NEW YORK — A fascinating little drama taking place in Egypt now is worth watching for what it might reveal about the popularity of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi — but also about how modern, military-anchored autocratic power structures and regimes across much of the Arab World have taken control of every branch of government.

The issue that has suddenly become a drama is the fate of two Egyptian-controlled Red Sea islands that Sisi “gave” or “returned” to Saudi Arabia in April, during a visit to Egypt by the Saudi Arabian king. A judge in an Egyptian administrative court, the State Council, ruled that Sisi’s move was unconstitutional and annulled the Sisi-supported maritime borders agreement between the two countries.

The two islands of Tiran and Sanafir are strategically located at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba that is used by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. Egyptian troops have been on the islands since the 1950s, at Saudi Arabia’s request. Sisi said he was only making formal the long-standing reality that Saudi Arabia was the sovereign authority on the islands. Egyptians across the land protested the decision in April and May; hundreds were jailed, most were released, but some remain in prison.

Other Egyptians subsequently challenged the islands transfer move in the courts, claiming it was unconstitutional, and the State Council has now accepted this argument. The decision will be reviewed by a higher court, and most likely it will be reversed, and Sisi’s move will be validated. Yet this situation is fascinating and perhaps significant for several reasons, all related to how power is exercised in modern Arab autocratic states that are usually ruled by individuals and families supported by military and security services, with the backing also of foreign powers.

The first issue is the independence, authority, and role of the judiciary in Egypt and other Arab states. Historically, even under the army-linked rulers of Egypt since the 1950s, many Egyptian courts have always enjoyed credibility because they often exercised independent judgment from the policies of the executive and legislative branches of government. The High Administrative Court (HAC) and the High Constitutional Court (HCC) especially have often ruled against the government, including during and after the 2011 revolution. The judiciary in Egypt historically has fought hard to safeguard its autonomy from executive control, and has succeeded more than has been the case in most other Arab countries.

Only in recent years has citizen respect for and trust in the judiciary dropped significantly. Transparency International polls in 2013 indicate high levels of citizen perceptions of corruption in government institutions; 70% or more feel that political parties and parliament are corrupt or extremely corrupt; 65% of citizens view the judiciary this way.

So it is striking for a court now to rule against a very high profile move by the Egyptian president within a context in which Egypt expects to keep receiving tens of billions of dollars a year in aid and investment from Saudi-led Gulf states. In question here is whether the judiciary in Egypt will be able to play any meaningful role in the checks and balances system that has always put some limits on the total power of the executive branch.

This is significant because ordinary Egyptians and the political class alike have usually looked to the court system as a means of last resort in citizen political or legal arguments with the state. The decision on the two islands is a test of whether the court system can retain enough of its independence and autonomy to be seen by citizens as the guardian of the rule of law.

The second related issue is about how Egyptians today can make use of the courts and the law to oppose or challenge the policies of the all-powerful central government, in an atmosphere of mass emotionalism tinged by some fear and hysteria that have given President Sisi and other power centers in Egypt two years of almost absolute power. The government and assorted security agencies, sometimes with the cooperation of embarrassingly heavy-handed and often comic judges, have almost totally closed channels for open political contestation by political parties and civil society. Tens of thousands of Egyptians are in jail, often mainly for their political views that support Islamists or secular democrats. Most activists have been jailed, exiled, or numbed into submission, and a few have disappeared into the country’s dark detention system.

If you wish to oppose or challenge the Egyptian government today, there are few credible opportunities to do so. The courts in this case indicate that perhaps legal action could be a credible, non-violent way to politically challenge the state’s policies. Even if this decision is overturned, as expected, the process of challenging the state in the courts will probably continue to be used by Egyptians who oppose President Sisi’s policies but cannot do so safely through traditional public political means.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 22 June 2016
Word Count: 813
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BEIRUT — Two years or so since “Islamic State” (IS, or Da’esh) declared itself and its caliphate in parts of northern Syria and Iraq, we are now finally approaching the moment when decisive, coordinated, pervasive, and sustained military force will be used against it to destroy its territorial enclaves in several countries. This will bring to the fore a series of critical non-military questions that shape the heart of the problem we face across much of the Arab world.

IS (Da’esh) will be destroyed military without any doubt, but its military abilities and the territorial controls are not the main problem we have with IS. We have seen IS defeated in the last year in small, localized military attacks against it in different parts of Iraq and Syria (Kobani, Ramadi, Takrit, Mosul Dam area, Aleppo region), but it continued to grow and attack in other places.

The lessons here repeat those of the last 20 years in the fight against groups like Al-Qaeda, IS, Taliban and others. Military action can wipe out the facilities and even top leaders of these groups, but military power cannot weed out the underlying sicknesses, injustices, and abuses of power in the societies that spawned these groups in the first place. Military power used by global forces along with local autocrats usually exacerbate the situation, by creating ungovernable zones of chaos and growing anti-government resentments among local populations — both of which only feed the expansion of the terror groups.

This dilemma will now rear its head high and quickly in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, where concerted military action includes the ongoing or planned assaults to liberate Fallujah in Iraq, Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa in Syria, Sirte in Libya, and eventually Mosul in Iraq, to mention only the most prominent areas of IS control. A fascinating aspect of these military campaigns is the mix of many fighting forces that work together, or at least in parallel, in their attacks against IS. These include the Iraqi and Syrian armies, local tribal forces, several different Kurdish armed groups, the United States, Russia, and other international powers using both air and special forces on the ground, Iranian-supplied militias in Iraq, assorted actions by regional powers like Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and many Islamist and secular/nationalist rebel groups in Syria.

These players and hundreds of other local forces will find it very difficult to agree on how to rule the areas that will soon be liberated from IS control, so we should expect a period of mild chaos and intermittent clashes among the many actors who both facilitate the current wars in Syria and Iraq and also seek to destroy IS there.

Yet the bigger problem that will resurface is about the many underlying structural political and economic weaknesses in Arab societies that gave birth to IS and other militant movements in the first place. These have been clear, but also confounding to Arab establishments, for decades. They include citizen political, social, and cultural rights, economic growth and equity, environmental protections, quality education, decent access to basic social, housing, and health services, a fair and independent judiciary, freedom of speech and cultural expression, and the many other dimensions of a modern, decent, humane society that respects majority will and protects minority rights.

These realities led to the 2010-11 Arab uprisings, assorted civil and regional proxy wars, some fragmenting states, and the rise and expansion of IS, alongside the resurgence of Al-Qaeda. Defeating IS and curtailing its slow territorial expansion in several countries will not impact any of these negative underlying trends, especially employment, family real incomes, education quality, and fair access to basic human services like food, water, housing, health care, and electricity, not to mention political pluralism and citizen rights. Most of these key factors have worsened in the past five years for most citizens in most Arab states. They will worsen more rapidly in light of the new regional era we enter of economic belt-tightening due to lower oil income.

If the battles now being launched to defeat IS do not include equally coordinated and sustained campaigns to defeat the scourges of unemployment, poverty, political and economic marginalization, vulnerability and despair that afflict large numbers of the 370 million Arab citizens, then we will simply have to do this all over again in ten years — in the same way as we have had to keep fighting and killing Al-Qaeda personnel after 20 years, without seeing that organization disappear because we did nothing serious to address the underlying issues that gave birth to it.

You cannot militarily defeat the symptom of an underlying disease. IS is a terrible and haunting symptom of many decades of steadfast Arab governance dysfunction that has been strongly supported by major regional and global powers. When we wage war against that vicious and tenacious foe, we will finally see the path to better days.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 25 May 2016
Word Count: 811
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BEIRUT — Truly historic moments in the lives of political movements occur only rarely, and we may be witnessing such a moment now in the evolving status of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Institute’s very able Senior Fellow Charles Lister, who chronicles Islamist rebel movements in Syria at first hand: After five years of growing deep roots in Syria, “Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra recently initiated discussions regarding its plans to establish an Emirate in the northern province of Idlib. Moreover, a number of Al-Qaeda’s most powerful figures have arrived in Syria in recent months, in what can only be described as the covert revitalization of Al-Qaeda’s central leadership on Europe’s doorstep.”

Lister, author of the recently published comprehensive book The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency (Hurst Publishers & Oxford University Press), wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that, unlike ISIS (Da’esh), “Jabhat al-Nusra actively seeks a level of acceptance from civilians and opposition groups before assuming influence over populated territory.”

If this proves to be accurate — which is likely, in view of Lister’s credible reporting history and extensive personal contacts with opposition Islamists in Syria — it strikes me as a potential critical turning point in Syria and perhaps the wider region. It would mark the first time that a militant “jihadi” group sought to govern territory and achieve sovereign control with the acquiescence or even partnership of local forces and popular institutions. This will tell us much about several related dynamics, or political actors, in the region today: popular discontent with prevailing governance systems and living conditions, the vulnerable incumbency of existing state or local authorities, the erratic status of mainstream secular or nationalist opposition forces, and the power and local anchorage of militant Islamists.

Al-Qaeda is now one of the oldest and most established militant Islamist groups in the world, with battlefield and civilian governance experiences in over half a dozen countries spanning nearly 30 years. Its early attempts to establish sovereign control in various countries did not succeed, mainly because it imposed its harsh rule on local populations without first eliciting their acceptance. In the past few years in Yemen, it has modified its approach to sharing in authority by working with local tribal forces to in existing governance councils, courts, welfare systems, and other institutions that citizens seek in an orderly and reasonably fair society. Jabhat al-Nusra’s novel Syria experience combines its proven battlefield capabilities with a relatively low-key, gradual approach to imposing hardline Islamic rules on an acquiescent society.

Seeking local agreement for an “emirate” where Al-Qaeda is the main political force will test citizens’ and other rebel movements’ willingness to accept its leadership role in creating a new political entity that formally separates from Syrian state rule. It will also test its own ability to be more pragmatic and collegiate in achieving the emirate status it seeks, by responding to the concerns and desires of the people in its areas of operation.

This is significant in terms of Syria today, but also for our entire Arab region during the past half century or so, given that the rise, occasional retreat, or defeat or banning of Islamist political movements across the Arab world has been perhaps the most significant single, consistent, and pervasive political identity development since the mid-1970s. Most Islamist attempts to achieve incumbency and sovereignty in Arab countries have failed, whether through democratic elections as in Egypt and Tunisia, or by imposed rule as in Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.

We may be witnessing in Syria the latest attempt by Al-Qaeda to learn the lessons of its own missteps and try to achieve legitimate incumbency through a more consensual political process that builds on its proven military capabilities and its anti-Syrian government stand. This necessarily requires Jabhat al-Nusra to take into consideration local people’s demands, and to negotiate relationships that respond to both sides’ priorities. This consultative approach contrasts sharply with ISIS’ harsh, imposed rule-by-force. Its success or failure will provide important insights into the mindsets and capabilities of the local population, the other rebel groups, and the Syrian government.

A new front seems to be forming among the many other battles taking place in Syria, this time pitting the local population’s legitimate acceptance of Al-Qaeda governance against either a total rejection of this, or a modified form of shared governance with other local actors. The success or failure of this process merits close monitoring, because it could have implications elsewhere across the Arab world, where many incumbent but incompetent or brutal governments are being challenged by an assortment of Islamist, tribal, nationalist, and secular groups, including both non-violent groups and armed rebel movements.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 07 May 2016
Word Count: 783
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BEIRUT — The various wars and ideological contestations taking place simultaneously in Syria have entered their sixth year, with no sign of how they might end and Syria’s political future unfurl. The scale, intensity, and persistence of the last five years of nonstop and often barbaric violence reflect the fact that Syria today, as in the past four millennia at least, continues to be a central pivot in the geo-politics of the Middle East and its neighboring civilizations.

Here are my ten observations on what I see as the most important or intriguing aspects of the wars in Syria.

1. The large number of political and military actors in Syria is stunning, with several dozen major actors that impact nationally, and over a thousand that engage with others at the local and provincial levels.

2. The political and military actors in Syria represent five distinct levels of identity and interests: local, province- or governorate-level, national, regional across the Middle East, and global. The disparate interests and ever-changing alliances among them are kaleidoscopic in their variety and constant change.

3. The nature of the many actors crosses every conceivable category we know of, including state, religion, tribe and clan, ideology, ethnicity, nationality, and sect, along with ancillary sub-categories like businesspeople and others.

4. The very rapid militarization of the conflicts in Syria simultaneously reflected the direct or indirect military action of Syrians, transnational non-Syrian Islamists, regional powers (Arab, Iranian, Turkish, and occasionally Israeli), and global powers. Most of these parties actively engage in direct warfare in different parts of the country.

5. The ups and downs of various parties and their need to avoid losing means that the physical borders and political alliances among many of the fighting forces are constantly shifting and changing, with key parties often simultaneously losing ground in one area while gaining it in another. This indicates that no single party can definitively win outright today and control all Syria, though it also suggests that we cannot rule out this possibility in the future, if some key actors become exhausted, bankrupt, or lose their critical external support.

6. All the political trends and military behavior in the country since March 2011 offer nothing genuinely new in the land. They reflect existing legacies of power and identity that we have experienced in the modern Arab world since the 1920s, albeit sometimes in more extreme forms — notably state authoritarianism and brutality against one’s own people, politicized and militarized religion and ethnicity, a tendency to state fragmentation, Islamist and secular-nationalist citizen rebellions, activist for democracy and human rights, rapid environmental deterioration, socio-economic disparity, urban collapse, refugee flows, and regional and foreign military intervention.

7. The possible consideration of creating ethnically pure statelets for Alawites, Druze, Kurds, Sunnis, and others — following the trailblazing path of Israel’s self-perception as a Jewish state and the rickety “Islamic State” (ISIS) that Daesh has established in parts of Syria and Iraq — reveals the fragile and conditional nature of statehood and sovereignty in Syria today (and parts of other Arab countries). The massive destruction and pain that Syria and its people have suffered shows that indigenous and foreign powers would happily control a landscape that has been devastated and denuded of people, towns, and economic infrastructure, for they seem to care little for citizen rights or wellbeing, but seek only incumbency for themselves and their allies.

8. We witness the important paradox of, on the one hand, the strength, capacity to act, and frequent local anchorage in society of Islamist militant rebel groups like ISIS (Daesh), Jabhat el-Nusra, Ahrar el-Sham, and dozens of others like them in many ways; and, on the other hand, our total ignorance of whether these groups would have the management capacity and political legitimacy to actually rule all or parts of Syria if they prevailed in the long run. The proven military strength and organizational capabilities of militant Islamists in Syria reflect their power and credibility as opposition forces, but there is no indication of whether they would succeed as incumbents. Most other incumbent Islamists in the Arab world in recent decades have been total failures and managerial amateurs, and were ousted from office.

9. Regional and global powers like Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Russia, support much of the fighting and political jockeying for power and position in Syria; yet, most of their long-term goals, like their short-term actions, have been mostly erratic and/or unclear. The Syrian wars are a dynamic without a clear destination.

10. Syria today reminds us of Syria a century ago, when local, regional, and foreign powers in 1915-1925 fought for control of the land and its destiny. Syria also reminds us that the great missing element in the modern Arab world remains today, as it has been for a century, the self-determination of citizenries.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 23 April 2016
Word Count: 801
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BEIRUT — As Israelis and Palestinians continue to battle to the death in their contested land, it is important to note a historic shift in how the minds, hearts, and public politics of the world perceive the Palestine issue and a just Palestinian-Israeli-Arab peace accord that assures the equal rights of all parties. In many arenas and dimensions, far from dropping off the global political map, Palestinian rights are popping up in more venues around the world, with a regular public focus on countering and even sanctioning Zionist excesses and criminal actions, such as expropriating and colonizing occupied Arab lands.

We see this most clearly in Europe and the United States, where open societies based on the rule of law provide credible opportunities for activists to challenge and stop their societies’ complicity in Israeli colonial policies. This works in both directions, as public debates advocate Israeli as well as Palestinian positions. But by making the Israel-Palestine issue a matter for public discussion in local political or professional arenas — such as state legislatures, mainstream churches, universities, commercial activities, the media, and academic societies — the net effect is clearly to the advantage of the Palestinians.

This is because the debates focus on issues that Zionism and the state of Israel have always sought to downplay in the global discussion of this conflict, and that the Palestinians in contrast have sought to highlight: the international rule of law, the nature of Israeli political and military practices, and how to prod both sides to comply with existing international laws, conventions, and UN resolutions that uphold the rights or protection of all concerned.

Israel has continued its heretofore largely successful propaganda tactics and associated political leverage that depict the Palestinians globally as violent anti-Semites who refuse to accept Jews in their midst and seek to destroy the state of Israel and kill Jews. Yet the pendulum of global public perceptions has swung back to a more balanced position that continues to criticize Palestinian armed resistance, political violence, and occasional acts of terrorism against civilians, but more and more routinely these days also analyses Israel through the prism of South African Apartheid practices. Israel is worried, as it should be if Apartheid is the political term most often associated with it.

So Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his posse of professional propagandists, illusionists, and liars now desperately tries to link the Palestinians with terrorists such as “Islamic State” (Daesh). They have also tried to associate Palestinians with Iran, assuming that Iran is widely negatively viewed in the West, but that policy also failed on two counts: The West and the world have rejected Israel’s exaggerated fears and bluster, have successfully negotiated with Iran, and mainstream Western political circles have harshly criticized Netanyahu’s attempts to influence their domestic policy-making systems — for example, his rallying pro-Israeli groups in the United States against President Barack Obama.

The question of Israel-Palestine now has expanded into a wider contest over free speech on American college campuses, where Israel’s intemperance freely accuses people of anti-Semitism in a desperate attempt to restrict public discussion or criticism of Israeli practices, such as colonial settlements, mass incarceration of Palestinians by the thousands, the continuing semi-siege of Gaza, or cold blood killings of Palestinians who are not a clear security threat. Such tactics have only generated more public, focused, and intense debates on Israeli and Palestinian practices, and explored more seriously the available responses — including boycotts and sanctions — of institutions and countries around the world that base their actions on law, justice, and morality.

The important trend taking place is two-fold: the Palestinians’ shift from mostly ineffective military and government actions to a non-violent political challenge to Israel’s occupation and colonization of Arab lands, and, greater public political debates about the Israeli and Palestinian people’s mutual actions and rights, and how the world should act to achieve those rights.

The first line of global political action on Palestine-Israel is no longer Israel’s ability to make its security the main focus of discussion and to nudge big powers’ policies in its favor; instead, it has shifted to how collective global action can get both sides to comply with existing global norms while ensuring their mutual security and well-being. Some novel developments: The UN secretary-general speaks out forcefully on these issues, the French government wants to launch an international peace conference on Israel-Palestine, Sweden and other states recognize the state of Palestine, the European Union highlights its opposition to official contacts with Israeli institutions in occupied Arab lands, and one American senator has asked his government to investigate the actions of both Israeli and Arab governments. The times they are a changing, and mostly for the better as far as the Palestine issue in the world’s eyes is concerned.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 02 April 2016
Word Count: 791
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BEIRUT — I have been concerned in recent years about the declining quality of governance in Lebanon, which has reached a new low in the past six months in sectors that impact every household every day, like garbage collection, electricity, and water. But I took a giant leap forward last week in my concerns about the government’s capacity or willingness to govern.

This happened when I attended a panel discussion at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (full disclosure: my employer for the past decade) on how climate change impacts could effect the economy of Lebanon in the near and distant future. What caught my attention at the panel of four Lebanese and international speakers, chaired by AUB’s Dr Nadim Farajallah who has guided IFI’s work in this area since its inception, was an analysis of the economic costs of climate change between now and 2080.

I nearly fell out of my seat when I heard that already today the Lebanese economy loses about $800 million per year only in agricultural and food costs that can be traced to direct or indirect climate change-related causes. Total economic costs today are an estimated $2 billion per year. Also, an estimated 30,000 people die every year due to climate change-linked factors such as heat stress, disease, malnutrition and others, based on studies for Lebanon and the wider Eastern Mediterranean region.

These and other striking findings come from a powerful new study by the Ministry of Environment and the United Nations Development Programme, entitled “Economic costs to Lebanon from climate change: A first look.” It thoroughly analyzed the total economic costs and dislocations across Lebanon that would result from climate change consequences, under scenarios of high, medium and low greenhouse gasses emissions levels from 2020 to 2080.

Its projections show that countries like Lebanon will suffer immensely if governments and private sectors do not take speedy and sensible actions in the areas of mitigation and adaptation, to minimize the damage that is already happening, and to save millions of citizens from certain grief and hardships that will strike harder in the years ahead.

The striking thing about this report, which focuses on the economic costs of climate change, is the overview of how many aspects of life and society will be impacted negatively. These include increased costs everywhere and on everyone, population displacements as some areas become nearly uninhabitable or unable to support traditional agricultural life, violence, health problems, worker productivity, and others. Income and livelihood disparities would worsen and exacerbate social and economic polarization among wealthy and poor families.

The total potential annual costs of climate change direct damage impacts under the highest emissions scenario, the report says, would reach $2.8 billion a year by 2040 and a staggering $23 billion a year by 2080. The total cumulative costs of direct damage impacts and forgone economic growth potential would reach figures that are almost incomprehensible for a small state like Lebanon: $139 billion by 2080.

When I heard these facts I followed up by speaking to Dr Ernie Niemi, an American economist who was asked by the Lebanese government to join the team doing this analysis. He told me that these projections should cause Lebanese to do three things: Do not deny the climate change impact realities that are already well documented; start reducing vulnerabilities in areas where that can be done; and enact policies that increase resilience in the economy, which would allow Lebanese state and private institutions to respond effectively and in time to anticipated dangers ahead.

“The longer people wait to adjust to the new realities, the more stress the ecosystem and economy will suffer, which could lead to poor decisions made in haste,” he suggested, “so it is important to start making good decisions as soon as possible.”

Studies like this one could become a catalyst that wakes up citizens and officials to the dangers ahead for them and their families. So when I asked the climate change and environment program coordinator at IFI-AUB, Rana el-Hajj, what she concludes from projects like these that she has participated in for years, her answer was as clear as the humming from my building’s electricity generator that provides us power a few times a day when the electricity from the government is shut off:

”The time to act on climate change is now, or humanity might just miss its last lifeline. The new climate agreement [reached in Paris last year] might prove to be the perfect incentive for Lebanon to adopt more sustainable policies.”

Whenever the government decides to discuss how to save tens of thousands of lives a year and hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decades, and prevent a further fracturing of society along wealth/poverty lines, this report might be a good place to start that process.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 19 March 2016
Word Count: 810
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BEIRUT — One of the fascinating dimensions of political life across the Middle East region in recent generations has been the repeated Arab concern that some non-Arab power has hegemonic plans to dominate the entire region and rob the Arabs of their identity and rights. This applies mainly to the three principal non-Arab powers in the region — Israel, Turkey, and Iran. It is useful therefore to consider the past and current condition of these three, in order to determine if indeed they have the desire or capability of achieving hegemonic control over Arab societies.

The short and easy answer to that question is: No. They certainly do not have the capacity to dominate the Arab world; if they have the desire to do so, they are probably naive. Turkey, Iran, and Israel’s relations with different parts of our region over time suggest several important realities: that these non-Arab powers have a combination of good and bad relations with Arab countries, and these ties constantly evolve over time.

Turkey enjoyed a decade of healthy and expanding trade, tourism, and political relations with most Arab states, but now it suffers problematic relations with some key countries, like Syria and Iraq. This is often due to the impact of Kurdish national aspirations, and Ankara has become militarily involved inside both Arab neighbors. In recent years Turkey suffered the ire of rich or powerful Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia because of its support for Muslim Brotherhood groups that were threatening to assume power in some countries through democratic elections. That has changed, as Turkey and Saudi Arabia now speak of joint military action against Syria and possible partnering with Egypt and others to form a pan-Islamic military force to fight terror threats in the region.

Israel similarly goes through cycles of sentimental and strategic desires to have good ties with Arab countries. The latest version of this is for Israel and conservative Arab governments in the Gulf Cooperation Council to normalize ties, on the assumption that they both share long-term strategic threats from such forces as “Islamic State” (Daesh), Arab popular revolutions, or shattered countries that are replaced by a patchwork of Islamist or tribal militias. Some conservative Arab states in turn might panic and feel that strategic ties to Israel could offer them the protection that they fear they might not enjoy in the long run from a fickle United States.

Most of these ideas are fanciful, but they are not new. Every few decades, Israelis imagine that they can normalize relations with Arab states on the basis of the cold calculations of national strategic interests. This idea always crashes on the realization that Arab societies are not prepared to have normal ties with Israel while Zionist policies continue to colonize Arab lands and maintain the Palestinians in a state of occupation, subjugation, refugeehood and forced exile.

Iran for its part also has erratic relations with Arab people and governments. This often reflects historical tensions between Arabs and Persians, but also is due to contemporary concerns by some Arabs that Iran meddles in their internal affairs by manipulating Shiite Arab communities. Saudi Arabia now leads a serious ideological and military effort to thwart alleged Iranian desires to control Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen through its ties to governments or Shiite communities there. Most well informed people I consult in this region and abroad see the Arab fears of Iranian hegemonic aims as wildly exaggerated. But it is also clear that many Arabs genuinely oppose and actively resist Iranian connections with various Arab government, or groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Despite these realities, we often hear expressions of Arab concerns that new conspiracies are afoot by regional and foreign powers to dominate and reconfigure the Arab world. I suspect that the real issue that matters here is not the aim in Arab lands of Turkey, Iran, Israel, the United States, Russia or anyone else. It is rather what this tells us about the weaknesses of Arab societies that generate their sense of vulnerability to more powerful foreign powers that might dominate or even control them.

The bottom line is that such fears are the imaginings of insecure and politically immature Arabs, whose vulnerabilities actually stem more from their own lack of domestic consensus and citizen-based stability than from any external danger. The real threat to all Arab regimes and governments in the past century emanates from their having relied for their “security” or “stability” more on foreign powers or oil income than on the consent, participation, and validation of their own citizens. This makes it easy for powers like Turkey, Iran, and Israel to engage with slightly panicked Arab governments that desperately seek protection from any available external source rather than from the solidarity of their own people. It also allows foreigners to exploit the fears of Arab citizens who want to challenge their own states by drawing on external assistance. We do have a security problem in the Arab region, and it mainly emanates from within us.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 20 February 2016
Word Count: 835
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BEIRUT — It was more than fascinating coincidence that last week both the French government and the UN secretary general called for serious and urgent international action to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through a negotiated agreement that leads to the creation of a Palestinian state living in peace adjacent to Israel. Both gestures were dramatic, and deserve our full attention, because they affirm the pivotal link between the unresolved status of Palestine and the continued deterioration of conditions across the Middle East.

I say this in the echo of the powerful statements last week by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, with the French government going beyond rhetorical exhortations by saying it would organize an international conference for this purpose by the summer, and if this fails it would recognize the state of Palestine. These two very serious men and their institutions, the United Nations and France, capture the elusive global commitment to the two factors that, above all others, must be activated to achieve a just and lasting peace: the primacy of the rule of law, and the need to be even-handed in supporting the legitimate rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.

The absence of this crucial legality and equity in the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs finally led our Middle East region to its present violent and fracturing condition, which plagues other countries in the form of illegal migrants, terrorism, and waking up the once buried ghosts of xenophobic, fascistic, and Islamophobic hatreds in some Western societies.

The link between resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict through a two-state solution and winding down sectarian polarization and rampant violence across the Middle East is both symbolic and practical. It starts by acknowledging that the Middle East’s modern legacy of sectarian and national polarization due to political violence, ethnic cleansing, population transfers and expulsions, and the sustained use of political violence started with the conflict between Zionism and Arabism in Palestine in the early decades of the 20th Century — and it has continued and become worse ever since.

Ban Ki-moon was on to something important when he said last week at the Security Council and in a follow-up op-ed in the New York Times: “Some may say the current volatility across the region makes it too risky to seek peace. I say the greater peril is not seeking a solution to the Palestinian question. As the wider Middle East continues to be gripped by a relentless wave of extremist terror, Israelis and Palestinians have an opportunity to restore hope to a region torn apart by intolerance and cruelty.”

Yes, we can restore hope to the region if we recognize that the current deadly political and sectarian dynamics very often can be traced back to the early days of the Zionism-Arabism conflict, and must be reversed in order to end this nightmare of human suffering across our region. These include most notably: political violence carried out by individuals and organized groups, including governments; ignoring and trampling on the rights of ordinary men and women in this region, by sacrificing their national integrity and well-being to the greater political priorities or narrow sectarian demands; the rise of ethno-religious nationalism; the large-scale flow of refugees and the reality of multi-generational refugeehood; the active involvement of foreign powers in reconfiguring our national arrangements, with an almost total and criminal disregard for the wishes and rights of the indigenous Arab inhabitants; the incompetence and other failures of Arab governments in addressing Palestinian rights and resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict peacefully and justly for all sides (this contributed to the growing illegitimacy of Arab leaderships that culminated in the mass citizen uprisings of the past five years); the marginalization or misuse of existing international organizations like the UN to promote justice, peace, and security; and, the comprehensive sidelining of the international rule of law in dealing with local conflicts such as Israel-Palestine.

This frightening catalogue of negative political dynamics and ethnical shortcomings still defines the Zionism-Arabism war that has lasted over a century now, and is reflected in so many other Mideast conflicts today. So a concerted international effort with active Arab and Israeli participation to reach an equitable two-state solution would be both a symbolic and a practical reversal of all these destructive trends. A negotiated agreement that ends Palestinian refugeehood, secures Israel’s acceptance in the region, ends Zionist colonialism and expansion, and offers millions of Palestinians a normal life would be a tremendous boost for precisely the forces we need to counter the region’s current deteriorations.

These positive forces include resolving conflicts through negotiations, achieving peace and security by applying the rule of law to all people, treating people equally regardless of their national or sectarian identity, reviving the efficacy and legitimacy of Arab governments, restoring the credibility of foreign powers in their actions in the Middle East, and reaffirming the applicability of international institutions like the UN.

A two-state solution does not immediately end the conflicts across our region; but if it were achieved through negotiations among Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, and world powers, working through the UN Security Council, it would send a powerful message that we have regained our composure, rationality, and humanity by recognizing the primacy of law, tolerance, and justice as the foundations of the secure statehood that is the long-denied right of Israelis and Palestinians.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 04 February 2016
Word Count: 888
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BEIRUT — At least a dozen different dynamics shape the deteriorating situation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the consequences this will have across much of the Middle East for some time. The crisis is being analyzed through a dizzying array of lenses. These include, notably (take a deep breath here) relatively recent Sunni-Shiite sensitivities, the rearing of wider Middle Eastern sectarian heads, long-standing geo-strategic rivalries in the Gulf region, reactions to big power policy changes in the Middle East, assorted domestic challenges, an evolving regional ideological landscape with multiple proxy battles (mostly in Arab lands), the long-standing face-off between Arab conservatism and revolutionary populism, and the impact of the last five years of popular uprisings and the subsequent counter-revolutions and civil wars in some countries.

The situation is made all the more complex by the fact that all of these forces and several others around the Middle East as well (social marginalization of some groups, economic disparities, environmental distress) usually all converge. They converge in regional ideological confrontations like this one, or in conflicts within single countries, such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or Lebanon.

Most of the contentious issues in play reflect man-made policies and decisions that can be reversed or tempered, thereby resolving both regional clashes and local confrontations. I leave it to both sides and their many supporters and public relations consultants in the region and in Western capitals to hash out the specific grievances, concerns, threats, and fears they all express against one another. The history of the modern Middle East has seen such active confrontations ebb and flow, occasionally exploding into war but usually being defused after just a few local bombings, burned flags, really shrill media editorials, and emptied embassies.

Such abatement of tensions usually happened due to the intervention of either a major regional power like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, or, in the past, Syria and Egypt, or one of the global powers acting unilaterally or through the UN Security Council. Here is the most striking and troubling aspect of the current Iranian-Saudi tensions: This Middle Eastern face-off between two regional powerhouses, whose mutual accusations spill over into many local conflicts within Arab countries, is taking place as traditional global powers that once kept our region in check watch from the sidelines, protect their interests, and wonder what they can do.

The big new element in today’s Middle East is the continued emergence of decisive leadership, unilateral interventions, and diplomatic and military initiatives by the three major regional powers of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey. These three states’ concerns and actions on the ground now have immense impact, parallel to the deeds of global powers and Israel that traditionally influenced major regional trends.

The short-term destabilizing impact of this is evident in the many conflicts and fragmenting states across the region. It reflects two interlinked and simultaneous historic dynamics: Big powers like the United States and Russia are recalibrating their relationships and interventions across the region, while the regional powers step up their involvements in other countries to fill the few voids or the new threats created by the big powers’ shifts.

The immediate big winners in this situation are political science and international relations professors, who have a bounty of material to analyze on how regional powers, smaller states, and even sub-national groups all enhance their political impact, as global powers recalibrate. Beyond Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, some of these actors with considerable new agency and impact in the Middle East include salafist and tribal Sunni groups in Iraq and Syria, Hizbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq.

The Middle East has never known such a situation in which regional and global powers alike, along with empowered local groups, all engage energetically in political and military actions in half a dozen different battlefields; they do this while also enjoying the capabilities of modern weaponry, alongside the fertile environments of some weakening and collapsing states. Neither global nor regional big powers are available this time to step in and restore order, because they are all in the ring punching away.

Our best hope to step back from the brink of wider regional conflagrations is for sensible and responsible people in all concerned lands, especially around the Gulf region, to grasp the catastrophes that will engulf much of the Middle East if current trends continue. The whole world is also threatened, should energy flows be disrupted. A frightening warning sign of this is the current fighting for oil installations in Libya between “Islamic State” troops and assorted Libyan groups. The dangers of something like this occurring in the Gulf region are becoming too great to ignore. I know that our societies are as capable of spawning sensible diplomatic initiatives that could calm things down and resolve the issues that aggravate relations, as they are of undertaking dramatic military and diplomatic moves that express their real fears. We shall soon find out.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 January 2016
Word Count: 821
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It is right for us to commemorate this week the day five years ago when Mohamad Bouazizi’s self-immolation in southwestern Tunisia sparked the Arab uprisings. But that is a limited window into the deeper, more important, story of both those (continuing) uprisings and the greater sagas of modern Arab history.

Political simpletons and sinister people around the world mostly bemoan the post-uprisings violence across the Arab world, wondering why the popular revolts did not lead to democratic transitions beyond Tunisia. A more useful and politically relevant frame through which to view the turbulent Arab world must go well beyond the past five years, and encompass instead the past century, from 1915 until today, for two critical reasons.

First, the modern Arab world in the past half-century or so had experienced many telltale signs of mass discontent and attempts to blunt the nasty edges of autocratic regimes; but these always failed, due to the unbreachable power of the autocrats (and their serious support from foreign powers in Moscow, Washington, London, Paris, Riyadh, and Tehran). Second, the structural and persistent strain in modern Arab history has not been the battle for democracy, but rather the quest for stable and legitimate statehood, including since the 1800s in places like Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and others.

The core problem that has plagued all Arab societies, without exception, continues to be the elusive quest for negotiated relationships between citizens and governing power elites that can define the following important dynamics which are critical for any stable society or state: identity, community, citizenship, statehood, sovereignty, nationalism, socio-economic dignity, governance and, ultimately, legitimacy. This is a huge menu, but it is also the normal menu of human-political-social relationships that every society in the world navigates on its road to stable statehood and a decent life for its citizens.

The Arab world experiences such erratic conditions and frequent violence these days because it has never seriously attempted to address these issues under sovereign conditions, so we remain without any consensus on how they all relate to one another. Not surprisingly, we continue to fragment into tribes, clans, neighborhoods, militias, ethno-nationalists, sectarian thugs and mobs, resistance movements, terrorists, ideological fringes, free market zealots, neo-colonial satraps and subjects, NGOized sub-cultures, corrupted and bloated state bureaucracies, massive militarized one-party governments, and other smaller units that we cling to for the rights, protections, services, voice, and opportunities that we expect but do not get from our sovereign states.

This is a distinctly Arab, rather than a wider Middle Eastern or Islamic, problem, because some other non-Arab Middle Eastern or Muslim-majority countries have successfully navigated this path. Historians will clarify in time why Arab modern states remain chronically and collectively erratic but broadly dysfunctional in their governance, defined by worsening disparities in their socio-economic conditions, and now increasingly rattled by national fragmentation, sectarian terror, and widespread violence in their political configurations.

For now, we would do well simply to acknowledge that fixing the troubles and dangers in our region requires that we honestly analyze how we got here since our encounters with modern statehood a century ago. The Hussein-McMahon correspondence of 2015-16 started the reconfiguration of Ottoman Empire Arab-majority lands towards some kind of Arab statehood. Ever since then we have been on a roller coaster ride of state development and de-development that includes impressive eras of growth and embarrassing moments of civil strife and foreign military assaults. Some states split into two and sometimes reunited, others were occupied and colonized, some disappeared and came back into history, many tried to unite with neighbors, and almost all Arab states have actively engaged in warfare against their neighbors or their own people.

The bumpy ride during 1915-2015 has seen Arab societies and states achieve many impressive things, in realms like education, industrialization, cultural expression, and others, alongside chronic criminal behavior by both some state powers and many non-state actors. Always, though, at the heart of this past complex century has been the elusive quest for citizen-state relations that are at once stable, satisfying, and legitimate. Oil, ideology, materialism, religion, ethnicity, tribal pride, historical memories and grievances, and, most recently, active warfare have all be used to stoke national solidarity — with partial successes in most cases, and lasting success in none.

The eruption of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia five years ago this week was an important milestone on this long and unfinished journey. It was the most dramatic and widespread simultaneous expression of Arab citizens’ mass discontent and their shared aspirations. We should honor all those millions who have participated in this latest noble quest for dignity and democracy, and enhance their ability to succeed by better understanding why success has been so rare in the past century of stubborn Arab paternalism.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 19 December 2015
Word Count: 790
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