Publications – Page 115

Patrick Seale, “Fiascos of American Foreign Policy”

September 27, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

U.S. President Barack Obama is piling up foreign policy disasters. In at least three areas, crucial for world peace and American interests — Arab-Israel, Afghanistan-Pakistan and Yemen-Somalia — he is pursuing a course which can only be described as foolhardy. The anger and hate towards the United States which he is generating could take a generation to dispel.

His abject surrender to Israel on the Palestine question has shocked a large part of the world and gravely damaged America’s standing among Arabs and Muslims. To court the Jewish vote at next year’s presidential election, he has thrown into reverse the policy of outreach to the Muslim world which he expressed so eloquently in his 2009 Cairo speech. If he is now driven to use America’s veto at the Security Council to block the application of a Palestinian state for UN membership, he will have been defeated by the very forces of racism, Islamophobia, neocon belligerence and Greater Israel expansionism he once hoped to tame.

Obama’s policy in Afghanistan is equally perverse. On the one hand he seems to want to draw the Taliban into negotiations, but on the other some of his army chiefs and senior diplomats want to kill the Taliban first. This is hardly a policy likely to bring the insurgents to the table. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ryan Crocker, America’s new ambassador to Kabul, actually said that the conflict should continue until more of the Taliban are killed. Who, one wonders, is in charge of U.S. policy?

In a message on the occasion of the Eid at the end of Ramadan, Mullah Muhammad Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, seemed to hint at his readiness for a comprehensive negotiation. “Every legitimate option can be considered,” he said, “in order to reach the goal of an independent Islamic regime in Afghanistan.” He urged foreign powers to withdraw their troops “immediately” in order to achieve a lasting solution to the problem. In a gesture to his local opponents, he stressed that the Taliban did not wish to monopolize power and that all ethnicities would participate in a “real Islamic regime acceptable to all the people of the country.”

Should not the United States and its allies respond positively to this message? A conference in Bonn next December is due to review NATO’s war in Afghanistan – a war which seems closer to being lost than won. 25,000 soldiers deserted the Afghan armed services in the first six months of this year because they had lost faith in the Karzai government’s ability to protect them and their families. Coalition troops are due to withdraw their troops by the end of 2014. Might there not be an argument for an immediate offer of negotiation together with a pledge of an earlier withdrawal? It is far from clear what strategic interests, if any, the West is defending in Afghanistan.

The subject is of considerable urgency since America’s counter-insurgency strategy is in real trouble. In July, Ahmad Wali Karzai, President Karzai’s powerful brother, was shot dead in Kandahar. In August, the Taliban attacked the British Council in Kabul. On September 10, a truck packed with explosives killed five people and wounded 77 US troops at a NATO military base south-west of Kabul — the highest injury toll of foreign forces in a single incident in the 10-year war. On 13 September, insurgents staged a 20 hour-long assault on the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters in the heart of Kabul — supposedly the best protected perimeter in the whole country. And on 20 September, Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council, was assassinated.

Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, was charged by Karzai with the task of seeking peace with the Taliban. He seems to have made little or no progress. He was a mujahidin leader in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, then President of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996, before he was ousted by the Taliban. He then became a leading figure of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras which fought the Islamists until the Taliban were driven from power by the U.S. invasion of 2001. No one has claimed responsibility for Rabbani’s murder but suspicion has fallen on the Pakistan-backed Haqqani network.

Pakistani has a vital strategic interest in Afghanistan. It wants to keep Indian influence out of a country, which it considers its strategic depth. It suspects Karzai of being in league with India. It would seem to prefer a Taliban-governed Afghanistan to Karzai’s American-backed regime. In any event, Rabbani’s death robs President Karzai of a key ally and strains his relations with Pakistan. It could be a step towards a civil war if no early attempt is made to engage the Taliban.

Now entering its eleventh year — at the colossal cost to the U.S. taxpayer of about $120bn a year — the Afghan war has drained U.S. resources, dangerously undermined the Pakistani state and threatened to destroy the U.S.-Pakistani alliance. Addressing the U.S. Senate in mid-September, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan’s army and the ISI, the powerful military intelligence service, of being in league with the Haqqani network. By using “violent extremism as an instrument of policy,” Mullen said, Pakistan was undermining the American military effort and jeopardizing the U.S.-Pakistani strategic partnership.

Pakistan’s response was not long in coming. Speaking on the BBC programme The World Tonight on 22 September, General Asad Durani, a former head of the ISI, described U.S.-Pakistan relations as in a state of “low-intensity conflict.” Pakistan should back America’s opponents in Afghanistan, he said if the United States continued drone strikes against targets in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, in their hunt for the Taliban and their supporters, US special forces mount frequent night raids in Afghanistan, such as the one on 2 September which killed Sabar Lal, a wealthy Afghan in his home in Jalalabad. According to press reports, the Americans broke in, handcuffed and blindfolded him and his guests, then took him out on the veranda and killed him. He had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, spent five years in Guantánamo, then built a new life for himself and his family. Clearly this was not enough to allay American suspicions of his links with Islamic militants.

In Yemen and the Horn of Africa, America’s increasing resort to drones, with their inevitable toll of civilian deaths, has enraged the local populations and driven recruits into the arms of the militants. According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration has used CIA-operated drones to carry out lethal attacks against al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The drone program has killed more than 2,000 militants and civilians since 2001.

Is it not time to enquire whether U.S. policy has not created more terrorists than the CIA has managed to kill? Would it not be better if the United States were simply to declare victory in Afghanistan — and indeed in all the other places where its Special Forces operate — bring its troops home as soon as possible and turn its attention to tending the wounds in its own broken society?

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

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Released: 27 September 2011

Word Count: 1,182

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Patrick Seale, “The Middle East’s New Geopolitical Map”

September 20, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

The Arab Spring is not the only revolution in town. The toppling of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; the mounting death toll in Syria and Yemen, where the outcome is still undecided; the revival of long-suppressed Islamic movements demanding a share of power; the struggle by young revolutionaries to re-invent the Arab state — all these dramatic developments have distracted attention from another revolution of equal significance.

It is the challenge being mounted by the region’s heavyweights — Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran — against the hegemony which the United States and Israel have sought to exercise over them for more than half a century.

When David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence on 14 May 1948, he held the view that the country’s security could be assured only if it were militarily stronger than any possible Arab combination. This became Israel’s security doctrine. The desired hegemony was achieved by the prowess of Israel’s armed forces, but also by Israel’s external alliances first with France, then with the United States.

Military superiority won Israel outstanding victories in the 1948 and 1967 wars, a less resounding victory in 1973, still more contentiously by its invasions of Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006, and more reprehensively by its operation of unashamed brutality against Gaza in 2008-9 — to mention only the most significant among a host of other Israeli attacks, incursions and onslaughts against its neighbours over the past several decades.

In its early years, Israel’s hegemony was reinforced by its so-called ‘periphery’ doctrine — its attempt to neutralise the Arabs by concluding strategic alliances with neighbouring non-Arab states such as Turkey and the Shah’s Iran. Its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt also proved a vital asset over the past three decades, since it removed the most powerful country from the Arab line-up.

The collapse of Soviet power in 1989-91 contributed to the Arabs’ disarray, as did the huge success of pro-Israeli Americans in penetrating almost every institution of the American government, whether at state or federal level, most notably the U.S. Congress. The message these advocates conveyed was that the interests of America and Israel were identical and their alliance ‘unshakable.’

Over the past forty years, the United States has provided Israel with sustained political and diplomatic support, as well as massive financial and military assistance, including a guarantee, enshrined in American law, of Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) – that is to say a U.S. pledge to guarantee Israel’s ability to defeat any challenge from any of its neighbours.

Even 9/11 was turned to Israel’s advantage in convincing American opinion that Palestinian resistance to Israel was terrorism, no different from that which America itself had suffered. There followed George W. Bush’s catastrophic militarisation of American foreign policy, and the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq on fraudulent premises, largely engineered by neo-cons such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and their colleagues at the Pentagon and in the Vice-President’s office, concerned above all to remove any possible threat to Israel from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The United States has sought to protect Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly by harsh sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear activities, as well as joint U.S.-Israeli sabotage operations, such as the infiltration into Iranian computers of the Stuxnet virus. Washington has turned a blind eye to Israel’s assassination of Iranian scientists, and has followed Israel in demonizing resistance movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas as terrorist organisations.

America’s most grievous mistake, however — the source of great harm to itself, to Israel, and to peace and stability in the Middle East — has been to tolerate Israel’s continued occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians. These policies have aroused intense hate of Israel in the Arab and Muslim world and great anger at its superpower protector.

We are now witnessing a rebellion against these policies by the region’s heavyweights — in effect a rebellion against American and Israeli hegemony as spectacular as the Arab Spring itself. The message these regional powers are conveying is that the Palestine question can no longer be neglected. Israel’s land grab on the West Bank and its siege of Gaza must be ended. The Palestinians must at last be given a chance to create their own state. Their plight weighs heavily on the conscience of the world.

Turkey, long a strategic ally of Israel, has now broken with it. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced it as “the West’s spoilt child.” In a passionate speech in Cairo, he warned Israel that it must “pay for its aggression and crimes.” Supporting the Palestinians in their efforts to gain UN recognition as a state was, he declared, not an option but an obligation.

Prince Turki al Faisal, a leading member of the Saudi Royal family and former intelligence chief, has publicly warned the United States that if it casts its veto against the Palestinian bid for statehood, it risks losing an ally. In a widely-noted article in the International Herald Tribune on 12 September, he wrote that “Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America” in the way it has since the Second World War. The “Special Relationship” between the two countries “would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people.”

Last week, the American-brokered 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty — a key underpinning of Israel’s regional hegemony — came under open criticism from Egypt itself. The treaty was “not a holy book,” said Egypt’s prime minister, Dr. Essam Sharaf. It would need to be revised. Amr Moussa, the leading candidate for the Egyptian presidency, has called for the treaty’s military annexes to be reviewed so as to allow Egyptian troops to be deployed in Sinai.

As for Iran, denunciation of the United States and Israel can be expected from President Ahmadinejad when he addresses the UN General Assembly in the coming days. The failure to engage with Iran — demonising it as a threat to the whole world, rather than working to incorporate it into the security architecture of the Gulf region — has been one of Obama’s gravest policy mistakes.

Turkey, Iran and Egypt, heirs to ancient civilizations, are thus asserting themselves against what they see as an Israeli upstart. Saudi Arabia, the region’s oil and financial giant, guardian of Islam’s holiest sites, is breaking free from the constraints of the American alliance.

Israel stands accused. Will it heed the message or shoot the messenger? If true to its past form, it might well try to fight its way out of the box in which it now finds itself, further destabilising the region and attracting to itself further opprobrium.

As for the United States, bound hand and foot by Israeli interests, it seems to have abdicated the leading role in the Arab-Israeli peace process it has played for so long — but to so little effect. Disillusion with President Barack Obama is now total. Others must now take up the baton. Many believe the time has come to break the dangerous stalemate with some coercive diplomacy. Will Europe take up the challenge?

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Released: 20 September 2011

Word Count: 1,170

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Patrick Seale, “Egypt’s Next President?”

September 13, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

Amr Moussa, 74, the front-runner in the contest for the presidency of post-revolution Egypt, has called for a renegotiation of the military annexes to the Egyptian-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979.

“The Treaty will continue to exist,” he told me in an exclusive interview on 10 September, “but Egypt needs forces in Sinai. The security situation requires it. Israel must understand that the restrictions imposed by the Treaty have to be reviewed.”

Amr Moussa was speaking in Geneva a day after delivering the keynote address at the annual conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading London-based think tank.

Under the Peace Treaty — signed in Washington on 26 March 1979 by President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, and witnessed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter — the Sinai Peninsula, captured by Israel in the 1973 war, was returned to Egypt. In return, Egypt agreed to its demilitarization.

Last January, when protests first erupted against former President Husni Mubarak, leading to his downfall eighteen days later on 11 February, Israel allowed Egypt to move a few hundred troops into Sinai — for the first time since the treaty was signed 32 years ago. Egypt deployed two battalions, about 800 soldiers, in the Sharm el-Sheikh area on Sinai’s southern tip, far away from Israel. But, in calling for a revision of the military annexes, Amr Moussa clearly has something more radical in mind.

The Egyptian revolution has led to acute tension between Egypt and Israel, and to great concern in Israel and Washington about the future of the Peace Treaty. By removing Egypt from the Arab line-up, the Treaty gave Israel three decades of military hegemony in the region. For the Arabs it was a disaster. It exposed them to Israeli aggressions, such as the repeated invasions of Lebanon, the siege and invasion of Gaza, and the relentless seizure of Palestinian land on the West Bank..

On the night of Moussa’s address to the IISS in Geneva, protesters in Cairo stormed the Israeli embassy. The ambassador and his staff fled to Israel. Egyptian opinion was outraged by the killing on 18 August of five Egyptian policemen by Israeli forces inside Egyptian territory, north of the Egyptian town of Taba and the Israeli town of Eilat. The policemen died when Israeli forces crossed the border in pursuit of militants who had attacked Israeli vehicles on the road to Eilat, killing eight Israelis.

“Israel made a great mistake when the Egyptian revolution erupted,” Mussa told me. “It claimed that the revolution had nothing to do with Palestine. I said: ‘Just wait!’ Israel is playing havoc with the stability of the Middle East because it doesn’t appreciate the extent of the changes sweeping the region. It thinks it can go back to business as usual. This is impossible.

“Palestinians are right to seek recognition of their statehood at the United Nations this month. They have no other option. No other offer has been made to them. The peace process is dead. The time has come for the European powers to understand that keeping Palestine on the back burner has been a grave strategic mistake.

“All European states should support the Palestinian move. One cannot close all doors to the Palestinians and expect them to submit. They will not.”

Amr Moussa’s views are important because he stands a strong chance of being elected President of Egypt next year. Other leading contenders are Muhammad ElBaradei, 70, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Abdel-Muneim Abul-Futuh, 60, a medical doctor, with a long history of opposition to the Mubarak regime, who is thought to be a member of the moderate wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. ElBaradei is admired by educated young people, but he has spent much of the past 35 years out of Egypt and can have little first-hand knowledge of Egypt’s domestic problems. As for Dr Abul-Futuh, there is some doubt whether the Muslim Brotherhood would want one of its members to assume responsibility for the awesome task of tackling Egypt’s immense economic and social problems. Depending how they fare at the coming parliamentary elections, when it is estimated they might win 30 to 40 per cent of the vote, the Muslim Brotherhood may prefer the premiership to the presidency, or might even be content with two or three ministries.

Amr Moussa could be a strong president, acceptable to a wide range of opinion. He is known to prefer a presidential to a multi-party parliamentary system of government, which he fears might result in weak, short-lived coalition governments. In standing for President, he has said that he will seek only a single four-year term.

He was not a member of Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party, nor was he part of the corrupt elite around the former president and his son. He has a reputation for probity and for understanding Egypt’s grave domestic problems. As he told the IISS in his keynote address, 50% of Egyptians live in poverty, while 30% are illiterate. The country has to be rebuilt. He is confident it can be done.

He has had extensive international experience having been Egypt’s representative at the UN from 1981 to 1983 and again from 1986 to 1990, before serving as Egypt’s foreign minister for ten years from 1991 to 2001, and then as secretary-general of the Arab League for another ten years from 2001 to 2011. He opposed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and has been a consistent critic of Israel’s occupation and dispossession of the Palestinians. The Arab League under his direction approved NATO’s operations against Qadhafi’s regime in Libya.

Last April, Moussa called for a No Fly Zone over Gaza to protect it from Israeli bombardment. Israel’s Operation Cast Lead — its brutal assault on Gaza in December-January 2008-9, which killed some 1,500 Palestinians and caused immense material damage — did a great deal to undermine its relations with both Egypt and Turkey, the two major powers of the region with which it used to enjoy close relations. Many Egyptians are profoundly ashamed that Mubarak, their former president, colluded with Israel in the prolonged siege of Gaza.

Amr Mousa would not be a belligerent President. He wants a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict on a win-win basis, as proposed in the Arab Peace Initiative. He advocates setting up a regional security system, to include both Israel and Iran on the basis of a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) free zone. His vision is of a new, vigorous, stable and peaceful Middle East. ‘The people cannot stand being robbed of their future any longer,’ he says.

Amr Moussa is a profoundly reasonable and moderate statesman. So is Mahmud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who is seeking UN recognition for a Palestinian state. If Israel wants long-term security and full acceptance into the region, it should heed their views.

As Amr Moussa told me last weekend, there is a popular consensus in the Arab world that the Palestine question must be dealt with properly and fairly. “If this does not happen, things will turn ugly,” he said with great emphasis.

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Released: 13 September 2011

Word Count: 1,184

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Patrick Seale, “America’s Terrible Decade”

September 6, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

After the massive violence and killings of the past decade — in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere — the tenth anniversary of 9/11 next Sunday might be a suitable moment to take stock.

A good place to start might be to try to understand the motives of the men who flew the hijacked planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Why did Muhammad Atta and his al-Qaida colleagues feel such intense hatred for America that they were prepared to sacrifice their lives in order to punish it?

The American response to the devastating attacks on its heartland was, alas, wholly predictable. The trauma was so painful that the overwhelming instinct of most Americans was not to understand the terrorists but to kill them. The outrage was so great that it blanked out the need to ask further questions.

But ten years have passed and the catastrophic consequences for America and the world of George W. Bush’s belligerent response to 9/11 are now clear for everyone to see. It may, therefore, be useful to probe the motives of the attackers if only to enquire whether a change of Western policies might not be necessary to prevent a similar attack happening again.

What were the origins of Al-Qaida? This militant Muslim group was a product of the proxy war the United States and the Soviet Union fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In league with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the United States recruited, armed and trained tens of thousands of Muslims to fight the Soviets. Young men, attracted by the opportunity to wage jihad against the godless Russians, by the manly adventure and also no doubt by the money, were drawn into the conflict from a great belt of countries stretching from Central Asia to Algeria. Yemen alone provided some 25,000 of these volunteer fighters in the cause of Islam, which came to be known as the mujahidin.

Not only did America’s secret war expel Soviet forces from Afghanistan, it also contributed mightily to bringing down the whole Soviet system in 1989-91. It was the final decisive battle of the Cold War.

America’s mistake was to abandon the mujahidin, once they were no longer needed. Thoughtlessly, it dropped them. Funding dried up. Thousands of alienated and jobless youths, often unwanted back in their own countries, turned against their own governments, as in Algeria and Yemen for example, creating mayhem. Some turned violently against the United States. Their names and personal details had been entered into the data-base of a fervent opponent of the Soviets: Osama Bin Laden. The creation of al-Qaida was a direct result of America’s war to destroy Soviet power in Afghanistan.

Some of the mujahidin then turned also against Saudi Arabia, their former paymaster, particularly when the Kingdom in 1991 invited half a million U.S. soldiers on to its territory — a territory Muslims consider ‘sacred’ — to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The First Gulf War was a highly controversial affair. Many Muslims were outraged by the destruction of Iraqi forces, as well as by the punitive sanctions imposed on Baghdad after the conflict, which were said to have resulted in the death of half a million Iraqi babies.

But these were not the only reasons for al-Qaida to hate America. Another compelling reason was America’s blind support for Israel as it continued to oppress and dispossess the Palestinians.

After Kuwait was freed, President George H.W. Bush, the 41st U.S. President, did make an attempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of the old principle of land-for-peace. He advised Israel to abandon its expansionist policies, freeze settlement-building and give the Palestinians a chance to build a state of their own. With these ambitious aims, he convened a peace conference at Madrid in 1991, arousing Arab hopes that America could truly be an honest broker.

But Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister at the time, was not only determined to continue settlement-building. He also demanded that the United States give Israel $10 billion in loan guarantees to absorb more Jewish immigrants. As George H. W. Bush collapsed under pressure from Israel and its American friends, Shamir got his way.

Pro-Israeli lobbies then contributed to Bush’s subsequent defeat by Bill Clinton at the 1992 presidential elections. Subservience to Israel undoubtedly contributed to stoking the fires of hatred for the United States.

When America was shaken to the core by the attacks of 11 September 2001, an Israeli politician like Benyamin Netanyahu immediately recognised that the strikes against America were “good for Israel.” It allowed hard-line Israelis like him to say that the Palestinians were terrorists exactly like the ones who had attacked America. Israel and the United States were in the same boat, Netanyahu argued — victims of Islamic terror! The poison of Islamophobia spread throughout America and infected several European countries as well. It is no accident that the monstrous Norwegian killer, Anders Behring Breivik, has declared an unbounded love for Israel and its anti-Palestinian policies.

When Barack Obama assumed office on January 20, 2009, as the 44th President of the United States, he knew what needed to be done. He had to throw off George W. Bush’s disastrous legacy and chart a new course. One of his very first acts was to appoint George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy charged with re-launching the moribund Arab-Israeli peace process by insisting on a freeze of Israeli settlement-building. In Cairo on 4 June 2009, Obama pledged that the United States was not, and would never be, at war with Islam — words which awakened immense hope throughout the Muslim world.

But that hope has given way to an equally immense disillusion. Obama has failed to rescue America from the baleful influence of the pro-Israeli neo-cons and other fanatical and deluded conservatives. He has been defeated by Netanyahu and by America’s pro-Israeli lobbies even more resoundingly than George Bush Senior was defeated by Yitzak Shamir a generation earlier.

Instead of a new beginning, Obama has had to assume Bush’s terrible legacy as his own: U.S. military operations continue to kill or displace Muslims in large numbers in different parts of the world; men and resources continue to be squandered on unwinnable wars (according to Noam Chomsky, the Iraq and Afghan wars have cost the U.S. $4.4 trillion); the shameful prison at Guantánamo remains open.

Meanwhile, Israel’s land-grab in the Palestinian territories continues unchecked. America’s inability to rein in its tiny Israeli ally is one of the wonders of international politics. Seeing their country being gobbled up before their eyes, the despairing Palestinians are this month planning to seek UN recognition of their statehood. But the United States has indicated that it will veto any such move in the Security Council. What remains of America’s standing in the Arab and Muslim world will suffer a further blow.

Such is the ground from which terrorism springs.

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Released: 06 September 2011

Word Count: 1,148

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Patrick Seale, “Remaking the Arab State”

August 30, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

The Arabs face a formidable task — nothing less than rebuilding the entire state structure and system of government in countries as diverse as Tunisia and Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In Syria, too, the Ba‘thist state is almost certainly doomed, whether President Bashar al-Asad survives at its head or not. It has lasted 48 years, ever since the Ba‘th party seized power in 1963. If it is to outlast the present uprising, it would need to be profoundly recast and remade in order to accommodate several neglected forces in Syrian society — sects, ethnicities, tribes, disgruntled intellectuals and the rural poor among others.

What form of government will replace the rickety Arab structures, some of which have already been brought down it, while others are still fighting to survive? What state structures will replace the old autocracies, with their bankrupt one-party rule and their all-powerful military and security apparatus? This is the key question posed by events not only in Damascus, but also in Tunis, Cairo, Tripoli and Sanaa. This is the great unknown.

The monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula (with the exception of Bahrain) stand out as islands of relative stability in the current upheaval — possibly the most radical since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. They are protected by their oil wealth, but not by that alone.

Modernised and reformed over the years, their traditional systems of government have, in most cases, proved responsive to the needs of their citizens. They have provided reasonably good governance, whether in the United Arab Emirates or Qatar, in Kuwait or Oman, or indeed in Saudi Arabia itself, the dominant power in the Peninsula. Good governance would seem to be the secret of their continued legitimacy.

We all know — because it has been said so often — that the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring want social justice, jobs, freedom from police brutality and arbitrary arrest, a chance to advance in life, better prospects for themselves and their families, a fairer distribution of their country’s resources, an end to corruption by a privileged elite, dignity and respect from their rulers. In a word, good governance.

That, above all, is what the Arab world would seem to want, rather than democracy on the Western model, of which the Arabs have had little experience; and for which they have little appetite, if it means any form of Western tutelage.

A problem as yet unresolved is the future role of Islamic parties in the countries which are experiencing, or have experienced, revolutions. In Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen these Islamic movements are now above ground and will undoubtedly figure prominently in the new structures of power. In Syria, the Muslim Brothers – the regime’s main enemy since the 1970s — cannot be indefinitely suppressed and will have to be accommodated, one way or the other.

Al-Qaida — a radical Islamic movement not to be confused with the Islamic mainstream — is active in Yemen, engaging in almost daily gun battles with government forces. In Algeria last week, a terrorist attack, claimed by Al-Qaida, against a barracks at Sharshal in the north of the country, killed 18 and wounded many others. Algeria has so far refused to recognise Libya’s Provisional National Council precisely because the Council and its agencies include jihadists wanted for crimes in Algeria. Some members of Qadhafi’s family have fled to Algeria and found refuge there.

For many Arabs, indeed for most Muslims, the West is highly suspect, and its current rampant Islamophobia a source of angry bewilderment. America’s blind support for Israel — for its aggressions against its neighbours and its long and cruel oppression of the Palestinians — is a source of great rage, latent and largely impotent so far, but for how long? The West’s colonial past in the region has also by no means been forgotten – whether in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, to name only the most obvious countries.

The horrors of the Italian occupation between the wars have not been erased from Libyan minds. Many Libyans will be grateful for the help Britain, France and the United States gave in defeating Muammar Qadhafi, but many others will resent the bombing of their country during the holy month of Ramadan.

There is a level of grievance and aspiration in the revolutions of the Arab Spring, which the West has largely ignored. This is the thirst for national independence. The Arabs have pursued the goal of national independence – not from their rulers but from external powers – ever since the First World War. But they have not yet fully achieved it. It is very much on their current agenda.

Consider for a moment the impact on opinion of America’s invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq. Imagine the displeasure and anxiety many feel about the vast American bases in the Gulf. Reflect about the bitter resentment aroused by America’s massive subventions to Israel, which allow it to expand its settlements in Palestinian territory, besiege and bomb Gaza, in defiance of the whole Arab and Muslim world and of international law. Imperialism is alive and well.

The Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979 is a very sore point for many Egyptians, and indeed for many Arabs. It removed Egypt from the Arab line-up, condemning it to American-financed impotence, while exposing the rest of the Arab world to Israeli power. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, during which it killed 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, was a direct consequence of the Treaty. Egyptians certainly do not want another war with Israel, but the treaty is a badge of shame which many would like removed.

In the eastern Arab world, there are some who detest the strength Hizballah has acquired in Lebanon, who dread the role of Iran in Arab affairs, and who want to destroy the Alawi-dominated regime in Syria. But there are many others who understand that the Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis has been the main obstacle to Israeli and American hegemony in the region. If the axis is brought down — as Israel and its American friends fervently desire — there are many who fear that the region will lose what little independence and deterrent capability it has managed to acquire.

There is thus a wider geopolitical dimension to the battles being waged inside several countries across the region. National independence – freedom from imperialist and Israeli pressures of one sort or another — is what the revolutionaries demand, in addition to good governance at home.

In dealing with the Arab Spring, the West would be wise not to seek to shape events too blatantly in its own interest – or risk an unpleasant backlash. It is high time the Arabs were left alone to determine their own destiny.

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Released: 30 August 2011

Word Count: 1,097

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Patrick Seale, “Syria’s Assad on the Ropes?”

August 29, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

President Bashar al-Assad is fighting for his political life, perhaps even for life itself. His brutal repression of the protest movement in Syria has earned him international condemnation. Calls for him to step down have come from President Barack Obama and from the leaders of Britain, France and Germany. The Arab world’s heavyweight, Saudi Arabia, has recalled its ambassador from Damascus, as have several of the smaller Gulf states. The UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, has presented a report to the Security Council describing, in gruesome detail, the killing and torture of civilian protesters. There are moves afoot to ban imports of Syrian oil to European markets, which provides about 30 percent of the state’s income.

Yet Assad remains defiant. He seems determined to fight to the end. Undeterred by harsh repression, the Friday demonstrations have swollen week after week, and their tone has hardened. Increasingly, the strident call is for the fall of the regime. Angry protesters say that over 2,000 of their number have been killed and over 13,000 arrested, many of them savagely tortured, while the regime retorts that it is fighting a foreign-inspired “conspiracy” and that 120 security personnel have been killed by “armed gangs.” A sectarian civil war on the Iraqi or Lebanese model is every Syrian’s nightmare. No one really wants that — neither the regime nor the vast majority of the opposition. There is, however, a fringe element that believes any regime, however extreme, would be better than the present one.

The opposition faces a stark choice: either go all out to bring the regime down, as some would like, or cooperate with it in building a new and better Syria. The first course is hazardous: If the Baathist state is torn down, what will replace it? The second course requires an act of faith: It means accepting that Assad truly wants to implement radical reforms and effect a transition to democracy by means of a national dialogue. He has attempted to launch such a dialogue, but has so far failed to convince — largely because the killing has continued. In August, for example, he signed a bill introducing a multiparty system, but no such reform can be implemented while the violence persists.

The regime has not distinguished itself in the trial of strength. Slow to grasp the nature of the popular uprising, it has been incompetent in confronting it. The security services, like Assad himself, seem to have been taken by surprise. By resorting to live fire against protesters at the start, in the city of Dara’a in southern Syria, they displayed indiscipline and arrogant contempt for the lives of citizens — the very contempt that, in one country after another, has been a motor of the Arab Awakening.

The speeches Assad has given since the protests started have been public-relations disasters — far from the rousing, dramatic appeal to the nation that his supporters had expected and the occasion demanded. Above all, he has failed to rein in his brutal security services and put an end to the shootings, arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture that have aroused international condemnation. Meanwhile, the Baath Party — “leader of state and society,” according to the notorious Article 8 of the Syrian Constitution — has been virtually silent, confirming the widespread belief that it has become a hollow shell, concerned only with protecting its political monopoly, its privileges and its corrupt patronage network.

If the regime has shown itself to be weak, the opposition, however, is weaker still. It wants to challenge the system, but evidently does not yet know how to go about it — apart, that is, from staging riots and publishing videos of brutal repression by government forces. It is split in a dozen ways between secularists, civil rights activists, democrats and Islamists of various sorts; between the opposition in Syria and exiles abroad, who are among the regime’s most virulent opponents; between those who call for Western intervention and those who reject any form of foreign interference; between angry, unemployed youths in the street and venerable figures of the opposition, hallowed by years in prison, most of them in late middle age. In a gesture of conciliation, the regime lifted a travel ban on several of them, including veteran human rights campaigner Haitham al-Maleh, 81, who, to his great surprise, was allowed to leave Damascus to attend an opposition gathering in Istanbul in July. But no coherent leadership has yet emerged, some say because its members, at least those inside Syria, fear arrest.

The July Istanbul meeting was the second of its kind to be held in Turkey, and seems to have enjoyed some support from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP, a ruling party of conservative Islamic coloring. But neither conference brought to the fore a united leadership or a clear program, let alone anything that might look like an alternative government. The opposition factions that have so far declared themselves — the National Democratic Grouping, the Damascus Declaration signatories, the National Salvation Council, the local coordination committees in Syria — are loose groupings of individuals with little real structure and few novel ideas, save for the goal of ending rule by the Assad family and its cronies once and for all.

The truth is that, as Tunisia and Egypt are discovering, it is exceedingly difficult to bring about a transition from an autocratic, highly centralized, one-party system to anything resembling democratic pluralism. It is not something that can be done in a weekend or even in a month. In Europe it took a couple of centuries. In Syria — and, for that matter, in most Arab countries — there is no experience of free elections, and there are no real political parties, no free trade unions, no state or civil society institutions, no separation of powers, no independent judiciary, little real political education. The Syrian Parliament is a farce.

Everything in Syria will have to be rebuilt from the ground up — including the ideology of the state. The old slogans of the post–World War II period — anticolonialism, revolutionary socialism, Baathism, radical Islamism, Arab unity and Arab nationalism, Arabism itself — will all need to be rethought, discarded or brought up to date.

As in Egypt and Tunisia, a key puzzle will be how to integrate Islamist movements into a democratic system. In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned — membership is punishable by death — ever since it conducted an insurgency against the regime of former President Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, from 1976 to 1982, which ended in a massacre at Hama. According to Human Rights Watch, between 5,000 and 10,000 people were killed as the government fought to regain control of the town from Islamist insurgents. These events have been seared into the collective memory of most Syrians. But they mean different things to different people. For the regime, Hama was a necessary action that saved the country from Islamist terrorism. For the opposition — and especially for Sunni Muslims — it was a criminal massacre that, some would say, must be avenged.

There is, therefore, understandable uneasiness among sections of the population, especially the Christians (10 percent of the population) and the Alawis (about 12 percent). The regime is dominated by the latter, a branch of Shiite Islam, who are heavily represented in the officer corps and security services. They would be an immediate target if an extreme Sunni regime were to come to power. As Syria is a mosaic of sects and ethnic groups, the need for tolerance, reflected in an essentially secular government, is deeply ingrained. Many worried secularists look to Turkey as a model because Erdogan’s AKP has shown that Islam is compatible with democracy.

The Need for Neutral Intermediaries

Since the task of bringing democracy to Syria is so vast, and since any viable transition must inevitably take time, some observers have come to the view that a dialogue between regime and opposition would be the safest way forward. But how to start, when the two camps are separated by an abyss of hate? Clearly, the regime must first stop killing its citizens and the opposition must accept the notion of a gradual transition. A cooling-off period is urgently required.

A peacekeeping mission, staffed by neutral countries such as India, Brazil and Turkey, could do the job. Jimmy Carter could oversee it. His moral stature and his record of conciliation are widely admired. The task would be to create the conditions for a serious exchange of views and hold the regime to its promises of real democratic reforms. Free elections under international supervision should be the ultimate goal.

Assad’s Syria claims legitimacy on two main counts: for standing up to Israel and its American backer, and for having given its citizens — at least until the present crisis — a long spell of security and stability even if the price paid was an absence of political freedoms. Every Syrian knows the terrible fate suffered by two of its neighbors: Lebanon because of its savage civil war (1975–90), and Iraq because of the horrendous bloodletting of the Sunni-Shiite conflict, unleashed by the US invasion of 2003.

So Assad may be on the ropes, but he is far from finished. Some hardline protesters reject any notion of dialogue with him. Other opposition figures are more flexible but insist that the killing must stop first. As repression has intensified, the hardliners are gaining ground.

There are three scenarios that could bring the regime down: a split in the army and security forces; a major dispute within the regime or within the Assad family; or a catastrophic economic collapse. All are possible, but none seem imminent.

Except for some defections, the army and security forces have stayed loyal to the regime. So long as this remains the case, it will be difficult for the opposition to topple it. The ruling family and the regime continue to present a united front. There have been rumors of disputes between the president and his hardline brother Maher, commander of the regime’s Praetorian Guard. But little of this has emerged in public view.

The economy is, of course, a source of great concern. Syria’s tourist trade has collapsed, domestic investment has dried up and the Syrian pound has taken a battering. After the Arab Spring’s first moment of euphoria, most people now realize that the problem is not just one of forging a new political system, whether in Syria or indeed in Tunisia, Egypt or Yemen. It is also a question of tackling the huge social and economic problems Syria and other countries in the region are facing: exploding populations; rampant youth unemployment; an impoverished middle class and a semi-destitute working class; a soaring cost of living; a semi-bankrupt government; policies of economic liberalization that have benefited only a tiny and corrupt elite; and neglect of workers’ rights, whether on the land or in shops and factories.

The rich monarchies of the Gulf can spend their way out of trouble, and are doing so. Saudi Arabia, for example, has announced plans to spend $70 billion on low-cost housing. Syria, with about the same size population, can only dream of such figures. Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, highly prosperous sheikdoms with vast sovereign wealth funds, have promised to help Tunisia surmount its current difficulties. Money has also gone to Egypt, Oman and Yemen, a country of special concern to Saudi Arabia. Syria, too, will need bailing out if the crisis continues. But on whom can it rely? If times get really hard, its Iranian ally might well help out with a billion or two. But Iran has its own problems.

The Syrian economy can probably stumble along for several more months without imperiling the regime. Syria has proved it can withstand sanctions, mainly because, unlike most Arab countries, it can largely feed itself — this year’s wheat crop is estimated at 3.6 million tons. With an oil output of 380,000 barrels per day, and plenty of gas, it also has a measure of energy autonomy. Although Europe is moving closer to a ban on imports of Syrian oil, imposing a worldwide ban would be difficult. In short, for all its faults and weaknesses, the regime is no pushover.

Assad’s Assets

Bashar al-Assad is in deep trouble, but it does not yet look terminal. After the NATO intervention in Libya — not to mention the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan — no external power, and surely no Western country, has an appetite for military intervention. Russia has started to express its alarm at what its Syrian friends are doing, but it will almost certainly block condemnation of Syria at the UN Security Council, as will China. And Syria is too central to the stability of the eastern Arab world for any of the neighboring Arab states to be in a hurry to destabilize it. While the Saudis and several other Gulf states have recalled their ambassadors, and the Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council have urged Assad to stop the killing, they have not called for him to step down.

Compared with other Arab countries that have experienced this year’s revolutionary wave, Syria is something of a special case. Tunisia, for example, is geographically largely immune from the boisterous currents of Arab politics (although it has had to take in refugees from Libya). Events in Libya, too, violent as they have been, have had little impact on the Arab world. Even Egypt’s revolution has not so far radically changed the Arab political map. Egypt is still self-absorbed, trying to sort out its own immense problems. It will no doubt in the future have a major impact on the Arab world, and on Arab-Israeli relations, but not quite yet.

Syria, in contrast, lies at the heart of the politics of the eastern Arab world. It is on the fault line of the Sunni-Shiite divide. It is Iran’s main Arab ally. It is Israel’s most obdurate opponent. It was, until the present crisis, the linchpin of Turkey’s Arab policy. As Turkey’s relations with Israel cooled, a Turkish-Syrian alliance was formed that has been of great importance for the region’s geopolitics. Strains have arisen because of the brutality of Syria’s security forces, but Turkey has by no means abandoned Syria. It would like to play a key role in stabilizing the situation, and has urged Assad to discipline his forces and stop the killing.

Syria is still the dominant external influence in Lebanon, in alliance with Hezbollah, the strongest party and the most powerful armed force in that country. Israel and the United States continue to demonize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, whereas it is, in fact, no more than a Shiite resistance movement, which managed to evict Israel from Southern Lebanon after a twenty-two-year occupation (1978-2000). Indeed, it was Israel’s occupation that created Hezbollah. To Israel’s fury, Hezbollah has acquired a minimal capability to deter further Israeli aggression; it demonstrated its strength when Israel last invaded Lebanon, in 2006. Israel would dearly like to disrupt the Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis, which in the past three decades has been the main obstacle to its regional hegemony. But it would not be easy to do so without incurring grave risks.

Hezbollah has attracted some criticism, especially from Syria’s opponents in Lebanon, for siding with Assad’s repression. Its heroic image of confronting Israel has been somewhat dented. But it remains true that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have together shouldered the confrontation with Israel and the United States ever since the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty removed Egypt from the Arab equation and exposed the rest of the region to Israeli power. This was evident in 1982. In the same year that the Syrian army perpetrated the massacre at Hama, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing more than 17,000 people in an attempt to destroy the PLO and wrest Lebanon from Syria’s sphere of influence, bringing it into Israel’s orbit. Had Israel been successful, Syria’s security would have been fatally undermined and Israel would have reigned supreme in the Levant. However, the late Hafez al-Assad managed to thwart the Israeli plan. He used to claim it was one of his greatest triumphs. It protected Syria and kept Lebanon in the Arab camp.

All these many relationships — with friends as well as enemies — would risk unraveling if the Assad regime were to fall. This is the great worry in the region and beyond, and is one reason Bashar al-Assad may yet survive.

If the protests in Syria become more threatening and the killing continues, no one should expect the regime to go down without a fight. Indeed, few regimes are ready to commit political suicide or willingly surrender to their enemies, especially when severe retribution is threatened. Under father and son, the Assad regime has lasted for more than four decades, survived many a crisis and seen off many an enemy. In this, its ruthlessness is no different from that of others.

China had its Tiananmen Square massacre and Russia its bitter war in Chechnya. Iran crushed the Green Movement, which tried to topple President Ahmadinejad. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has cast aspersions on Assad’s legitimacy and called on the international community to stop doing business with Syria, but Syrians know very well that America’s record in hunting down and destroying its enemies is no better than their own, and perhaps a good deal worse. When it was attacked on 9/11, that great bastion of democracy invaded Afghanistan in 2001, then Iraq in 2003 on fraudulent, trumped-up charges. Hundreds of thousands died, and several million were internally displaced or forced to flee abroad. Syria still plays host to more than 1 million Iraqi refugees, victims of America’s war.

As violence intensifies in Syria, the frightening specter looms of a bloody sectarian settling of accounts. It is already a case of kill or be killed. That is why all those who care about the Syrian people and about regional stability should work to ensure that a national dialogue take place as soon as possible, with the aim of bringing about a transition of power by democratic means rather than by civil war.

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Released: 29 August 2011

Word Count: 3,005

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Patrick Seale, “The Middle East in Flames”

August 23, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

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.

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Released: 23 August 2011

Word Count: 1,137

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Patrick Seale, “The Global Intifada”

August 16, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

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.

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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”

August 9, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

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.

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Released: 09 August 2011

Word Count: 1,137

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Patrick Seale, “Making an Enemy of Iran”

August 2, 2011 - Jahan Salehi

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.

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Released: 02 August 2011

Word Count: 1,182

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Patrick Seale, “Fiascos of American Foreign Policy”

Patrick Seale, “The Middle East’s New Geopolitical Map”

Patrick Seale, “Egypt’s Next President?”

Patrick Seale, “America’s Terrible Decade”

Patrick Seale, “Remaking the Arab State”

Patrick Seale, “Syria’s Assad on the Ropes?”

Patrick Seale, “The Middle East in Flames”

Patrick Seale, “The Global Intifada”

Patrick Seale, “Iraq Seeks Protection in a Dangerous Environment”

Patrick Seale, “Making an Enemy of Iran”

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