Agence Global

Patrick Seale, “Is Iran the Enemy of the Arabs?”

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The United States and some of its European allies, notably Britain and France, are piling the pressure on Iran, claiming that its behaviour “constitutes a grave and urgent threat to peace,” as the Elysée Palace in Paris put it in a communiqué last week. The charge is that Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. 
Sanctions are being stiffened, trade crippled, financial ties severed, isolation enforced: Indeed, a range of punitive measures are being put in place which are just short of all-out war against Tehran.
But the latest report on Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency contains no hard evidence that Iran has decided to manufacture atomic weapons. It contains suppositions and speculations that Iran is concealing part of its nuclear activities, but few new facts. Even if Iran were to acquire a nuclear capability, most experts agree it could only be for defensive purposes.
Nevertheless, the United States and Israel have chosen to portray the Islamic Republic as a deadly threat to the world. Iran, in response, has thrown the accusation back at them. Washington sees Iran as a challenge to U.S. control of Middle East oil, while Tel Aviv sees Iran as a threat to Israel’s military supremacy and to its nuclear weapons monopoly. In blatant violation of the UN Charter, Israel repeatedly threatens to strike Iran and destroy its nuclear facilities, while doing its utmost to incite — or indeed blackmail — the United States into doing the job for it. 
Following the U.S. lead, the British government has this week rashly ordered UK banks and financial institutions to cut all ties with Iran. They have been ordered “to cease business relationships and transactions with all Iranian banks, including the Central Bank of Iran.” In response, the Iranian Majlis has called for the expulsion of the British ambassador, while British trade with Iran has slumped by nearly 50% this past year. France is also calling for a halt of all purchases of Iranian oil and a freeze of the assets of Iran’s Central Bank.
The Arabs are being urged to join in this hostile campaign against the Islamic Republic, largely stirred up by Israel and the United States. But is making an enemy of Iran in the Arabs’ interest? 
The Saudi Kingdom and the Islamic Republic are often considered to be rivals for regional influence. This, however, is a relatively new development. In the past, when the Shah ruled in Tehran, the two countries were partners, working jointly to ensure the security and stability of the Gulf region. More recently, under the Iranian presidencies of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Muhammad Khatami (1997-2005), Riyadh and Tehran were on reasonably good terms. It was only with the advent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 that relations have soured.
I would argue that Riyadh and Tehran should be partners, not rivals. Good relations between them are essential to protect the region from the many dangers threatening it and from the intrigues and ambitions of external powers. The U.S.-Iranian quarrel has nothing to do with the Arabs. They should resist being dragged into it. 
Iran well remembers America’s role in overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Muhammad Mossadiq in 1953, as well as its support for Saddam Hussein in his eight-year war of aggression against Iran, 1980-1988. The U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian civil airliner in the final stages of that war. For its part, the United States has not forgotten the holding hostage of its Tehran embassy staff in 1979, and the attack on a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 by Iran-backed guerrillas. 
It would be wise for the Arab states to look to their own interests in this matter, rather than follow the bellicose lead of the Western powers and Israel. The Arabs must surely be aware that a military clash between Iran and the United States or Israel could be disastrous for the Arab Gulf region. Sensitive installations such as oil terminals and desalination plants could come under fire. The achievements of recent decades could be wiped out.
Looked at positively, Iran and the Gulf States — notably Dubai — have been natural trading partners for many years. The Arab and Iranian shores of the Gulf are linked by a great many financial, commercial and family ties. Iran and Oman have long been strategic partners in ensuring the security of the Straits of Hormuz, a vital choke point for much of the world’s oil trade. Rather than allowing the enemies of the Arabs to exploit tensions between Sunnis and Shi‘is, bridges should be built across the sectarian divide.
It is worth remembering that Iran has no history of aggression. It has never attacked another country in modern times. The international commission headed by Cherif Bassiouni, which investigated the quelling of the protests in Bahrain, failed to discover any Iranian role in the unrest. No evidence has been found of an Iranian hand in the Zaydi revivalist movement led by the al-Huthi family in North Yemen. The Shia in Bahrain and the Huthis in Yemen deny any link with Iran and proclaim their loyalty to their own states.
Saudi-Iranian relations have been severely strained by the American claim to have uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. But few experts believe the American accusation. No convincing evidence in its support has yet been produced. The plot — if there really was a plot — reeks of a “sting” operation by America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or of a “false flag” operation by a third party, designed to set Riyadh against Tehran.
Rather than demonising Iran and severing links with it, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners would be well advised to draw Iran into the security architecture of the region. Iran and its Gulf neighbours share a common interest in the security of the region and a common responsibility for ensuring it.
Rather than being unduly influenced by anti-Iranian propaganda, the Arabs should take note of the sensible views expressed in a joint communiqué on 24 November by the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These five powerful countries “stressed the necessity to build a system of relations in the Gulf region that would guarantee equal and reliable security for all States.” They “emphasized that imposing additional and unilateral sanctions on Iran is counterproductive and would only exacerbate the situation.” They advocated “settling the situation concerning Iran’s nuclear programme only through political and diplomatic means and establishing dialogue between all the parties concerned.…”
A Saudi-Iranian strategic dialogue is an urgent necessity to dispel mutual fears and misunderstandings and to agree on common security policies. This would be the best way to protect the Gulf region from what could, at any moment, escalate into a catastrophic clash of arms.
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 29 November 2011
Word Count: 1,126
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Patrick Seale, “Averting Civil War in Syria”

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Syria is heading for a bloody sectarian civil war. The mutual kidnappings, torture, beheadings and displacement of populations taking place between the Sunni and Alawi communities in the central city of Homs — often described as “the capital of the revolution” — send a fearsome signal of what might be in store for the rest of the country.
To avert this descent into hell must surely be the immediate priority of Arab leaders and the international community. 
The Iraqi example next door is there for all to see. The Anglo-American invasion destroyed a major Arab country. The country’s institutions and infrastructure were shattered; sectarian demons were released, triggering a civil war. Hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced from their homes or forced to flee abroad. The country was dismembered as the Kurds established their own semi-independent statelet.
Syria needs the intervention of a high-powered, neutral, contact group to stop the killing on both sides. There must be a pause in which tempers are cooled, demonstrations and counter-demonstrations are halted, and a climate created in which a real dialogue can take place and real reforms agreed and implemented. The aim must be a peaceful transition to a different sort of regime, with effective guarantees for all sides.
The Arab states and the Western powers are ill-suited for this task. The latter are not trusted. Too many of them have taken sides. The United States, in particular, has been discredited by its blind support for Israel. Rather than bringing peace, Washington’s spectacular failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, or indeed its own 32-year conflict with Iran, has prepared the ground for future wars.
Who then could form the necessary contact group? My choice would be the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India and China — countries with real economic and political clout and a strong interest in the region. Brazil, for example, has close historical ties with Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Millions of Brazilians have grandparents who emigrated from these countries.
The present Syrian regime has been one of the most durable in the Middle East, lasting for almost half a century, ever since the Ba‘th party seized power in 1963. The Asads — father and son — have ruled since 1970. However, the current crisis poses a particular danger to the regime because, almost for the first time, it faces a conjunction of internal and external challenges. 
The last big internal challenge occurred in 1977-1982, when an uprising by the Muslim Brothers threatened to topple the regime. It was crushed at Hama with the loss of perhaps 10,000 lives — a brutal repression which continues to resonate to this day, as Islamists dream of revenge.
External challenges to Syria have been far more frequent. They include Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which was aimed at expelling Syrian influence as well as the PLO, and drawing Lebanon into Israel’s orbit; the 1998 crisis when Syria faced the possibility of a two-front war with Turkey and Israel, and was only resolved when Syria expelled the Kurdish PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan; then came the biggest challenge of all: the 2003 invasion of Iraq, conceived and driven by America’s pro-Israeli neo-conservatives. Had it been successful, Syria would undoubtedly have been the next target.
When Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, was murdered in 2005, Syrian troops were forced out of Lebanon and the Syrian regime threatened with overthrow by U.S. President George Bush and French President Jacques Chirac. In 2006 Israel’s attacked Lebanon to destroy Syria’s ally, Hizbullah; it then attacked Gaza in 2008-9 to destroy another Syrian ally, Hamas.
The mentality of the Syrian regime — the mind of President Bashar al-Asad himself — has been shaped by these recurrent life-threatening crises. They were largely responsible for making the regime what it is: authoritarian, defensive, brutal, neglectful of political reforms, over-anxious to exercise control over the citizenry, the media, the universities, the economy, over every aspect of society. 
The continuing threat from Israel and its American patron led to the creation of the Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah axis — a defensive alliance which emerged as the main obstacle to Israeli-American regional hegemony. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States want the axis destroyed. Syria is now under extreme pressure, but Iran, too, has for years faced systematic demonization, intimidation and sanctions. Determined to protect its own nuclear monopoly, Israel is attempting to push America into war against Iran — and if not war then still more sanctions — while Hizbullah, the third member of the axis, continues to be treated like a terrorist organisation because it managed to expel Israel from Lebanon after an 18 year occupation.
The Syrian regime’s instinct has been to interpret the current uprising as one more conspiracy. Taken by surprise, its immediate response was brutal repression: the use of live fire from the very beginning at Dar‘a in mid-March. No doubt, President Bashar had imagined that his nationalist stance gave him immunity from popular uprisings. But, faced by the escalating crisis, his leadership has been wanting; his speeches and promises of reform were late and unconvincing. His failure to seize the initiative with radical proposals showed a lack of political imagination. The killings have fatally undermined his legitimacy.
Who are the revolutionaries and what do they want? They are the rural poor, who have suffered from drought and government neglect; the urban poor and small businessmen, crushed by corrupt, crony capitalists close to the centre of power; and the armies of unemployed youth. Like many Arab countries, Syria suffers from a population explosion. In 1965 (when I wrote my first book about Syria) there were 4m Syrians; today there are 24m. With a fertility rate of 3.26, the population could reach 46m within 20 years. These figures are catastrophic. Economic growth simply cannot keep pace.
The revolutionaries want jobs, good governance, a fair distribution of the country’s resources, an end to corruption, arbitrary arrest and police brutality. They want dignity and respect. They have had no experience of democracy and have little knowledge of what it means. About 40% of the population are under 14, and only 3% are over 65 — with faint memories of a pre-Ba‘th, pre-Asad rule, which in any event was not all that democratic.
Although isolated, sanctioned and internationally condemned, the regime still has several assets. So long as the army and security services remain loyal, it will be difficult for the opposition to topple it. The more the opposition takes to arms, the more the regime will feel justified in crushing it. Meanwhile, there is no appetite in the West for military intervention in Syria. Russia and China will protect it from any UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of force. The opposition remains divided, while the regime still enjoys the support of a large slice of the middle and upper classes in the big cities, of minorities such as Alawis, Christians and Druze, of large numbers of civil servants, and also no doubt of a silent majority, fearful of suffering the dreadful fate of Iraq.
As the death toll rises, the thirst for revenge becomes sharper and the sectarian divide deeper. Civil war looms and, with it, the urgent need for measures to avert it.
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 22 November 2011
Word Count: 1,191
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Patrick Seale, “America’s Unhealthy Obsession with Al-Qaeda”

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The Unites States’ obsession with the threat from Al-Qaeda urgently needs debunking. It has led national security chiefs and politicians dangerously astray — including President Barack Obama himself.
Traumatised by the terrorist attacks on the American heartland of September 11, 2001, the United States launched two catastrophic and unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, at great cost to its armed services, its finances and its reputation. That was by no means the full extent of the damage. 
The War on Terror also caused the United States to create a monstrously-inflated national security-industrial complex, that today employs nearly a million people with high security clearances, seriously eroding America’s precious civil liberties; it caused the CIA to become a para-military organisation as concerned with extra-judicial assassinations as with its traditional intelligence-gathering; and it has driven President Obama to rely on missile strikes from unmanned drones which, as well as killing the occasional Islamic fighter, slaughter large numbers of innocent civilians, arousing fierce hostility to the United States.
The drone strikes are widely thought to create far more militants than they kill. Barbara Bodine, who served as U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 1997 to 2011, says that drone attacks “most assuredly do far more harm than good.”
All these subjects and many more are explored in detail in The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda (Oxford University Press), an important new book by Fawaz Gerges, Professor of Middle East Studies and International Relations at the London School of Economics. It should be required reading in the White House. In an ideal world, his scathing critique of American security policies should induce American officials and politicians to change course.
I must declare an interest. I strongly recommend Professor Gerges’ book because he expresses, better than I could have done, many of the ideas which I have put forward in my columns over the years.
His basic argument is that Al-Qaeda is by no means the strategic, existential threat it is made out to be by the pundits of terrorism. It is a small, weak organisation, with limited tactical aims — “more of a security irritant,” Gerges maintains, “than a strategic threat.” The figures are striking. At the height of its powers in the late 1990s, Al-Qaeda comprised some 3,000 to 4,000 armed fighters. Today, its ranks have dwindled to 300, if not fewer. In Afghanistan, there is now, for all practical purposes, no Al-Qaeda. 
The mistake the United States continues to make in Afghanistan is to link the Taliban to Al-Qaeda, rejecting any separation between them. But they are very different. The Taliban are a local, essentially Pashtun force, dedicated to protecting the country’s tribal and Islamic traditions and ridding it of foreigners. Al-Qaeda — at least in its heyday — aspired to be a transnational jihadi movement.
Yemen is another country where Al-Qaeda is usually said to pose a major strategic threat. But, as Gerges argues, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — formed by the 2009 merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches – has no more than between 50 and 300 core operatives, mostly semi-literate rookies with little combat experience. 
Yet, a decade after September 11, overreaction is still the hallmark of the U.S. War on Terror. Americans and Westerners are fed a constant diet of catastrophic scenarios and scare tactics. The result, Gerges says, is that Americans have internalized an exaggerated fear of terrorism. Obama himself has bought “the doomsday scenario offered by his national security team.” This American overreaction provides the oxygen that sustains Al-Qaeda.
The fear of terrorism has not only taken hold of the imagination of Americans, it also drives government policy. But all the War on Terror really does, Gerges maintains, is legitimize Al-Qaeda’s failed ideology and expand the worldwide circle of the West’s enemies.
In the Muslim world as a whole — in Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Maghreb, in Indonesia and elsewhere – Al-Qaeda now faces a hostile environment with fewer recruits and shelter. Ordinary Muslims join the authorities in chasing al-Qaeda away from their neighbourhoods and streets.
AQAP has attempted to carry out a few terrorist acts abroad — such as the attack on the Saudi counter-terrorism chief Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the failed underwear bomber, the would-be New York subway bomber, and the foiled Times Square bomber – but its real focus is local. In Yemen, for example, it is attempting to use its tribal connections to gain a foothold in the southern secessionist movement, one of the several rebellions threatening the regime of President Ali Abdallah Salih. It remains first and foremost a Yemeni problem, one that must be tackled from within.
Gerges cites two incidents among many, which have inflamed Yemeni opinion against President Saleh and his American allies. The first he mentions occurred in December 2009 when a US Navy ship off the coast of Yemen fired a double cruise missile, loaded with cluster bombs, at what it thought was an Al-Qaeda training camp. Instead, the strike killed 41 members of the Haydara family in a Bedouin encampment. In May 2010, a U.S. cruise missile killed Jabir al-Shabwani, deputy governor of Ma’rib province, and four of his escorts. He had reportedly been seeking to persuade the militants to lay down their arms. The killing sent shock waves through the Saleh regime, undermining its legitimacy in the eyes of the tribes and the public at large. Saleh paid blood money to Shabwani’s family to avoid a bloodbath. 
Gerges might have added that on Match 17 this year, a U.S. drone killed forty people in Pakistan, dealing a blow to U.S.-Pakistan relations. How many of the forty victims were innocent civilians? Of all Arabs, Yemenis currently voice the strongest anti-American sentiments. But such incidents also trigger a backlash among scores of disillusioned and frustrated young Muslims, living in Western societies. 
Instead of investing in economic development and good governance in Yemen, the United States has squandered precious resources combating AQAP. In 2010, for example, the United States gave Yemen $250m to fight Al-Qaeda, but only $42m for development and humanitarian assistance. Clearly, the figures should be reversed.
What is to be done? Plots against Western societies will persist, Gerges believes, so long as the United States is embroiled in wars in Muslim lands. The root causes of many recent home-grown terror plots lie in the raging conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere. 
The longer the United States wages war on terrorism in Afganistan-Pakistan, the more durable the threat. Pakistan’s slide into anarchy will be a far greater catastrophe for American interests and regional stability than the current mess in Afghanistan. There is an urgent need, he writes, to speed up the withdrawal of Western, and particularly American, boots from Muslim territories.
What other lessons does he recommend? The first is that US policymakers must bring a closure to the War on Terror. Second, there must be a concerted effort to debunk the terrorism narrative and break Al-Qaeda’s hold on the American imagination. And third, the United States should stop viewing the Middle East through the terrorism prism, the Israeli prism and the black-gold prism — oil.
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 08 November 2011
Word Count: 1,178
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Patrick Seale, “America’s Defeat in Iraq and Beyond”

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America’s nine-year adventure in Iraq is drawing to a humiliating close. President Barack Obama has said that “the last American soldiers will cross the border out of Iraq” on 31 December. Most Iraqis — those who have survived the nightmare of the past decade — will heave a great sigh of relief, but healing the wounds of their stricken country will be neither quick nor easy.
Nor, it appears, will the United States be gone from Iraq altogether. Some 16,000 U.S. personnel are due to remain behind in the form of diplomats, Defence Department experts, military and police trainers, and a large number of contractors, of whom some 5,000 will be armed to protect the U.S. mission. They will provide attractive targets for anti-American militants of various sorts.
History’s verdict on America’s Iraqi war is likely to be severe. The United States may not have suffered a military defeat in the conventional sense of the word, but the damage to its reputation, moral stature and political influence is irreparable. It may take a generation to set right. 
The Iraq war will be seen as a landmark in the downward slide of the United States from its once pre-eminent place in the community of nations. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, the United States was the world’s unchallenged hyper-power. Today, twenty years later, it seems to have lost its way. Even its closest friends look at it askance and wonder what has become of it.
The invasion was launched on fraudulent premises; the occupation grossly ill-managed; the cost in human lives and treasure immense. Some 4,500 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and tens of thousands more were wounded. The cost to the American taxpayer has been estimated at $700 billion and upwards. The economist Joseph Stiglitz believes the ultimate cost will be $3 trillion. As for the Iraqi victims of the American onslaught, they have died in the hundreds of thousands, while another four to five million have been internally displaced or driven abroad as refugees. The material damage to the country, including its vital oil industry, will take decades to repair.
America’s war released sectarian demons in Iraq, triggering a savage civil war between Shi‘is and Sunnis. This has heightened tensions between these two Islamic communities and their various offshoots in countries as far afield as Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen. Once a strong and united country, Iraq is now a weak and querulous federation. The Kurds have broken loose and enjoy something close to independence under their own regional government, while Sunni Arabs, outraged at the discrimination they suffer at the hands of the Shi‘i Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, are threatening secession in a northern province around Irbil.
An unintended consequence of America’s war was to put the Shi‘is in power in Baghdad, thereby opening the door to Iranian influence; and in the wider Gulf area, the destruction of Iraq overturned the regional balance of power to Iran’s advantage. Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s leading Sunni power, is understandably perturbed. Saudi-Iranian rivalry is now intense while relations between Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iraq are close to breaking point. 
To ease the tensions, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Shaykh Hamad bin Jassem — a leading mediator of regional conflicts — has proposed that Saudi Arabia and Iran hold talks over American allegations of an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Few experts believe the American accusations have much substance, but they have served to destabilise an already volatile region. Overall, therefore, the geopolitical costs of the Iraqi war have been very great indeed.
Not the least astonishing aspect of the Iraqi adventure is that the United States has made no systematic attempt to establish who was responsible for the catastrophe. No one has been held to account. 
The prime responsibility must rest with former President George W. Bush, together with his Vice-President Dick Cheney, and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. After Al-Qaeda’s devastating attacks on the American mainland on 11 September 2001, their overwhelming urge was to teach the Arabs a lesson about American power which they would never forget. Cheney may have dreamed of extending American control over Iraq’s oil, while Rumsfeld may have dreamed of setting up American bases in Iraq from which to dominate the region.
However, the prime architects of the Iraqi war were not Bush and his close colleagues but the neoconservatives — Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon, David Wurmser in the Vice-President’s office, Richard Perle, chairman of the Defence Policy Board, and many others embedded in the administration and in right-wing think tanks. In seeking to destroy Iraq, their principal aim was to protect Israel from any possible attack from the east. 
A study group chaired by Perle, and including Feith and Wurmser, produced a strategic paper for Israel’s incoming Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Notoriously, it was entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” It recommended that a key Israeli objective should be the removal of Saddam Hussein. The neocons then set themselves the task of getting America to do the job instead.
Intelligence about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was forged. Skilful propaganda roused American opinion in favour of war. Iraq was attacked, occupied and fatally weakened. Israel’s interests were satisfied, but the human, financial and political costs for the United States were beyond measure. 
On coming to office, President Barack Obama seemed determine to throw off George Bush’s legacy, tame the pro-Israeli neocons, and change course. His Cairo speech of June 2009 was a call for friendship with the Arab and Muslim world and a pledge of American support for the Palestinians. As recently as September 2010, he was still expressing the hope that an independent Palestinian state would emerge within a year.
But pressure from Israel and its American supporters have forced him to eat his words. He has had to sabotage his own policies. He has abdicated America’s once dominant role in the failed peace process and now opposes Palestinian statehood. He has allowed Israel’s far-right government to dictate American policy in the Middle East. This is a strategic blunder of historic proportions. How are the mighty fallen? 
The outcome has been to destroy Obama’s reputation and isolate the United States. This week 107 countries defied the United States and voted to admit Palestine to UNESCO. The United States promptly suspended its funding for the organisation. But pandering to Israel’s fanatical settlers and their expansionist ambitions will speed the decline of America’s regional influence and makes Israel less, rather than more, secure.
Can America chance course? Nothing is less likely. It is widely predicted that if the Republican Mitt Romney wins the White House, the pro-Israeli neocons will be back in power in Washington. Their target this time will be Iran.
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 01 November 2011
Word Count: 1,129
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Patrick Seale, “The Rise of Political Islam”

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Political Islam is making a dramatic comeback right across the greater Middle East. Some in the West will react with alarm at what they see as a dangerous geopolitical upset. Democrats, secularists, feminists, Christians and other religious minorities may fear that a rigid application of the shari‘a, the body of Islamic law, will threaten their freedoms and their way of life. But these fears are almost certainly exaggerated, if not wholly unfounded, at least in most Arab countries. 
The triumph at last Sunday’s elections of Tunisia’s leading Islamic party Ennahda(Renaissance) is the latest example of the revival of political Islam in the Arab world. But it is also cause for reassurance. This moderate Islamic party should not be confused with hard-line Salafis, who demand a return to the uncompromising values of early Islam. 
Without an absolute majority in the new Constituent assembly, Ennahda cannot rule alone, nor does it intend to do so. It will seek to form a coalition to carry forward its programme of social justice, economic development, and clean government. It has pledged not to erode or claw back the achievements of the past, notably democratic freedoms and women’s rights.
In Libya, however, the interim leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, has aroused fears by declaring that “any law violating the shari‘a will be legally null and void.” If this is implemented, it could have an impact on laws of personal status, for women in particular, in such matters as inheritance, divorce and polygamy. But what it will actually mean in practice has yet to be determined. 
The rebel forces that stormed and captured Tripoli were led by an Islamist, Abdalhakim Belhadj, battled-hardened in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Tracked by the CIA and Britain’s MI6, he was returned to Libya and tortured for seven years in Abu Salim prison. His attachment to Western interests should not be counted on.
Why have the revolutions of the Arab Spring brought political Islam to the fore? One reason is that, having suffered decades of persecution at the hands of Western-backed Arab autocrats, Islamists now benefit from a mantle of martyrdom. Hamid Jebali, Ennahda’s secretary-general, spent 16 years in prison, including ten in solitary confinement. Rashed Ghannouchi, the party’s spiritual leader, spent 22 years in exile. 
In Egypt, Syria, Libya, Algeria and elsewhere, members of Islamic movements have been hounded, jailed, killed and tortured in great numbers, or have simply fled abroad. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed since the 1980s. Membership is a capital offense. If there is a change of regime in Damascus, the Islamists, by far the best organised of the opposition movements, are bound to figure prominently.
Another reason for the emergence of political Islam is the poverty and deprivation of a large part of the electorate in most Arab countries, especially those with little or no oil income. Free elections have at last given this under-class a voice. The Islamic parties have long distinguished themselves by their welfare activities in favour of the underprivileged. Of all the political parties, they can justly claim to be closest to the common people.
The Tunisian revolution was not a middle class achievement but was, on the contrary, driven forward by young men and women on the margin of society, bitter at their own unrelenting misery and at the gross corruption of the former ruling elite, especially the plutocrats close to former president Ben Ali and his wife.
There is a striking contrast in Tunisia between what the tourists see — the coastal hotels, restaurants, comfortable villas, well-tarred roads, efficient services and so forth — and the interior of the country, where jobs are scarce, running water a luxury denied to many, medical services virtually non-existent and government indifference a subject of angry complaint. 
The same is true of Syria. The rural poor, which have suffered gravely from drought and government neglect, make up the massed ranks of the opposition, while the well-heeled merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo has so far remained loyal to the regime.
Egypt’s Muslim Brothers are expected to do well at next month’s elections. But, like Ennahdain Tunisia, they do not aspire to rule alone. The task of satisfying the economic demands of the great majority of the population is simply too daunting. The Islamists have no ambition to assume the burden alone. They fully realise that there can be no economic miracle which will, overnight, produce the hundreds of thousands of jobs, the affordable housing, student scholarships, low-cost medical services, and efficient public services which the population is clamouring for. Rebuilding the state institutions and the economy in all these countries will be a long and trying process, and many expectations are bound to be disappointed.
Another winning asset of the Islamic movements, however, is that they express, more clearly than their rivals, the frustrated but largely unvoiced ambition of the masses to affirm their Muslim-Arab identity. Most Arabs, with the exception of small Westernised elites, are God-fearing, socially conservative and attached to their traditional way of life. They are unhappy at attempts — which they attribute to outside powers — to impose on them a Western model of society. Islamic parties are the champions of this aspiration — all the way from the Taliban in Afghanistan, to Hamas in Gaza and, in its own way, even to the moderate Ennahda in Tunisia.
The so-called ‘Arab Spring’, therefore, is far more than a revolt against long-entrenched, corrupt and brutal dictators. It is also a rebellion against foreign values — and foreign military intervention. America’s destruction of Iraq and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians arouse great anger. What the various Islamist movements have in common — whether in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen — is an ambition to satisfy the thirst of the populations for an Islamic version of social justice freed from foreign tutelage. 
It needs to be stressed that each country’s experience will be different. Tunisia, where women are among the most emancipated of the Arab world, is not like Libya or Yemen, nor will it be changed radically when Islamist parties come to power. In countries heavily dependent on tourism like Egypt and Tunisia, wide-ranging compromises with the shari‘a are bound to be made. Tourists will not be denied alcohol, belly-dancers or night-clubs.
In Turkey, Prime Minister Erdogan’s Islamic-coloured Justice and Development Party has had to compromise with the strong secular tradition of Ataturk, the Republic’s founder. The result is Turkey’s special brand of democracy. Likewise, Tunisia’s large and educated middle class will be a force with which Ennahda will have to accommodate. In most Arab countries, Islamists will be constrained by the counter-weight of long-established secularists and the need to satisfy foreign investors, donors, tourists and Western governments.
The West wants to see democracy flourish in the Arab world, no doubt to protect its interests. But the locals want jobs, a better future for themselves and their families, a fairer distribution of the country’s resources, an end to corruption and police brutality. They want good governance and a respect for their traditions rather than Western- style democracy or Western interference.
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 25 October 2011
Word Count: 1,177
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Patrick Seale, “Destabilising the Middle East”

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The U.S. Government’s excitable accusation that Iran paid a Mexican drug dealer to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a Washington restaurant adds a further destabilising factor to an already dangerously unstable Middle East. It moves the interminable U.S.-Iranian quarrel one step closer to an armed conflict and it fans into flame the latent antagonism between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. 
A U.S.-Iranian war would have potentially devastating consequences for the region, for the United States and the world. The smaller Gulf States, several of them home to large U.S. military bases, would find themselves in the line of fire. Their spectacular accomplishments of recent decades could be turned to rubble. Attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would undoubtedly multiply. The Arab world’s sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi ‘is, already greatly exacerbated by America’s war in Iraq, would be further increased. For the industrial world, a regional war would immediately disrupt oil supplies, further worsening the current economic crisis.
Not surprisingly, world opinion has reacted with widespread scepticism, even derision, to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder‘s announcement on 13 October of the alleged Iranian plot. Tehran has vigorously denied any connection whatsoever with it. It is, indeed, inherently implausible that Iran would, by means of a terrorist act of no strategic value, risk provoking the U.S. into military retaliation. Most experts agree that the very last thing Iran wants is a war with the United States. The story makes no sense.
If the U.S. government is not to be laughed out of court, it must now produce hard evidence of high-level Iranian implication in the alleged conspiracy. If the plot is no more than an FBI/DEA sting operation which overreached and went wrong, that, too, will need to be candidly examined and explained. If, as some would argue, it is the work of rogue elements in Iran’s Quds Force (a wing of the Islamic Republic Guard Corps which, like U.S. Special Forces, specialises in foreign operations), that, too, will need to be convincingly demonstrated. 
In any event, America’s accusations are bound to increase Iran’s paranoid fear that the United States and Israel are planning to attack it, and will therefore drive it to seek deterrence and protection by acquiring a nuclear capability. This is hardly the way to prevent nuclear proliferation. President Barack Obama thus presents the sad spectacle of siding with the war-mongers. He has called for the “toughest sanctions” possible against Iran, as well as repeating the old mantra that “all options remain on the table,” a threadbare reference to military action. 
His campaign for re-election has already caused him to woo the Jewish vote by opposing the Palestinians’ bid for UN membership while turning a blind eye to the “Greater Israel” ambitions of Israel’s fanatical settlers. The United States guarantees Israel’s military supremacy over all its neighbours yet is clearly unable to exercise the slightest influence over Israeli policies, even the most extreme. Now – once again perhaps for electoral reasons — Obama has gone a step further by echoing, and seeming to endorse, Israeli threats of military action against Iran.
News of the so-called plot comes at the very time when top Iranian officials — including President Ahmadinejad himself — have called for fresh talks with the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) on Iran’s nuclear programme. That in itself presents a striking contradiction. How could Iran seek talks and yet, at the same time, act in such a way as to make them impossible? 
The obvious conclusion would seem to be that the plot was contrived by someone anxious to sabotage the possibility of a U.S.-Iranian dialogue, let alone a compromise over Iran’s nuclear activities. Indeed, the so-called plot reeks of a “false flag” operation — that is to say an operation by a third party deliberately designed to push the United States into conflict with the Islamic Republic. 
There are many potential candidates for such a role, all anxious to see the Iranian regime punished. They include Iranian exiles longing to see the mullahs ousted; Lebanese enemies of Hizbullah, whether Sunni or Maronite, many of whom have Latin American connections; opponents of the Iran-backed Syrian regime who believe that Bashar al-Asad would be gravely weakened if the Iranian regime were to fall; American neo-cons itching for war against Iran, the very same people who conned America into war against Iraq; and of course Israel’s Mossad which, by all accounts, is a master at intelligence coups. It is thought to have been responsible for the recent murder of several Iranian nuclear scientists as well as for infecting the computers at Iran’s nuclear power station with toxic viruses such as Stuxnet. 
Israel’s right-wing government has spared no effort to demonise Iran’s nuclear programme as a deadly threat to mankind and has been eager to push the United States into destroying it. Israel’s motive is clear. If Iran were it to acquire a nuclear capability, however rudimentary, it would checkmate Israel’s own large arsenal of nuclear weapons, and greatly restrict Israel’s ability to strike its neighbours at will. 
Rather than fuelling tensions as Obama is doing, rather than pandering to America’s worst instincts, the wise leader of a superpower should seek to pacify the region, resolve conflicts and cool tempers. Improbable as it may seem, Obama should talk to Iran rather than demonise it; he should devote himself again and again — and this time with more muscle and conviction — to settling the Arab-Israeli conflict, thereby removing a major factor of instability and opening the way for Israel’s peaceful integration into the region; he should seek to calm, rather than inflame, sectarian antagonisms; he should disengage the United States militarily, and as soon as possible, from Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf region; and he should halt the counter-productive drone attacks which create more terrorists than they kill and which, under his watch, have brought death and destruction to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
The Middle East needs an end to the imperial ambitions and machinations which have plagued the region since the First World War. Urgently required instead is a massive coordinated international effort to revive the shattered economies of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria and the Palestinian territories — and, above all, create jobs. Without jobs, there will be no peace.
The United States is said to be redirecting its efforts to the Far-East in order to contain the rising power of China. The sooner it gives the Middle East a break by turning its attention elsewhere the better.
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 18 October 2011
Word Count: 1,094
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Patrick Seale, “Will Israel Bomb Iran?”

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In recent weeks, intense discussions have taken place in Israeli military and intelligence circles about whether or not to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Apparently, the key question in the debate was how to ensure that the United States took part in the attack or, at the very least, intervened on Israel’s side if the initial strike triggered a wider war. 
Reports of these discussions have caused considerable alarm in Washington and in a number of European capitals. Some Western military experts have been quoted as saying that the window of opportunity for an Israeli air attack on Iran will close within two months, since the onset of winter would make such an assault more difficult.
Concern that Israel may decide to attack without giving the United States prior warning is thought to be the main reason for the visit to Tel Aviv on 3 October of the U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta. His aim seems to have been to rein in the Israeli hawks.
Amos Harel of the Israeli daily Haaretz summed up Panetta’s message as follows: America is standing by Israel, but an uncoordinated Israeli strike on Iran could spark a regional war. The United States will work to defend Israel, but Israel must behave responsibly. 
At his joint press conference with Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Panetta said: The United States is “very concerned, and we will work together to do whatever is necessary” to keep Iran from posing “a threat to the region.” But doing so “depends on the countries working together.” He repeated the word “together” several times. In other words, Israel should not act without an American green light.
In recent years, Israel has often threatened to attack Iran. Why has the subject been revived this time? Is Israel worried that Iran is close to acquiring the capability to manufacture a nuclear bomb? Most intelligence experts agree that Iran has not yet made a decision to build nuclear weapons. A more likely Israeli motive is its concern that the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany — the so-called P5+1 — may accept an Iranian offer of renewed talks. 
Israel’s greatest fear is that the P5+1 will reach a compromise with Iran which would allow it to continue enriching uranium for civilian purposes. This might then lead in due course to the world agreeing to co-exist with a nuclear Iran. If that were to happen, Israel’s monopoly of nuclear weapons — a key asset in maintaining its regional military supremacy – would be lost.
Iran has, in fact, made several recent overtures to the United States and its allies. When he was in New York last month to attend the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the Washington Post that Iran would stop producing uranium enriched to 20 percent if foreign countries would provide the fuel needed for the Tehran Research Reactor, which makes medical isotopes. Some 850,000 Iranians are said to depend on such isotopes for cancer treatment.
Late last month, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, sent a letter to Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, requesting fresh talks with the P5+1 to try to resolve the longstanding dispute. Yet another overture was made by Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi when, in an interview with Asia Times on 29 September, he said that Iran was “prepared to undertake the necessary efforts to restore mutual confidence, and if there is a specific concern, it should be addressed in talks… We must look for innovative proposals.”
Fereydoun Abbasi, head of Iran’s Atomic Organisation, has invited Yukiya Amano, Secretary-General of the International Atomic Energy Agence (IAEA), to visit Iran and inspect its nuclear facilities. “Our recommendation is that Mr Amano accept this invitation… Today, the situation is that we are again read to consider the fuel swap,” he said. (This was the proposed swap of a large quantity of low-enriched uranium for a small quantity of 20 percent enriched uranium for medical purposes.) Mr Amano’s IAEA board is due to meet in Vienna on November 17-18, a meeting that is keenly awaited.
Several influential voices have been urging the United States to respond positively to Iran’s overtures. “Why not test Iran’s seriousness?” asked Reza Marashi in an article in theHuffington Post on 30 September. Marashi is a former Iran desk officer at the U.S. State Department and is now Director of Research at the National Iranian American Council, 
In an article in the International Herald Tribune on 29 September, Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists, and Ali Vaez, director of the Federation’s Iran Project, urged the United States and its allies to take Ahmadinejad at his word. They even suggested that the Western powers should provide Iran with 50 kilograms of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor as a humanitarian gesture that would buy Washington goodwill with the Iranian people, while curtailing Iran’s enrichment activities.
None of these appeals is likely to be heard. President Barack Obama has collapsed in the face of pressure from powerful pro-Israeli lobbies and a fervently pro-Israeli U.S. Congress. As he is seeking re-election next year, we will hear nothing more of the call he made during his 2008 campaign for the need for diplomacy with Iran.
The danger is that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu may now seek to break out of Israel’s current political isolation by mounting a spectacular attack on Iran. Having lost Turkey and Egypt, and facing a revolt by the international community against his “Greater Israel” ambitions, he may think that the time is ripe to seize the initiative. His calculation may be that a lethal blow against Iran would weaken an already deeply troubled Syria and leave Hizbullah orphaned. Israel would have killed three birds with one stone.
Will Israel seek an American green light if it decides to attack Iran or might Netanyahu believe that Obama, enslaved to Israeli interests, would have no choice but to follow suit?
According to the 6 October edition of TTU, a French intelligence bulletin, the United States and Israel are planning an unprecedented joint land forces exercise next May with the goal of establishing a common “intervention force” ready for action in the event of a major regional war. Admiral James Stavridis, head of Eurocom — America’s European command — paid a recent unpublicised visit to Israel for talks with General Benny Gantz, Israel’s chief of staff. According to TTU, the plan is to set up American command posts in Israel and Israeli command posts in Eurocom. Cooperation between the two powers has rarely been closer.
These are dangerous times in the Middle East.
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 11 October 2011
Word Count: 1,106
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Patrick Seale, “Anwar al-Awlaqi, Yemen, and Obama’s War”

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On Friday, 30 September, Yemen announced that a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone had killed Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaqi, in the north of the country. His grief-stricken father, once a minister of agriculture in a Yemeni government, went to the scene to collect and bury the pieces of what remained of Anwar’s body. It was the seventh U.S. strike in Yemen this year.
Anwar al-Awlaqi was a virulent critic of American foreign policy in the Arab world, and a passionate advocate of al-Qaida’s form of Islamic jihad. He was also a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico, with an engineering degree from Colorado State University. His internet sermons, delivered in fluent English, had a devoted following, especially among young Muslims in the West. 
His killing inevitably aroused a storm of controversy in the United States about its legality. In an article in The National Interest, Paul R. Pillar, a former senior CIA officer now a university professor, described it as “essentially a long-range execution without judge, jury or publicly presented evidence.” This is a subject which must be left to the Americans to debate.
What are its probable consequences? The most obvious is that it is likely further to inflame some Muslims against the United States, drawing fresh recruits into the jihadist struggle. “Why kill him in this brutal, ugly way?” a member of his Awalik tribe was quoted as saying. “Killing him will not solve the Americans’ problem with al-Qaida. It will just increase its strength and sympathy in this region.”
A key question, therefore, is whether al-Qaida — including its Yemen-based offshoot, “Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” — is an organisation or a cause. If it is an organisation, killing its leaders must eventually drive it out of business. But if it is a cause, assassinations may have the contrary effect. A ‘martyred’ Awlaqi may prove a more effective recruiting sergeant than he was alive. A young American Muslim cleric, Yasir Qadhi, wrote in the International Herald Tribune on October 3 that “Killing people does not make their ideas go away.”
Awlaqi’s killing has inevitably been compared to that of Osama Bin Laden, shot down last May in his home in Pakistan by a hit-team of U.S. Special Forces. The clandestine mission was seen by many Pakistanis as an intolerable infringement of their country’s sovereignty. The assassination precipitated a grave crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations. It played into the hands of hard-liners in the Pakistani army and military intelligence service, no doubt causing them to tighten still further their links with jihadi groups, such as the Haqqani network. America’s 10-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan will thus have been made more perilous and any outcome favourable to the United States more uncertain than ever.
In much the same way as he cheered Bin Laden’s death, U.S. President Barack Obama has hailed Awlaqi’s murder as a major blow to al-Qaida. Many Muslims, however, will see the killing as further evidence that the American President, much like his belligerent predecessor George Bush, is at war with Islam. His slavish support for Israel as it seizes Palestinian land and denies statehood to the Palestinians has aroused great anger. His standing is already close to rock-bottom in the Arab and Muslim world. The killing of Awlaqi will drive another nail in the coffin of what little remains of his reputation.
In an ironic twist of fortune, Dick Cheney, Bush’s war-mongering Defence Secretary, said last weekend that Obama should apologise to Bush for criticising the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ — such as water-boarding — inflicted on al-Qaida suspects, since Obama was himself now resorting to even more robust methods!
The United States is deeply unpopular in Yemen. The divide can be traced to the American-sponsored war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It will be recalled that, with the help of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the United States recruited, trained and armed tens of thousands of young Muslims from several Arab countries to fight the ‘godless’ Russians in Afghanistan. Some 25,000 of these mujahidin — volunteer fighters in the cause of Islam — came from Yemen alone. Many thousands more came from Algeria, Egypt and elsewhere.
But when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, the United States callously dropped the mujahidin. Funding for them dried up. A number of these battle-hardened and radicalised ‘Afghan Arabs’ joined Bin Laden’s al-Qaida. Thousands made their way home to Yemen, where they were treated as heroes — at least at first. Some were given jobs in the civil service and the army. 
A year later, in 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. To dislodge him, the U.S. dispatched half a million men to Saudi Arabia in what was to become the First Gulf War. Since Yemen had long had close ties with Saddam’s Iraq, President Ali Abdallah Salih refused to join the American-led coalition. Instead, he advocated an “Arab solution” to the Kuwait crisis. This angered Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States who saw Saddam as a dangerous bully who had to be cut down to size — a task they believed only the United States could do. 
Saudi Arabia’s response to Ali Abdallah Salih’s pro-Iraqi policies was to expel close to a million Yemeni migrant workers. Their return home deprived Yemen of indispensable remittances and added to already severe unemployment. Yemen became a failing state. This was the beginning of a long dispute between Yemen and Saudi Arabia — and also of a battle between jihadists and the United States, which continues to this day.
At first, the ‘Afghan Arabs’ were useful to Yemen’s President as he battled former Marxists in South Yemen. But when the jihadists started attacking American targets, they got him into trouble with the United States The former heroes became terrorists.
In December 1992, jihadists bombed the Goldmur Hotel in Aden where U.S. military personnel were staying. In June 1996 they bombed the Khubar Towers in the eastern Saudi town of Dhahran, killing 19 American soldiers. In August 1998, they attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In October 2,000, they blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole in Aden harbour killing 17 U.S. sailors. In November 2002, a missile from a CIA-operated drone killed Shaykh Salim al-Harithi, one of the men involved in the Cole bombing.
By this time, the exploits of these local jihadis had been overshadowed by the devastating assault mounted by their mother organisation on the U.S. heartland — the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq followed. 
Meanwhile, the bitter struggle continues in Yemen, a country now on the verge of collapse. U.S. Special Forces are being sucked further into what looks increasingly like a civil war. The killing of Anwar al-Awlaqi must be seen in this context. 
But is it not obvious that external force is a blunt instrument in dealing with what is essentially an internal Yemeni contest? Is it not time for Washington to rethink its policy towards the Arab and Muslim world — as the unfortunate Obama had indeed intended to do, before he was defeated by America’s gung-ho militarists, rabid conservatives, pro-Israeli lobbyists and other assorted Islam-haters?
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 04 October 2011
Word Count: 1,177
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Patrick Seale, “Fiascos of American Foreign Policy”

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U.S. President Barack Obama is piling up foreign policy disasters. In at least three areas, crucial for world peace and American interests — Arab-Israel, Afghanistan-Pakistan and Yemen-Somalia — he is pursuing a course which can only be described as foolhardy. The anger and hate towards the United States which he is generating could take a generation to dispel. 
His abject surrender to Israel on the Palestine question has shocked a large part of the world and gravely damaged America’s standing among Arabs and Muslims. To court the Jewish vote at next year’s presidential election, he has thrown into reverse the policy of outreach to the Muslim world which he expressed so eloquently in his 2009 Cairo speech. If he is now driven to use America’s veto at the Security Council to block the application of a Palestinian state for UN membership, he will have been defeated by the very forces of racism, Islamophobia, neocon belligerence and Greater Israel expansionism he once hoped to tame. 
Obama’s policy in Afghanistan is equally perverse. On the one hand he seems to want to draw the Taliban into negotiations, but on the other some of his army chiefs and senior diplomats want to kill the Taliban first. This is hardly a policy likely to bring the insurgents to the table. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ryan Crocker, America’s new ambassador to Kabul, actually said that the conflict should continue until more of the Taliban are killed. Who, one wonders, is in charge of U.S. policy?
In a message on the occasion of the Eid at the end of Ramadan, Mullah Muhammad Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, seemed to hint at his readiness for a comprehensive negotiation. “Every legitimate option can be considered,” he said, “in order to reach the goal of an independent Islamic regime in Afghanistan.” He urged foreign powers to withdraw their troops “immediately” in order to achieve a lasting solution to the problem. In a gesture to his local opponents, he stressed that the Taliban did not wish to monopolize power and that all ethnicities would participate in a “real Islamic regime acceptable to all the people of the country.” 
Should not the United States and its allies respond positively to this message? A conference in Bonn next December is due to review NATO’s war in Afghanistan – a war which seems closer to being lost than won. 25,000 soldiers deserted the Afghan armed services in the first six months of this year because they had lost faith in the Karzai government’s ability to protect them and their families. Coalition troops are due to withdraw their troops by the end of 2014. Might there not be an argument for an immediate offer of negotiation together with a pledge of an earlier withdrawal? It is far from clear what strategic interests, if any, the West is defending in Afghanistan.
The subject is of considerable urgency since America’s counter-insurgency strategy is in real trouble. In July, Ahmad Wali Karzai, President Karzai’s powerful brother, was shot dead in Kandahar. In August, the Taliban attacked the British Council in Kabul. On September 10, a truck packed with explosives killed five people and wounded 77 US troops at a NATO military base south-west of Kabul — the highest injury toll of foreign forces in a single incident in the 10-year war. On 13 September, insurgents staged a 20 hour-long assault on the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters in the heart of Kabul — supposedly the best protected perimeter in the whole country. And on 20 September, Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council, was assassinated.
Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, was charged by Karzai with the task of seeking peace with the Taliban. He seems to have made little or no progress. He was a mujahidin leader in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, then President of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996, before he was ousted by the Taliban. He then became a leading figure of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras which fought the Islamists until the Taliban were driven from power by the U.S. invasion of 2001. No one has claimed responsibility for Rabbani’s murder but suspicion has fallen on the Pakistan-backed Haqqani network.
Pakistani has a vital strategic interest in Afghanistan. It wants to keep Indian influence out of a country, which it considers its strategic depth. It suspects Karzai of being in league with India. It would seem to prefer a Taliban-governed Afghanistan to Karzai’s American-backed regime. In any event, Rabbani’s death robs President Karzai of a key ally and strains his relations with Pakistan. It could be a step towards a civil war if no early attempt is made to engage the Taliban. 
Now entering its eleventh year — at the colossal cost to the U.S. taxpayer of about $120bn a year — the Afghan war has drained U.S. resources, dangerously undermined the Pakistani state and threatened to destroy the U.S.-Pakistani alliance. Addressing the U.S. Senate in mid-September, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan’s army and the ISI, the powerful military intelligence service, of being in league with the Haqqani network. By using “violent extremism as an instrument of policy,” Mullen said, Pakistan was undermining the American military effort and jeopardizing the U.S.-Pakistani strategic partnership. 
Pakistan’s response was not long in coming. Speaking on the BBC programme The World Tonight on 22 September, General Asad Durani, a former head of the ISI, described U.S.-Pakistan relations as in a state of “low-intensity conflict.” Pakistan should back America’s opponents in Afghanistan, he said if the United States continued drone strikes against targets in Pakistan. 
Meanwhile, in their hunt for the Taliban and their supporters, US special forces mount frequent night raids in Afghanistan, such as the one on 2 September which killed Sabar Lal, a wealthy Afghan in his home in Jalalabad. According to press reports, the Americans broke in, handcuffed and blindfolded him and his guests, then took him out on the veranda and killed him. He had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, spent five years in Guantánamo, then built a new life for himself and his family. Clearly this was not enough to allay American suspicions of his links with Islamic militants.
In Yemen and the Horn of Africa, America’s increasing resort to drones, with their inevitable toll of civilian deaths, has enraged the local populations and driven recruits into the arms of the militants. According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration has used CIA-operated drones to carry out lethal attacks against al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The drone program has killed more than 2,000 militants and civilians since 2001. 
Is it not time to enquire whether U.S. policy has not created more terrorists than the CIA has managed to kill? Would it not be better if the United States were simply to declare victory in Afghanistan — and indeed in all the other places where its Special Forces operate — bring its troops home as soon as possible and turn its attention to tending the wounds in its own broken society?
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 27 September 2011
Word Count: 1,182
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Patrick Seale, “The Middle East’s New Geopolitical Map”

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The Arab Spring is not the only revolution in town. The toppling of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; the mounting death toll in Syria and Yemen, where the outcome is still undecided; the revival of long-suppressed Islamic movements demanding a share of power; the struggle by young revolutionaries to re-invent the Arab state — all these dramatic developments have distracted attention from another revolution of equal significance.
It is the challenge being mounted by the region’s heavyweights — Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran — against the hegemony which the United States and Israel have sought to exercise over them for more than half a century.
When David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence on 14 May 1948, he held the view that the country’s security could be assured only if it were militarily stronger than any possible Arab combination. This became Israel’s security doctrine. The desired hegemony was achieved by the prowess of Israel’s armed forces, but also by Israel’s external alliances first with France, then with the United States. 
Military superiority won Israel outstanding victories in the 1948 and 1967 wars, a less resounding victory in 1973, still more contentiously by its invasions of Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006, and more reprehensively by its operation of unashamed brutality against Gaza in 2008-9 — to mention only the most significant among a host of other Israeli attacks, incursions and onslaughts against its neighbours over the past several decades.
In its early years, Israel’s hegemony was reinforced by its so-called ‘periphery’ doctrine — its attempt to neutralise the Arabs by concluding strategic alliances with neighbouring non-Arab states such as Turkey and the Shah’s Iran. Its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt also proved a vital asset over the past three decades, since it removed the most powerful country from the Arab line-up.
The collapse of Soviet power in 1989-91 contributed to the Arabs’ disarray, as did the huge success of pro-Israeli Americans in penetrating almost every institution of the American government, whether at state or federal level, most notably the U.S. Congress. The message these advocates conveyed was that the interests of America and Israel were identical and their alliance ‘unshakable.’ 
Over the past forty years, the United States has provided Israel with sustained political and diplomatic support, as well as massive financial and military assistance, including a guarantee, enshrined in American law, of Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) – that is to say a U.S. pledge to guarantee Israel’s ability to defeat any challenge from any of its neighbours.
Even 9/11 was turned to Israel’s advantage in convincing American opinion that Palestinian resistance to Israel was terrorism, no different from that which America itself had suffered. There followed George W. Bush’s catastrophic militarisation of American foreign policy, and the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq on fraudulent premises, largely engineered by neo-cons such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and their colleagues at the Pentagon and in the Vice-President’s office, concerned above all to remove any possible threat to Israel from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
The United States has sought to protect Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly by harsh sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear activities, as well as joint U.S.-Israeli sabotage operations, such as the infiltration into Iranian computers of the Stuxnet virus. Washington has turned a blind eye to Israel’s assassination of Iranian scientists, and has followed Israel in demonizing resistance movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas as terrorist organisations. 
America’s most grievous mistake, however — the source of great harm to itself, to Israel, and to peace and stability in the Middle East — has been to tolerate Israel’s continued occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians. These policies have aroused intense hate of Israel in the Arab and Muslim world and great anger at its superpower protector. 
We are now witnessing a rebellion against these policies by the region’s heavyweights — in effect a rebellion against American and Israeli hegemony as spectacular as the Arab Spring itself. The message these regional powers are conveying is that the Palestine question can no longer be neglected. Israel’s land grab on the West Bank and its siege of Gaza must be ended. The Palestinians must at last be given a chance to create their own state. Their plight weighs heavily on the conscience of the world.
Turkey, long a strategic ally of Israel, has now broken with it. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced it as “the West’s spoilt child.” In a passionate speech in Cairo, he warned Israel that it must “pay for its aggression and crimes.” Supporting the Palestinians in their efforts to gain UN recognition as a state was, he declared, not an option but an obligation.
Prince Turki al Faisal, a leading member of the Saudi Royal family and former intelligence chief, has publicly warned the United States that if it casts its veto against the Palestinian bid for statehood, it risks losing an ally. In a widely-noted article in the International Herald Tribune on 12 September, he wrote that “Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America” in the way it has since the Second World War. The “Special Relationship” between the two countries “would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people.”
Last week, the American-brokered 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty — a key underpinning of Israel’s regional hegemony — came under open criticism from Egypt itself. The treaty was “not a holy book,” said Egypt’s prime minister, Dr. Essam Sharaf. It would need to be revised. Amr Moussa, the leading candidate for the Egyptian presidency, has called for the treaty’s military annexes to be reviewed so as to allow Egyptian troops to be deployed in Sinai. 
As for Iran, denunciation of the United States and Israel can be expected from President Ahmadinejad when he addresses the UN General Assembly in the coming days. The failure to engage with Iran — demonising it as a threat to the whole world, rather than working to incorporate it into the security architecture of the Gulf region — has been one of Obama’s gravest policy mistakes.
Turkey, Iran and Egypt, heirs to ancient civilizations, are thus asserting themselves against what they see as an Israeli upstart. Saudi Arabia, the region’s oil and financial giant, guardian of Islam’s holiest sites, is breaking free from the constraints of the American alliance.
Israel stands accused. Will it heed the message or shoot the messenger? If true to its past form, it might well try to fight its way out of the box in which it now finds itself, further destabilising the region and attracting to itself further opprobrium. 
As for the United States, bound hand and foot by Israeli interests, it seems to have abdicated the leading role in the Arab-Israeli peace process it has played for so long — but to so little effect. Disillusion with President Barack Obama is now total. Others must now take up the baton. Many believe the time has come to break the dangerous stalemate with some coercive diplomacy. Will Europe take up the challenge? 
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).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 20 September 2011
Word Count: 1,170
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