Agence Global

Patrick Seale, “The United States Is Losing Pakistan”

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The U.S. and Pakistani governments seem to be heading for a divorce full of recriminations. So great are the divergent objectives and lack of trust between them that Pakistan seems to be contemplating moving out of America’s orbit altogether and into China’s embrace.
America’s decision — without informing Pakistan or seeking its help — to send a hit-team deep inside Pakistani territory to kill Osama Bin Laden may have proved to be the last straw. Pakistan’s leaders are furious. Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani declared that any future action “violating the sovereignty of Pakistan” would lead to a complete review of military and intelligence cooperation with the United States. 
Added to this, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani expressed fulsome praise for China on a visit to Beijing in May. China, he said, was a source of inspiration for the Pakistani people, while Chinese premier Wen Jiabao declared that “China and Pakistan will remain for ever good neighbors, good friends, good partners and good brothers.” 
As well as cooperating in the military, banking, civil nuclear and other fields, Pakistan wants China to build a naval base and maintain a regular naval presence at the port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. This has alarmed the United States, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Worried at Pakistan’s drift away from Washington, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton hurried to Pakistan for a few hours on 27 May in an attempt to patch things up — but apparently with little success. This is because the row over the killing of Ben Laden is only the latest chapter in a long narrative of mutual misperceptions.
CIA missile attacks by unmanned drones against alleged ‘terrorist’ targets inside Pakistan invariably end up killing civilians, and arousing furious anti-American sentiment. The Pakistan parliament has denounced these strikes as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and demanded a permanent halt to them. Some parliamentary members warned that Pakistan could cut supply lines to U.S. forces in Afghanistan if drone attacks continued.
The extent of hostility towards America was on display following an incident on 27 January when Raymond A Davis, a covert CIA officer, shot and killed two Pakistanis in a crowded street in Lahore. Pakistani popular opinion wanted him hanged. It was only with great difficulty that the U.S. managed to secure his release. But the idea took root in Pakistan that the United States. was deploying a secret army against Islamic militants in the country. The Pakistan army has demanded that the number of American military personnel in the country be reduced. Relations between the CIA and Pakistan‘s Inter-Service Intelligence directorate (ISI), headed by Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, are said to be tense.
At the heart of the U.S.-Pakistani estrangement lies a profound disagreement about everything to do with Afghanistan, especially how to deal with radical factions, such as the Taliban. Not content with having eliminated Bin Laden, the United States wants to hunt down and destroy any remnants of Al-Qaida and other militant groups, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan – and even in places further afield like Yemen. Obsessed with the danger of terrorist violence, the U.S. has been unwilling to recognise that Arab and Muslim hostility to the United States springs mainly from its own catastrophic wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan itself, with their heavy toll of civilian casualties, and from its blind support for Israel. 
Suspecting Pakistan of complicity with Muslim radicals, the U.S. insists that it should join in America’s own anti-terrorist campaigns. It would like Pakistan to break relations with Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Afghan Taliban; with the Jalaluddin Haqqani network (now run by Jalaluddin’s sons, Sirajuddin and Badruddin); and with the Lashkar-e-Taiba — a militant group considered responsible for the devastating Mumbai attack of 2008.
But Pakistan sees the matter very differently. Created as a refuge for Indian Muslims after the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, it feels under permanent threat — mainly from India. Many in its government consider that its national interest demands that it maintain close links with the Taliban and other radical Afghan Muslim networks as useful allies once U.S. forces go home – as they will sooner or later. Troop withdrawals are due to start this July.
Pakistan is determined to exercise a degree of control over Afghanistan for two reasons. First, to prevent the realization of the Pashtun dream of a ‘Greater Pakhtunistan’ astride the Durand Line, since this would mean the loss of Pakistan’s Pashtun-inhabited North-West Frontier Province. The fact that Afghanistan still refuses to recognise the validity of the Durand Line — which divides the Pashtuns — keeps such Pakistani fears alive. 
Pakistan is still smarting from the loss of Kashmir to India in the 1947-48 war, followed by the loss of East Pakistan – now Bangladesh — in the 1971 war. It dreads further amputations of its territory. Rather than pressing Pakistan to sever its ties with militant groups, the United States would be better advised to quieten Pakistani fears by putting pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir dispute.
The second reason why Pakistan is determined to keep Afghanistan within its own orbit is to prevent it falling under India’s influence, as this would result in Pakistan being encircled. Islamabad sees Afghanistan as its “strategic depth.” 
The U.S.-Pakistani disagreement over Afghanistan serves to reinforce a deep-seated Pakistani suspicion that America is not a faithful partner but one which abandons its allies once they cease to be useful. Throughout the 1980s, the United States — with help from Pakistan and funding from Saudi Arabia — recruited, armed and trained tens of thousands of Muslim volunteers to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. But once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, the U.S. lost interest in these mujaheddin. Finance for them was cut off. They were abandoned to their fate. Many were not wanted in their home countries. Osama Bin Laden recruited them into al-Qaida.
The paradox is that Pakistan has in recent years been pressured to do America’s bidding in making war on militant Islamic groups — in its own country if not in Afghanistan — and has paid dearly for it. Not only have military operations against these militants been extremely costly for Pakistan in men and treasure, but they have also provoked lethal retaliation from groups such as Tahrik-e-Taliban in the form of suicide bombings and other attacks. Pakistan’s internal security situation is now dire, and its economy gravely damaged. It is wrestling with a soaring budget deficit, frequent power cuts and a growing danger of political and social chaos.
On 22-23 May, a militant team raided Pakistan’s Mehran Naval Station in the heart of Karachi, the country’s economic capital, killing 12 security officers and destroying two high-tech Lockheed Martin maritime surveillance aircraft. The militants said the raid was to avenge Bin Laden’s killing. Minister of Interior Rehman Malik concluded that the country was in “a state of war.” 
Pakistan thus finds itself under pressure from the United States to fight the militants, and under attack from the militants for waging America’s war for it. The United States gives Pakistan, a country of 180 million people, $3bn in annual aid, rather less than it gives to Israel, with a population of 7 million. Little wonder that some leading Pakistanis have come to think that their country would be better off without the exorbitant encumbrance of this American connection.
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: 31 May 2011
Word Count: 1,221
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Patrick Seale, “Obama’s Collapse to Israeli Pressure”

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President Barack Obama’s failure to stand up to Israel’s land-hungry prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has bitterly disappointed opinion in the Arab and Muslim world. It has confirmed the belief that Washington has sold out to Israeli interests.
Heralded as an attempt to extend a hand of friendship to the democratic wave in the Arab world, Obama’s speech on 19 May was met in the region with indifference or derision. The Arab-Israeli peace process is now thought to be all but dead.
Obama’s weak-kneed approach has alarmed some European leaders. They now have to consider whether it is time for Europe, in defence of its own security interests, to break ranks with Washington and adopt a tougher stance towards Israel. One can only wonder what David Cameron, Britain’s Prime Minister, said to Barack Obama on this subject when the latter visited the UK this week.
In his speech, Obama threw a bone to the Palestinians by saying that the borders between Israel and Palestine ‘”should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” But when Netanyahu made furious objection, he snatched the bone back. Addressing AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby, last Sunday, Obama sought to correct what he complained was a wrong interpretation of his words. “Mutually agreed swaps,” he said, meant “that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.” In other words, the drawing of the border was to be left to a negotiation between a lion and a mouse. 
There was no hint in his speech of any U.S. action to implement the vision of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, living side by side in peace and security. Instead his remarks were widely seen as a further demonstration, if one were needed, of the way pro-Israeli interests have taken control of America’s Middle East policy. 
It is now clear to most independent observers that Netanyahu wants land, not peace. He and like-minded Greater Israel ideologues will not yield to persuasion. Only serious pressure — even a threat of sanctions — might yield results. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers already live beyond the 1967 borders, and settlement construction in the Occupied Territories is proceeding apace. On the very eve of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, Israel defiantly announced the construction of 1,500 new homes for Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem.
But, as he campaigns for re-election next year, Obama has evidently decided that he cannot expend hard-won political capital on the unpopular cause of Palestine. The Congress is overwhelmingly pro-Israeli, AIPAC and The Washington Institute, its sister organisation, are powerful pressure groups, and American Jews are major contributors to Democratic Party campaign funds. 
Cairo was the only Arab capital where Obama’s speech attracted some favourable comment because of his offer to Egypt of $1bn in debt relief and an additional $1bn in loan guarantees. But as Saudi Arabia’s English-language Arab News commented acidly on 20 May: “If Obama wants our trust and friendship, then he must work on the one area where he has failed so disgracefully to deliver — Palestine… We do not want American bribes. He can keep his cash. The US economy needs it more than we do.”
Consider what Obama actually said in his 19 May speech. To Israel, he offered the following important commitments:
• “No peace can be imposed,” he said. This is familiar short-hand for saying that Israel will face no U.S. pressure to allow the emergence of a Palestinian state.
• “Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations won’t create an independent state…. efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure.” With these words he announced his opposition to the Palestinians’ plan to seek recognition for their sovereign state at next September’s meeting of the UN General Assembly. By saying that the United States would “stand against attempts to single [Israel] out for criticism in international forums” he indicated that the U.S. would continue to use its veto in Israel’s favour — as it did astonishingly last February, when it vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning settlement expansion, the very policy the U.S. had itself favoured until that moment!
• In his speech to AIPAC, Obama described the Fatah-Hamas agreement as “an enormous obstacle to peace.” Adopting Israel’s objections as his own, he said that “No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organisation sworn to its destruction.” Needless to say, he made no mention of the fact that Israel had tried to destroy Hamas when it invaded Gaza in 2008-9, leaving 1,400 Palestinians dead.
• Obama repeated the mantra that “our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable.” To AIPAC, he repeated the U.S. commitment to guarantee Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) — that is to say its ability to confront and defeat any Arab threat. He made no mention of security for the Palestinians or indeed for Lebanon, which has suffered repeated Israeli aggressions and invasions. Any future Palestinian state, he said, should be “non-militarized.” Clearly, in Obama’s vision, none of Israel’s neighbours has the right to defend itself.
• On the subject of Iran, Obama reaffirmed America’s opposition to Iran’s “illicit nuclear program and its sponsorship of terror” — remarks straight out of Israel’s propaganda book.
Obama listed what he described as America’s “core interests” in the Middle East as follows: “Countering terrorism.” (Together with its backing for Israel, America’s brutal interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen are the main causes of terrorism.) “Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.” (This is a pledge which Arabs will see as maintaining Israel’s regional monopoly of nuclear weapons. The Israeli daily Haaretz has reported that the United States has secretly pledged to enhance Israel’s nuclear arsenal.) “Securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region.” (Arabs and Iranians will ask who, apart from Israel, might threaten the security of the region.) “Standing up for Israel’s security.” (This is clearly an overriding American interest.) “Pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.” (This has so far been a total U.S. failure.)
Addressing the Arab world, Obama declared that “we know that our own future is bound to this region by the forces of economics and security, history and faith.” But there was nothing in his remarks that offered Arabs and Muslims the slightest assurance of America’s good intentions.
On Iraq, he said that “we have ended our combat mission,” but he made no mention of the troops he plans to leave behind. On Afghanistan, he claimed that “we have broken the Taliban’s momentum.” But the Taliban’s ever more lethal attacks suggest that nothing is less certain. He took pride in the killing of Osama Bin Laden — a “mass murderer” who was engaged in the “slaughter of innocents.” But he failed to recognise that the innocent victims of America’s wars — and indeed of Israel’s as well — are infinitely more numerous than the men and women Al Qaida has killed. 
If Obama truly wants a better relationship with the young men and women driving the “Arab Spring” he had better think again.
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: 24 May 2011
Word Count: 1,164
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Patrick Seale, “Obama Emerges Stronger from Security Reshuffle”

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What can one learn about America’s future direction from President Barack Obama’s choice of security advisers? As has been widely reported, he has reshuffled his team, thereby consolidating his own position as the final arbiter of American foreign and security policy. 
Obama’s authority received a considerable boost from the recent killing of Al-Qaida’s leader, Osama Bin Laden — America’s number one enemy. The successful operation consecrated the President in American public opinion as the uncontested Commander-in-Chief. It is expected that his position will now be further strengthened by the reshuffle of his advisers. 
Obama’s first term has been marked by his having to cope with formidable challenges: He has wrestled with a financial crisis unprecedented in modern times, with a soaring deficit, with persistent unemployment, with the fall-out from the severe setback at mid-term elections suffered by his Democratic Party, and much else besides. But he is now beginning to look more confident. 
In the absence — so far at least — of a credible Republican opponent, Obama seems well positioned to win a second presidential term at next year’s elections. He has already begun campaigning and has watched his approval ratings climb in the polls.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates, 68, a powerful veteran of defence and intelligence matters, is shortly to retire. Having been appointed to the job in 2006, when he replaced Donald Rumsfeld in George W Bush’s administration, Gates has been something of a law unto himself. He spent 26 years at the National Security Council and the CIA, where he served as Director under President George H W Bush. It is thought that his departure will give Obama a freer hand, especially in dealing with the contentious issue of trimming the Pentagon’s titanic budget. 
Gates is to be replaced as head of the Defence Department by Leon Panetta, 73, Director of the CIA since 2009. The son of Italian immigrants who used to own a restaurant, Panetta has had a long career as a Democratic politician, lawyer and professor. He served as chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House from 1994 to 1997. Washington insiders say that he will serve Obama faithfully and will not challenge the President’s policy choices.
In what looks like a game of musical chairs, Panetta is to be replaced as head of the CIA by General David Petraeus, 59, at present commander of the 140,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Before leading the fight against the Taliban, Petraeus was head of the U.S. Central Command in 2008-2010 and, before that, commanding-general in 2007-2008 of the Multinational Force in Iraq, where his ‘surge’ was credited with turning the tide against the insurgents. With a PhD in international affairs from Princeton, he is considered one of the most intellectual soldiers in the U.S. army. 
There has been much speculation about whether Petraeus has presidential ambitions. He denies it. At any rate, he will have his hands full at the CIA. He will face no competition from his nominal superior, James Clapper, 70, a retired Air Force lieutenant-general who, as Director of National Intelligence for the past year, has surprised observers by some apparently ill-informed comments on Arab affairs.
Tom Donilon, 56, remains the President’s National Security Adviser, a job he was given less than a year ago. A former lawyer and lobbyist, his career has been largely spent helping Democratic candidates get elected. He has little or no military experience, and is not thought to be a heavy-weight. 
Admiral Mike Mullen, 65, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is due to leave his post next October and is expected to be replaced by his number two, General James Cartwright, 62, who is regarded as a highly intelligent and thoughtful officer. And as Robert Mueller, 67, ends his ten-year term as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on September 4, Obama may ask him to serve further, or fill the post with a man of his choice.
These then are Obama’s key security advisers. There seems to be no-one among them who might overshadow the President or contest his views. The question being asked in European capitals is whether his stronger position might encourage the President to confront Republican and other hawks and make bold decisions in line with what were thought to be his instincts.
Will he now pull all U.S. forces out of Iraq, rather than leave a substantial number behind in different roles? Will he use the pretext of Osama bin Laden’s death to promote negotiations with the Taliban and speed up the withdrawal of allied forces from Afghanistan? Will he seek to conciliate opinion in Pakistan and Yemen by calling a halt to the inflammatory, and often counter-productive, missile strikes by drones? Will he at last close Guantánamo? Will he seek to reverse the militarisation of American foreign policy which has been such a feature of recent decades?
Above all, will he dare confront Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and his phalanx of powerful American lobbyists and supporters, and insist, with all the power at his command, on a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? 
Few observers expect a positive answer to any of these questions. Indeed, a contrary view of Obama’s reshuffle is that it will lead to still further progress towards what has been called the “militarization of intelligence.” Putting a general such as David Petraeus at the head of the CIA suggests precisely some such development. In other words, we are likely to see an increase, rather than a reduction, in covert U.S. operations abroad — in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere — operations in which it is difficult to distinguish between military personnel and intelligence agents.
In late April, the New York Times reported that in September 2009 General Petraeus signed a secret ‘Executive Order’ authorizing U.S. Special Operations troops to carry out reconnaissance missions and build up intelligence networks throughout the Middle East and Central Asia to “penetrate, disrupt, defeat and destroy” militant groups and “prepare the environment” for future U.S. military attacks.
What does this mean? Obama has often claimed that the United States is not at war with Islam, and will never be. It is a pledge he has often made but which has yet to be translated into action. Indeed, rather than setting the U.S. on a conciliatory path towards the Arab and Muslim world, it looks as if Obama may have been won over to a more robust approach — of which the killing of Osama bin Laden is a striking example. 
Is it surprising that some observers now see little difference between Barack Obama’s Middle East policy and that of George W Bush?
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: 17 May 2011
Word Count: 1,107
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Patrick Seale, “Rule of Law or Law of the Jungle?”

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The killing of Osama bin Laden on 1 May by a team of U.S. Navy Seals sends a brutal message to the world that the execution of America’s enemies takes precedence over any consideration of morality or international law. For daring to attack the United States — an act of lèse majesté, the medieval crime of violating majesty — Al-Qaida’s founder had to be hunted down and exterminated, however long it took and at whatever the cost. Might is right.
Other governments will note the example set by America — an example that might also be copied by non-state actors, and even by aggrieved citizens. After all, Americans are not alone in having national interests, legitimate grievances and enemies they wish to bury. Others, too, can claim the right of self-defence, overriding legal or ethical constraints. 
Israel has been doing so for decades. As a matter of deliberate policy, it has carried out numerous extra-judicial killings of its political enemies, and appears to have no qualms about violating the sovereignty of other countries. In a recent blog, the American lawyer John Whitbeck reports that General Shaul Mofaz, a former Israeli chief of staff known for his tough tactics, has claimed the credit for inspiring America’s assassination strategy. Mofaz is now chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs committee.
If states can resort to terrorism with impunity in order to kill their enemies, political leaders must be prepared to face the same rough ‘justice’ at the hands of the followers, friends or relatives of their victims. What if a hit team of Iraqi Ba‘thists, for example, seeking to avenge the wanton destruction of their party, their army and their country, were to track down and kill George W. Bush, Tony Blair and, more particularly, the neo-con ‘architect’ of the Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz? Would that be terrorism or justice? What if a Pashtun tribal leader were to decide that the director of the CIA should pay with his life for the drone attacks that have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians in the tribal areas of Pakistan? Would that be terrorism or justice?
Would America not have been better served had it upheld the rule of law in Abbottabad rather than resorting to the law of the jungle?
Terrible and tragic as was the fate of the 3,000 victims of 9/11, they are not the only ones to be mourned. In seeking to punish Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida for its attack on America’s heartland, the United States waged wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan — wars which are thought to have caused about a million deaths, not to mention the wounded and the displaced, and all those whose lives have been shattered by the massive disturbance and material destruction of these conflicts. The dead from these misguided wars cry out for vengeance from the grave. Whether they are Iraqis, Afghans or Pakistanis, they, too, are mourned. 
Just as America’s outrageous torture of ‘unlawful combatants’ in Iraq and elsewhere gave a blank cheque to Arab tyrants and others to torture their own citizens, so the assassination of America’s number one enemy will encourage others to resort to the same lawless methods. 
He appears to have been gunned down in front of his family. His 12-year-old daughter witnessed the scene. His wife was shot in the leg and another woman was killed. Bin Laden did not hide behind them or use them as human shields. He was unarmed. Bin Laden may have been loathed and feared as a terrorist, but many will see the way he was shot as a ‘hit’ — an assassination pure and simple.
What if American Special Forces have surrounded his house, once they had discovered where he was hiding, and asked the Pakistani authorities to arrest him and hand him over for trial? That would have had the great advantage of not violating Pakistani sovereignty and of not causing grave offense to the Pakistani army and intelligence services, as well as to public opinion in that country. Pakistani officials have described the American raid as “unauthorised and unilateral,” while the army has warned that any repeat of such an operation would affect relations with the United States. It is likely that Pakistan will now reduce its anti-terrorist cooperation with the U.S. and seek instead to strengthen its ties with China. It will certainly continue to befriend Afghan jihadist groups so as to have allies there to defend its cause against India, once U.S. forces withdraw. 
U.S. President Barack Obama has made a meal out of this shabby episode, milking it for all it is worth. He has claimed the credit for personally ordering the CIA to find Bin Laden. We were told that he then took the ‘gutsy’ decision to attack the compound where he was living. The President followed the assassination in real time and enjoyed wild applause when it proved successful. He visited Ground Zero, paid tribute to the fire-fighters, and decorated the Navy Seals. His popularity has soared and his chances of re-election have been greatly enhanced.
In my (no doubt minority) view, Obama must now redeem himself for the killing by putting his heightened prestige to good effect. He should announce an early withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, call a halt to drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen; invite China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran to form an Afghan contact group to sponsor urgent and intensive negotiations between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the Taliban, with a view to the formation of a national unity government. It would also be greatly to America’s advantage — both politically and financially — to reduce its military presence in the Arab world. Its many bases in the Gulf, in particular, serve little purpose. They merely exacerbate local tensions, especially those between the Arabs and Iran.
Above all, if the United States is to regain some goodwill in the Arab and Muslim world, Obama must have the courage to stand up to Israel’s right-wing government and its many American friends and lobbyists. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is due in Washington later this month. He has been invited to address a joint session of Congress. This should be Obama’s opportunity to upstage him with a clear statement that America will use all its influence and all its power to bring to birth a viable and independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem, living at peace and security side-by-side with Israel. 
The American President knows very well what needs to be done. He must be ready to use his new-found political capital to draw the poison from a conflict that has claimed countless victims and plagued the world for more than six decades. It is America’s failure to do so that has helped create the Bin Laden’s of this world.
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: 10 May 2011
Word Count: 1,129
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Patrick Seale, “Is This the End of the Assad Dynasty?”

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The disturbances started in mid-March in Daraa, a southern city on the border with Jordan, when a dozen children were manhandled, arrested and carried off to Damascus for scribbling hostile graffiti on a wall. Distraught parents came down into the street to vent their anger at such heavy-handed brutality. They were soon joined by others. The uprising had begun and soon spread across the country. No doubt it was inspired, in part at least, by the display of people power which has leapt with contagious speed from one country to another, shaking the foundations of Arab autocracy and giving a great jolt to the immobile political order in the Middle East.
In Syria, the authorities then made what may prove to be a fatal mistake. In a move that looked like panic, the security forces used live fire against the protesters — and have continued to do so. By the end of April, over 550 people had been killed in different locations around the country, while many more were wounded and possibly two thousand arrested. With little reliable information coming out of Syria it is impossible to be certain of the figures. The state used particular violence against Daraa, a poor city in an agricultural region which has suffered from government neglect and crippling drought in recent years. As if to punish it for initiating the troubles, tank fire was used to quell the protests and something like a siege put in place. Electricity and water were cut off and food became scarce.
The deaths in Daraa and elsewhere — and the emotional funeral processions that followed — have clearly aroused great rage in the population and a thirst for revenge. President Bashar al-Assad’s legitimacy has been eroded. A strident call is ringing out increasingly for the fall of the regime. The president is now fighting for his political life and for that of the regime put in place in 1970 by his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad.
Forty-one years in power
The rule of the Assads, father and son, has now lasted 41 years, a score comparable to that of other long-lasting Arab autocrats, each apparently determined to be a président-à-vie. In no other part of the world have so many rulers clung so assiduously to power. Bashar appears genuinely to have believed that the Arab nationalist ideology he inherited, his opposition to Israel and his support for resistance movements such as Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, gave him immunity from popular discontent. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on 31 January, he claimed that Syria could not be compared to Egypt. “Why is Syria stable,” he asked, “although we have more difficult conditions? Egypt has been supported financially by the United States, while we are under embargo by most countries of the world. We have growth although we do not have many of the basic needs for the people. Despite all that, the people do not go into an uprising. So it is not only about needs and not only about reform. It is about the ideology, the beliefs and the cause that you have. There is a difference between having a cause and having a vacuum.”
Unfortunately for Bashar, this analysis has proved wrong. As if caught unawares, his first public speech on 30 March was a public relations disaster. It was delivered to an obedient parliament, which interrupted him repeatedly with acclamation and crass plaudits. In an aside, he seemed to concede that external crises had distracted him from making the reforms he had intended when he first took office. In a second speech on 16 April to his newly appointed cabinet, he announced the lifting of the hated state of emergency, in force since the Ba’ath Party seized power in 1963, and the abolishing of the dreaded Special State Security Court. But even these moves came to seem half-hearted when it emerged that demonstrations could only be held with prior permission from the interior ministry.
The difficult and perilous task Bashar now faces is nothing less than the profound restructuring — under great popular pressure — of a fossilised system of governance inherited from his father, but which is no longer appropriate to the modern age, and no longer tolerated by the bulk of the population. Like other Arabs, Syrians want real political freedoms, the release of political prisoners, an independent judiciary, the punishment of corrupt bigwigs, a free press, a new law on political parties allowing for genuine pluralism (and the cancellation of article 8 of the constitution which enshrines the Ba’ath Party as “the leader of state and society”), and an end, once and for all, to arbitrary arrest, police brutality and torture.
Can Bashar meet these demands? Does he have the will and ability to do so? Can he hope to prevail over the entrenched interests of his extended family, of his intelligence and army chiefs, of powerful figures in his Alawite community, of rich Sunni merchants of Damascus traditionally allied to the Assad family, and of the small but powerful “new bourgeoisie,” made rich by the transition from a state-controlled to a market-oriented economy, over which he has himself presided in the past decade? All these disparate forces want no change in a system which has brought them privilege and wealth. Above all, can Bashar change the brutal methods of his police and security forces? Could anyone in just a few weeks hope to change habits of repression ingrained over half a century, and indeed far longer? (For autocracy is not an Assad invention.)
The Bashar years
Until the outbreak of the crisis, Bashar al-Assad had little or nothing of the menacing pose of a traditional Arab dictator. His manner was modest and, at 45, he looked astonishingly young. His tall willowy frame has none of the robustness of a fighter, while his gaze, questioning and often perplexed, has none of the certainties of a man born to power. He was a young doctor studying ophthalmology in London when the accidental death in 1994 of his elder brother, Basil, an altogether tougher character who was being groomed for the succession, propelled him somewhat reluctantly onto the political scene.
The country he came to rule in 2000 seemed backward in an increasingly globalised and technologically advanced world. His first reforms were therefore financial and commercial. Mobile phones and the internet were introduced. Private schools and universities proliferated. In 2004 private banks and insurance companies were allowed to operate for the first time, and a stock exchange was opened in March 2009. A political and economic alliance was forged with Turkey (and visas abolished), which allowed trade to grow along that border, benefiting Aleppo. The Old City of Damascus was revitalised, ancient courtyard houses restored and hotels and restaurants opened to cater for the growing number of tourists. Before the crisis erupted, Syria was negotiating to join the World Trade Organisation and conclude an association agreement with the European Union.
But Bashar’s years in power seem to have hardened him. He developed a taste for control — control over the media, over the university, over the economy (through cronies such as his exorbitantly rich cousin Rami Makhlouf), control over society at large. Free expression is not allowed. Political decision-making is restricted to a tight circle around the president and security services. Like his father, Bashar clearly does not like to be pushed around or to seem to yield to pressure. Even so, many Syrians still support him in the belief that, as an educated, modern and secular ruler, he is better placed than most to bring about necessary change.
At the time of writing, Bashar still seems to have a chance, if a slim one, of stabilising the situation and perhaps earning a further spell in power — but only if he calls a halt to the killing of protesters and takes the lead of the reform movement, and in effect carries out a silent coup against the hardliners.
But it may well be too late for that. Indeed, Bashar may already have lost authority to men like his brother, Maher al-Assad, commander of the regime’s Republican Guard, who seems to advocate crushing the protests by force. If the army and the security services remain loyal, it will be difficult for the opposition to unseat the regime. But there have been ominous rumours of army defections as well as reports that some members of the Ba’ath Party have resigned.
It needs to be recognised that the Assad regime does have determined enemies, at home and abroad, who conspire against it in the neighbouring countries — Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and also Israel — and among Syrian exiles in London, Paris and the US. These enemies have smelled blood. Riding on the turbulent wave of popular dissent, they will not easily give up. According to US diplomatic cables, released by WikiLeaks and published in mid-April in The Washington Post, the State Department secretly financed a London-based network of Bashar’s opponents to the tune of $12m between 2005 and 2010.
A continuous whole
It is probably fair to view Bashar al-Assad’s term of office and that of his father as a single continuous whole. Not only did Hafez al-Assad decide that Bashar should succeed him, but he also bequeathed to him an autocratic system based on an all-powerful centralising presidency, and a set of principles and external allies and opponents which together determine Syria’s foreign policy. Bashar’s whole career — like that of his father before him — has been shaped by Syria’s contest with Israel. Syria has had to live, fight and survive in a hostile Middle East environment shaped by Israel’s overwhelming victory over the Arabs in the 1967 war, its seizure of extensive Arab territories including Syria’s Golan Heights and its subsequent close alliance with the United States, which put in place a sort of dual US-Israeli regional hegemony from which Syria and its allies have sought to free themselves ever since. The 1973 war waged by Egypt and Syria to recover lost territories and force Israel to negotiate a global peace had some initial success but failed to realise its objectives. Instead, Egypt made a separate peace with Israel in 1979 and was removed from the Arab line up. The rest of the region was then exposed to the full force of Israeli power.
Looking to its defences, Syria established a partnership in 1979 with the newborn Islamic Republic of Iran. And once Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in a bid to expel Syrian influence, destroy the PLO and bring Lebanon into its orbit, Syria found local allies among the Shia resistance movements of South Lebanon — of which Hizbullah became the most prominent. Waging a guerrilla war, and benefiting from logistical support and weapons from Iran and Syria, Hizbullah managed to force Israel out of South Lebanon in 2000, after an 18-year occupation. From this was born the Tehran-Damascus-Hizbullah axis, which over the years grew into the principal regional challenger of the United States and Israel.
Both the United States and Israel have done their utmost to disrupt this axis and prevent it acquiring any effective deterrent capability: Iran has faced constant demonisation, sanctions and threat of military attack because of its nuclear programme, while Israel has made repeated attempts to destroy Hizbullah, including its war on Lebanon in 2006. Syria, in turn, has faced intimidation, isolation, US sanctions and an Israeli attack in 2007 on its alleged nuclear facility.
Bashar has had to wrestle with his own crises. He survived George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” after 9/11, then faced the greater ordeal of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the long occupation that followed. Had the United States been successful in Iraq, Syria would have been the next target, as pro-Israel neocons, the main architects of the Iraq war, had intended. Syria was then confronted by the 2005 Lebanese crisis, triggered by the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Syrian forces were ousted from Lebanon and the Assad regime threatened with extinction by the combined pressures of the United States and France.
There is also a much older memory that still hangs like a dark cloud — that of the massacres at Hama in central Syria in 1982. It was then that Hafez al-Assad put down, with great violence, an armed insurrection by the Muslim Brothers. Beginning in 1977, this Islamic group had launched a series of terrorist attacks against the regime, murdering several of the president’s close associates and eventually seizing control of Hama, where they killed Ba’ath Party and government officials. The regime regained control of the town, but only after a bloodbath in which between 10,000 and 20,000 people lost their lives.
Thirty years later, some Islamists still dream of revenge, while minorities such as the Alawites fear that if the regime were to fall, they would be massacred in turn. Emerging from underground, the Muslim Brothers have now called on the people to join the protests. The cry for freedom risks being drowned by sectarian strife.
Such has been Bashar al-Assad’s harsh apprenticeship. He has had to surmount a series of regime-threatening crises much like those his father confronted in his time. Both Assads felt some satisfaction at managing to survive them and thus provide Syria with a measure of stability and security, especially compared with Iraq and Lebanon. There was, however, a price to pay. Having to live and survive in a hostile environment inevitably conferred great powers on the security services, guardians of the regime — to the increasing resentment of ordinary Syrians. A dialogue of the deaf ensued. The Assads’ intense preoccupation with external crises led them to neglect the internal scene. Who would need political freedoms, they no doubt thought, if given the benefits of security and stability? As the regime’s official daily newspaper Tishrin wrote on 25 April: “The most sublime form of freedom is the security of the nation.”
The recent explosion of popular anger has evidently taken Bashar by surprise, as it did other Arab autocrats. He has had to wrench his attention away from the perils and excitements of foreign policy to urgent challenges at home. To devise and implement far-reaching domestic reforms, as the present situation urgently demands, will require a radical change of focus. It will not be easy, and a favourable outcome is far from certain. Bashar now faces an internal threat to his regime at least as dangerous as any of the external threats he and his father confronted so successfully.
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 Le Monde diplomatique – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 05 May 2011
Word Count: 2,414
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Patrick Seale, “The World after Bin Laden”

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America has been celebrating the killing of Osama Bin Laden. And much of the Western world has cheered in sympathy. But the deadly assault by American Special Forces on the Al-Qaida leader in his Pakistani hide-out was not simply an act of revenge, although all the sweeter for having been longed for and plotted for a decade. It should not be seen as a mere settling of accounts with a man responsible, in President Barack Obama’s words, for “the worst attack in American history.”
 
Bin Laden was feared and detested because he struck a blow at American self-esteem. With the devastating attacks of 9/11, he had dared to carry the war into America’s heartland, puncturing its view of itself as an exceptional nation, favoured above all others. His killing will serve to wash clean that terrible moment of national humiliation. The death-feud is over. Dumped into the sea, his blood-stained carcass will provide food, if not for worms, then for fishes. Americans will have a sense of awakening from a nightmare. They will be able to renew their faith in their country’s greatness. 
 
In the jungle of international power politics there is no joy to match that of the demise of an iconic enemy. Americans will rejoice at his death, but will that be the end of the story? That remains to be seen. 
 
There is little doubt that President Obama’s stature will be boosted by Bin Laden’s demise. He will at last be seen by ordinary Americans as a strong and effective commander-in-chief dedicated to ensuring American security. His chance of re-election in 2012 will be enhanced. As a result, there will be much gnashing of teeth in the Republican camp.
 
Yet, in announcing the news to America and the world, Obama was careful not to gloat, as his predecessor George W. Bush might well have done had the killing taken place under his watch. Instead, he was sobriety itself. No one is more acutely aware that the war against Islamic militancy cannot be won by military means alone. 
 
America, Obama was careful to stress, is not at war with Islam. This is a sentiment he has already expressed a number of times, notably in his celebrated Cairo speech of June 2009. The problem, however, is that Obama is no longer believed. He has failed to match his words with actions. The great hopes he aroused at that time have given way to an equally immense disillusion. The promise of a new departure in American foreign policy has worn desperately thin. 
 
Obama seems to be trapped between his personal convictions and the electoral necessities of American politics. Instead of acting resolutely in his first years in office to defuse Arab and Muslim anger at American policies, he has bowed to domestic pressures from the U.S. Congress, from Bush-era neoconservatives whose influence still reaches deep inside the Administration, from powerful pro-Israeli lobbies and their affiliated think-tanks, and from an increasingly right-wing and Islamophobic American public. If anything, America under Obama has waged war more ferociously than ever against radical Islamic groups. 
 
Will the elimination of Bin Laden put an end to Islamic militancy? This is unlikely. It would seem that in recent years, Bin Laden has been less of an operational commander, sending militants to attack American targets across the world, and more of a symbol of Islamic resistance, making occasional speeches from what looked like semi-retirement. His message has been ‘franchised’ to far-flung militant groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, in the Saharan borderlands of North Africa and elsewhere. Since they have adopted the al-Qaida appellation, some of these groups may now seek to avenge him. Retaliation by such militants against America and its allies is a distinct possibility and will require additional defensive measures by security services, no doubt to the further inconvenience of air travellers.
 
Yet Bin Laden’s death could provide Obama with a unique opportunity to revise and correct some aspects of American foreign policy. Bush’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) could at last be put officially to rest. Obama could proclaim victory over al-Qaida, announce a ceasefire in Afghanistan, followed by a speedy withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from that war-ravaged country. 
 
The Talban and other militant groups, which the United States and its allies have been fighting for a decade, at great cost in men and treasure, had at one time hosted and protected al-Qaida. But they are not al-Qaida and should not be confused with it. The Talban are not international terrorists. They are an essentially Pashtun tribal resistance movement fighting foreign occupation. 
 
The United States should seize upon the death of Bin Laden to promote urgent peace negotiations with the Taliban leadership. At the same time, drone attacks against militants in Pakistan, which destabilise the country and arouse fierce anti-American sentiment, should be halted. The killing of Bin Laden was a clear success for American Special Forces, but many, indeed perhaps most, counter-terrorist operations are counterproductive as they inflame opinion and arouse hate. New terrorists are created rather than old ones tamed.
 
There remains the unresolved Arab-Israel conflict which has long been a major cause of Muslim and Arab hostility to the United States, and to the West in general. Will Obama’s new stature and authority, earned from the elimination of Bin Laden, give him the political muscle he needs to deal with Israel’s far right government? Nothing is less certain.
 
Instead of welcoming the recent reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas as a major step towards Israeli negotiations with a united Palestinian movement, the United States has followed Israel’s lead in condemning it. Israel wants to divide the Palestinians precisely in order to avoid negotiations. In Washington, Israel’s friends in Congress are pressing for a ban on U.S. aid to any Palestinian government that includes Hamas. 
 
The democratic wave sweeping across the Arab world will not tolerate American complicity in Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinians. Egypt’s new leadership has already urged the United States to recognise Palestinian statehood and has announced that it will break the cruel siege of Gaza by opening the Rafah crossing on a permanent basis.
 
If the United States is to salvage its battered image in the Arab and Muslim world it must heed the new trend in the region. The killing of Bin Laden may give American opinion a moment of triumphalism, but it needs to be followed by a major re-think of American policies. Only then will Americans be safe.
 
 
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: 03 May 2011
Word Count: 1,076
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Patrick Seale, “The New Pan-Arabism”

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Let us dream for a moment. 
Although the future is uncertain and danger still lurks at every street corner, Arab society could be experiencing an inspiring moment of renewal. Spreading with contagious euphoria across the Middle East, popular uprisings are providing the Arabs with an immense opportunity, such as occurs rarely, perhaps only in every three or four generations. The opportunity must not be squandered.
 
Although much blood has been spilled — in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere — fresh blood has, at the same time, been infused into a senile and decaying political system. Heavy-handed methods of repression and coercion are being swept away, which for decades condemned the Arabs to stagnation and backwardness. A surge of “people power” is dismantling the suffocating controls of the Arab security state. The Arabs are being freed from captivity.
Right across the region, the young and the not-so-young are united in long-stifled aspirations. Formulating the same demands for political freedom, economic opportunity and, above all, dignity, they call out to each other across national boundaries, copying each other, drawing encouragement from each other’s experience. The Arab peoples are responding to each other as never before. 
Satellite television and internet communications have undoubtedly succeeded in creating a sense of community, informing Arab societies about each other, ventilating common problems, linking Maghreb to Mashrek. Social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have also played a role in bringing the Arabs together. Had it not been for such new inventions, the spark lit in Tunisia by the self-immolation of a young street vendor might not have set fire to the combustible, pent-up grievances of Egypt, which in turn inspired revolts in Libya, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere. 
But something more profound is at work. As autocracies are brought down, the region seems to be experiencing a new pan-Arab moment. More genuine than that promoted in the past by individual leaders such as Gamal Abd al-Nasser or his rivals in the Ba‘th party, this incipient pan-Arabism is a union of peoples, rather than a union of leaders for their own geopolitical ambitions. Political pan-Arabism was a failure. Will poplar pan-Arabism be more successful? Will Arab solidarity be more than an empty slogan?
In the coming weeks and months, there will clearly be an opportunity for the Arabs to recover their corporate voice and their corporate power, an opportunity to overcome their internal disputes and resolve their external conflicts, an opportunity to promote Arab causes, an opportunity to rid themselves of foreign predators and take their destiny into their own hands. But will they seize it? Will new leaders emerge with the vision to lead their peoples out of the failures of the past and towards new horizons?
The last time something of this nature happened was a century ago when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War. After four centuries of Ottoman rule, some Arabs saw in the Empire’s collapse an opportunity for a national awakening. Demands were formulated for freedom, self-determination and unity. But the nascent Arab nationalism of the time was brutally crushed — by the imperial ambitions of Britain and France; by the quest for statehood of the Zionist movement, which flourished under British protection; and also, it must be said, by Arab rivalries, which remain to this day a source of weakness and paralysis.
The fathers and grandfathers of the present generation fought for freedom from the colonial powers — in Egypt, Iraq, and South Yemen against the British; in Syria and across North Africa against the French; in Libya against the Italians; in Palestine against the Zionists. But today’s revolution is primarily against internal rather than external colonists. 
The post-revolutionary period is bound to be chaotic. There will be instability, fierce infighting while new political parties are formed and new forces take shape, even attempts here and there at counter-revolution. Faced with popular uprisings, those Arab rulers still in place will inevitably look to their defences. But they should not miss the import of what is happening. They should embrace the new trend rather than fight it. 
It seems to me, and no doubt to many other observers, that three developments are necessary at this historic moment if the Arab Revolution is to succeed.
The first is that those Arab monarchies which have so far been spared popular uprisings must themselves introduce and implement far-reaching reforms. Ruling families need to open their ranks to ordinary citizens; representative institutions need to be created; shouracouncils or parliaments must be given real responsibility; accountability insisted upon; corruption curbed; arbitrary arrest and police brutality ended. In a word, power must be shared and the people’s energies harnessed for the common good.
A second development will be even more difficult to bring about, but is perhaps even more important. Sectarianism is the curse of Arab societies. What does it matter if an Arab man or woman is a Sunni or a Shi‘i, an Alawi, an Ismaili or a Derzi, a Christian or a Muslim? Political and religious authorities across the region should make a resolute attempt to consign sectarian differences and conflicts to history. What alone matters is that Arabs — whether male or female, rich or poor, and whatever their backgrounds or religious beliefs — should feel and behave as Arab citizens. It is surely time to launch an Arab Union based on common citizenship to match the European Union, which the Europeans managed to create over the past half-century.
A third necessary development is a recognition that oil wealth belongs not just to a few privileged Arabs but to all of them. It must be shared across the region. Generosity is, after all, the greatest of Arab virtues. The oil-poor countries will need help from their richer brothers. Solidarity is meaningless if it is not backed with cash. 
Just as Western Europe pumped billions into the poorer parts of Eastern Europe after the Soviet collapse, so the oil-rich Arabs must urgently come to the aid of their poorer neighbours. With oil prices at near-record levels, it is a scandal that the great majority of Arabs still scrape a living on two dollars a day or less.
Youth unemployment is the number one problem of the Arab world. In country after country it has been the real motor of the revolution. A great bank or fund needs to be set up which, by tapping into Arab sovereign wealth funds, would be dedicated to creating jobs across the region. Countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria and others, need massive aid, well-directed and managed, if the democratic movement is not to collapse in disillusion and despair. 
If it does, no one will be spared.
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 April 2011
Word Count: 1,108
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Patrick Seale, “Europe’s Immigration Panic”

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Europe’s political leaders seem to be suffering from acute panic over the subject of immigration. The troubles in North Africa have raised the spectre of hundreds of thousands of destitute Libyans and Tunisians, and perhaps tomorrow Algerians as well, not to mention sub-Saharan Africans, besieging Europe’s shores in search of security, jobs, a better life — and welfare benefits.
 
The alarm was sounded when, in the first three months of this year, some 26,000 young Libyans and Tunisians, escaping from the upheavals in their own countries, crossed the Mediterranean in makeshift boats to the small Italian island of Lampedusa, threatening to swamp its normal population of about five thousand. 
 
Fearing that this trickle might become a flood, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi spoke of the danger of a ‘human tsunami’. Right-wing members of his coalition called for the forced repatriation of the migrants as well as an Italian naval blockade to intercept and turn back incoming boats.
 
In struggling to cope with the Lampedusa crisis, Italy appealed for help to other European countries. But no country agreed to share the burden. To Italy’s anger and disappointment, European solidarity was lacking. Germany’s Minister of Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich, was quoted as saying that “Italy must deal with the problem on its own.”
 
Faced with this situation, Italy decided to give the Lampedusa refugees a temporary six-month residence permit which, in theory, allowed them to move freely within the Schengen area — that is to say the 25 European countries which had eliminated border controls under the Schengen Agreement of 1985. But when trains carrying some of these North Africans arrived at the French border last weekend, the French authorities refused to let them in. An indignant Italy accused France of failing to live up to its European commitments. 
 
Once considered a foundation stone of European unity, the Schengen agreement is now viewed by many – not least in France — as a grave liability. With nationalism rearing its head in several European countries, pressure is building up to restore border controls in some form or another.
 
One new statistic, much quoted in the press, has caused particular alarm in Europe: It is that more than 500,000 persons — out of Libya’s total population of about 6.5 million — have fled the country to avoid the fighting. Were they heading for Europe? What most of the reports did not made clear was that the great majority of these escapees were not Libyans at all, but rather migrant workers — Egyptians, Tunisians, Chadians, Filipinos and other nationals — who had no ambition or opportunity to come to Europe. They were only seeking to return as best they could to their countries of origin.
 
They had come to Libya because there was no work for them at home. Victims of Libya’s civil war, they were now returning — to inevitable unemployment once more. The crisis emanating from war-torn Libya is, therefore, not a European one, but rather a migrant crisis in the developing world. 
 
The whole subject of large population movements has led to frequent humanitarian emergencies — such as the present situation on the Egyptian and Tunisian borders of Libya, where refugees have been housed in tented camps. There have also been tragedies at sea. On a number of occasions, the various fishing boats and other fragile craft that attempted the crossing to Europe were caught in rough weather and capsized, throwing their desperate passengers into the sea. Some 4,200 people are thought to have perished in this way since 2003
 
Nevertheless, the xenophobic prejudices of Europe’s increasingly rightwing populations have now been aroused. The fear is that continued instability in North Africa will export chaos and an unwanted, destitute population to Europe. With elections looming in several European countries, politicians have had to adjust to the new climate. 
 
Facing local elections on 5 May, David Cameron, Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister, delivered a tough speech on immigration on 14 April, lashing out at the previous Labour government for net immigration of more than two million between 1997 and 2009. Last year alone, net immigration into the UK topped 200,000. Some of these newcomers, Cameron complained, could not speak English and had no wish to integrate into British life. Of the 2.5 million jobs created in Britain since 1997, two thirds had been filled by people born outside the United Kingdom. Cameron’s declared ambition is to reduce the intake to ‘a few tens of thousands’ a year.
 
Immigration, both legal and illegal, has long been a problem for Europe. Today, every country is trying to stem the inward flow. In France, where net immigration has been running at just under 200,000 a year, a special police unit has been created to uncover and shut down clandestine immigration networks. People enter on student or tourist visas and then stay on illegally. Forged papers are becoming ever more sophisticated and difficult to detect. North African workers brought in to help rebuild France after the Second World War have grown into a vast community of several million. 
 
Faced with the prospect of a presidential election next year — as well as the growing popularity of the far right under the leadership of the dynamic Marine Le Pen — President Nicolas Sarkozy has made clear that he is determined to curb non-European immigration into France by all possible means. Germany now has some of the tightest rules for entry. It is already thought to have close to a million ‘illegals’ within its borders. They risk arrest if discovered and are denied access to basic medical care. 
 
Europe has long wrestled with the problem of how to prevent the conflicts and youth unemployment of the Arab world from being exported to Europe. The Barcelona Process of 1995 was meant to address this problem by channelling European investment to the region. But it was only moderately successful. Unresolved disputes — between the Arabs and Israel, between Morocco and Algeria over the Western Sahara — made the region less attractive to investors.
 
In 2008, France’s President Sarkozy’s ambitious “Union for the Mediterranean” was intended to unite Europe and its southern neighbours around major development projects. But it too has foundered because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and has now been virtually abandoned.
 
To ensure a peaceful and prosperous Arab transition from autocracy to democracy, the oil-rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council should create a generously-endowed bank to provide aid and management advice to the poorer Arab states. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Europeans created the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) which has proved very beneficial to the newly-independent countries of Eastern Europe and to Russia itself. This is perhaps the model which the Arabs should urgently adopt.
 
The democratic wave which has swept over Tunisia and Egypt, and which is struggling to triumph in Libya, Yemen and Syria, will need a strong underpinning of economic and financial help if it is not to collapse in disillusion and chaos.
 
 
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
 
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
 
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Released: 18 April 2011
Word Count: 1,145
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Patrick Seale, “Mediators to the Rescue”

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Several conflicts across the Middle East seem in danger of sinking into long-running stalemates, and are beginning to display all the characteristics of murderous civil wars. In Libya and Yemen, but also in Bahrain and Syria, there seems little chance of a rapid or widely acceptable settlement. Can mediation help? 
The good news is that mediators — mainly drawn from the region itself — are at last beginning to offer their services in an evident attempt to save the ‘Arab Revolution’ from degenerating into uncontrollable chaos. The euphoric democratic wave of the early days has been replaced by a harsher, grimmer mood, suggesting that the revolution has entered a new and more violent phase. 
In Libya, in particular, mediation is urgently required to break the dangerous impasse. As if mimicking the desert battles of the Second World War, rebels and Qadhafi loyalists chase each other up and down the Mediterranean coast with neither side seeming able to deliver a knockout blow. Meanwhile, precious infrastructure — including oil installations — is being destroyed, while some 450,000 people have already fled abroad. The country is in danger of splitting into two. Food and fuel is everywhere in short supply. 
A delegation from the African Union, led by South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, seems to have won Qadhafi’s agreement to what was, in effect, a Turkish roadmap for a settlement. It proposed an immediate cease-fire, humanitarian aid corridors, and negotiations between Qadhafi and the rebels. But the rebels have already rejected any plan which leaves any semblance of a role for the Libyan dictator and his sons. They want them out.
Turkey will no doubt try again. It has won an enviable reputation for conflict resolution. It has also invested heavily in Libya, where it has many large-scale construction projects worth several billion dollars. When fighting broke out, these projects ground to a halt and Turkish workers were among the first to be evacuated. At a time when the United States seems anxious to disengage from military operations, while Britain and France face the unwelcome prospect of a long war, Turkey’s efforts deserve strong international support. 
Qatar, a small but influential country, has also distinguished itself as a regional mediator, notably in Lebanon and Sudan. Like Turkey, it has now entered the Libyan arena, but not as a mediator. Instead, it has offered the anti-Qadhafi rebels precious backing. Its jets are helping enforce the No-Fly Zone; it has recognised the Interim Transitional National Council in Benghazi; and — perhaps most important of all — it has offered to supply fuel to the people of eastern Libya and market oil from the region.
It is no surprise that Riyadh is leading the mediation effort in Yemen. No country has a greater interest than Saudi Arabia in the stability of Yemen, where the beleaguered President Ali Abdallah Saleh is fighting for his political life. With backing from other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia has been attempting to organise a conference of all the parties in Riyadh. No doubt, Saudi subsidies and offers of development aid could help smooth the way for a settlement.
But the gap is difficult to bridge between President Saleh and the many factions opposed to him – youthful revolutionaries, Islamists, Zaydi Houthis from the region of Sa‘ada in the north and would-be secessionists in the south. President Saleh wants to leave office in his own time and with full immunity from prosecution, while the revolutionaries say they will only engage in dialogue if his immediate departure is assured.
Yemen is the poorest and most turbulent of the Arab countries, while Saudi Arabia is the richest and in many ways the most stable. If Yemen were to sink into lawless turmoil, Saudi Arabia would inevitably suffer. Destitute Yemenis, unable to find work in their own country, would seek to cross the long porous border into the Kingdom in search of a better life. From Riyadh’s point of view, they would pose a security threat.
Historically, relations between Saudi Arabia and Yemen have veered back and forth between cautious friendship and bitter hostility, especially since the 1962 revolution which overthrew the one thousand year-old Imamate, making Yemen the only republic in an Arabian Peninsula ruled by kings, sultans, emirs and shaykhs. The last forty years have been marked by one crisis after another in Saudi-Yemeni relations.
Qatar has also suggested helping to mediate the conflict, but President Saleh appears to have rejected its offer and expelled its envoy. Meanwhile, the situation in Yemen has turned increasingly ugly. Protesters are being met with live fire. Pitched battles are being fought in the streets. Casualties are mounting, fuelling anger and a thirst for revenge, and hardening positions on both sides. 
In Bahrain, Kuwait was reported to have offered to mediate between the government and opposition, but Saudi Arabia, whose troops have helped quell the recent protests, may not welcome interference in a country it regards as falling within its sphere of influence. Turkey has also attempted to mediate in Bahrain. Its hyper-active foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has held talks with King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa as well as with al-Wefaq, the main Shiite opposition group.
It is not clear whether Syria would welcome a helping hand in resolving a situation which is now threatening to escalate into further violence. Once again, Turkey has stepped in with advice, if not with actual mediation. “We cannot remain indifferent to what is going on in Syria,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan has declared. “We have an 800 km border with Syria. I advised President Bashar al-Asad to listen to the demands of his people.” Erdogan is thought to have recommended that President Bashar institute a multi-party democracy on the Turkish model.
Hakan Fidan, the powerful head of Turkey’s Intelligence Service (MIT) has paid a recent visit to Damascus. No doubt Turkey feels it has the right to speak its mind since it has been enjoying a spectacular political honeymoon with Syria. The two countries carried out joint military exercises in April 2010, to Israel’s evident dissatisfaction and alarm.
Even in countries where rulers have already been toppled, protests have by no means been silenced. In Egypt, the revolutionaries want Husni Mubarak and his closest associates to be put on trial. In Tunisia, where an atmosphere of great political confusion reigns, no fewer than 51 political parties have registered to contest the 24 July elections. Plagued by economic misery, hordes of young Tunisians have sought to smuggle themselves across the sea to Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has warned of a “human tsunami.” 
The fear of a wild, infectious insurrection sweeping across the region is bringing would-be mediators onto the scene. But the situation with which they have to deal is daunting, and it is far from clear that all parties to the various conflicts would welcome external help.
Israel is certainly a regional power that wants no interference in its continued land-grab of Palestinian territory and its cruel oppression of the Palestinians. But the recent dangerous flare-up on the Israeli-Gaza border — which at the time of writing had claimed the life of some fifty Gaza citizens in the last month — is serving to alert European leaders that the time for a forceful mediation to enforce a ceasefire and resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict is fast approaching.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 11 April 2011
Word Count: 1,216
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Patrick Seale, “Is the Syrian Regime in Danger?”

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Can the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Asad withstand the wave of popular protest which has this year overthrown the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt and is threatening others — notably in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain? Even in usually tranquil and well-ordered Oman, the Sultan has had to yield some of his powers. 
 
Will Syria be next? Is there any reason why it should escape? In this infectious moment of “Arab awakening,” are not Syrians making much the same demands as those voiced by others?
 
The demands now stirring the blood of young people across the Middle East fall into three broad categories, of which the first two may be described as political and economic. Political demands are for freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, freedom to form political parties, freedom to choose one’s own representatives in free elections, and freedom from police brutality, torture and arbitrary arrest. The release of political prisoners and an independent judiciary are also important political demands. 
 
Economic demands are for jobs, for food and housing at affordable prices, for fair opportunities for advancement, and a better future for oneself and one’s children. In most of the countries where protests have broken out, there is also a fervent wish for the punishment of a handful of powerful men close to the center of power whose greed and corruption have become notorious.
 
The protesters, however, have a third demand, which is perhaps of equal importance to the other two. It is for dignity. Ordinary citizens want to be treated with respect by the authorities, and not be insulted, mocked, beaten, or even simply neglected. 
 
Predictions are always dangerous, especially in a fast moving situation, but one can say with some confidence that if the Syrian regime were to make a serious and honest effort to meet the demands of its people, it would stand a good chance of survival. If it does not, it is likely to face continued rebellion. The new factor is that young people seem ready to risk their lives. Killing protesters with live fire may perhaps earn the regime a brief respite, but it destroys its legitimacy. As President Asad himself said in his speech on 30 March, “Without reform we are on the path of destruction.”
 
This remark by the President should be taken seriously. It suggests that he knows that change must come. Why then has he not announced radical reforms and taken urgent steps to implement them? This is the real puzzle about the Syrian situation. 
 
There are several possible explanations. One is that President Bashar — much like his father, the late Hafiz al-Asad who ruled for thirty years — hates being put under pressure. He wants to act in his own way, and in his own time, in the belief that he is the best person to prepare Syria for a place in the global economy. Hence the financial, economic, educational and technological changes he has introduced in the past decade. His overriding strategy would seem to be to advance gradually so as to ensure stability — his overriding priority. As Volker Perthes, Germany’s leading expert on Syria, wrote in an article in the International Herald Tribune on 31 March, “Asad… is not a reformer. He can best be described as a modernizer.”
 
Asad’s gradualist approach may have worked in the past, but it is clearly no longer appropriate. Revolution is at the door. The time has come for the President to act boldly and with all possible speed. But can he do so, even if he wanted to? There are evidently powerful forces in Syria which do not want change. Everywhere in the world there are people who reject change if it risks threatening their interests. Syria is no different.
 
Who then are the defenders of the regime? First and foremost, are the powerful Alawi-led army and security services. They would almost certainly fight to maintain the regime in power. Supporters are also to be found among the leading Sunni merchants of Damascus, who have long been allied to the regime. 
 
A still wider group consists of the several thousand members of the new affluent bourgeoisie, which has benefited in recent years from the opportunities created by the inflow of foreign investment, by the opening of private banks and insurance companies, and by the general switch from a state controlled to a market economy. 
 
To these different groups should be added those Syrians of all classes who, having observed the slaughter and destruction across the borders in Lebanon and Iraq, prefer to opt for stability and security, even at the cost of harsh repression and a lack of political freedoms. 
 
These then are the defenders of the regime. Who are its opponents? In this category one can put the young working-class poor who protest in the street because they see no possibility of a better life. To them should be added a rebellious core made up of the new middle-class poor — that is to say educated or semi-educated young people who, on graduation, find that there are no jobs for them. Undoubtedly, youth unemployment is one of the motors of revolution in Syria, as it has been in other Arab countries.
 
Intellectuals of all sorts make up another hostile group. They yearn for freedom — to speak, write, publish, meet freely and debate every aspect of their society. They are perhaps the most frustrated of all Syrians. Many of them have chosen exile, where they form a vocal opposition. Yet another group of disgruntled opponents is made up of small businessmen whose ability to make money has been blocked by the corrupt and greedy men at the top. 
 
And then there are the Islamists. After he crushed the uprising of the Muslim Brothers in the 1980s, the late President Hafiz al-Asad sought to defuse some of the bitter hatred this punitive action had caused by making overtures to moderate Islam. He encouraged large-scale mosque building and gave particular consideration to the leaders of ‘official’ Islam. These efforts had some initial success, but they now seem to have turned against the regime. There would appear to be something like a sullen movement of Muslim opposition across Syrian society. 
 
This then is the line-up in Syria. From a distance, it is hard to say which of the two sides has the upper hand. By acting with imagination and resolve, President Bashar has a chance to earn himself some more years in power. But if he drags his feet, he risks an uncontrollable explosion. Syria’s enemies, both at home and abroad, are eager for the kill. 
 
The President’s window of opportunity is narrow and shrinking daily. 
 
 
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
 
Copyright © 2011 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
 
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Released: 04 April 2011
Word Count: 1,104
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