BEIRUT — President Barack Obama has an opportunity on his visits to several Arab countries this week to clarify America’s strategic aims and core policies in the Middle East, but to do so he will have to make a few key decisions that his government has avoided to date. The most important on the conceptual level is to break free from the psychological choke-hold of religion that continues to constrain American thinking vis-à-vis the Arab world and other Muslim-majority societies.

As he wanders in Arab-Islamic lands this week, he should be guided less by the ghastly images of the 9/11 attacks, and more by his two seminal experiences in Chicago as a community organizer and a law professor. Law and rights, not terror and revenge, should be the lenses through which he encounters the Arab-Islamic world this week.

Obama should stop wasting his and our time telling us how much Americans admire Islam, and instead focus on two things: clarifying whether the United States understands the legitimate grievances of ordinary men and women in the Arab-Asian region — most of whom are Muslims — and positioning the United States on a policy path that helps to reduce rather than aggravate those grievances. He can praise the Islamic faith ten times a day, but that will have zero impact on the Osama Bin Laden types who want to attack American interests. Rather, he should grasp why hundreds of millions of Arabs and other Muslims have rejected the Bin Laden terror approach, and instead line up behind “resistance” movements and ideologies that are focused heavily on defying the United States, Israel and conservative Arab regimes.

Three significant issues face the people of the Middle East and the interests here of foreign powers: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the “resistance front” headed by Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, and the lack of democratic, rule-of-law-based governance systems in most Arab countries. To his credit, he has started to reshape American policies in the region with his outreach to Iran and Syria, and calling for an absolute freeze on Israeli settlements in order to re-start Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, but a huge contradiction may soon doom this approach.

Simply stated, the United States cannot realistically hope to move closer to Iran and Syria while also boycotting Hizbullah and Hamas. The structural constraint in American policy in the Middle East is that it has always subordinated relations with the Arab world to its primary alliance with Israel. Washington often does sensible things in the Arab world, but when Israel comes into the picture American rationality turns into mush. That is, the United States pushes for democratic pluralism and elections where it can, but then boycotts democratically elected movements like Hamas or Hizbullah because they fight against Israel. It goes to war to implement UN resolutions in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, but sits on its hands on Israel-Palestine resolutions.

Obama’s team seems to have realized that this approach has failed, which is why we witness an initial adjustment in American policy on Iran-Syria and Arab-Israeli peace-making. This policy will hit a brick wall soon, however, if it continues to adhere to Israeli red lines. A better yardstick — and this should form the core of Obama’s speeches in the Arab world — would be to articulate the core values that drive his and America’s policy in the region — and to continue adjusting Washington’s policies to align with those values.

This means first and foremost treating all people and countries equally, and according to a single standard of law and morality. Obama’s Muslim father and his own years as a child in Indonesia are interesting psychologically and culturally for the American president, but meaningless for US foreign policy today. More significant is for Obama to recall his days as a law professor at the University of Chicago, or as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago, when he battled oppression and racism to help achieve a single standard of law, services and opportunity for all the residents of that city. He did not preach to south Chicagoans about the depth and wealth of African-American culture or the power of Christianity and Islam; he worked for housing loans, quality education, safe streets and other policy issues that affirm the equal rights of all Americans, and that matter to men and women who live in south Chicago.

Public speeches are not good platforms for policy-making. They are suitable for articulating one’s values, though. No offense, but nobody really cares about Obama’s ancestors or youth years, or his views on other religions. What we care about — and what he should explain clearly on this trip — is whether the United States government believes that habeas corpus and the 4th Geneva Convention, for example, apply with equal force to Arabs as to Israelis.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 03 June 2009
Word Count: 802
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BEIRUT — The emergence of Zionist-Jewish colonialism — otherwise euphemistically called “Israeli settlements” — as the litmus test of relations between Israel and the United States is an important indicator of how quickly the Obama administration has moved to reposition itself in the Middle East.

The latest statements by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton represent a dramatic change in America’s Middle East rhetoric, which now unambiguously calls for a total freeze on settlements, natural growth, “outposts” and anything else the Israelis do when they transfer their population into colonies built on Arab lands occupied in 1967. Washington has dropped its previous wishy-washy practice of merely calling colonies and settlements “unhelpful” to peace making, and has used dramatic moments to press its point to Israel and the world.

The most telling was when Obama spoke in the White House Oval Office in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, bluntly shooting down every Israeli attempt to shift the focus of conversation on to “the Iranian threat,” and instead stressing two counter-points: Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is probably a more important priority for reducing tensions throughout the Middle East, and freezing Israeli settlements is the essential starting point for the progress of this task.

The freezing of modern Zionist colonialism in occupied Arab lands is now a priority of American foreign policy. Three significant dimensions of this dynamic should be appreciated.

The first is the apparent change in US policy. The United States now emphasizes the priority and centrality of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict within the wider challenges throughout the Middle East, and includes active, top-level American diplomatic engagement. This dramatic change has been driven primarily by the sensible realization in Washington that overall American interests and standing in the region are deteriorating steadily, and American acquiescence in Israeli colonialism and other crimes is one of several reasons for this. When the United States invoked its own national interest as the main criterion for its policies, it quickly realized that it needed to change those policies. This has meant becoming a more active and impartial peacemaker, rather than remaining the arms supplier, apologist and protector of Israel and its colonial ways.

The second significant dimension of events these days is the battle of wills between the United States and Israel on the issue of freezing settlements completely, and what this might mean for domestic politics in both countries. Obama enjoys immense popularity and a majority in Congress that he can rely on, and he ensures this support and neutralizes the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Congress by framing his policy in the dictates of US national interest. Netanyahu, on the other hand, leads a vulnerable coalition and does not have deep popular support in Israel. He is likely to elicit strong criticism if he keeps widening the gap between the United States and Israel — Israel’s single most important political relationship — and probably will be thrown out of office if this trend continues.

The third and most important dimension — in the medium and long term — concerns how the settlements issue fits into the wider demands of a comprehensive, negotiated peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Freezing settlements is seen in Washington as critical to kick-starting an Arab-Israeli negotiating process. But any negotiations that hope to succeed will have to tackle the much more difficult issue of the status and rights of the Palestinian refugees. The danger is that so much political muscle and negotiating time will be expended on achieving a settlement freeze that prospects for getting the concessions needed on the refugees issue will lessen significantly.

Israel’s strategy is to make it seem that its concessions on settlements are so huge that the Palestinians have to make counter-concessions on the refugee issue. The trade-off Israel seeks is to drop its right to expand settlements in return for the Palestinians dropping their demand to offer the refugees a full range of options in a permanent peace accord, including the right of return for some refugees to their original homes and lands in Israel today. This is a dangerous approach because it equates Israeli settlements — a criminal act that is widely condemned by the entire world — with the legitimate rights of refugees. Rights that are widely recognized in international law and many UN resolutions.

The immediate emphasis on freezing Israeli settlements is heartening, and it is reasonable to ask the Arabs to make a reciprocal gesture of equal magnitude of criminal activity from our side, such as clamping down hard on terrorism against civilians. If the United States pursues a truly even-handed approach that recognizes that crimes by Israeli and Arabs must be condemned and stopped simultaneously, it will increase the likelihood that the rights of both sides can then be addressed in a more credible and fruitful manner.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 June 2009
Word Count: 807
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DUBAI — The first place you feel the impact of the global economic recession in Dubai is in taxi rides and car journeys that take much less time than they used to, due to reduced traffic congestion. This and other superficial measures of economic conditions offer insights into the current state of affairs in the UAE and the Gulf region, but the more interesting issues remain largely unexplored in public. These longer term issues determining the fate of the Arab world in the decades ahead are concerned less with material conditions — how crowded are the malls, how much have real estate prices declined — and more with whether the Arab world as a whole will use the current crisis to make some fundamental changes in how it manages its human and mineral wealth.

The most interesting discussions here in the Gulf region these days are not about the present situation, but rather about the past and the future. The most frequent question one hears discussed here in private is: Can Dubai realistically continue to grow on the basis of the same strategy that fuelled its meteoric expansion in the past two decades? The most common answer is, “yes and no”.

Yes, Dubai can continue to play the role of a regional service center that thrives off delivering quality services to the wider Gulf region, in areas like consulting, transport, advertising, distribution, and media services. It can even maintain a buoyant tourism and leisure travel industry that attracts sun-starved visitors from abroad and shopping maniacs from the Middle East and parts of Africa.

No, it cannot maintain the rate of construction expansion that fuelled its real estate sector in recent decades, mostly on the basis of speculative buying rather than purchases of properties that buyers actually wanted to live or work in.

How much the authorities in the Arab world have learned from the current economic crisis is really the big issue that must be addressed, and in private at least it is being discussed in Dubai and other Gulf emirates. The full consequences of the global economic crisis have not been felt in the Arab world, due to a lag of around 6-9 months in absorbing the impact of global trends. This is partly due to the low level of Arab integration with the global economy — though the Arab world has taken a big hit in the drop in value of its investments abroad. Most credible estimates of the losses suffered by Arab sovereign wealth funds in the past year suggest that these funds’ value has declined from around $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion, due to the drop in the value of financial investments abroad.

A new report from the International Labor Organization (ILO) regional office in Beirut (by Christina Behrendt, Tariq Haq and Noura Kamel) suggests that hard days remain ahead, as the Arab world’s economic growth rate is expected to decline from 6 to 4 percent this year (other reports suggest that a 2-3% growth rate is more likely). Many countries will suffer from the combined impact of rising unemployment, lower remittances and investments, high inflation and soaring national debt, the ILO predicts.

Because the wealth surpluses of recent decades in the Arab region have not been channeled into building up strong industrial, infrastructural and human skills bases, our region remains very vulnerable to shocks in the real estate and financial markets. Declining living standards and rising inequality will become even more problematic for the region in the years ahead, the ILO says, especially because of the broad lack of well-developed social security policies.

This and many other recent reports on the Arab economy suggest that the current crisis should be grasped as an opportunity, in the ILO’s words, for “regional investment and socio-economic reform, which countries in the region should use to establish mechanisms to promote employment, encourage pro-poor growth, strengthen social protection mechanisms, promote gender equality and non-discrimination, and focus on human development and decent work.”

This is an ambitious agenda for any country in any period, and a particularly difficult one for the Arab world today. The loss of $400 billion or more by Arab sovereign wealth funds, and perhaps three or four times that amount due to other consequences of the current crisis, may be partly recuperated when the global economy resumes sustained growth. When that happens, though, will the Arab world also resume its old economic management policies that have made sustained vulnerability and widening disparities the hallmarks of the modern Arab economy? Or will someone in the Arab world change course, and aim to really develop our vast human talent, free the minds and spirits of our youth, and move us towards a path of sustainable economic growth that is based on producing goods and services rather than mainly exporting energy and importing consumer goods?

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 28 May 2009
Word Count: 805
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SOUTH SHOUNEH, Dead Sea, Jordan — Every May, the rich and powerful corporate and government leaders of the Middle East gather at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Jordan to discuss a recurring agenda: the changing conditions of the world economy, and the broadly static conditions in the Middle East region. Every year, at this and other similar gatherings, some of the best minds and most successful and dynamic leaders in the region do three things: They diagnose the Middle East’s main constraints, offer guidelines on how to overcome them and how to enter an era of growth and prosperity, and they scratch their heads about why this region remains peculiarly immune to the transformations sweeping most other parts of the globe.

I have attended these gatherings since their inception a decade ago, and I find them to be a good barometer of the sentiments among a thin but powerful slice of the Arab world. Over the years, the most striking aspect of this annual pulse-taking of the region continues to be the persistent gap between the widespread acknowledgment of need for radical changes in political, economic, educational and social sectors, and the inability to actually make such change happen.

This year’s meeting attracted a record crowd of 1400 participants, suggesting that interest in the Middle East remains high. The most striking aspect of this year’s WEF was the recurrence of two issues that intruded into virtually every single session: the need to focus more seriously on youth-related policies, and the importance of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Neither of these are new issues, but it was striking how they came up at every single session or discussion, whether it was about economic growth, political trends, the role of foreign powers, technology, culture and the arts, environment or anything else. This is because these two issues structurally are the most important reasons for the potential for growth and prosperity, and, conversely, for the continued paralysis, autocracy and stagnation of the Arab world.

It is slightly depressing to hear the same issues raised in every gathering that takes place in or about the Arab world and the wider Middle East, without much progress on them. But it is also heartening that we seem to enjoy such a clear and widespread consensus on these issues. The main hurdle remains the transition from diagnosis to action and policy changes.

The unanswered large question about our region continues to be the same as it has been for two generations, since the oil-fuelled dominance of the modern Arab security state in the 1970s: Why do most Arab countries virtually ignore their single most important domestic source of both stress and opportunity — their youth — while they also deal with their single most critical external issue — war or peace with Israel — with the diligence of sleepwalkers?

The urgency of the youth issue in particular constantly resurfaces, thanks to new research and analysis by an increasingly professional cadre of scholars and policy analysts in the region and beyond. The most recent work was published last week by the Middle East Youth Initiative, a joint project of The Dubai School of Government and the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Entitled Missed by the Boom, Hurt by the Bust: Making Markets Work for Young People in the Middle East, the short study nicely captures the essence of analysis done by leading scholars in recent years on the various dimensions of youth during their transition from school and adolescence to college or work, adulthood, marriage and family, and active citizenship.

The study is grim reading, because it notes that young people did not benefit sufficiently from the recent boom and will suffer disproportionately from the current decline in the region. It notes that, “…despite six years of relatively high growth in the Middle East between 2002 and 2008, the transition to adulthood for many young people has remained stalled and, in some ways, outcomes have worsened. Young people continue to struggle in attaining job-relevant skills and high quality education. They continue to wait for good jobs, enduring long spells of unemployment or spending their most productive years trapped in informal jobs that fail to prepare them for better positions. In turn, young men and women increasingly delay marriage and family formation, unable to meet the costs associated with these life stages. Moreover, since outcomes in these spheres are interdependent, failure in one transition spills over into others, resulting in a debilitating state of waithood, when young people are left waiting to achieve a full state of adulthood.”

The Arab world knows clearly where it needs to move to shift from stagnation and repression to innovation and prosperity. If our government systems cannot walk and chew gum at the same time — address both the youth and peace issues at once — they should at least choose one of them to work on, and act intelligently and responsibly, for a change.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 25 May 2009
Word Count: 821
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BEIRUT — The meeting in the White House Monday between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified significant differences as well as deep convergences in the two countries’ approaches to two major sources of tension and conflict in the Middle East — the Iranian nuclear sector and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The convergences are well known, but the new gaps are the important element to watch in the coming months.

The gaps reveal much about changing conditions in the Middle East, especially American threat perceptions and policy options that see Washington moving towards the center in the Arab-Israeli conflict — and towards negotiations with Iran and Syria. The major differences between the United States and Israel include the outcome of any peace talks in the region: The US favors Israeli and Palestinian sovereign states living side by side, while Israel wants the Palestinians to ‘enjoy’ a self-governance that is less than sovereignty and statehood.

Israel and the United States also have different views on the Iranian nuclear issue and how to deal with it.

The Middle East is in a very different configuration today than it was even six months ago due to simultaneous changes in Israel, the United States, the Arab world, and Iran. The Arab world’s internal ideological balance-sheet has changed due to the wars that Israel has fought with Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively, in Lebanon and Gaza during the past 3 years. Also, Islamists have made gains in areas where conflict and tensions persist. Centrist and pro-American Arab forces have lost credibility and power in tandem with the rise of these militants.

Iran, for its part, promotes and exploits the gains of Arab groups who define themselves primarily by their “resistance” role — as Tehran markets itself as the mother of all resisters by defying the United States and the West on uranium enrichment. Israel sees both the Arab and Iranian trends as worrying and existentially threatening, but cannot muster any response other than a continued popular shift to the right and militarism. The result is ever more hardline governments such as Netanyahu’s.

All of this has created a worsening cycle of extremism and confrontation that touches most parts of our region. Centrist and pro-American Arab governments have responded by re-launching the 2002 Arab Peace Plan that offers Israel comprehensive peace and coexistence. They believe that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict would cool down other tensions in the Middle East and reduce Iran’s ability to penetrate Arab societies.

Obama has a much better understanding of these realities than his predecessor, and quickly launched a policy review that put US interests in the Middle East at the center of things (rather than Israeli fears or American neo-conservative ideological experiments). Obama’s past Monday meeting with Netanyahu clarified the new American insistence on addressing Iran and Arab-Israeli peace-making on the basis of four important principles:

• emphasizing negotiations rather than confrontational militarism;
• paying simultaneous attention to Iran and Arab-Israeli peace-making;
• committing to deep, sustained American diplomacy; and,
• addressing the legitimate grievances and rights of all parties, rather than making American or Israeli needs the beginning and end points for all encounters.

The opening negotiating positions of all parties are now on the table, and the hard bargaining will now begin — with some pushing and shoving and the occasional walking out of the room. Revived American diplomatic engagement is the most significant new factor, and it is easy to understand why the Obama team has slowly shifted US policy towards a more centrist, engaged, equitable and diplomatically activist approach.

The most telling example I personally encountered of why the United States is changing course in this region happened at the World Economic Forum Middle East gathering in Jordan last weekend. When Iraqi Vice-President Adel Abdel-Mahdi was asked in a plenary session what he would say to Obama, he mentioned four things: The US should withdraw fully from Iraq by the 2011 deadline; it should pressure Israel to accept the Arab Peace Plan; it should engage Iran diplomatically to resolve outstanding issues; and, it should deal more decently and fairly with Muslims in the United States and around the world.

It is hard to find a better reason than this for the United States to review and revise its failed policies in the region: A senior Iraqi official, who is in office largely thanks to the American-led invasion and regime change in his country, suggests four policy moves that in one way or another criticize or require changes in Washington’s policies.

The fact that Obama’s team seems to be making these adjustments is an important sign that real change may be on the way, and the Israeli government for now seems to be the odd man out in a region that seems to be groping towards new relationships and realities.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 20 March 2009
Word Count: 803
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BEIRUT — The meeting in the White House Monday between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified significant differences as well as deep convergences in the two countries’ approaches to two major sources of tension and conflict in the Middle East — the Iranian nuclear sector and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The convergences are well known, but the new gaps are the important element to watch in the coming months.

The gaps reveal much about changing conditions in the Middle East, especially American threat perceptions and policy options that see Washington moving towards the center in the Arab-Israeli conflict — and towards negotiations with Iran and Syria. The major differences between the United States and Israel include the outcome of any peace talks in the region: The US favors Israeli and Palestinian sovereign states living side by side, while Israel wants the Palestinians to ‘enjoy’ a self-governance that is less than sovereignty and statehood.

Israel and the United States also have different views on the Iranian nuclear issue and how to deal with it.

The Middle East is in a very different configuration today than it was even six months ago due to simultaneous changes in Israel, the United States, the Arab world, and Iran. The Arab world’s internal ideological balance-sheet has changed due to the wars that Israel has fought with Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively, in Lebanon and Gaza during the past 3 years. Also, Islamists have made gains in areas where conflict and tensions persist. Centrist and pro-American Arab forces have lost credibility and power in tandem with the rise of these militants.

Iran, for its part, promotes and exploits the gains of Arab groups who define themselves primarily by their “resistance” role — as Tehran markets itself as the mother of all resisters by defying the United States and the West on uranium enrichment. Israel sees both the Arab and Iranian trends as worrying and existentially threatening, but cannot muster any response other than a continued popular shift to the right and militarism. The result is ever more hardline governments such as Netanyahu’s.

All of this has created a worsening cycle of extremism and confrontation that touches most parts of our region. Centrist and pro-American Arab governments have responded by re-launching the 2002 Arab Peace Plan that offers Israel comprehensive peace and coexistence. They believe that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict would cool down other tensions in the Middle East and reduce Iran’s ability to penetrate Arab societies.

Obama has a much better understanding of these realities than his predecessor, and quickly launched a policy review that put US interests in the Middle East at the center of things (rather than Israeli fears or American neo-conservative ideological experiments). Obama’s past Monday meeting with Netanyahu clarified the new American insistence on addressing Iran and Arab-Israeli peace-making on the basis of four important principles:

• emphasizing negotiations rather than confrontational militarism;
• paying simultaneous attention to Iran and Arab-Israeli peace-making;
• committing to deep, sustained American diplomacy; and,
• addressing the legitimate grievances and rights of all parties, rather than making American or Israeli needs the beginning and end points for all encounters.

The opening negotiating positions of all parties are now on the table, and the hard bargaining will now begin — with some pushing and shoving and the occasional walking out of the room. Revived American diplomatic engagement is the most significant new factor, and it is easy to understand why the Obama team has slowly shifted US policy towards a more centrist, engaged, equitable and diplomatically activist approach.

The most telling example I personally encountered of why the United States is changing course in this region happened at the World Economic Forum Middle East gathering in Jordan last weekend. When Iraqi Vice-President Adel Abdel-Mahdi was asked in a plenary session what he would say to Obama, he mentioned four things: The US should withdraw fully from Iraq by the 2011 deadline; it should pressure Israel to accept the Arab Peace Plan; it should engage Iran diplomatically to resolve outstanding issues; and, it should deal more decently and fairly with Muslims in the United States and around the world.

It is hard to find a better reason than this for the United States to review and revise its failed policies in the region: A senior Iraqi official, who is in office largely thanks to the American-led invasion and regime change in his country, suggests four policy moves that in one way or another criticize or require changes in Washington’s policies.

The fact that Obama’s team seems to be making these adjustments is an important sign that real change may be on the way, and the Israeli government for now seems to be the odd man out in a region that seems to be groping towards new relationships and realities.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 20 March 2009
Word Count: 803
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BEIRUT — As has been the case for the past six decades or so, the usually turbulent politics of Lebanon mirror almost perfectly the many strands of political, ideological, commercial and criminal activities that define public life in the Arab region. So it is again with the elections that will take place on June 7 — comprising a series of positive and negative attributes that give these elections much greater significance than would normally be the case. I would suggest five dimensions by which the election results could shed light on pertinent national, regional and global issues.

1. This is a rare election in the Arab world because the results are not known ahead of time — and, when they are known, they definitely will not show one party winning 97.8 percent of the vote, as happens in so many other Arab countries where most elections are an insulting joke. This is especially true because there are something like 17-19 seats whose results are unpredictable (out of 128 total) — and they will determine the overall results. The resolution of ideological competition through a truly contested free vote should be celebrated – along with the alphabet and tabbouleh salad – as one of Lebanon’s most meaningful contributions to Arab civilization. This is the last little corner of Arabism where people valiantly hang on to the idea that democratic pluralism is at once appropriate, desirable, and functional.

2. Ideological contests in Lebanon often are proxy battles for wider antagonisms in the Middle East and globally. The two main camps — roughly the Hariri-led group that is allied with the United States and conservative Arabs, and the Hizbullah-and-Michael Aoun-led groups that are allied with Syria-Iran — reflect the two dominant ideological confrontations that now define the Middle East. The election results will clarify the relative strengths of these two camps, probably revealing nearly equally matched strengths that will reinforce the need for negotiated coexistence and power-sharing.

3. On the national front, the elections are often contested on the basis of what could be called, in very rough shorthand, pro- or anti-Syrian platforms. The results could produce a new configuration of power-sharing that modifies the current system of the government majority and the opposition both wielding veto power on major decisions, perhaps a small centrist block linked to the president, and certainly a clarification of relations between Lebanon and Syria. This is of monumental importance for most Lebanese, and of marginal interest to everyone else in the world — but it deserves watching because the local developments touch on, and reflect, the wider trends that make Lebanon such a powerful microcosm of the Middle East as a whole.

4. The elections may be an important step in clarifying whether Lebanon and the entire region move toward more secular, non-sectarian and meritocratic governance systems, or sink deeper into the current regional trend towards religion, ethnicity, and sect playing a greater role in life, power, and identity. The Lebanese people have repeatedly expressed their desire for a more non-sectarian governance system — as agreed in the Taif accord that ended the civil war in 1990 — but to date they seem incapable of making the transition to that new world.

5.The fifth issue that might be clarified by the election results and the political deal-making that will follow is whether Lebanon — like most of the other Arab countries — will opt for a strong central state that is also efficient and equitable in serving its citizens, or instead will remain with the current model of a weak central state that is dominated by special interests, ethnic groups, religious organizations, and assorted armed groups. Groups that, most of whom, are directly and openly supported, funded and armed by foreign governments.

These five issues strike me as critical to monitor as the election results come in and a new government is formed. The outcome of the voting will be significant far beyond Lebanon, because the country today mirrors the impact of every single major issue and trend in the Middle East, including: the Arab-Israeli conflict; Iranian, Syrian, American and Saudi influences; cultural liberalism and democratization; Islamism; UN intervention (peacekeepers, sanctions and monitoring resolutions, and tribunals); terrorism, militia culture, youth emigration, and several others.

Also, the Lebanon election is best seen in a wider context of six important elections that will have been or will be taking place this year starting last November, in six societies critical for the Middle East: the United States, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and — probably soon — Palestine. Every other election in the region is not to be taken seriously, unfortunately. These elections will tell us much about our assorted political cultures, ideological leanings, national identities and conceptions of statehood. How refreshing it is to follow a handful of elections that will help define our societies with more clarity and legitimacy than we have experienced from the criminality, police states, street fighting, foreign invasions and resistance that have dominated the Middle East in recent decades.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 11 May 2009
Word Count: 818
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BEIRUT — The US-Israeli relationship today is like a bunch of oranges, apples and bananas thrown into a blender to make a fruit smoothie. Action is the name of the game, but outcomes are not clear.

The United States-Israel relationship is one of the strongest and most stable bilateral links in the history of modern statehood. The United States will long remain Israel’s strongest and most important supporter — as reflected in the legal American policy commitments to ensuring that Israel always remains militarily stronger than the combined Arab countries around it. Yet the advent of the Obama and Netanyahu administrations clarifies that Washington’s commitment to Israel’s existence, security and strength does not automatically mean unquestioning support for Israeli policies of the day.

This relationship may soon reach an important milestone as the Obama administration emphasizes its determination to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while the Israeli government makes clear that its first and only concern now is Iran — and the Arabs can wait. Assorted Israeli officials in the past month have offered slightly contradictory views about their priority being two-state talks with Palestinians, discussions leading only to a Palestinian quasi-state, a focus on Syria, unilateral moves in Lebanon, deterrence or attack on the Iran front, or some combination of these.

Every single policy aspect of this matter remains shrouded in uncertainty. This is partly due to normal diplomatic tactics of not revealing your hand too early, and partly to the reality that the Obama administration probably has not yet decided if it is willing to expend the necessary political capital — and take the consequent risks — that come with confronting pro-Israeli forces in the United States. Arab silence and ambiguity are also problems that enhance the current uncertainty.

We can be fairly sure that if the United States puts its full weight behind a policy option that appeals to the majorities of Arabs and Israelis, and is anchored in American self-interest, its chances of being implemented are high. We do not know, though, what the US plans beyond active diplomatic re-engagement via George Mitchell’s office. Reliable Israeli reports speak of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel telling the leading pro-Israel supporters and funders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that President Obama plans to act “firmly and decisively” to reach durable peace — moving on the Iran and Israel-Palestine fronts simultaneously.

Emanuel mentioned key issues on the Israeli side — such as the settlements — without saying what the United States wanted Israel to do about them, while also mentioning the need to move on the Arab side. He called this the “moment of truth” for Israelis and Palestinians, which is correct. But it is also the moment of truth for the United States and the rest of the Arab world, the two other key players in this process.

The point of convergence that seems too obvious to miss is the policy of Israeli settlements and colonies — the last active settler enterprise that links our era to the ugly world of 19th Century European colonialism. The settlement/colonies issue is where the United States and the Arabs can work with the rest of the world to pressure Israel to focus more seriously on negotiating peace. Obama can stare down the pro-Israeli lobby by appealing to American national self-interest, and the basic commitment to justice that still defines most Americans.

A new poll just released by WorldPublicOpinion.org shows that 75 percent of Americans feel that Israel should not build settlements — compared to just 53 percent in 2002, with majorities of Democrats (83 percent), Republicans (65), and Independents (74) holding this view. Also, 51 percent of Americans sympathize equally with both sides. This is not new. Americans as a people have always been even-handed, but pro-Israeli political blackmail by Washington-based lobbies, media and think tanks has always generated a wild divergence here between the even-handed sentiments of Americans and the frenzied pro-Israeli policy of their government.

Arabs and Americans pressing hard to freeze Israeli settlements would generate the popular support for diplomacy among Palestinians that would in turn prod their leaders to form a national unity government required for serious negotiations. Peace-making that is anchored in equitable legal and moral foundations for justice — such as prohibiting colonial settlements, reducing the use of military violence by all, and seeking two sovereign states as the outcome of negotiations — offers hope for progress.

Bizarre as it may seem, it remains unclear if this is what the United States, the Arabs and the Israelis seek. A good place to start reversing this is to say that we would all like to end the colonial era once and for all — and pressuring Israel to freeze its settler-colonies is a good starting point that would resonate strongly across the world. And offer Israelis and Palestinians an opportunity to imagine living a normal life once again.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 May 2009
Word Count: 808
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BEIRUT — It is too early to say whether the release Wednesday of the four Lebanese security services generals who had been held in jail for four years on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will have a positive or negative impact on the political scene in the country. In momentous times like this, I often find guidance in the wisdom of the great contemporary American songwriter Bob Dylan, who wrote in one song, “Something’s going on here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”

Indeed, something important is going on here, but we do not quite know what it is. The release of the generals will impact at least four distinct arenas: the Lebanese parliamentary elections on June 7 and the domestic balance of power; Lebanese-Syrian relations broadly; the quality and relevance of the rule of law in Lebanon; and, the likelihood that legitimate global intervention could stop the assassinations that have defined and marred modern Arab political life.

The four released generals — Jamil Sayyed, Ali Hajj, Raymond Azar and Mustafa Hamdan — were in charge of key Lebanese security services when Hariri and 20 other people were killed in a massive bomb in central Beirut in February 2005. They were detained soon afterwards on the recommendation of the international commission that the UN Security Council established to investigate the crime. That commission has now transferred its key personnel and findings to the special tribunal in the Hague – a mixed Lebanese-international body — that will prosecute the cases that will be made against people who are yet to be named in indictments likely to come this year.

The release of the four generals means only one thing for sure right now: The special tribunal did not have enough hard evidence to keep holding them in prison. This is deeply embarrassing for both the international investigation and the Lebanese judicial system that jointly moved to detain the four men who had been seen as suspects or accomplices in the crime. It is not clear how much of a blow this is to the credibility of the investigation itself, because we know very little about what kind of evidence has been gathered against any suspects.

One thing that is clear, though, is the following question: If this entire investigation is about holding accountable — through juridical legitimacy — those who act with impunity and harm the rights or lives of others, is there a case to be made for holding accountable those who detained the four generals for the past four years?

This is a political question that must be answered by the boisterous and often dysfunctional Lebanese political system. In my view, it touches the single most important aspect of the entire special tribunal issue: using the rule of law and international legitimacy to try to bring an end to the impunity that has defined those mysterious parties and quarters that routinely use political violence as a normal course of action in the modern Arab world.

Of all the dramatic and important things that happened in those tumultuous months after the Hariri assassination — mass public protests, Syria’s withdrawal, a government change, new elections, and the naming of the investigating commission — the most important for me was the investigating commission. It represented two critical elements that have long been absent from the Arab arena: a legitimate form of foreign intervention in Arab affairs to try to stop the criminality that has plagued much of our public life for decades, and an attempt to use the rule of law, rather than armies and unilateral sanctions, to achieve this end.

If the release of the four generals reflects a fraying of the credibility of the investigation and its associated special tribunal, that is bad news. It is also possible that the investigation has generated no credible evidence against anyone, or, expedient political deals are being made to downgrade the investigation and tribunal in favor of other more strategic goals. I hope and also believe that neither of these is the case. We will know more in due course.

The special investigation and tribunal mandated by a unanimous decision of the UN Security Council in 2005 was a potentially historic turning point in the modern Arab world. It offered the hope that collective courage to make law and accountability, rather than terrorism and intimidation, the defining forces of Arab public life, through a legitimate partnership between one Arab country and the rest of the world represented by the UN. This hope is still operative, but it has been hit with a sudden jolt of reality.

The big picture and the key question for me remain very clear: Can people, political movements or governments forever kill and coerce with impunity in the Arab world?

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 04 May 2009
Word Count: 802
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BEIRUT — The scene in the ballroom of the venerable old Bristol Hotel in Beirut last week was the epitome of low-keyness — dozens of mature men and a sprinkling of women seated around a large, U-shaped conference setting, in slightly dim lighting, hearing lecturers and participating in open discussions over two days.

This gathering, however, reminded me why I am confident that the dysfunctional mismanagement and occasional criminality of the modern Arab world will not persist forever. The meeting — organized by the Arab Anti-Corruption Organization — reminded me why I am confident that the Arab world in my lifetime will start to transform top-heavy, mismanaged, and corruption-riddled governments into more productive and humane systems.

It is abundantly clear that sustainable change in our Arab region will not soon occur through three mechanisms that have transformed other societies: Iranian-style internal popular revolutions, foreign military or political intervention, or Gorbachev-style domestic change from above. Existing power structures in the Arab world lean towards personalized permanence, not change.

Having watched the Arab world mostly pound its head against concrete over the past 40 years — fixing it as the only entire region in the world that is collectively and chronically non-democratic – my guess is that the most likely mechanism for change will emanate from these different sources:
• the expanding private sector businesses that need a rule-of-law foundation;
• the increasingly cash-strapped governments that find no alternative to liberalizing seriously and steadily; and,
• the concentrated pressuring, cajoling and partnering of respected civil society organizations that know how governments operate, and how they must evolve.

Of the latter, the Arab Anti-Corruption Organization (AACO) is one of several such institutions in the Arab world working to break through — or at least chip away at — the steel wall that protects the prevailing centralized, autocratic power structures. This symposium was about “Better Fiscal and Monetary Controls in the Arab world” — a deceptively technical title. Along with civilian control of security sectors, more efficient public financing offers the best hope for pushing the Arab region from stagnant mediocrity towards dignified citizenship and productive growth.

The organizers and participants of the AACO meeting are not radical rebels, but rather sons and daughters of the modern Arab establishment — former prime ministers and finance ministers, members of parliament, and senior fiscal sector officials. They included Selim Hoss and George Corm from Lebanon, Amer Khayyat from Iraq, Taher Kanaan and Mohammad Hammouri from Jordan, Nasser Sane’ from Kuwait, Abboud Saraj from Syria, Ahmad Ashour from Egypt, Abdul Latif Atrouz from Morocco, and many others.

They and others around the region have worked patiently for six years since they founded AACO to pursue several tracks that will eventually penetrate and ultimately puncture the structures of Arab public sector intemperance, incompetence and corruption. They prepare studies — available in books and on their website — documenting the weaknesses of existing accountability systems, and suggesting where and how loopholes must be closed. They clarify why and how corruption damages all Arab societies, such as through waste, poverty- and disparity-promotion, and lower investments. They generate important linkages among civil society institutions, international partners and groups such as the Arab Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption. And, they lobby incessantly with incumbent government officials to make the changes required to slow down and then reverse the continued decline and marginalization of the Arab world.

More effective fiscal controls in the Arab world are needed, AACO Executive Director Amer Khayyat says, to avert the recent experience that saw collective public and private sector Arab losses in global financial investments in the past year — according to some credible Arab estimates — reach as high as $2.5 trillion. (Yes, trillion with a T.) Many of those losses were probably inevitable in light of the global financial crisis; but many others reflect incompetence or corrupt investment management in a context of a total lack of accountability.

When I asked him at the end of the gathering what struck him most about the discussions, Khayyat said it was the fact that, “the problems and weaknesses of fiscal accountability and monetary oversight and controls are almost identical in every part of the Arab world.”

At the technical level, the priority needs are clear, the symposium concluded. Reducing waste and corruption in Arab public funding needs oversight and accountability through updated anti-corruption laws, an independent judiciary in the context of separation of public powers, strengthened executive branch audit institutions, trained and qualified parliamentarians, and oversight by civil society groups and the mass media. Especially urgently, all Arab states should sign and ratify the 2003 UN global anti-corruption convention, and pass critical laws on financial disclosure and protection for whistleblowers who expose corruption.

At the political level, though, progress will come through persistent education and pressure.

“The existing power structure has an interest in retaining the status quo,” Khayyat told me, “but we will keep knocking on the doors of those in power.”

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 April 2009
Word Count: 812
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