismissal, but also because these factories are often isolated (far away from city centers where political activity is at its highest) and smaller than their public sector predecessors. They also claim that the government has given in to public sector strikers (usually for an increase in wages) in attempts to mollify the workers before the plant is privatized - thus paving the way for the disappearance of the unions altogether.

The alternative view is that the wave of strikes is something new (not seen since the middle of the century) and combined with the bread riots and the skyrocketing cost of living, presents a generally new direction in state-labor relations. The decline in standards of living, combined with the increasing poverty level (from 16% in 2000 to almost 20% in 2005), the police presence and repression of political dissent, and the regime's unpopular policy to police the border with Gaza (to buttress the Israeli regimes blockade of Palestinians) seems enough to spark major social unrest, whether in the form of labor strikes or protests with the main political opposition, the Muslim Brothers.

Gender in the Middle East

2008-06-13T06:38:00.003-04:00

Gender in the Middle East is a perennial hot topic, and there's a few topics that come up again and again (women in the workplace, family planning, women in Islam, etc.) But one strange policy I've noticed is that groups of young men are not allowed into certain establishments unless they bring an equal number of young women with them. I first encountered this in Lebanon in Monoe (sp?) where groups of foreign men from AUB would ask us (the girls) to go with them to neighborhood bars so they could get in. I noticed it again when I booked a reservation at a jazz club in Cairo - the reservation system said "couples only" - and explained that too much testosterone ruins any party (which I wholeheartedly agree with).

But this policy does belie a more systemic problem: too many unemployed or underemployed young males with too much time on their hands. The higher education system in Egypt (although free to all those who achieve qualifying grades on their secondary school exams) is very poor, and the job market is too small even to accommodate those who graduate with the necessary skills. The result is large roving bands of shabab getting in street fights and otherwise causing trouble. I have noticed an inordinately large number of sports clubs (gyms) - maybe this is an effort to deal with the problem?

The Police

2008-06-10T14:08:00.003-04:00

The police are everywhere! We've been to five universities since we've arrived, and armed personnel and paddy wagons (anywhere from 1-3 vehicles) have been stationed at the main gates to all the public universities (higher education in Egypt is free – with the exception of AUC – where I saw the most guards). The one exception was the Future University – a for-profit private school established to serve the wealthy families of the New Cairo Developments. In contrast to the public universities, with their aging infrastructure, inadequate facilities and low-paid faculty (some universities have around ¼ million students) – the new private universities look like space age monstrosities: the one I visited was built in the shape of the Roman Coliseum, but with silver steel accents and blue tinted windows. In addition to the campus installations, there's lookout towers everywhere (although the windows are so dirty I don't see how they do much looking). There's also guards stationed along the expressways, up on perches that make them level with the road (they're in little white cubbies that remind me of something you'd find in the children's reading room at a library).