Agence Global

Patrick Seale, “The Middle East in Flames”

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As if sparked by the intense summer heat, fierce fighting and other acts of extreme violence have broken out here and there across the Middle East. The danger is that one of these nasty local conflicts will escalate into a full-scale war, setting the whole region on fire.
In retaliation for an ambush of a Turkish military convoy on 17 August by guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which killed eight soldiers and wounded another fifteen, the Turkish Air Force, a couple of days later, struck at 60 suspected PKK hideouts and bases in the mountains of northern Iraq. Dozens of militants are said to have been killed. The flare-up will put a temporary end to Ankara’s attempts to conciliate the Kurds by granting them more rights — a policy which it had hoped would rob the rebels of popular support.
Iraq, in turn, was swept in mid-August by a devastating wave of attacks in different parts of the country, which left 68 people dead and wounded more than 300. Although no group claimed responsibility, it was a further demonstration of the catastrophic damage to the Iraqi state caused by the U.S. invasion of 2003 and the long occupation that followed. The government is evidently still not able to provide even minimal security. The attacks are likely to have been triggered by reports that U.S. troops plan to stay on in Iraq beyond the end of the year, the agreed deadline for their final withdrawal.
In Libya, the rebels have at last captured Tripoli. At the time of writing, Muammar Qadhafi’s end seemed very close. However, rebuilding a nation after his eccentric, brutal and highly personal 42-year rule will be no easy task. There are great differences between the east and west of the country, not to mention the Berber tribes in the deserts of the south. At least, Libya will benefit from plenty of oil income with which to reconstruct the country, unlike oil-poor countries like Tunisia, Yemen, Syria and even Egypt itself, all wrestling with grave economic problems.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Asad is fighting for his political life, perhaps for life itself. Outraged by his repression of the protest movement, the United States and several European countries have called on him to step down. Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s heavyweight, and several Gulf countries have recalled their ambassadors from Damascus. But Asad remains defiant. From his vantage point, the revolt is a ‘conspiracy’ of Islamists and others, backed by the U.S. and European powers and manipulated by Israel, to punish Syria for its defence of Arab nationalist causes, and bring it down. However, recognising the need for political reforms, Asad has announced the holding of legislative elections next February. Will he be heard? Meanwhile, the killing continues, drowning out hopes of a political settlement.
Further afield, Pakistan and Afghanistan are both suffering from conflicts of growing intensity. Pakistan seems in imminent danger of imploding, so great are its internal tensions, while in Afghanistan, nowhere is safe from Taliban assaults, not even Kabul, the heavily defended capital. In Europe and the United States, opinion is more than ever sceptical of the wisdom of continued Western implication in the war.
As usual, the most explosive conflict zone is that between Israel and its neighbours. On 18 August, seven Israelis were killed and dozens injured in a series of roadside attacks on buses and cars travelling down to Eilat, through the Negev, along a road close to the Egyptian border. Israel and Egypt share a 240 km border through the desert to the Red Sea at Eilat and Taba. It was the deadliest assault on Israel in at least four years. 
In hot pursuit of the attackers, Israeli troops and aircraft entered Egyptian territory and killed five Egyptian policemen, an incident which has caused outrage in Cairo. It brought to the surface latent anger and detestation of Israel. Israeli flags were set on fire and crowds demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. Egyptian opinion feels nothing but shame for the way Husni Mubarak, the former dictator, colluded with Israel, notably in the siege of the 1.5m Palestinians of Gaza. The 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, which removed Egypt from the Arab line-up, thus giving Israel great licence to hit its other neighbours at will, is slowly being emptied of its substance.
Egypt is demanding an apology from Israel and compensation for the killing of the five policemen, in much the same way as Turkey is demanding an apology and compensation from Israel for the nine Turks killed by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara, when the Turkish ship tried to break the Gaza blockade. 
The attacks on Israeli vehicles across the Sinai-Negev border may well have been the work of an extremist Palestinian Islamist group or of angry beduin, the semi-nomadic inhabitants of Sinai who have suffered from heavy-handed treatment by both Israel and Egypt. The beduin long for greater autonomy. Militant groups among them have almost certainly been responsible for the repeated attacks on the pipeline which carries Egyptian natural gas to Israel.
Although Hamas strenuously denied having anything to do with the attacks on the Eilat road, Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu immediately blamed it for them. In time-honoured fashion, Israeli planes bombed the defenceless Gaza Strip, killing at least 20 civilians, wounding twice that number and causing much material damage. Determined to maintain some element of deterrence, Hamas and other militant Palestinian factions then fired volleys of rockets into Israeli territory. The stage is thus set for a wider conflagration. 
In his usual belligerent form, Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak declared: “Those who operate against us will be decapitated.” Like other members of Netanyahu’s far-right government, he seems unaware that Israel’s aggressive and expansionist behaviour is piling up hate against it, undermining its future security. In mid-August, Barak himself approved the building of 277 apartments in the illegal Jewish settlement of Ariel, built deep inside the occupied West Bank. In any reasonable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ariel would have to be evacuated. Yet Israel has recently moved ahead with plans to build more than 2,500 apartments in Arab East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as their future capital. Israeli officials say 2,700 more apartments will be approved soon.
In an eloquent column in the International Herald Tribune on August 20-21, Roger Cohen wrote: “…Jews cannot with their history become the systematic oppressors of another people. They must be loud and clear in their insistence that continued colonization of Palestinians in the West Bank will only increase Israel’s isolation and ultimately its vulnerability.” A generation ago, James Baker, a former U.S. Secretary of State, urged Israel to give up “the unrealisable dream of a Greater Israel.” 
There is no sign that these wise counsels have yet been heard. More violence can safely be predicted.
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: 23 August 2011
Word Count: 1,137
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Patrick Seale, “The Global Intifada”

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It would be hard to argue that the rioting which erupted in British cities this month was ofexactly the same nature as the ongoing revolts across the Arab world or the massive social protests which have rocked Israel, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and other countries. Theindignados – the angry ones – in each country have their own reasons to rebel. Yet they do all seem to have some things in common, even though the mix of economic, social and political causes is clearly not the same everywhere. 
Youth unemployment, social injustice, police brutality, the excesses of unregulated capitalism, the arrogant consumerism of the rich and the misery and helplessness of the poor, the widespread sense that the country’s resources are in the wrong hands and are being spent in the wrong way, the alienation of much of the population from the centres of power – most of these factors are present, in one form or another, in the various places where protesters have taken to the streets.
Almost everywhere, a single incident has been the spark that set fire to the tinder lying about. As is well-known, in Tunisia, it was the self-immolation of an unlicensed street vendor, the 26 year-old Muhammad Bouazizi, who was struggling to feed his family. When a policewoman confiscated his cart, he set himself on fire. Very soon, the whole country was up in arms against the corrupt autocratic rule of President Ben Ali and his family. 
In Israel, Daphne Leef, a 25 year-old video editor, grumbled on Facebook that she was tired of spending half her salary on rent. Her moan was heard: Tent camps sprang up across Israel, including on Tel Aviv’s glossy Rothschild Boulevard, in protest at the price of housing, the soaring cost of living, and the ten or twenty billionaires whose family-owned businesses control banks, insurance companies, cellphones, supermarket chains and media companies.
In Syria, a nation-wide rebellion was triggered when the police brutally manhandled children who had scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa. When angry parents protested, live fire was used to disperse them – the regime’s fatal mistake. 
In Britain, a security operation against West Indian gangs in the poor London suburb of Tottenham turned violent when the police shot dead Mark Duggan, a 29-year old black man. He was in illegal possession of a handgun, but he had not opened fire nor threatened to do so. His killing sparked an orgy of rioting, arson and looting which spread to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham and Bristol. Bands of masked and hooded marauders torched buildings and pillaged stores.
In the Arab world, youth unemployment has been the main motor of the revolution, itself the product of the demographic explosion of recent decades. When Nasser and his band of Free Officers seized power in Egypt in 1952, there were 18 million Egyptians. Today there are 84 million, increasing by close to a million a year. In almost every Arab country, over-crowded schools and colleges turn out half-educated youths for whom there are no jobs. In Spain, youth unemployment is said to be as high as 45 %; in Greece it is 38%. Little wonder that mass protests have erupted in both countries. In Britain, too, one million young people, aged 16 to 24, are officially unemployed, the greatest number since the deep recession of the mid-1980s. 
In Germany, there have been no riots. Youth unemployment is under 10%. Israel, too, has low unemployment, but it has one of the largest gaps between rich and poor in the industrialized world. One in four Israeli families lives below the poverty line. Hundreds of thousands have now taken to the street to demand social justice. The protesters are aiming to assemble a million people on 3 September at a giant demonstration — the biggest ever seen in Israel.
According to a poll in the Jerusalem Post, if the leaders of the tented revolt were to form a new political party, they could win 20 seats in the Knesset, becoming the second political force in the country behind the right-wing Likud and ahead of the centrist Kadima. In the words of the Israeli writer David Grossman, “The state has betrayed the people.” 
The fragmented Syrian opposition, too, would be well advised to form a political party. Rather than seeking to overthrow the regime by force — probably a doomed enterprise — it should hold the government to its promises of reform and challenge the half-century rule of the Ba‘th party at free elections. Israelis protest against the monopolistic tycoons that control large swathes of the Israeli economy. Syrians protest against the small group of big businessmen, close to the ruling family, who have grown immensely rich while the middle class grows ever poorer and the masses struggle to survive. Some 35% of Syrians live below the poverty line.
In Britain, there was shock and outrage at the riots. The right wing of the Conservative Party called for the use of water cannon and rubber bullets against the rioters. There is pressure for the police to be armed, and for the army to intervene if need be. Half a dozen people lost their lives in the four days of riots and 1,800 people were arrested. What if a full-scale rebellion had broken out against the government? Decent, well-behaved, democratic Britain might not have responded all that differently from the autocrats in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. 
In Syria, there are said to have been some 15,000 to 20,000 arrests over five months and about 2,000 deaths. When allowance is made for the different levels of development, and the very different political traditions, there seems little room for Western complacency or the facile condemnation of others.
Arab governments have been much criticised for shutting down the internet and social networks to prevent protesters gathering. But is not this exactly what David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has demanded? “When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them,” he said. “We are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder a criminality.” Criminal gangs, he added, had been behind the wave of arson and looting. Is not this the very same language used by President Bashar al-Asad of Syria? He, too, has spoken of criminal gangs which have to be crushed.
In all the countries where the people have rebelled, the social contract has been broken and needs repair. A common sense of nation needs to be fostered. But Britain’s leaders speak only of punishing the hooligans. In Syria, the regime is stuck in the criminal folly of killing demonstrators daily. In Israel, the protesters have not yet focused on the real problem undermining their country: the occupation, dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians. In every country, the underclass needs to be given hope or even greater violence is inevitable.
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: 16 August 2011
Word Count: 1,163
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Patrick Seale, “Iraq Seeks Protection in a Dangerous Environment”

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Iraq was once a proud and powerful Arab country. With its vast oil resources, its great rivers, and its educated middle class, it was in many ways an Arab success story — before things started to go wrong. The last thirty years have been terrible.
Among the gruesome landmarks were first, the eight-year long life-and-death struggle with the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1980-88, which Iraq managed to survive, but only with great loss of life and material destruction; second, the Gulf War of 1991, when it was forcibly expelled from Kuwait by America and its allies after Saddam Hussein was rash enough to invade his neighbour; third, the thirteen years of punitive international sanctions which followed the Kuwait war and which are said to have cost the lives of half a million Iraqi children; and fourth, America’s devastating invasion of 2003 and its long occupation of the country, which is due, at least in principle, to end this 31 December.
In its slow and painful recovery from these decades of devastation, Iraq’s dilemma today is that it may still need help from the United States, the power which, more than any other, has destroyed it. This is the background to the current discussions between Baghdad and Washington about a possible extension of America’s military presence in Iraq beyond 2011 — the date set by the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) for a final U.S. evacuation. 
There are still some 46,000 American soldiers in Iraq — down from 140,000 a couple of years ago. President Barack Obama has pledged to bring them home — but the Americans are as divided as the Iraqis on the issue. In the United States, Democrats have long opposed the war. The Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid declared last month that “now is the time for our military mission to come to a close.” Republicans, in contrast, want America to remain in Iraq — to defend its interests and confront Iran. Senator John McCain, for example, has argued that there is a “compelling case” for the United States to keep at least 13,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely.
Opinion is divided in Iraq also. The Kurds desperately want the Americans to stay as guarantors of their fragile semi-independence from Baghdad, while hard-line Shi‘a factions, notably the Sadrists, who are close to Iran, want to get rid of the Americans altogether, and the sooner the better. In between these two poles are a number of more moderate parties, both Shi‘a and Sunni, who have no great love for the Americans, and would rather be free of them, but recognise that they may still be needed to stabilise a highly volatile situation — both inside the country and in the surrounding neighbourhood. 
Iraq’s new-found ‘democracy’, dominated by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, is characterised by a great number of parties and splinter groups, all jostling for advantage. This produces a lot of heated talk but not much action — to the extent that a leading Iraqi (consulted for this article) described the Iraqi political scene as resembling that of the French Fourth Republic.
There is a vast amount of rebuilding to be done in Iraq. The 2003 war overthrew Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, but the horrors which followed have been at least as bad as — and probably a good deal worse than — anything he was guilty of.
• The U.S. invasion triggered a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shi‘is which killed tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions inside the country and sent millions more fleeing as refugees abroad (including much of the Christian community). 
• It destroyed Iraq as a unitary state by encouraging the emergence of a Kurdish statelet, now linked awkwardly to the rest of the country in a loose Federation. 
• It smashed Iraq’s infrastructure to the extent that, in this summer’s heat, with temperatures climbing to over 50 degrees Celcius, the country suffers from crippling power cuts. On average in the south, electricity is on for one hour and off for four. The population is clamouring for better services.
Under Saddam, Iraq was ruled by the Sunni minority, accounting for no more than 20% of the population. The war put the Shi‘a majority in power. Since the 2008 elections, the country has been governed by a coalition of Shi‘a groups together with secularists and Kurds, but with Maliki’s Shi‘a block very much in control. Maliki personally controls the defence and security apparatus.
Maliki is close to Iran but he is an Iraqi nationalist, not an Iranian puppet. Whereas he is negotiating to extend the U.S. military presence into 2012, Iran would, on the contrary, like to force the United States out of Iraq under duress. Suffering from U.S. sanctions, and under constant threat of attack by Israel, Iran is hitting back against the United States by encouraging its Iraqi supporters to attack American troops: 14 were killed in June and another five in July. Baghdad’s Green Zone, home to the American and other embassies, has suffered a growing number of rocket attacks. The internal security situation remains very dangerous.
Iraqis also feel, with some justice, that they are living in a hostile environment. Syria next door is in the throes of a vast popular revolution, savagely repressed by the regime, a highly dangerous situation which could well overspill into Iraq. Iraq is also on very poor, even hostile, terms with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s Sunni heavyweight, which has been alarmed and angered by the rise of Shi‘a power in both Iraq and Iran. The Saudis and some of their Gulf neighbours fear the extension of Shi‘a influence across the Arab world. In Bahrain, for example, Saudi Arabia recently helped quell a revolt by the Shi‘a community – a community which has traditionally been close to its co-religionaries in Iraq. This, too, has damaged Saudi-Iraqi relations. 
Iraq is also quarrelling with Kuwait over the latter’s plan to build a megaport on the island of Bubiyan, which could have an impact on the Shatt al-Arab waterway, Iraq’s sole outlet to the sea. Iraq is sending a commission of experts to Kuwait to assess the project. Some Iraqi parliamentarians have also accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil by slant drilling into Iraqi territory. These are highly sensitive issues. They are precisely the ones Saddam Hussein invoked for invading Kuwait in 1990.
For all these reasons, Iraq feels that it needs to beef up its armed services, rebuild its air force and navy, as well as its ground troops, so as to be able to protect its borders and its oil platforms, as well as stabilise the situation in cities like Kirkuk and Mosul where ethnic and sectarian tensions remain high. 
Al things considered, it does not look as if America’s involvement with Iraq – which has proved catastrophic for both countries — will be ended soon.
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: 09 August 2011
Word Count: 1,137
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Patrick Seale, “Making an Enemy of Iran”

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It is now widely accepted — and lamented — that US President Barack Obama failed dismally in attempting to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Defeated by Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, and by Israel’s friends in the United States — lobbyists, Congressmen and women, neo-conservatives, Christian Zionists, and assorted Arab-haters both inside and outside the Administration — the President threw in the towel.
What is less well understood is that Obama was also defeated in another major area of foreign policy — relations with Iran. When he came to office he vowed to ‘engage’ with the Islamic Republic, but this admirable objective was soon supplanted by a policy of threats, sanctions and intimidation aimed at isolating Iran, subverting its economy and overthrowing its regime.
Israel and its friends led the campaign against Iran, demonizing it as a threat to all mankind, and forcing the United States to follow suit. Israel has repeatedly, and very publicly, threatened to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, and has done its best to drag the United States into war against it, in much the same way as pro-Israeli neo-conservatives — such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon — manipulated intelligence to push America into war against Iraq in 2003, with catastrophic consequences for the United States. 
Why did Wolfowitz and his friends do it? Because they feared that, having survived the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq might just possibly pose a threat to Israel. It had to be destroyed. Tony Blair, Britain’s Prime Minister at the time, himself something of a Christian Zionist, was foolish enough to tag along. The war totally discredited him.
The neo-con’s strategic fantasy was not just to use American power to smash Iraq. Once Saddam had been dealt with, they planned to use the US military again and again to ‘reform’ Syria, Hizbullah, Iran, the Palestinians and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia so as to make the whole region safe for Israel. Such demented folly is hard to comprehend.
Having brushed the Iraqi fiasco under the carpet, Israel and its friends are now doing it again. In recent weeks there has been a flurry of reports that Israel was planning to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities this September — a bluff clearly intended to pressure the United States into taking ever tougher measures against Iran so as to make it unnecessary for Israel to attack. 
In addition to such a transparent propaganda ploy, Israel has in the past two years murdered a number of Iranian nuclear scientists — two were killed and one was seriously injured last year and a fourth was killed last month. Israel’s Mossad has made murdering its enemies something of a speciality. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s it carried out several assassinations, or attempted assassinations, of scientists working for Egypt and Iraq, not to mention the many Palestinian activists it has killed around the world over the past half century.
Apparently with American help, Israel has also sought to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme by introducing a virus, Stuxnet, and possibly other viruses, into its nuclear facilities. Not surprisingly, Tehran now views the United States and its aggressive Israeli ally as one and the same enemy. 
Assassinations and other acts of state terrorism are short-term expedients which usually end up being paid for dearly. Countries have long memories. Hate is not easily expunged. The United States, and to a lesser extent Britain, are still paying for their clandestine overthrow in 1953 of Muhammad Mosaddeq, Iran’s democratically-elected Prime Minister, whose ‘crime’ was to seek to protect Iran’s oil from imperialist predators. 
Why has Netanyahu chosen to portray Iran’s nuclear programme as the gravest threat to the survival of the Jewish people since Hitler? He must know that this is pure fantasy. Ehud Barack, his defence minister, has himself admitted that Iran poses no ‘existential threat’ to Israel. With its own vast nuclear arsenal, Israel has ample means to deter any attack. 
But a nuclear Iran — if it ever came to that — would indeed pose a different sort of challenge to Israel: It would not threaten its existence but it would curtail its freedom to strike its neighbours at will. Israel has always sought to prevent any of its neighbours acquiring a deterrent capability. It wants to be the uncontested military power from Tehran to Casablanca. Hence the hysteria it has sought to generate over Iran’s nuclear programme and over Hizbullah’s rockets. How dare Israel’s neighbours seek to defend themselves! 
In recent weeks, the troubles in Syria have encouraged Israel and its friends to seek to disrupt, and if possible destroy, the Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah axis which has challenged the regional hegemony of Israel and the United States The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), part of the Israeli lobby in the United States, has been particularly active in rousing opinion against all three members of the axis. To quote a single example among many, in an overheated article in Foreign Policy on 27 July, Matthew Levitt, one of WINEP’s propagandists, described Hizbullah as “one of the largest and most sophisticated criminal operations in the world.” The ‘crime’ of this Lebanese resistance movement was to have forced Israel out of South Lebanon after an 18-year occupation (1982-2000) and to have built up a minimal capability to deter future Israeli aggressions, such as its invasion in 2006 which killed 1,600 Lebanese.
The United States has already paid dearly — in men, treasure, and reputation — for its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It remains trapped in the AfPak theatre of war. It must surely know that there can be no settlement in Afghanistan without Iran’s support. A glance at a map is enough to confirm it.
But the relentless demonising of Iran goes on. Last week, David S. Cohen, undersecretary for Terrorism at the U.S. Treasury — a job which seems reserved for pro-Israeli neo-cons to wage economic warfare against Tehran — made the excitable accusation that “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world today.” Without advancing a scrap of evidence, Cohen alleged that Tehran had a “secret deal” with al-Qaida to use Iranian territory to transport money and men to the war in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This fabrication is eerily like the one the neo-cons made against Saddam Hussein to justify the 2003 invasion.
Instead of such mendacious propaganda, the United States would be better advised to listen to Turkey and Brazil. Having approached Iran with respect and understanding, these two powers concluded a deal in May last year whereby most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium would have been swapped for fuel for Tehran’s research reactor. Had the United States conceded Iran’s right to develop a peaceful nuclear programme, as allowed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the deal could have provided the basis for a global settlement. 
Obama rashly dismissed this highly promising approach. Instead, yielding to his ill-intentioned advisers, he pressed for a new round of Security Council sanctions against Iran. But by making an enemy of Iran, he has simply increased the bill the United States will eventually have to pay – in Afghanistan, and no doubt in Iraq and elsewhere as well.
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: 02 August 2011
Word Count: 1,182
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Patrick Seale, “The Palestinian Battle for Statehood”

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This September, the United Nations in New York will be the scene of a great political battle when Mahmud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, submits a formal request to the Security Council for UN recognition and membership for the State of Palestine.
The Palestinian move has full Arab backing. On 14 July, the Arab League pledged to “take all necessary measures” to secure recognition of a Palestinian state via the Security Council.
Israel is mobilising all its friends and its own formidable energies to counter the Palestinian move, while U.S. President Barack Obama has already indicated that he will use the U.S. veto to block it. Why then are the Palestinians taking the grave risk of alienating the United States by doing battle with Israel on the international stage? 
The reasons are clear: Israel’s relentless land-grab on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem; the total deadlock in Israeli-Palestinians negotiations; and the Palestinian sense that, with the Arab world rocked by revolution, it is time for them, too, to make some international headlines. 
Another reason why the Palestinians are going to the UN — and perhaps the main one — is their utter disillusion with America, now seen as a dishonest broker in the iron grip of Zionist lobbies, a pro-Israel Congress and right-wing Jewish and Christian-Zionist forces. Obama’s defeat by Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and America’s blatant pro-Israeli bias have driven the Palestinians to try to leap over the US-Israeli roadblock and seek a multilateral approach at the UN, now seen as the centre of international decision-making. 
In the run up to the vote in September, both Israelis and Palestinians have been furiously lobbying. The Palestinians know that they will have no trouble rallying support from developing countries. Of the 193 UN members, 122 already recognise Palestinian statehood. This figure could rise to about 154, almost on a par with Israel, which has diplomatic relations with 156 states. The problem for the Palestinians lies with the rich, powerful and developed world of North America, Europe and Australasia. That is where Israel has the advantage. The European Union will be the real battleground for the coming diplomatic contest, and there the key swing votes are those of Britain, France and Germany. 
It was anticipated that France would vote for the Palestinians — President Nicolas Sarkozi said as much. But he seems to have recently moved back to the pro-Israeli camp. Germany will as usual vote against the Palestinians, while Britain sits on the fence. Officially, the EU has long come out in favour of a two-state solution. But some European states may fear that a ‘unilateral’ Palestinian move might risk splitting the EU and deepen the transatlantic divide.
The UN vote could be of considerable significance for the United States. America’s influence in the Arab and Islamic world has already suffered a catastrophic decline. Together with its blind support for Israel, its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its strikes against militant Muslim groups in Yemen and elsewhere, have aroused great hostility. According to James Zogby, the well-known Arab-American pollster, America’s favourable ratings have fallen to a minuscule 5% in Egypt. Even in Morocco, a country traditionally close to America, they are down to 12%. If Obama vetoes Palestinian statehood at the Security Council, as seems very likely, America’s alienation from the Arab and Muslim world will be very great.
In a recent article, an influential member of the Saudi Royal family, Prince Turki al-Faysal, former head of intelligence and former ambassador to London and Washington, warned the United States that “there will be disastrous consequences for US-Saudi relations if the US vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian state.” He added that “the game of favouritism towards Israel has not proven wise for Washington… It will soon learn that there are other players in the region…” This angry tone from America’s main Arab ally is highly unusual.
Among the actions which have shocked the Arabs are America’s veto last February of a Security Council Resolution condemning Israel’s continued building of illegal settlements; the resignation in May of George Mitchell, Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, after a frustrating two years in which he was unable to get Netanyahu to move an inch; Obama’s declared opposition to the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation; and his scornful dismissal of the PLO’s UN strategy. 
The mechanics for securing UN recognition and membership for a Palestinian state are fairly tortuous. They would require a nine-vote majority in the Security Council as well as finding a way around a potential US veto. One way being considered by Palestinian strategists would be for the General Assembly to invoke Resolution 377 of November 1950. Known as the “Uniting for Peace” Resolution, it was adopted during the Korean crisis to overcome a Security Council deadlock. The solution found then was for the UN General Assembly, convened in an Emergency Special Session, to recommend collective action in order to maintain international peace and security. The Security Council was unable to block it. It might provide a model.
What would the Palestinians gain from UN recognition of their state? It would not at once end the Israeli occupation nor change much on the ground. But they would gain ‘virtual citizenship’, a passport and sovereignty; legal protection against violence by Israeli settlers; the right to fight back in self-defence if attacked; potential backing for their claims from international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
A favourable UN vote, however, could have dire consequences. The US Congress could cut US aid to the Palestinian Authority of $550m a year. Israel’s right-wing government might react aggressively by annexing Area C of the West Bank, amounting to almost 60% of the territory, or by scrapping the Oslo accords, and therefore ending economic and security cooperation with the Palestinian authority. Any of these moves could trigger an outbreak of Palestinian violence, even a third intifada. But determined at all costs to keep his coalition intact, Netanyahu will fight to the end. His fanatical far-right, national religious and settler constituency wants nothing less than a “Greater Israel” — whatever the cost to Israel’s international reputation and long-term security. 
The Palestinians are still a long way from exercising their basic right of self-determination. But the battle at the UN will alert the world to the gross injustice they are suffering. The jailed Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti — perhaps the most famous of the many thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons — wrote a recent letter from his prison cell calling for “a peaceful million-man march during the week of voting in the UN in September.” Israel promptly placed him in solitary confinement — a punitive response which betrays its nervousness at the Palestinians’ UN strategy and also its contempt for Palestinian human rights. 
The Palestinians hope to swap the charismatic Barghhouti and a thousand other prisoners for Gilad Shalit, the Israel soldier being held by Hamas in Gaza. But the last thing Netanyahu wants is to face a Palestinian leader who could unite his people behind a non-violent programme for statehood. That would be a real threat.
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: 26 July 2011
Word Count: 1,181
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Patrick Seale, “Netanyahu’s Catastrophic Leadership”

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Yigal Amir has good reason for quiet satisfaction. Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin knows that the three shots he fired on the night of 4 November 1995 slammed shut the door on peace and changed the course of Israeli history. 
As he sits in his comfortably-appointed cell in Beersheba, awaiting the visits of Larisa Trembovler, the Russian wife he married in jail, Amir must savour his decisive contribution to the extremist causes for which he killed Israel’s Prime Minister: the rise and rise of the far-right, ultra-religious Zionism to which he adheres; the ever-expanding West Bank settlements; and the unrelieved suffering of the Palestinians, robbed not only of their land, but of freedom, justice and human rights.
The assassin may be locked up for life, but his policies live on. In the nearly two and a half years he has been Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu has walked unswervingly down the path trodden by Yigal Amir. It is as if he were determined to consolidate the young fanatic’s heritage.
Netanyahu has done everything he can to avoid peace with the Palestinians. He has maintained the occupation of the West Bank; he has continued to wage economic warfare against 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza; he has attempted to seize what remains of Arab East Jerusalem; and he has refused to negotiate with any semblance of good faith.
His land-hunger apparently knows no bounds. He has given fanatical settlers free rein to expand their illegal colonies and subject their Palestinian neighbours to systematic violence — burning their crops, cutting down their olive trees, and desecrating their mosques.
It is no wonder that the Palestinians, despairing of Israel’s intentions, have decided to seek recognition of their state at the UN next September, an initiative to which Israel has reacted with something like panic. Recognition of Palestinian statehood by a large majority of UN members will not end the occupation, but it will further underline Israel’s isolation.
At home, Netanyahu has allowed far-right and ultra- religious elements to acquire ever-greater influence in the Israeli army, in society and in his own government; and he has eroded Israeli democracy by promoting an oppressive and racist ideology, which he has done his best to translate into law. The latest example is the Boycott Prohibition Law, which inflicts severe punishments on anyone calling for a boycott of Israel — or of the produce of its illegal settlements.
The cost to Israel of these policies has been very steep. Its reputation and international standing have suffered hugely. It is seen in many Western diplomatic circles as a real nuisance. That a notorious and most undiplomatic bruiser, Avigdor Lieberman, has been put in charge of Israel’s foreign relations has not helped.
Meanwhile, Israel’s cruel behaviour towards the Palestinians has led to the emergence of a world-wide non-violent civil-resistance movement, known as the BDS campaign – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – aimed at making Israel come to its senses before catastrophe strikes.
Although Israel seeks to justify its uncompromising stance by the absolute necessity to protect itself in a hostile environment, Netanyahu’s policies have actually dealt the sacred cow of security a lethal blow. Washington will no doubt continue to guarantee Israel’s ability to defeat any combination of its enemies — a guarantee actually written into American law. But on a deeper level, Netanyahu and his fellow extremists have themselves helped to bring about adverse changes in Israel’s strategic environment.
• Israel’s key alliance with Turkey has been all but destroyed. The last nail in the coffin was last year’s brutal assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship attempting to break the Gaza siege. Nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed. Turkey is seeking an apology and compensation for the dead. Lieberman says never.
• For all its relentless demonization of Iran, Israel has failed to drag the United States into war with Tehran. This marks a real setback for Israel’s formidable propaganda machine. Few if any observers believe Israel would dare strike Iran alone — and risk the inevitable, and probably devastating, consequences. So Iran’s nuclear programme proceeds unchecked.
• Israel’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt — which by removing the largest state from the Arab military line-up guaranteed Israeli supremacy for three decades — is under threat. The Treaty will probably survive, in form at least, but the revolutionary changes now taking place in Egypt have emptied it of its content. There will be no more Egyptian collusion with Israel against the Palestinians or against Iran.
• Despite all its efforts, Israel has failed to dismantle the Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah axis which has been a major obstacle to US-Israeli regional hegemony over the past several years. In spite of intense lobbying against Syria in the United States by APAC and the Washington Institute, AIPAC’s sister organisation, and in spite of a similar campaign in Europe by pro-Israeli groups, Syria and its axis have both so far survived. 
President Bashar al-Asad’s rigid and autocratic Syrian leadership is facing unprecedented opposition. Its attempt to silence the protests with violence has been rightly condemned. But the situation does not seem to be regime-threatening — or at least not yet. Meanwhile in Lebanon, Syria’s Hizbullah ally remains politically and militarily strong. Taken together, however, these developments mean that Israel’s military supremacy over all its neighbours looks unsustainable in the longer term. It may eventually have to accept to live — horror of horrors — with a regional balance of power.
Of all the consequences of Netanyahu’s policies, the real damage has been to America. Natanyahu has humiliated Barack Obama, arrogantly dismissing his attempts at peace-making. The contest between them has given the world a demonstration of American impotence. Netanyahu has made nonsense of Obama’s overtures to the Arab and Muslim world. Shackled by lobbyists and by a venal Congress, the President has been unable to discipline his errant ally. 
There are, of course, several reasons why the United States now faces great hostility in much of the Arab and Muslim world. The main reason is its own wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, and the huge material and human damage these have caused. But its blind support for Israel has also been a major contributing factor. Netanyahu’s adamant refusal to make peace with the Palestinians has been extremely costly for the United States. The cost will only grow as the occupation is prolonged and the prospect of peace fades away. 
Meanwhile, a minor, often forgotten casualty of the conflict is Gilad Shalit, the captured Israel soldier rotting in a Gaza cellar for the past five years. True to form, Netanyahu has not wanted to reward the hated Hamas by releasing, in exchange for his freedom, a few hundred of the many thousands of Palestinians rotting in Israeli jails.
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: 12 July 2011
Word Count: 1,115
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Patrick Seale, “Challenges Facing the Arabs”

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Rarely have the leaders of the Arab world – its rulers, opposition activists, intellectuals, economic planners, bankers, major businessmen — faced so many challenges as in this summer of 2011. Everything is changing before their eyes, both inside Arab societies and in the world outside. 
Among the host of bewildering problems, two stand out. The way these problems are tackled and resolved will affect the Arab world for decades to come. They demand careful reflection and bold action.
The first and most obvious problem is that posed by the revolutionary wave sweeping across the region. The key question is this: how to make sure that this exercise of “people power” has a positive rather than a negative outcome. In other words, how to make sure that the tremendous energies released by the “Arab Spring” will lead to a just, stable and prosperous Arab world rather than to violence and chaos.
The second problem relates to the change in American and European strategic priorities. There seems no doubt that the United States and its Western allies are slowly but surely disengaging militarily from the Middle East and Central Asia. The Western security umbrella which has been a feature of the region since the Second World War is being gradually withdrawn. This process has already begun in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The vast U.S. bases in the Gulf are also an anachronism, which may not long survive. 
The United States is war-weary and bankrupt. Its debts total $14.5 trillion, equal to 100% of its GDP. For it to spend $900bn on defence and military operations this year is unsustainable. It is disengaging from the Arab and Muslim world in order to focus its energies on China, its global rival. President Barack Obama’s failure to impose a two-state solution on Israel sends a clear signal of American weakness and is a reminder of the extent to which pro-Israeli activists have taken control of America’s Middle East policy. It is sheer folly for the Arabs to depend on the U.S. to solve the Palestine problem.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. deployed 500,000 men to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Those days are long past. The Iraq and Afghan wars — both defeats of a sort for the United States in which many terrible crimes were committed — have robbed the Americans of any appetite for Middle Eastern adventures. This means that the United States will not attack Iran — even if it reaches a nuclear threshold. But nor will it allow Israel to drag it into war against Tehran — as Israel and its American friends managed to do against Baghdad in 2003. That lesson has been learned.
As far as the Arab Spring is concerned, the situation can be roughly summed up by saying that Tunisia, where the popular uprising started, is ahead of the others in the transition to a more representative system. Because of its large, well-educated middle class, and because of the modernising legacy of former President Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia seems well equipped for institutional change. It could provide a model for other countries.
In Egypt, a peaceful transition may be more difficult to achieve because of Egypt’s own inherent problems: the crippling demographic explosion, the intractable economic problems, the heavy-handed powerful remnants of past military regimes. Yet success in Egypt is essential — for itself and for all the Arabs. Without a strong Egypt — under strong representative management, firmly committed to Arab causes — the whole Arab world will be enfeebled, as the history of the past thirty years has demonstrated.
Libya’s immediate future is, for the moment at least, in the hands of the Western powers. They intervened militarily, allegedly to protect Libyan civilians from Muammar al-Qadhafi’s violence but in reality to end his autocratic and cruel regime. This may well prove to be the last armed intervention by the West in an Arab country for the foreseeable future. 
More immediately relevant to Arab fortunes is the situation in both Yemen and Syria. A stable Yemen is vital to the security of the Arabian Peninsula, and a stable Syria is vital to the security of the eastern Arab world. The loss of life in both these countries is greatly to be regretted. By resorting to violence, the rulers in both countries grossly mismanaged the protest movement. Violence invariably breeds violence. The killing must stop.
Yemen’s President Ali Abdallah Saleh, now convalescing in Saudi Arabia, will very probably never return to rule in San‘a. He squandered his reputation and tarnished his legacy by clinging far too long to power. In Syria, the hope is that a National Dialogue, due to be launched this month, will result in the passing — and implementation — of new laws allowing for political parties, freedom of assembly and a free media; the curbing of police brutality; the release of political prisoners and the emergence of a truly independent judiciary. In a word, there has to be a restructuring of the apparatus of power.
In passing judgment on Arab regimes facing popular protests — in Bahrain and Morocco, as well as in the ones mentioned above — we need to remember two lessons from history. The first is that democracy is not built in a day or a year, or even in a generation. In most Western countries it has taken one hundred or two hundred years. A democratic system has to be built brick by brick, beginning with participatory institutions which reflect, respect and defend the rights of ordinary citizens.
The second lesson is that non-violence is a far more effective strategy than force in persuading autocratic regimes to change their ways. The activists of the Arab Spring would be well advised to heed the message of a man like Abd al-Ghaffar Khan, a former Muslim political and religious leader in the Indian sub-continent who preached non-violent opposition to British rule. He was highly influential, is still revered, and is often compared to Gandhi.
The Arabs must take their own destinies in hand. They must look to their own protection. Out of pure self-interest, the oil-rich monarchies must help their poorer brothers. The responsibility of Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s dominant power, is very great. Its prime task must surely be to use its wealth to save the Arab Spring from collapsing into chaos while strengthening its own hand with new alliances. A wide-ranging partnership with Turkey could be of great benefit to the Arabs, as would a sincere dialogue with Iran — a dialogue untainted by sectarian hates and fears. 
With the world changing around them, the Arabs need whatever help they can get. They must nurse the Arab Spring to a successful outcome; they must see to their own defence as the Western security umbrella is gradually withdrawn; they must protect the Palestine cause from fanatical Israel settlers, far-right politicians and Israel’s powerful friends in the United States; and they must protect Arab and Muslim interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where American intervention has been disastrous. Quite a programme!
Summer is a time for reflection. Arab leaders — both those in power and those aspiring to power — have a great deal of serious thinking to do.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 05 July 2011
Word Count: 1,182
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Patrick Seale, “An Exit Strategy for Afghanistan”

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America’s exit from its costly 10-year war in Afghanistan has begun. This is a welcome step. But will it be peace with honour? That is far from certain. Much remains unclear about the longer-term outlook. 
Two recent developments have changed the picture for the better, if not yet as radically as some would like. First, it has been announced in both Washington and Kabul that talks with the Taliban leadership, or at least contacts of some sort, are underway. German mediators are thought to be playing a role. Secondly, President Barack Obama has announced a fairly bold timetable for American force withdrawals, defying some of his hard-line military advisers who had argued for a more cautious drawdown.
Of the almost 100,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan today, 10,000 are to return home this summer, another 23,000 by September 1912 (in time to have an impact on November’s presidential election) and many of the remaining 67,000 by the end of 1914, when Afghan forces are due to assume responsibility for their country’s security. 
The fly in the ointment is that there is talk of some 20,000 American soldiers remaining in Afghanistan at permanent U.S. bases. No doubt the intention is that they will continue to play a counter-terrorist role in both Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. But this could prove seriously counter-productive, as it will arouse bitter opposition in both Iran and Pakistan, and no doubt in Afghanistan as well. 
But that is to look too far ahead. The current message from Washington is that U.S. disengagement from the AfPak theatre of war has begun. Driving the withdrawal is America’s patent war-weariness. American politicians of both parties have grasped that the American public is fed up with what has come to seem an unwinnable conflict and wants out. Deficit-ridden America, wrestling with high unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure, can no longer afford the exorbitant cost of the Afghan war. The bill for the last decade has topped $450bn, with $120bn spent last year alone. Expenditure on the war is currently running at $2bn a week! 
Obama is well aware that this must stop. But his policies are still plagued by contradictions and plain muddle. The dominant view in Washington is that the Taliban must first be weakened, if not actually defeated, before serious negotiations can succeed. This was the argument behind the ‘surge’ in U.S. troop numbers which Obama agreed to last year. But the Taliban have proved resilient. They may have fallen back here and there in the face of overwhelming U.S. pressure but their hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings are more frequent and lethal than ever. They have also pushed their tentacles into northern provinces well beyond their Pashtun heartland. Killing their leaders by missile strikes may raise a cheer but it has resulted in more radical commanders taking over, younger men even less inclined to negotiate than their elders. In a word, the policy of “kill them first and negotiate afterwards” has been a failure. 
Should Obama have been bolder? The following are some steps he might have taken — and still could: 
• Call for an immediate ceasefire to create the right atmosphere for peace talks. Once the guns fall silent, negotiations could be held in Afghanistan itself, or in Turkey or Qatar, countries with a proven record of mediation. 
• Summon all Afghanistan neighbours — whether the United States likes them or not — to an international conference at which all aspects of the Afghan problem would be discussed and everyone’s interests in the country addressed, so that the outlines of a deal could emerge. The aim would be to get all Afghanistan’s neighbours, near and far, on board. 
• Follow up the international conference with a loya jurga, a major tribal gathering attended by all Afghan factions, at which the details of the internationally-backed peace deal could be thrashed out and finalised.
• Encourage President Hamid Karzai to appoint a commission to draft an urgently-needed new Afghan Constitution. The present highly-centralised presidential system does not suit a country of diverse regions and ethnic communities.
• Pledge that all U.S. and allied forces would be withdrawn once the peace deal was implemented.
• Promise to fund a major ten-year aid package, to be disbursed once peace takes hold. 
There are several obstacles to such a peace strategy, most of them the result of America’s mistaken policiess. 
Iran The Islamic Republic of Iran has a frontier of nearly 1,000 kms with Afghanistan, over which it keeps a close eye. It needs to guard against raids by al-Qaida and other Sunni jihadis, stem the inflow of Afghan drugs, and protect communities in Afghanistan to which it is allied, whether for religious or ethnic reasons. Iran is so deeply involved in Afghan affairs that there can be no satisfactory settlement without its help and approval. Yet, rather than engaging with Iran on Afghanistan and other matters, the United States has followed Israel’s lead in seeking to cripple it with sanctions, subverting it wherever possible, and demonising it as a grave danger to American interests and to mankind at large. Only Iran’s hard-line clerics have benefitted from this aggressive policy. In the grip of special interest groups, Washington seems incapable of thinking clearly about Iran. Its hopes for a satisfactory outcome in Afghanistan must suffer accordingly.
Pakistan The United States has treated Pakistan shabbily — violating its sovereignty with clandestine operations (like the killing of Osama bin Laden) and with its numerous drone attacks against Islamic militants which inevitably result in civilian deaths. The result has been to arouse fierce hostility to the United States. The country has been gravely destabilised by America’s ‘war on terror’ and has had to confront a ferocious terrorist assault at home largely because it has seemed to be fighting America’s war against its own people. 
The United States gives Pakistan billions of dollars a year to fight jihadis and lectures it for its ambivalent attitude towards such Islamic militants, refusing to recognise that Pakistan feels it needs the militants to protect itself against Indian encroachment in Afghanistan once the U.S. withdraws. Like Iran, Pakistan is essential to any Afghan settlement. But it will play its part in reaching one only if its interests are understood and addressed.
Afghanistan President Karzai and his ruling group of warlords and corrupt businessmen have been spoiled rotten by the billions of dollars which the United States has poured into Afghanistan. The deluge of funds has become addictive. Much of the money has been wasted or has ended up in private pockets. Karzai’s puzzle is how to survive without this bonanza. He seems to hope that renting military bases to the U.S. in the future will keep the money flowing. 
A well-directed aid programme aimed at providing jobs for young Afghans by developing the country’s extensive mineral resources would surely be a better way to spend American tax dollars than waging a destructive and increasingly pointless war.
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: 28 June 2011
Word Count: 1,147
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Patrick Seale, “Asad Sticks to His Guns”

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All those dreaming of — and working for — ‘regime change’ in Syria will be outraged by President Bashar al-Asad’s speech last Monday, 20 June. They want him out, together with the hate figures around him who have been conducting the brutal repression of the protest movement. But he is not stepping down. He intends to stay on — and to fight on. 
Asad gave no ground to his political enemies. The speech was not, in fact, addressed to them. It was addressed to Syria’s ‘silent majority’ which — or so the President continues to believe — aspires to security, stability and national unity, and is terrified, above all, of a sectarian war on the Iraqi model. 
The President explained that, in order to understand the nature of the crisis, he had held several meetings in recent weeks with citizens from all parts of the country. He wanted to hear directly from them. The conclusion he had reached was that there were several different components to the protest movement.
First, there were those who had legitimate demands, who wanted justice, democracy and jobs, and the resolution of problems which had accumulated over decades. Their demands could not be ignored. He intended to address them and had already started to do so. But then there were the others — the criminal outlaws, the blasphemous intellectuals who spoke in the name of religion, the vandals, conspirators and paid agents of foreign powers. Under cover of the protest movement, they had taken up arms against the state!
These conspirators, he said, had called for foreign intervention, they had smeared Syria’s image and destroyed public and private property. They had no respect for state institutions or the rule of law. No reform was possible with such vandals.
He dismissed the argument that Syria was not facing a conspiracy. There was a conspiracy, he declared – designed abroad and perpetrated inside the country. How else to explain the satellite phones, the advanced weapons, the guns mounted on trucks in the hands of his enemies? Syria had always been a target of conspiracy. He had long been under pressure to abandon his principles. (No doubt, by this he meant his Arab nationalist convictions, his alliance with Iran and Hizbullah, his opposition to Israel and the United States.) Syria needed to strengthen its immunity against such conspiracies, he insisted.
In this defiant speech, President Asad made no mention of the abuses of his security services — the callous use of live fire against civilians, the killing of well over a thousand protesters, the deployment of tanks to besiege rebellious cities, the mass arrests, the beatings and the torture, the flight of terrified refugees across Syria’s borders — a catalogue of outrages which has shattered Syria’s reputation and earned it international condemnation. The refugees in Turkey should return home, he said. They would not be punished. The army would protect them. But those who have had a taste of army brutality may not be persuaded by the President’s assurances. He did, however, have a word of condolence for bereaved mothers.
The heart of Asad’s address was a statement of his ambition to shape a new vision for Syria’s future. Reform, he declared, was his firm conviction. His one big idea — the centrepiece of his speech — was a plan for a National Dialogue. A special authority had been set up to work out the necessary arrangements for this great debate, which he hoped would provide for the widest possible popular participation. The task was to create a forum where far-reaching political and economic reforms could be discussed, so that legislation could then be drafted and passed into law. There could be no giant leap into the unknown because decisions taken now would affect Syria for decades to come.
The speech will disappoint all those who had hoped for immediate and dramatic reforms. The President served up a diet of words rather than of actions. He did mention, however, that elections would take place in August, and that among the bills to be discussed would be a new electoral law, a law allowing for the formation of political parties, a media law, a law to give greater powers to municipal authorities, and the need to amend or even entirely rewrite the Constitution. He seemed to be indicating that the notorious Article 8 of the Constitution, which gives the Ba‘th party a “leading role in state and society,” might be scrapped.
This may well prove hard to achieve. Having enjoyed a monopoly on the political scene since 1963, Syria’s Ba‘th party has long since become rigid and Stalinist, and is probably incapable of sharing power with other parties. More battles lie ahead.
To all but his diehard political enemies, President Asad seemed thoughtful and even conciliatory. He did not look like a leader battling for survival. No doubt, the credits outweigh the debits in his personal profit-and-loss account. He knows that he need fear no foreign military intervention: After Libya, no Western power would even contemplate it. Some soldiers have defected to the rebels, but there has been no major split in the army or the security services, or in the regime itself. Whatever disputes and dissensions there may have been in the ruling circle have been carefully hidden from view. He knows that so long as they remain united, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the opposition to topple him.
At the UN and elsewhere, Syria enjoys the protection of Russia — perhaps concerned for its naval base at Tartus. The Russian view is that the Syrian crisis poses no threat to international peace and security. China, India, South Africa and Brazil all side with Syria. At home, the country will not face starvation — this year’s wheat harvest is estimated at 3.6m tons. Oil and gas exports have so far not been affected.
On the debit side, however, tourism has collapsed; inward investment has dried up; the increase Asad has decree in the salaries of government bureaucrats is estimated to cost $1bn a year — driving the government deficit to dangerous heights. If the crisis continues much longer, Syria will need a large cash injection from somewhere, and is probably looking to Qatar. Then there is the unpredictable factor. What if the protests continue and become more violent? Will the merchant middle class, the backbone of the regime, remain loyal? Could the economy take the strain? What might next Friday bring?
I was reached this week on the phone by a well-placed Syrian, close to the regime. “Western condemnation of Syria is pure hypocrisy,” he fumed. “Every regime in the world will try to destroy its enemies. Have you heard of a place called Abu Ghraib? Or the hundreds of thousands killed by America in Iraq? Or Israel’s massacre in Gaza? Or the 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails? If the U.S. and Israel can get away with large-scale killing and torture, why can’t we? They claim to act in self-defence, so do we!”
It would seem that lawlessness and contempt for human life are contagious.
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: 21 June 2011
Word Count: 1,166
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Patrick Seale, “Washington Wrestles with Afghan Options”

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What is President Barack Obama’s biggest foreign policy headache? Is it China’s emergence as a global rival? Is it the tricky relationship with a sullen Russia? Is it holding back a belligerent Israel from attacking Iran? Or is it America’s failure to pressure Israel to make peace with the Palestinians and the damage this must inevitably cause to U.S. relations with the whole Arab world, and especially with the young revolutionaries of the “Arab Spring”? 
There is little doubt that these highly important questions preoccupy a great many people in Washington. But they are overshadowed by an even more difficult and more urgent problem: what to do about Afghanistan. 
America’s Afghan war has now lasted ten years, with no end in sight and no credible exit strategy. NATO has deployed 140,000 men in Afghanistan, of which 100,000 are American. Combat operations are planned to continue until the end of 2014, if not beyond — in other words, for another three to four years of agony. So far, some 1,500 American service men and men have been killed in action in Afghanistan and another 11,500 wounded. 
These casualties are painful enough, but the really spectacular figures are in dollars rather than in lives. The war has so far cost the United States $420bn (about half the cost of the catastrophic Iraq war.) The bill in Afghanistan for this fiscal year alone is estimated at $113bn, with another $107bn earmarked for 2012. These are colossal sums. If spent on job creation they could have transformed the Arab world or Africa. They could have resolved the Palestine refugee problem, brought drinking water to millions, eradicated diseases, and much else besides. They could have done great things in repairing America’s own dilapidated infrastructure. But they have been squandered on an unwinnable war. In the words of Senator John Kerry, expenditure on this scale is simply “unsustainable,” especially at a time of America’s soaring federal deficits. 
Not the least of the many absurdities of the Afghan war is the $28bn the United States has spent beefing up the Afghan army, which now numbers close to 350,000 men. The Pentagon has asked for another $12.8bn for 2012. But who will pay for this inflated army when the U.S. withdraws? No Afghan government could conceivably afford such a luxury. Will the U.S. be condemned to foot the bill for the foreseeable future?
The situation in Afghanistan cannot be separated from the almost equally dire situation across the border in Pakistan: hence the American appellation of ‘Afpak’ to describe the joint theatre of operations. These two fragile states, one of them a nuclear power, are home to some 200 million people, many of them poor, angry and extremely hostile to America because of the death and destruction which war has brought to their lives. The danger of large-scale social and political chaos is ever-present.
Most observers of the Afghan scene agree that there is no military solution to the conflict, only a political one. But how, when and by whom can this solution be brought about? The Obama administration does not seem to have put its mind to answering these questions with sufficient urgency. The argument in Washington tends to be about force levels in Afghanistan, rather than about peace.
Vice-President Joe Biden is known to favour a reasonably rapid drawdown of U.S. forces. He was none too keen on a ‘surge’ in U.S. forces in the first place, although Obama went ahead and agreed to send an extra 30,000 men. Another leading adviser who expressed doubts to Obama about the wisdom of maintaining high force levels in Afghanistan was General James Cartwright of the Marine Corps. Obama liked and respected him and intended to nominate him to replace Admiral Mike Mullen as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But Cartwright has been passed over. His mistake was to take his advice straight to the President without informing Admiral Mullen and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, both enthusiastic backers of the troops’ surge. The job of chairman of the Joint Chiefs — in effect chief military adviser of the President — is going to General Martin Dempsey, at present head of the U.S. army. Cartwright has paid the price and is retiring. 
General David Petraeus, overall commander in Afghanistan, was the leading advocate of the ‘surge’. He was evidently hoping to replicate in Afghanistan the success he had with a ‘surge’ in Iraq. But Petraeus is due to leave Afghanistan in September when he takes over as director of the CIA. 
These different views illustrate the current disputes in Washington and among its allies. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a powerful voice in the current debate, opposes a reduction in America’s force levels. “To reduce the force would be a mistake,” he told Britain’s Financial Times in an interview published on 31 May. “We don’t want to leave a security vacuum in the country after we have gone.” His argument was that “maintaining high military pressure [on the Taliban] facilitates the reconciliation process.” In the view of many experts, this is a highly doubtful conclusion. Rasmussen’s motives are suspect. His main concern would seem to be to maintain NATO’s prestige. He may think that anything like a scuttle out of Afghanistan would damage the Alliance’s image.
Whereas Rasmussen favours continued counter-insurgency operations requiring large numbers of men, other experts recommend that the United States should switch its focus to counter-terrorist operations, which require only small hard-hitting teams, such as the one which killed Bin Laden.
Others still argue that it is utter folly for America to hunt down and kill the Afghan Taliban since they are the very people with whom a political settlement will eventually have to be negotiated. On this view, an atmosphere suitable for peace talks should be created by reducing missile attacks by unmanned drones, as well as air strikes and night raids on residential areas, all of which inevitably kill civilians. A NATO air strike on 28 May killed 14 Afghan civilians, including 11 children, aged 2 to 7. A furious President Hamid Karzai issued a ‘last’ warning to NATO to cease such attacks. NATO made an apology. But the damage was done. 
In an article in the International Herald Tribune on 24 March, Lakhdar Brahimi, a former UN special representative for Afghanistan, and Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. under secretary of state, recommended that a “neutral international facilitator” be appointed to explore with all potential parties the possibility of a negotiated end to the conflict. The facilitator, they wrote, could be a person, a group, an international organisation, a neutral state, or a group of states.
A settlement, they added, would require making room for Taliban representatives in central and provincial governments as well as guaranteeing that foreign forces would be withdrawn. Financial aid would be necessary — no doubt only a fraction of what the war is costing — as well as some way for the international community to keep the peace and enforce any agreement reached. 
This is the voice of wisdom. So far, however, Obama seems to give more weight to the war-mongers among his advisers than the peace-makers. He has failed to make peace between the Arabs and Israel. Is he to fail in Afghanistan also?
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: 06 June 2011
Word Count: 1,203
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