Jahan Salehi – Page 11

Patrick Seale, “Challenges Facing the Arabs”

July 5, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

Rarely have the leaders of the Arab world – its rulers, opposition activists, intellectuals, economic planners, bankers, major businessmen — faced so many challenges as in this summer of 2011. Everything is changing before their eyes, both inside Arab societies and in the world outside.

Among the host of bewildering problems, two stand out. The way these problems are tackled and resolved will affect the Arab world for decades to come. They demand careful reflection and bold action.

The first and most obvious problem is that posed by the revolutionary wave sweeping across the region. The key question is this: how to make sure that this exercise of “people power” has a positive rather than a negative outcome. In other words, how to make sure that the tremendous energies released by the “Arab Spring” will lead to a just, stable and prosperous Arab world rather than to violence and chaos.

The second problem relates to the change in American and European strategic priorities. There seems no doubt that the United States and its Western allies are slowly but surely disengaging militarily from the Middle East and Central Asia. The Western security umbrella which has been a feature of the region since the Second World War is being gradually withdrawn. This process has already begun in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The vast U.S. bases in the Gulf are also an anachronism, which may not long survive.

The United States is war-weary and bankrupt. Its debts total $14.5 trillion, equal to 100% of its GDP. For it to spend $900bn on defence and military operations this year is unsustainable. It is disengaging from the Arab and Muslim world in order to focus its energies on China, its global rival. President Barack Obama’s failure to impose a two-state solution on Israel sends a clear signal of American weakness and is a reminder of the extent to which pro-Israeli activists have taken control of America’s Middle East policy. It is sheer folly for the Arabs to depend on the U.S. to solve the Palestine problem.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. deployed 500,000 men to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Those days are long past. The Iraq and Afghan wars — both defeats of a sort for the United States in which many terrible crimes were committed — have robbed the Americans of any appetite for Middle Eastern adventures. This means that the United States will not attack Iran — even if it reaches a nuclear threshold. But nor will it allow Israel to drag it into war against Tehran — as Israel and its American friends managed to do against Baghdad in 2003. That lesson has been learned.

As far as the Arab Spring is concerned, the situation can be roughly summed up by saying that Tunisia, where the popular uprising started, is ahead of the others in the transition to a more representative system. Because of its large, well-educated middle class, and because of the modernising legacy of former President Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia seems well equipped for institutional change. It could provide a model for other countries.

In Egypt, a peaceful transition may be more difficult to achieve because of Egypt’s own inherent problems: the crippling demographic explosion, the intractable economic problems, the heavy-handed powerful remnants of past military regimes. Yet success in Egypt is essential — for itself and for all the Arabs. Without a strong Egypt — under strong representative management, firmly committed to Arab causes — the whole Arab world will be enfeebled, as the history of the past thirty years has demonstrated.

Libya’s immediate future is, for the moment at least, in the hands of the Western powers. They intervened militarily, allegedly to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar al-Qadhafi’s violence but in reality to end his autocratic and cruel regime. This may well prove to be the last armed intervention by the West in an Arab country for the foreseeable future.

More immediately relevant to Arab fortunes is the situation in both Yemen and Syria. A stable Yemen is vital to the security of the Arabian Peninsula, and a stable Syria is vital to the security of the eastern Arab world. The loss of life in both these countries is greatly to be regretted. By resorting to violence, the rulers in both countries grossly mismanaged the protest movement. Violence invariably breeds violence. The killing must stop.

Yemen’s President Ali Abdallah Saleh, now convalescing in Saudi Arabia, will very probably never return to rule in San‘a. He squandered his reputation and tarnished his legacy by clinging far too long to power. In Syria, the hope is that a National Dialogue, due to be launched this month, will result in the passing — and implementation — of new laws allowing for political parties, freedom of assembly and a free media; the curbing of police brutality; the release of political prisoners and the emergence of a truly independent judiciary. In a word, there has to be a restructuring of the apparatus of power.

In passing judgment on Arab regimes facing popular protests — in Bahrain and Morocco, as well as in the ones mentioned above — we need to remember two lessons from history. The first is that democracy is not built in a day or a year, or even in a generation. In most Western countries it has taken one hundred or two hundred years. A democratic system has to be built brick by brick, beginning with participatory institutions which reflect, respect and defend the rights of ordinary citizens.

The second lesson is that non-violence is a far more effective strategy than force in persuading autocratic regimes to change their ways. The activists of the Arab Spring would be well advised to heed the message of a man like Abd al-Ghaffar Khan, a former Muslim political and religious leader in the Indian sub-continent who preached non-violent opposition to British rule. He was highly influential, is still revered, and is often compared to Gandhi.

The Arabs must take their own destinies in hand. They must look to their own protection. Out of pure self-interest, the oil-rich monarchies must help their poorer brothers. The responsibility of Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s dominant power, is very great. Its prime task must surely be to use its wealth to save the Arab Spring from collapsing into chaos while strengthening its own hand with new alliances. A wide-ranging partnership with Turkey could be of great benefit to the Arabs, as would a sincere dialogue with Iran — a dialogue untainted by sectarian hates and fears.

With the world changing around them, the Arabs need whatever help they can get. They must nurse the Arab Spring to a successful outcome; they must see to their own defence as the Western security umbrella is gradually withdrawn; they must protect the Palestine cause from fanatical Israel settlers, far-right politicians and Israel’s powerful friends in the United States; and they must protect Arab and Muslim interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where American intervention has been disastrous. Quite a programme!

Summer is a time for reflection. Arab leaders — both those in power and those aspiring to power — have a great deal of serious thinking to do.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

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Released: 05 July 2011

Word Count: 1,182

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Patrick Seale, “An Exit Strategy for Afghanistan”

June 28, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

America’s exit from its costly 10-year war in Afghanistan has begun. This is a welcome step. But will it be peace with honour? That is far from certain. Much remains unclear about the longer-term outlook.

Two recent developments have changed the picture for the better, if not yet as radically as some would like. First, it has been announced in both Washington and Kabul that talks with the Taliban leadership, or at least contacts of some sort, are underway. German mediators are thought to be playing a role. Secondly, President Barack Obama has announced a fairly bold timetable for American force withdrawals, defying some of his hard-line military advisers who had argued for a more cautious drawdown.

Of the almost 100,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan today, 10,000 are to return home this summer, another 23,000 by September 1912 (in time to have an impact on November’s presidential election) and many of the remaining 67,000 by the end of 1914, when Afghan forces are due to assume responsibility for their country’s security.

The fly in the ointment is that there is talk of some 20,000 American soldiers remaining in Afghanistan at permanent U.S. bases. No doubt the intention is that they will continue to play a counter-terrorist role in both Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. But this could prove seriously counter-productive, as it will arouse bitter opposition in both Iran and Pakistan, and no doubt in Afghanistan as well.

But that is to look too far ahead. The current message from Washington is that U.S. disengagement from the AfPak theatre of war has begun. Driving the withdrawal is America’s patent war-weariness. American politicians of both parties have grasped that the American public is fed up with what has come to seem an unwinnable conflict and wants out. Deficit-ridden America, wrestling with high unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure, can no longer afford the exorbitant cost of the Afghan war. The bill for the last decade has topped $450bn, with $120bn spent last year alone. Expenditure on the war is currently running at $2bn a week!

Obama is well aware that this must stop. But his policies are still plagued by contradictions and plain muddle. The dominant view in Washington is that the Taliban must first be weakened, if not actually defeated, before serious negotiations can succeed. This was the argument behind the ‘surge’ in U.S. troop numbers which Obama agreed to last year. But the Taliban have proved resilient. They may have fallen back here and there in the face of overwhelming U.S. pressure but their hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings are more frequent and lethal than ever. They have also pushed their tentacles into northern provinces well beyond their Pashtun heartland. Killing their leaders by missile strikes may raise a cheer but it has resulted in more radical commanders taking over, younger men even less inclined to negotiate than their elders. In a word, the policy of “kill them first and negotiate afterwards” has been a failure.

Should Obama have been bolder? The following are some steps he might have taken — and still could:

• Call for an immediate ceasefire to create the right atmosphere for peace talks. Once the guns fall silent, negotiations could be held in Afghanistan itself, or in Turkey or Qatar, countries with a proven record of mediation.

• Summon all Afghanistan neighbours — whether the United States likes them or not — to an international conference at which all aspects of the Afghan problem would be discussed and everyone’s interests in the country addressed, so that the outlines of a deal could emerge. The aim would be to get all Afghanistan’s neighbours, near and far, on board.

• Follow up the international conference with a loya jurga, a major tribal gathering attended by all Afghan factions, at which the details of the internationally-backed peace deal could be thrashed out and finalised.

• Encourage President Hamid Karzai to appoint a commission to draft an urgently-needed new Afghan Constitution. The present highly-centralised presidential system does not suit a country of diverse regions and ethnic communities.

• Pledge that all U.S. and allied forces would be withdrawn once the peace deal was implemented.

• Promise to fund a major ten-year aid package, to be disbursed once peace takes hold.

There are several obstacles to such a peace strategy, most of them the result of America’s mistaken policiess.

Iran The Islamic Republic of Iran has a frontier of nearly 1,000 kms with Afghanistan, over which it keeps a close eye. It needs to guard against raids by al-Qaida and other Sunni jihadis, stem the inflow of Afghan drugs, and protect communities in Afghanistan to which it is allied, whether for religious or ethnic reasons. Iran is so deeply involved in Afghan affairs that there can be no satisfactory settlement without its help and approval. Yet, rather than engaging with Iran on Afghanistan and other matters, the United States has followed Israel’s lead in seeking to cripple it with sanctions, subverting it wherever possible, and demonising it as a grave danger to American interests and to mankind at large. Only Iran’s hard-line clerics have benefitted from this aggressive policy. In the grip of special interest groups, Washington seems incapable of thinking clearly about Iran. Its hopes for a satisfactory outcome in Afghanistan must suffer accordingly.

Pakistan The United States has treated Pakistan shabbily — violating its sovereignty with clandestine operations (like the killing of Osama bin Laden) and with its numerous drone attacks against Islamic militants which inevitably result in civilian deaths. The result has been to arouse fierce hostility to the United States. The country has been gravely destabilised by America’s ‘war on terror’ and has had to confront a ferocious terrorist assault at home largely because it has seemed to be fighting America’s war against its own people.

The United States gives Pakistan billions of dollars a year to fight jihadis and lectures it for its ambivalent attitude towards such Islamic militants, refusing to recognise that Pakistan feels it needs the militants to protect itself against Indian encroachment in Afghanistan once the U.S. withdraws. Like Iran, Pakistan is essential to any Afghan settlement. But it will play its part in reaching one only if its interests are understood and addressed.

Afghanistan President Karzai and his ruling group of warlords and corrupt businessmen have been spoiled rotten by the billions of dollars which the United States has poured into Afghanistan. The deluge of funds has become addictive. Much of the money has been wasted or has ended up in private pockets. Karzai’s puzzle is how to survive without this bonanza. He seems to hope that renting military bases to the U.S. in the future will keep the money flowing.

A well-directed aid programme aimed at providing jobs for young Afghans by developing the country’s extensive mineral resources would surely be a better way to spend American tax dollars than waging a destructive and increasingly pointless war.

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Released: 28 June 2011

Word Count: 1,147

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Patrick Seale, “Asad Sticks to His Guns”

June 21, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

All those dreaming of — and working for — ‘regime change’ in Syria will be outraged by President Bashar al-Asad’s speech last Monday, 20 June. They want him out, together with the hate figures around him who have been conducting the brutal repression of the protest movement. But he is not stepping down. He intends to stay on — and to fight on.

Asad gave no ground to his political enemies. The speech was not, in fact, addressed to them. It was addressed to Syria’s ‘silent majority’ which — or so the President continues to believe — aspires to security, stability and national unity, and is terrified, above all, of a sectarian war on the Iraqi model.

The President explained that, in order to understand the nature of the crisis, he had held several meetings in recent weeks with citizens from all parts of the country. He wanted to hear directly from them. The conclusion he had reached was that there were several different components to the protest movement.

First, there were those who had legitimate demands, who wanted justice, democracy and jobs, and the resolution of problems which had accumulated over decades. Their demands could not be ignored. He intended to address them and had already started to do so. But then there were the others — the criminal outlaws, the blasphemous intellectuals who spoke in the name of religion, the vandals, conspirators and paid agents of foreign powers. Under cover of the protest movement, they had taken up arms against the state!

These conspirators, he said, had called for foreign intervention, they had smeared Syria’s image and destroyed public and private property. They had no respect for state institutions or the rule of law. No reform was possible with such vandals.

He dismissed the argument that Syria was not facing a conspiracy. There was a conspiracy, he declared – designed abroad and perpetrated inside the country. How else to explain the satellite phones, the advanced weapons, the guns mounted on trucks in the hands of his enemies? Syria had always been a target of conspiracy. He had long been under pressure to abandon his principles. (No doubt, by this he meant his Arab nationalist convictions, his alliance with Iran and Hizbullah, his opposition to Israel and the United States.) Syria needed to strengthen its immunity against such conspiracies, he insisted.

In this defiant speech, President Asad made no mention of the abuses of his security services — the callous use of live fire against civilians, the killing of well over a thousand protesters, the deployment of tanks to besiege rebellious cities, the mass arrests, the beatings and the torture, the flight of terrified refugees across Syria’s borders — a catalogue of outrages which has shattered Syria’s reputation and earned it international condemnation. The refugees in Turkey should return home, he said. They would not be punished. The army would protect them. But those who have had a taste of army brutality may not be persuaded by the President’s assurances. He did, however, have a word of condolence for bereaved mothers.

The heart of Asad’s address was a statement of his ambition to shape a new vision for Syria’s future. Reform, he declared, was his firm conviction. His one big idea — the centrepiece of his speech — was a plan for a National Dialogue. A special authority had been set up to work out the necessary arrangements for this great debate, which he hoped would provide for the widest possible popular participation. The task was to create a forum where far-reaching political and economic reforms could be discussed, so that legislation could then be drafted and passed into law. There could be no giant leap into the unknown because decisions taken now would affect Syria for decades to come.

The speech will disappoint all those who had hoped for immediate and dramatic reforms. The President served up a diet of words rather than of actions. He did mention, however, that elections would take place in August, and that among the bills to be discussed would be a new electoral law, a law allowing for the formation of political parties, a media law, a law to give greater powers to municipal authorities, and the need to amend or even entirely rewrite the Constitution. He seemed to be indicating that the notorious Article 8 of the Constitution, which gives the Ba‘th party a “leading role in state and society,” might be scrapped.

This may well prove hard to achieve. Having enjoyed a monopoly on the political scene since 1963, Syria’s Ba‘th party has long since become rigid and Stalinist, and is probably incapable of sharing power with other parties. More battles lie ahead.

To all but his diehard political enemies, President Asad seemed thoughtful and even conciliatory. He did not look like a leader battling for survival. No doubt, the credits outweigh the debits in his personal profit-and-loss account. He knows that he need fear no foreign military intervention: After Libya, no Western power would even contemplate it. Some soldiers have defected to the rebels, but there has been no major split in the army or the security services, or in the regime itself. Whatever disputes and dissensions there may have been in the ruling circle have been carefully hidden from view. He knows that so long as they remain united, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the opposition to topple him.

At the UN and elsewhere, Syria enjoys the protection of Russia — perhaps concerned for its naval base at Tartus. The Russian view is that the Syrian crisis poses no threat to international peace and security. China, India, South Africa and Brazil all side with Syria. At home, the country will not face starvation — this year’s wheat harvest is estimated at 3.6m tons. Oil and gas exports have so far not been affected.

On the debit side, however, tourism has collapsed; inward investment has dried up; the increase Asad has decree in the salaries of government bureaucrats is estimated to cost $1bn a year — driving the government deficit to dangerous heights. If the crisis continues much longer, Syria will need a large cash injection from somewhere, and is probably looking to Qatar. Then there is the unpredictable factor. What if the protests continue and become more violent? Will the merchant middle class, the backbone of the regime, remain loyal? Could the economy take the strain? What might next Friday bring?

I was reached this week on the phone by a well-placed Syrian, close to the regime. “Western condemnation of Syria is pure hypocrisy,” he fumed. “Every regime in the world will try to destroy its enemies. Have you heard of a place called Abu Ghraib? Or the hundreds of thousands killed by America in Iraq? Or Israel’s massacre in Gaza? Or the 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails? If the U.S. and Israel can get away with large-scale killing and torture, why can’t we? They claim to act in self-defence, so do we!”

It would seem that lawlessness and contempt for human life are contagious.

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Released: 21 June 2011

Word Count: 1,166

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Patrick Seale, “Washington Wrestles with Afghan Options”

June 6, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

What is President Barack Obama’s biggest foreign policy headache? Is it China’s emergence as a global rival? Is it the tricky relationship with a sullen Russia? Is it holding back a belligerent Israel from attacking Iran? Or is it America’s failure to pressure Israel to make peace with the Palestinians and the damage this must inevitably cause to U.S. relations with the whole Arab world, and especially with the young revolutionaries of the “Arab Spring”?

There is little doubt that these highly important questions preoccupy a great many people in Washington. But they are overshadowed by an even more difficult and more urgent problem: what to do about Afghanistan.

America’s Afghan war has now lasted ten years, with no end in sight and no credible exit strategy. NATO has deployed 140,000 men in Afghanistan, of which 100,000 are American. Combat operations are planned to continue until the end of 2014, if not beyond — in other words, for another three to four years of agony. So far, some 1,500 American service men and men have been killed in action in Afghanistan and another 11,500 wounded.

These casualties are painful enough, but the really spectacular figures are in dollars rather than in lives. The war has so far cost the United States $420bn (about half the cost of the catastrophic Iraq war.) The bill in Afghanistan for this fiscal year alone is estimated at $113bn, with another $107bn earmarked for 2012. These are colossal sums. If spent on job creation they could have transformed the Arab world or Africa. They could have resolved the Palestine refugee problem, brought drinking water to millions, eradicated diseases, and much else besides. They could have done great things in repairing America’s own dilapidated infrastructure. But they have been squandered on an unwinnable war. In the words of Senator John Kerry, expenditure on this scale is simply “unsustainable,” especially at a time of America’s soaring federal deficits.

Not the least of the many absurdities of the Afghan war is the $28bn the United States has spent beefing up the Afghan army, which now numbers close to 350,000 men. The Pentagon has asked for another $12.8bn for 2012. But who will pay for this inflated army when the U.S. withdraws? No Afghan government could conceivably afford such a luxury. Will the U.S. be condemned to foot the bill for the foreseeable future?

The situation in Afghanistan cannot be separated from the almost equally dire situation across the border in Pakistan: hence the American appellation of ‘Afpak’ to describe the joint theatre of operations. These two fragile states, one of them a nuclear power, are home to some 200 million people, many of them poor, angry and extremely hostile to America because of the death and destruction which war has brought to their lives. The danger of large-scale social and political chaos is ever-present.

Most observers of the Afghan scene agree that there is no military solution to the conflict, only a political one. But how, when and by whom can this solution be brought about? The Obama administration does not seem to have put its mind to answering these questions with sufficient urgency. The argument in Washington tends to be about force levels in Afghanistan, rather than about peace.

Vice-President Joe Biden is known to favour a reasonably rapid drawdown of U.S. forces. He was none too keen on a ‘surge’ in U.S. forces in the first place, although Obama went ahead and agreed to send an extra 30,000 men. Another leading adviser who expressed doubts to Obama about the wisdom of maintaining high force levels in Afghanistan was General James Cartwright of the Marine Corps. Obama liked and respected him and intended to nominate him to replace Admiral Mike Mullen as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But Cartwright has been passed over. His mistake was to take his advice straight to the President without informing Admiral Mullen and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, both enthusiastic backers of the troops’ surge. The job of chairman of the Joint Chiefs — in effect chief military adviser of the President — is going to General Martin Dempsey, at present head of the U.S. army. Cartwright has paid the price and is retiring.

General David Petraeus, overall commander in Afghanistan, was the leading advocate of the ‘surge’. He was evidently hoping to replicate in Afghanistan the success he had with a ‘surge’ in Iraq. But Petraeus is due to leave Afghanistan in September when he takes over as director of the CIA.

These different views illustrate the current disputes in Washington and among its allies. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a powerful voice in the current debate, opposes a reduction in America’s force levels. “To reduce the force would be a mistake,” he told Britain’s Financial Times in an interview published on 31 May. “We don’t want to leave a security vacuum in the country after we have gone.” His argument was that “maintaining high military pressure [on the Taliban] facilitates the reconciliation process.” In the view of many experts, this is a highly doubtful conclusion. Rasmussen’s motives are suspect. His main concern would seem to be to maintain NATO’s prestige. He may think that anything like a scuttle out of Afghanistan would damage the Alliance’s image.

Whereas Rasmussen favours continued counter-insurgency operations requiring large numbers of men, other experts recommend that the United States should switch its focus to counter-terrorist operations, which require only small hard-hitting teams, such as the one which killed Bin Laden.

Others still argue that it is utter folly for America to hunt down and kill the Afghan Taliban since they are the very people with whom a political settlement will eventually have to be negotiated. On this view, an atmosphere suitable for peace talks should be created by reducing missile attacks by unmanned drones, as well as air strikes and night raids on residential areas, all of which inevitably kill civilians. A NATO air strike on 28 May killed 14 Afghan civilians, including 11 children, aged 2 to 7. A furious President Hamid Karzai issued a ‘last’ warning to NATO to cease such attacks. NATO made an apology. But the damage was done.

In an article in the International Herald Tribune on 24 March, Lakhdar Brahimi, a former UN special representative for Afghanistan, and Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. under secretary of state, recommended that a “neutral international facilitator” be appointed to explore with all potential parties the possibility of a negotiated end to the conflict. The facilitator, they wrote, could be a person, a group, an international organisation, a neutral state, or a group of states.

A settlement, they added, would require making room for Taliban representatives in central and provincial governments as well as guaranteeing that foreign forces would be withdrawn. Financial aid would be necessary — no doubt only a fraction of what the war is costing — as well as some way for the international community to keep the peace and enforce any agreement reached.

This is the voice of wisdom. So far, however, Obama seems to give more weight to the war-mongers among his advisers than the peace-makers. He has failed to make peace between the Arabs and Israel. Is he to fail in Afghanistan also?

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Released: 06 June 2011

Word Count: 1,203

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Patrick Seale, “The United States Is Losing Pakistan”

May 31, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

The U.S. and Pakistani governments seem to be heading for a divorce full of recriminations. So great are the divergent objectives and lack of trust between them that Pakistan seems to be contemplating moving out of America’s orbit altogether and into China’s embrace.

America’s decision — without informing Pakistan or seeking its help — to send a hit-team deep inside Pakistani territory to kill Osama Bin Laden may have proved to be the last straw. Pakistan’s leaders are furious. Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani declared that any future action “violating the sovereignty of Pakistan” would lead to a complete review of military and intelligence cooperation with the United States.

Added to this, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani expressed fulsome praise for China on a visit to Beijing in May. China, he said, was a source of inspiration for the Pakistani people, while Chinese premier Wen Jiabao declared that “China and Pakistan will remain for ever good neighbors, good friends, good partners and good brothers.”

As well as cooperating in the military, banking, civil nuclear and other fields, Pakistan wants China to build a naval base and maintain a regular naval presence at the port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. This has alarmed the United States, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Worried at Pakistan’s drift away from Washington, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton hurried to Pakistan for a few hours on 27 May in an attempt to patch things up — but apparently with little success. This is because the row over the killing of Ben Laden is only the latest chapter in a long narrative of mutual misperceptions.

CIA missile attacks by unmanned drones against alleged ‘terrorist’ targets inside Pakistan invariably end up killing civilians, and arousing furious anti-American sentiment. The Pakistan parliament has denounced these strikes as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and demanded a permanent halt to them. Some parliamentary members warned that Pakistan could cut supply lines to U.S. forces in Afghanistan if drone attacks continued.

The extent of hostility towards America was on display following an incident on 27 January when Raymond A Davis, a covert CIA officer, shot and killed two Pakistanis in a crowded street in Lahore. Pakistani popular opinion wanted him hanged. It was only with great difficulty that the U.S. managed to secure his release. But the idea took root in Pakistan that the United States. was deploying a secret army against Islamic militants in the country. The Pakistan army has demanded that the number of American military personnel in the country be reduced. Relations between the CIA and Pakistan‘s Inter-Service Intelligence directorate (ISI), headed by Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, are said to be tense.

At the heart of the U.S.-Pakistani estrangement lies a profound disagreement about everything to do with Afghanistan, especially how to deal with radical factions, such as the Taliban. Not content with having eliminated Bin Laden, the United States wants to hunt down and destroy any remnants of Al-Qaida and other militant groups, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan – and even in places further afield like Yemen. Obsessed with the danger of terrorist violence, the U.S. has been unwilling to recognise that Arab and Muslim hostility to the United States springs mainly from its own catastrophic wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan itself, with their heavy toll of civilian casualties, and from its blind support for Israel.

Suspecting Pakistan of complicity with Muslim radicals, the U.S. insists that it should join in America’s own anti-terrorist campaigns. It would like Pakistan to break relations with Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Afghan Taliban; with the Jalaluddin Haqqani network (now run by Jalaluddin’s sons, Sirajuddin and Badruddin); and with the Lashkar-e-Taiba — a militant group considered responsible for the devastating Mumbai attack of 2008.

But Pakistan sees the matter very differently. Created as a refuge for Indian Muslims after the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, it feels under permanent threat — mainly from India. Many in its government consider that its national interest demands that it maintain close links with the Taliban and other radical Afghan Muslim networks as useful allies once U.S. forces go home – as they will sooner or later. Troop withdrawals are due to start this July.

Pakistan is determined to exercise a degree of control over Afghanistan for two reasons. First, to prevent the realization of the Pashtun dream of a ‘Greater Pakhtunistan’ astride the Durand Line, since this would mean the loss of Pakistan’s Pashtun-inhabited North-West Frontier Province. The fact that Afghanistan still refuses to recognise the validity of the Durand Line — which divides the Pashtuns — keeps such Pakistani fears alive.

Pakistan is still smarting from the loss of Kashmir to India in the 1947-48 war, followed by the loss of East Pakistan – now Bangladesh — in the 1971 war. It dreads further amputations of its territory. Rather than pressing Pakistan to sever its ties with militant groups, the United States would be better advised to quieten Pakistani fears by putting pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

The second reason why Pakistan is determined to keep Afghanistan within its own orbit is to prevent it falling under India’s influence, as this would result in Pakistan being encircled. Islamabad sees Afghanistan as its “strategic depth.”

The U.S.-Pakistani disagreement over Afghanistan serves to reinforce a deep-seated Pakistani suspicion that America is not a faithful partner but one which abandons its allies once they cease to be useful. Throughout the 1980s, the United States — with help from Pakistan and funding from Saudi Arabia — recruited, armed and trained tens of thousands of Muslim volunteers to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. But once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, the U.S. lost interest in these mujaheddin. Finance for them was cut off. They were abandoned to their fate. Many were not wanted in their home countries. Osama Bin Laden recruited them into al-Qaida.

The paradox is that Pakistan has in recent years been pressured to do America’s bidding in making war on militant Islamic groups — in its own country if not in Afghanistan — and has paid dearly for it. Not only have military operations against these militants been extremely costly for Pakistan in men and treasure, but they have also provoked lethal retaliation from groups such as Tahrik-e-Taliban in the form of suicide bombings and other attacks. Pakistan’s internal security situation is now dire, and its economy gravely damaged. It is wrestling with a soaring budget deficit, frequent power cuts and a growing danger of political and social chaos.

On 22-23 May, a militant team raided Pakistan’s Mehran Naval Station in the heart of Karachi, the country’s economic capital, killing 12 security officers and destroying two high-tech Lockheed Martin maritime surveillance aircraft. The militants said the raid was to avenge Bin Laden’s killing. Minister of Interior Rehman Malik concluded that the country was in “a state of war.”

Pakistan thus finds itself under pressure from the United States to fight the militants, and under attack from the militants for waging America’s war for it. The United States gives Pakistan, a country of 180 million people, $3bn in annual aid, rather less than it gives to Israel, with a population of 7 million. Little wonder that some leading Pakistanis have come to think that their country would be better off without the exorbitant encumbrance of this American connection.

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Released: 31 May 2011

Word Count: 1,221

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Patrick Seale, “Obama’s Collapse to Israeli Pressure”

May 24, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

President Barack Obama’s failure to stand up to Israel’s land-hungry prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has bitterly disappointed opinion in the Arab and Muslim world. It has confirmed the belief that Washington has sold out to Israeli interests.

Heralded as an attempt to extend a hand of friendship to the democratic wave in the Arab world, Obama’s speech on 19 May was met in the region with indifference or derision. The Arab-Israeli peace process is now thought to be all but dead.

Obama’s weak-kneed approach has alarmed some European leaders. They now have to consider whether it is time for Europe, in defence of its own security interests, to break ranks with Washington and adopt a tougher stance towards Israel. One can only wonder what David Cameron, Britain’s Prime Minister, said to Barack Obama on this subject when the latter visited the UK this week.

In his speech, Obama threw a bone to the Palestinians by saying that the borders between Israel and Palestine ‘”should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” But when Netanyahu made furious objection, he snatched the bone back. Addressing AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby, last Sunday, Obama sought to correct what he complained was a wrong interpretation of his words. “Mutually agreed swaps,” he said, meant “that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.” In other words, the drawing of the border was to be left to a negotiation between a lion and a mouse.

There was no hint in his speech of any U.S. action to implement the vision of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, living side by side in peace and security. Instead his remarks were widely seen as a further demonstration, if one were needed, of the way pro-Israeli interests have taken control of America’s Middle East policy.

It is now clear to most independent observers that Netanyahu wants land, not peace. He and like-minded Greater Israel ideologues will not yield to persuasion. Only serious pressure — even a threat of sanctions — might yield results. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers already live beyond the 1967 borders, and settlement construction in the Occupied Territories is proceeding apace. On the very eve of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, Israel defiantly announced the construction of 1,500 new homes for Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem.

But, as he campaigns for re-election next year, Obama has evidently decided that he cannot expend hard-won political capital on the unpopular cause of Palestine. The Congress is overwhelmingly pro-Israeli, AIPAC and The Washington Institute, its sister organisation, are powerful pressure groups, and American Jews are major contributors to Democratic Party campaign funds.

Cairo was the only Arab capital where Obama’s speech attracted some favourable comment because of his offer to Egypt of $1bn in debt relief and an additional $1bn in loan guarantees. But as Saudi Arabia’s English-language Arab News commented acidly on 20 May: “If Obama wants our trust and friendship, then he must work on the one area where he has failed so disgracefully to deliver — Palestine… We do not want American bribes. He can keep his cash. The US economy needs it more than we do.”

Consider what Obama actually said in his 19 May speech. To Israel, he offered the following important commitments:

• “No peace can be imposed,” he said. This is familiar short-hand for saying that Israel will face no U.S. pressure to allow the emergence of a Palestinian state.

• “Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations won’t create an independent state…. efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure.” With these words he announced his opposition to the Palestinians’ plan to seek recognition for their sovereign state at next September’s meeting of the UN General Assembly. By saying that the United States would “stand against attempts to single [Israel] out for criticism in international forums” he indicated that the U.S. would continue to use its veto in Israel’s favour — as it did astonishingly last February, when it vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning settlement expansion, the very policy the U.S. had itself favoured until that moment!

• In his speech to AIPAC, Obama described the Fatah-Hamas agreement as “an enormous obstacle to peace.” Adopting Israel’s objections as his own, he said that “No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organisation sworn to its destruction.” Needless to say, he made no mention of the fact that Israel had tried to destroy Hamas when it invaded Gaza in 2008-9, leaving 1,400 Palestinians dead.

• Obama repeated the mantra that “our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable.” To AIPAC, he repeated the U.S. commitment to guarantee Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) — that is to say its ability to confront and defeat any Arab threat. He made no mention of security for the Palestinians or indeed for Lebanon, which has suffered repeated Israeli aggressions and invasions. Any future Palestinian state, he said, should be “non-militarized.” Clearly, in Obama’s vision, none of Israel’s neighbours has the right to defend itself.

• On the subject of Iran, Obama reaffirmed America’s opposition to Iran’s “illicit nuclear program and its sponsorship of terror” — remarks straight out of Israel’s propaganda book.

Obama listed what he described as America’s “core interests” in the Middle East as follows: “Countering terrorism.” (Together with its backing for Israel, America’s brutal interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen are the main causes of terrorism.) “Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.” (This is a pledge which Arabs will see as maintaining Israel’s regional monopoly of nuclear weapons. The Israeli daily Haaretz has reported that the United States has secretly pledged to enhance Israel’s nuclear arsenal.) “Securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region.” (Arabs and Iranians will ask who, apart from Israel, might threaten the security of the region.) “Standing up for Israel’s security.” (This is clearly an overriding American interest.) “Pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.” (This has so far been a total U.S. failure.)

Addressing the Arab world, Obama declared that “we know that our own future is bound to this region by the forces of economics and security, history and faith.” But there was nothing in his remarks that offered Arabs and Muslims the slightest assurance of America’s good intentions.

On Iraq, he said that “we have ended our combat mission,” but he made no mention of the troops he plans to leave behind. On Afghanistan, he claimed that “we have broken the Taliban’s momentum.” But the Taliban’s ever more lethal attacks suggest that nothing is less certain. He took pride in the killing of Osama Bin Laden — a “mass murderer” who was engaged in the “slaughter of innocents.” But he failed to recognise that the innocent victims of America’s wars — and indeed of Israel’s as well — are infinitely more numerous than the men and women Al Qaida has killed.

If Obama truly wants a better relationship with the young men and women driving the “Arab Spring” he had better think again.

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Released: 24 May 2011

Word Count: 1,164

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Patrick Seale, “Obama Emerges Stronger from Security Reshuffle”

May 17, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

What can one learn about America’s future direction from President Barack Obama’s choice of security advisers? As has been widely reported, he has reshuffled his team, thereby consolidating his own position as the final arbiter of American foreign and security policy.

Obama’s authority received a considerable boost from the recent killing of Al-Qaida’s leader, Osama Bin Laden — America’s number one enemy. The successful operation consecrated the President in American public opinion as the uncontested Commander-in-Chief. It is expected that his position will now be further strengthened by the reshuffle of his advisers.

Obama’s first term has been marked by his having to cope with formidable challenges: He has wrestled with a financial crisis unprecedented in modern times, with a soaring deficit, with persistent unemployment, with the fall-out from the severe setback at mid-term elections suffered by his Democratic Party, and much else besides. But he is now beginning to look more confident.

In the absence — so far at least — of a credible Republican opponent, Obama seems well positioned to win a second presidential term at next year’s elections. He has already begun campaigning and has watched his approval ratings climb in the polls.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates, 68, a powerful veteran of defence and intelligence matters, is shortly to retire. Having been appointed to the job in 2006, when he replaced Donald Rumsfeld in George W Bush’s administration, Gates has been something of a law unto himself. He spent 26 years at the National Security Council and the CIA, where he served as Director under President George H W Bush. It is thought that his departure will give Obama a freer hand, especially in dealing with the contentious issue of trimming the Pentagon’s titanic budget.

Gates is to be replaced as head of the Defence Department by Leon Panetta, 73, Director of the CIA since 2009. The son of Italian immigrants who used to own a restaurant, Panetta has had a long career as a Democratic politician, lawyer and professor. He served as chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House from 1994 to 1997. Washington insiders say that he will serve Obama faithfully and will not challenge the President’s policy choices.

In what looks like a game of musical chairs, Panetta is to be replaced as head of the CIA by General David Petraeus, 59, at present commander of the 140,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Before leading the fight against the Taliban, Petraeus was head of the U.S. Central Command in 2008-2010 and, before that, commanding-general in 2007-2008 of the Multinational Force in Iraq, where his ‘surge’ was credited with turning the tide against the insurgents. With a PhD in international affairs from Princeton, he is considered one of the most intellectual soldiers in the U.S. army.

There has been much speculation about whether Petraeus has presidential ambitions. He denies it. At any rate, he will have his hands full at the CIA. He will face no competition from his nominal superior, James Clapper, 70, a retired Air Force lieutenant-general who, as Director of National Intelligence for the past year, has surprised observers by some apparently ill-informed comments on Arab affairs.

Tom Donilon, 56, remains the President’s National Security Adviser, a job he was given less than a year ago. A former lawyer and lobbyist, his career has been largely spent helping Democratic candidates get elected. He has little or no military experience, and is not thought to be a heavy-weight.

Admiral Mike Mullen, 65, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is due to leave his post next October and is expected to be replaced by his number two, General James Cartwright, 62, who is regarded as a highly intelligent and thoughtful officer. And as Robert Mueller, 67, ends his ten-year term as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on September 4, Obama may ask him to serve further, or fill the post with a man of his choice.

These then are Obama’s key security advisers. There seems to be no-one among them who might overshadow the President or contest his views. The question being asked in European capitals is whether his stronger position might encourage the President to confront Republican and other hawks and make bold decisions in line with what were thought to be his instincts.

Will he now pull all U.S. forces out of Iraq, rather than leave a substantial number behind in different roles? Will he use the pretext of Osama bin Laden’s death to promote negotiations with the Taliban and speed up the withdrawal of allied forces from Afghanistan? Will he seek to conciliate opinion in Pakistan and Yemen by calling a halt to the inflammatory, and often counter-productive, missile strikes by drones? Will he at last close Guantánamo? Will he seek to reverse the militarisation of American foreign policy which has been such a feature of recent decades?

Above all, will he dare confront Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and his phalanx of powerful American lobbyists and supporters, and insist, with all the power at his command, on a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Few observers expect a positive answer to any of these questions. Indeed, a contrary view of Obama’s reshuffle is that it will lead to still further progress towards what has been called the “militarization of intelligence.” Putting a general such as David Petraeus at the head of the CIA suggests precisely some such development. In other words, we are likely to see an increase, rather than a reduction, in covert U.S. operations abroad — in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere — operations in which it is difficult to distinguish between military personnel and intelligence agents.

In late April, the New York Times reported that in September 2009 General Petraeus signed a secret ‘Executive Order’ authorizing U.S. Special Operations troops to carry out reconnaissance missions and build up intelligence networks throughout the Middle East and Central Asia to “penetrate, disrupt, defeat and destroy” militant groups and “prepare the environment” for future U.S. military attacks.

What does this mean? Obama has often claimed that the United States is not at war with Islam, and will never be. It is a pledge he has often made but which has yet to be translated into action. Indeed, rather than setting the U.S. on a conciliatory path towards the Arab and Muslim world, it looks as if Obama may have been won over to a more robust approach — of which the killing of Osama bin Laden is a striking example.

Is it surprising that some observers now see little difference between Barack Obama’s Middle East policy and that of George W Bush?

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Released: 17 May 2011

Word Count: 1,107

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Patrick Seale, “Rule of Law or Law of the Jungle?”

May 10, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

The killing of Osama bin Laden on 1 May by a team of U.S. Navy Seals sends a brutal message to the world that the execution of America’s enemies takes precedence over any consideration of morality or international law. For daring to attack the United States — an act of lèse majesté, the medieval crime of violating majesty — Al-Qaida’s founder had to be hunted down and exterminated, however long it took and at whatever the cost. Might is right.

Other governments will note the example set by America — an example that might also be copied by non-state actors, and even by aggrieved citizens. After all, Americans are not alone in having national interests, legitimate grievances and enemies they wish to bury. Others, too, can claim the right of self-defence, overriding legal or ethical constraints.

Israel has been doing so for decades. As a matter of deliberate policy, it has carried out numerous extra-judicial killings of its political enemies, and appears to have no qualms about violating the sovereignty of other countries. In a recent blog, the American lawyer John Whitbeck reports that General Shaul Mofaz, a former Israeli chief of staff known for his tough tactics, has claimed the credit for inspiring America’s assassination strategy. Mofaz is now chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs committee.

If states can resort to terrorism with impunity in order to kill their enemies, political leaders must be prepared to face the same rough ‘justice’ at the hands of the followers, friends or relatives of their victims. What if a hit team of Iraqi Ba‘thists, for example, seeking to avenge the wanton destruction of their party, their army and their country, were to track down and kill George W. Bush, Tony Blair and, more particularly, the neo-con ‘architect’ of the Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz? Would that be terrorism or justice? What if a Pashtun tribal leader were to decide that the director of the CIA should pay with his life for the drone attacks that have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians in the tribal areas of Pakistan? Would that be terrorism or justice?

Would America not have been better served had it upheld the rule of law in Abbottabad rather than resorting to the law of the jungle?

Terrible and tragic as was the fate of the 3,000 victims of 9/11, they are not the only ones to be mourned. In seeking to punish Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida for its attack on America’s heartland, the United States waged wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan — wars which are thought to have caused about a million deaths, not to mention the wounded and the displaced, and all those whose lives have been shattered by the massive disturbance and material destruction of these conflicts. The dead from these misguided wars cry out for vengeance from the grave. Whether they are Iraqis, Afghans or Pakistanis, they, too, are mourned.

Just as America’s outrageous torture of ‘unlawful combatants’ in Iraq and elsewhere gave a blank cheque to Arab tyrants and others to torture their own citizens, so the assassination of America’s number one enemy will encourage others to resort to the same lawless methods.

He appears to have been gunned down in front of his family. His 12-year-old daughter witnessed the scene. His wife was shot in the leg and another woman was killed. Bin Laden did not hide behind them or use them as human shields. He was unarmed. Bin Laden may have been loathed and feared as a terrorist, but many will see the way he was shot as a ‘hit’ — an assassination pure and simple.

What if American Special Forces have surrounded his house, once they had discovered where he was hiding, and asked the Pakistani authorities to arrest him and hand him over for trial? That would have had the great advantage of not violating Pakistani sovereignty and of not causing grave offense to the Pakistani army and intelligence services, as well as to public opinion in that country. Pakistani officials have described the American raid as “unauthorised and unilateral,” while the army has warned that any repeat of such an operation would affect relations with the United States. It is likely that Pakistan will now reduce its anti-terrorist cooperation with the U.S. and seek instead to strengthen its ties with China. It will certainly continue to befriend Afghan jihadist groups so as to have allies there to defend its cause against India, once U.S. forces withdraw.

U.S. President Barack Obama has made a meal out of this shabby episode, milking it for all it is worth. He has claimed the credit for personally ordering the CIA to find Bin Laden. We were told that he then took the ‘gutsy’ decision to attack the compound where he was living. The President followed the assassination in real time and enjoyed wild applause when it proved successful. He visited Ground Zero, paid tribute to the fire-fighters, and decorated the Navy Seals. His popularity has soared and his chances of re-election have been greatly enhanced.

In my (no doubt minority) view, Obama must now redeem himself for the killing by putting his heightened prestige to good effect. He should announce an early withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, call a halt to drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen; invite China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran to form an Afghan contact group to sponsor urgent and intensive negotiations between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the Taliban, with a view to the formation of a national unity government. It would also be greatly to America’s advantage — both politically and financially — to reduce its military presence in the Arab world. Its many bases in the Gulf, in particular, serve little purpose. They merely exacerbate local tensions, especially those between the Arabs and Iran.

Above all, if the United States is to regain some goodwill in the Arab and Muslim world, Obama must have the courage to stand up to Israel’s right-wing government and its many American friends and lobbyists. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is due in Washington later this month. He has been invited to address a joint session of Congress. This should be Obama’s opportunity to upstage him with a clear statement that America will use all its influence and all its power to bring to birth a viable and independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem, living at peace and security side-by-side with Israel.

The American President knows very well what needs to be done. He must be ready to use his new-found political capital to draw the poison from a conflict that has claimed countless victims and plagued the world for more than six decades. It is America’s failure to do so that has helped create the Bin Laden’s of this world.

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Released: 10 May 2011

Word Count: 1,129

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Patrick Seale, “Is This the End of the Assad Dynasty?”

May 5, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

The disturbances started in mid-March in Daraa, a southern city on the border with Jordan, when a dozen children were manhandled, arrested and carried off to Damascus for scribbling hostile graffiti on a wall. Distraught parents came down into the street to vent their anger at such heavy-handed brutality. They were soon joined by others. The uprising had begun and soon spread across the country. No doubt it was inspired, in part at least, by the display of people power which has leapt with contagious speed from one country to another, shaking the foundations of Arab autocracy and giving a great jolt to the immobile political order in the Middle East.

In Syria, the authorities then made what may prove to be a fatal mistake. In a move that looked like panic, the security forces used live fire against the protesters — and have continued to do so. By the end of April, over 550 people had been killed in different locations around the country, while many more were wounded and possibly two thousand arrested. With little reliable information coming out of Syria it is impossible to be certain of the figures. The state used particular violence against Daraa, a poor city in an agricultural region which has suffered from government neglect and crippling drought in recent years. As if to punish it for initiating the troubles, tank fire was used to quell the protests and something like a siege put in place. Electricity and water were cut off and food became scarce.

The deaths in Daraa and elsewhere — and the emotional funeral processions that followed — have clearly aroused great rage in the population and a thirst for revenge. President Bashar al-Assad’s legitimacy has been eroded. A strident call is ringing out increasingly for the fall of the regime. The president is now fighting for his political life and for that of the regime put in place in 1970 by his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad.

Forty-one years in power

The rule of the Assads, father and son, has now lasted 41 years, a score comparable to that of other long-lasting Arab autocrats, each apparently determined to be a président-à-vie. In no other part of the world have so many rulers clung so assiduously to power. Bashar appears genuinely to have believed that the Arab nationalist ideology he inherited, his opposition to Israel and his support for resistance movements such as Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, gave him immunity from popular discontent. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on 31 January, he claimed that Syria could not be compared to Egypt. “Why is Syria stable,” he asked, “although we have more difficult conditions? Egypt has been supported financially by the United States, while we are under embargo by most countries of the world. We have growth although we do not have many of the basic needs for the people. Despite all that, the people do not go into an uprising. So it is not only about needs and not only about reform. It is about the ideology, the beliefs and the cause that you have. There is a difference between having a cause and having a vacuum.”

Unfortunately for Bashar, this analysis has proved wrong. As if caught unawares, his first public speech on 30 March was a public relations disaster. It was delivered to an obedient parliament, which interrupted him repeatedly with acclamation and crass plaudits. In an aside, he seemed to concede that external crises had distracted him from making the reforms he had intended when he first took office. In a second speech on 16 April to his newly appointed cabinet, he announced the lifting of the hated state of emergency, in force since the Ba’ath Party seized power in 1963, and the abolishing of the dreaded Special State Security Court. But even these moves came to seem half-hearted when it emerged that demonstrations could only be held with prior permission from the interior ministry.

The difficult and perilous task Bashar now faces is nothing less than the profound restructuring — under great popular pressure — of a fossilised system of governance inherited from his father, but which is no longer appropriate to the modern age, and no longer tolerated by the bulk of the population. Like other Arabs, Syrians want real political freedoms, the release of political prisoners, an independent judiciary, the punishment of corrupt bigwigs, a free press, a new law on political parties allowing for genuine pluralism (and the cancellation of article 8 of the constitution which enshrines the Ba’ath Party as “the leader of state and society”), and an end, once and for all, to arbitrary arrest, police brutality and torture.

Can Bashar meet these demands? Does he have the will and ability to do so? Can he hope to prevail over the entrenched interests of his extended family, of his intelligence and army chiefs, of powerful figures in his Alawite community, of rich Sunni merchants of Damascus traditionally allied to the Assad family, and of the small but powerful “new bourgeoisie,” made rich by the transition from a state-controlled to a market-oriented economy, over which he has himself presided in the past decade? All these disparate forces want no change in a system which has brought them privilege and wealth. Above all, can Bashar change the brutal methods of his police and security forces? Could anyone in just a few weeks hope to change habits of repression ingrained over half a century, and indeed far longer? (For autocracy is not an Assad invention.)

The Bashar years

Until the outbreak of the crisis, Bashar al-Assad had little or nothing of the menacing pose of a traditional Arab dictator. His manner was modest and, at 45, he looked astonishingly young. His tall willowy frame has none of the robustness of a fighter, while his gaze, questioning and often perplexed, has none of the certainties of a man born to power. He was a young doctor studying ophthalmology in London when the accidental death in 1994 of his elder brother, Basil, an altogether tougher character who was being groomed for the succession, propelled him somewhat reluctantly onto the political scene.

The country he came to rule in 2000 seemed backward in an increasingly globalised and technologically advanced world. His first reforms were therefore financial and commercial. Mobile phones and the internet were introduced. Private schools and universities proliferated. In 2004 private banks and insurance companies were allowed to operate for the first time, and a stock exchange was opened in March 2009. A political and economic alliance was forged with Turkey (and visas abolished), which allowed trade to grow along that border, benefiting Aleppo. The Old City of Damascus was revitalised, ancient courtyard houses restored and hotels and restaurants opened to cater for the growing number of tourists. Before the crisis erupted, Syria was negotiating to join the World Trade Organisation and conclude an association agreement with the European Union.

But Bashar’s years in power seem to have hardened him. He developed a taste for control — control over the media, over the university, over the economy (through cronies such as his exorbitantly rich cousin Rami Makhlouf), control over society at large. Free expression is not allowed. Political decision-making is restricted to a tight circle around the president and security services. Like his father, Bashar clearly does not like to be pushed around or to seem to yield to pressure. Even so, many Syrians still support him in the belief that, as an educated, modern and secular ruler, he is better placed than most to bring about necessary change.

At the time of writing, Bashar still seems to have a chance, if a slim one, of stabilising the situation and perhaps earning a further spell in power — but only if he calls a halt to the killing of protesters and takes the lead of the reform movement, and in effect carries out a silent coup against the hardliners.

But it may well be too late for that. Indeed, Bashar may already have lost authority to men like his brother, Maher al-Assad, commander of the regime’s Republican Guard, who seems to advocate crushing the protests by force. If the army and the security services remain loyal, it will be difficult for the opposition to unseat the regime. But there have been ominous rumours of army defections as well as reports that some members of the Ba’ath Party have resigned.

It needs to be recognised that the Assad regime does have determined enemies, at home and abroad, who conspire against it in the neighbouring countries — Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and also Israel — and among Syrian exiles in London, Paris and the US. These enemies have smelled blood. Riding on the turbulent wave of popular dissent, they will not easily give up. According to US diplomatic cables, released by WikiLeaks and published in mid-April in The Washington Post, the State Department secretly financed a London-based network of Bashar’s opponents to the tune of $12m between 2005 and 2010.

A continuous whole

It is probably fair to view Bashar al-Assad’s term of office and that of his father as a single continuous whole. Not only did Hafez al-Assad decide that Bashar should succeed him, but he also bequeathed to him an autocratic system based on an all-powerful centralising presidency, and a set of principles and external allies and opponents which together determine Syria’s foreign policy. Bashar’s whole career — like that of his father before him — has been shaped by Syria’s contest with Israel. Syria has had to live, fight and survive in a hostile Middle East environment shaped by Israel’s overwhelming victory over the Arabs in the 1967 war, its seizure of extensive Arab territories including Syria’s Golan Heights and its subsequent close alliance with the United States, which put in place a sort of dual US-Israeli regional hegemony from which Syria and its allies have sought to free themselves ever since. The 1973 war waged by Egypt and Syria to recover lost territories and force Israel to negotiate a global peace had some initial success but failed to realise its objectives. Instead, Egypt made a separate peace with Israel in 1979 and was removed from the Arab line up. The rest of the region was then exposed to the full force of Israeli power.

Looking to its defences, Syria established a partnership in 1979 with the newborn Islamic Republic of Iran. And once Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in a bid to expel Syrian influence, destroy the PLO and bring Lebanon into its orbit, Syria found local allies among the Shia resistance movements of South Lebanon — of which Hizbullah became the most prominent. Waging a guerrilla war, and benefiting from logistical support and weapons from Iran and Syria, Hizbullah managed to force Israel out of South Lebanon in 2000, after an 18-year occupation. From this was born the Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah axis, which over the years grew into the principal regional challenger of the United States and Israel.

Both the United States and Israel have done their utmost to disrupt this axis and prevent it acquiring any effective deterrent capability: Iran has faced constant demonisation, sanctions and threat of military attack because of its nuclear programme, while Israel has made repeated attempts to destroy Hizbullah, including its war on Lebanon in 2006. Syria, in turn, has faced intimidation, isolation, US sanctions and an Israeli attack in 2007 on its alleged nuclear facility.

Bashar has had to wrestle with his own crises. He survived George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” after 9/11, then faced the greater ordeal of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the long occupation that followed. Had the United States been successful in Iraq, Syria would have been the next target, as pro-Israel neocons, the main architects of the Iraq war, had intended. Syria was then confronted by the 2005 Lebanese crisis, triggered by the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Syrian forces were ousted from Lebanon and the Assad regime threatened with extinction by the combined pressures of the United States and France.

There is also a much older memory that still hangs like a dark cloud — that of the massacres at Hama in central Syria in 1982. It was then that Hafez al-Assad put down, with great violence, an armed insurrection by the Muslim Brothers. Beginning in 1977, this Islamic group had launched a series of terrorist attacks against the regime, murdering several of the president’s close associates and eventually seizing control of Hama, where they killed Ba’ath Party and government officials. The regime regained control of the town, but only after a bloodbath in which between 10,000 and 20,000 people lost their lives.

Thirty years later, some Islamists still dream of revenge, while minorities such as the Alawites fear that if the regime were to fall, they would be massacred in turn. Emerging from underground, the Muslim Brothers have now called on the people to join the protests. The cry for freedom risks being drowned by sectarian strife.

Such has been Bashar al-Assad’s harsh apprenticeship. He has had to surmount a series of regime-threatening crises much like those his father confronted in his time. Both Assads felt some satisfaction at managing to survive them and thus provide Syria with a measure of stability and security, especially compared with Iraq and Lebanon. There was, however, a price to pay. Having to live and survive in a hostile environment inevitably conferred great powers on the security services, guardians of the regime — to the increasing resentment of ordinary Syrians. A dialogue of the deaf ensued. The Assads’ intense preoccupation with external crises led them to neglect the internal scene. Who would need political freedoms, they no doubt thought, if given the benefits of security and stability? As the regime’s official daily newspaper Tishrin wrote on 25 April: “The most sublime form of freedom is the security of the nation.”

The recent explosion of popular anger has evidently taken Bashar by surprise, as it did other Arab autocrats. He has had to wrench his attention away from the perils and excitements of foreign policy to urgent challenges at home. To devise and implement far-reaching domestic reforms, as the present situation urgently demands, will require a radical change of focus. It will not be easy, and a favourable outcome is far from certain. Bashar now faces an internal threat to his regime at least as dangerous as any of the external threats he and his father confronted so successfully.

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Released: 05 May 2011

Word Count: 2,414

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Patrick Seale, “The World after Bin Laden”

May 3, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

America has been celebrating the killing of Osama Bin Laden. And much of the Western world has cheered in sympathy. But the deadly assault by American Special Forces on the Al-Qaida leader in his Pakistani hide-out was not simply an act of revenge, although all the sweeter for having been longed for and plotted for a decade. It should not be seen as a mere settling of accounts with a man responsible, in President Barack Obama’s words, for “the worst attack in American history.”

Bin Laden was feared and detested because he struck a blow at American self-esteem. With the devastating attacks of 9/11, he had dared to carry the war into America’s heartland, puncturing its view of itself as an exceptional nation, favoured above all others. His killing will serve to wash clean that terrible moment of national humiliation. The death-feud is over. Dumped into the sea, his blood-stained carcass will provide food, if not for worms, then for fishes. Americans will have a sense of awakening from a nightmare. They will be able to renew their faith in their country’s greatness.

In the jungle of international power politics there is no joy to match that of the demise of an iconic enemy. Americans will rejoice at his death, but will that be the end of the story? That remains to be seen.

There is little doubt that President Obama’s stature will be boosted by Bin Laden’s demise. He will at last be seen by ordinary Americans as a strong and effective commander-in-chief dedicated to ensuring American security. His chance of re-election in 2012 will be enhanced. As a result, there will be much gnashing of teeth in the Republican camp.

Yet, in announcing the news to America and the world, Obama was careful not to gloat, as his predecessor George W. Bush might well have done had the killing taken place under his watch. Instead, he was sobriety itself. No one is more acutely aware that the war against Islamic militancy cannot be won by military means alone.

America, Obama was careful to stress, is not at war with Islam. This is a sentiment he has already expressed a number of times, notably in his celebrated Cairo speech of June 2009. The problem, however, is that Obama is no longer believed. He has failed to match his words with actions. The great hopes he aroused at that time have given way to an equally immense disillusion. The promise of a new departure in American foreign policy has worn desperately thin.

Obama seems to be trapped between his personal convictions and the electoral necessities of American politics. Instead of acting resolutely in his first years in office to defuse Arab and Muslim anger at American policies, he has bowed to domestic pressures from the U.S. Congress, from Bush-era neoconservatives whose influence still reaches deep inside the Administration, from powerful pro-Israeli lobbies and their affiliated think-tanks, and from an increasingly right-wing and Islamophobic American public. If anything, America under Obama has waged war more ferociously than ever against radical Islamic groups.

Will the elimination of Bin Laden put an end to Islamic militancy? This is unlikely. It would seem that in recent years, Bin Laden has been less of an operational commander, sending militants to attack American targets across the world, and more of a symbol of Islamic resistance, making occasional speeches from what looked like semi-retirement. His message has been ‘franchised’ to far-flung militant groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, in the Saharan borderlands of North Africa and elsewhere. Since they have adopted the al-Qaida appellation, some of these groups may now seek to avenge him. Retaliation by such militants against America and its allies is a distinct possibility and will require additional defensive measures by security services, no doubt to the further inconvenience of air travellers.

Yet Bin Laden’s death could provide Obama with a unique opportunity to revise and correct some aspects of American foreign policy. Bush’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) could at last be put officially to rest. Obama could proclaim victory over al-Qaida, announce a ceasefire in Afghanistan, followed by a speedy withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from that war-ravaged country.

The Talban and other militant groups, which the United States and its allies have been fighting for a decade, at great cost in men and treasure, had at one time hosted and protected al-Qaida. But they are not al-Qaida and should not be confused with it. The Talban are not international terrorists. They are an essentially Pashtun tribal resistance movement fighting foreign occupation.

The United States should seize upon the death of Bin Laden to promote urgent peace negotiations with the Taliban leadership. At the same time, drone attacks against militants in Pakistan, which destabilise the country and arouse fierce anti-American sentiment, should be halted. The killing of Bin Laden was a clear success for American Special Forces, but many, indeed perhaps most, counter-terrorist operations are counterproductive as they inflame opinion and arouse hate. New terrorists are created rather than old ones tamed.

There remains the unresolved Arab-Israel conflict which has long been a major cause of Muslim and Arab hostility to the United States, and to the West in general. Will Obama’s new stature and authority, earned from the elimination of Bin Laden, give him the political muscle he needs to deal with Israel’s far right government? Nothing is less certain.

Instead of welcoming the recent reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas as a major step towards Israeli negotiations with a united Palestinian movement, the United States has followed Israel’s lead in condemning it. Israel wants to divide the Palestinians precisely in order to avoid negotiations. In Washington, Israel’s friends in Congress are pressing for a ban on U.S. aid to any Palestinian government that includes Hamas.

The democratic wave sweeping across the Arab world will not tolerate American complicity in Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinians. Egypt’s new leadership has already urged the United States to recognise Palestinian statehood and has announced that it will break the cruel siege of Gaza by opening the Rafah crossing on a permanent basis.

If the United States is to salvage its battered image in the Arab and Muslim world it must heed the new trend in the region. The killing of Bin Laden may give American opinion a moment of triumphalism, but it needs to be followed by a major re-think of American policies. Only then will Americans be safe.

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Released: 03 May 2011

Word Count: 1,076

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Patrick Seale, “Challenges Facing the Arabs”

Patrick Seale, “An Exit Strategy for Afghanistan”

Patrick Seale, “Asad Sticks to His Guns”

Patrick Seale, “Washington Wrestles with Afghan Options”

Patrick Seale, “The United States Is Losing Pakistan”

Patrick Seale, “Obama’s Collapse to Israeli Pressure”

Patrick Seale, “Obama Emerges Stronger from Security Reshuffle”

Patrick Seale, “Rule of Law or Law of the Jungle?”

Patrick Seale, “Is This the End of the Assad Dynasty?”

Patrick Seale, “The World after Bin Laden”

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