BEIRUT — The status of Hizbullah has become central to any discussion of events in Lebanon, which in turn instantly takes you — like clicking on a political hyperlink — to other sites in the region, given its linkages with Syria, Iran, Hamas, Palestine in general, Israel, other Shiites populations, and various Islamist and nationalist movements.

Something very important has happened to Hizbullah, however, in the last year: It has slowly and quietly become another political movement in a country full of them. It engages in the push and pull of politics, making both advances and mistakes, learning on the job. Unusually, it seems to be searching for a way out of the relative quagmire it has found itself in, partly through the consequence of its own policies. It has not become weaker in the past 14 months, but rather more constrained.

It continues to make a challenging yet erratic shift from a predominantly south Lebanon-based military resistance organization that confronts Israel’s occupation to one that must engage more directly in domestic Lebanese political horse-trading in order precisely to preserve its main role as a resistance and deterrence force. Fourteen months after last summer’s war with Israel in which it performed rather impressively at the technical military level, its military prowess today is as much a constraining as an empowering and defining element.

The nuances and complexities of Hizbullah’s status are important for Lebanon, but they also mirror a range of related issues throughout the Middle East: What are the Islamist movements’ ultimate domestic aims? What is the real balance among their religiosity, nationalism, resistance, communal empowerment, and politics? How do ties with Iran play in Arab circles? Is the Syrian-Iranian-led “resistance front” against the US-Israel-Arab conservatives the way of the future, or a cruel deception from the past? How far can armed struggle go in the battle against Israel, before the US-Israel combine uses devastating force to turn threatening neighbors into wastelands of total destruction — and would such destruction have any long-term impact?

The mainstream Western media and political elites — especially in the United States — continue to ignore the considerable nuances and ever-changing realities of Islamist-nationalist groups like Hizbullah. It is simplistic and counter-productive for Western mainstream elites simply to condemn Hizbullah as a terrorist organization or a dangerous Iranian- and Syrian-manipulated militia, and engage it with confrontation, threats, vilification, ultimatums and sanctions.

The tendency in much of the Arab-Islamic world is to go to the other extreme, of seeing Hizbullah as a valiant, inerrant force for righteousness, self-respect and powerful Arab and Islamic self-assertion. The truth, as always, is at neither extreme.

A timely example of how to analyze the Hizbullah phenomenon constructively appeared this week in the form of a fine report by the respected International Crisis Group (ICG), entitled Hizbullah and the Lebanese Crisis (www.crisisgroup.org). It accurately captures the multiple dimensions of Hizbullah, along with the many factors that must be addressed in the current quest for a new political compact and balance of power in Lebanon and the region.

Its main thesis is that, “Amidst Lebanon’s political deadlock, all parties and their external allies need to move away from maximalist demands and agree on a deal that accepts for now Hizbullah’s armed status while constraining the ways in which its weapons can be used.”

The report correctly outlines the many dimensions of Hizbullah and its numerous, increasingly complex, and sometimes contradictory, relations with other political forces in the country and the region. These include its role in the aftermath of the 2006 war, the elusive election of a new president, Hizbullah’s weapons, its growing status among Shiites, its increasingly tense ties with Sunni Muslims, and the consequences of its failed move to try to topple a Sunni-dominated Lebanese government.

Sectarian tensions have increased in Lebanon in the past year, and the deployment of Lebanon’s army and a larger UN force at the Israeli border has constrained Hizbullah’s military posture. This has made its turn to domestic politics all the more urgent, but also messy. It makes mistakes that slightly deflate its once infallible status.

Patrick Haenni, ICG’s Senior Analyst, says that, “Hizbullah’s resort to street politics was ultimately self-defeating. The street battles quickly morphed into confessional ones, forcing Hizbullah into the sectarian straightjacket it has long sought to avoid”.

The net result is that Hizbullah as a domestic political player with a mixed performance is now subject to analysis, criticism and horse-trading offers that had always been alien to its world. Hizbullah’s new status as a domestic political player that challenges the government, makes deals and threats, and gets analyzed and kicked around at the same time is an important new development that probably opens the door towards more pragmatic politics — if there are any pragmatic politicians in Lebanon willing to walk through the door. We shall soon find out.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 15 October 2007
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BEIRUT — The November Arab-Israeli peace-making meeting that President George W. Bush has called for replays several similar moments in the past quarter-century, when a gathering was convened but did not achieve its full promise — at Madrid, Camp David, Taba, and Oslo, among others. Will this year be any different? I hope so in my heart, but I do not think so, to judge by current political realities.

If we enter a process — as we are doing now — based primarily on nice sounding aspirations, but in reality defined by a terrible imbalance in power, aims, and negotiating assets, we will fail as surely as we did in the past.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, pushed this tendency ahead one more notch on October 8, when he spoke in lofty and sometimes stirring terms at the opening of parliament. His comments, however, were another example of the Israeli tendency to offer vague generalities at the expense of specific commitments, and to extend to the Palestinians a hand in peace-making while conducting policies on the ground that promote perpetual conflict and active war.

He said: “The Palestinian leadership today is not a terrorist leadership. The President and prime minister are committed to all the agreements that were signed with Israel and I believe that they want to advance, with us, on a path toward changing the relations between us and them.”

Inspiring words, indeed, but politically hollow also. Olmert ignores the half of Palestinians who follow the elected Hamas party, and he speaks only of “changing relations” rather than of both sides enjoying absolute equality in sovereign national rights.

He said: “Israel has excellent excuses to justify stagnation between us and the Palestinians…. I would like to announce here, in the firmest terms, that I do not intend to seek excuses to avoid a political process. I am firm and steadfast in my desire to seek ways to advance the political process.”

Another triumph of noncommittal emotionalism over the dictates of political realism, equal national rights, and hard-nosed diplomacy. Olmert, like all Israeli leaders before him, seems more interested in promoting a permanent peace process than in achieving a lasting peace based on Palestinian and Israeli states enjoying equal national rights and well-being.

He said: “Under no circumstances should Israel miss an opportunity that could bring an improvement in our relations with our neighbors, the Palestinian people.” “[it is] my determination to take advantage of every shred of political opportunity.”

Improved relations with the neighbors is a good idea for buyers of condo apartments and vacation homes. States and peoples at war need to aim for a much more specific and lofty aim, which is secure, sovereign statehood for both sides, mutually agreed, and guaranteed by a series of interlocking commitments by both sides.

He said: “We don’t have an agreement [with the Palestinians] …
But an atmosphere of personal trust was created, an atmosphere of a mutual willingness to listen to the concerns, the pains, the anxieties and worries that each side carries in its national purse… I feel that talking is worthwhile.”

It is very useful to have an atmosphere of trust, and listening to each other’s concerns and pains is always a useful exercise. But this is not a psychological therapy session, where our capacity to listen is seen as a significant achievement. An atmosphere of trust must quickly be transformed into active negotiating progress through mutual concessions and gains, or the process will collapse as it did several times in recent decades.

He said: “The peace process requires steadfastness to take bold, unavoidable decisions.”

Actually, the peace process simply requires Israelis and Arabs to say to each other, unequivocally and openly, that they are prepared to coexist in peace, based on UN resolutions, ending occupations of others’ lands, adjacent sovereign Israeli and Palestinian states enjoying equal rights, and a permanent, negotiated resolution of both sides’ historical grievances (refugees, holy sites, right to exist, and others).

The Arabs have repeatedly offered this to Israel since 2002, in the form of the Arab Summit peace plan. Why have Israeli leaders never replied in similarly clear terms that commit to equal rights for two peoples living in adjacent states?

Olmert instead offers the Palestinians feel-good trust-building sessions taken out of the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine, while continuing Israel’s colonization-settlement, land confiscation, economic strangulation and assassination policies on the ground.

If the Annapolis meeting is to have any meaning or impact, those shaping it would do well to look at the interests of both sides with equal magnitude, to avoid simply adding Annapolis to the list of failures at Madrid, Oslo, Taba, and Camp David.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 10 October 2007
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BEIRUT — Momentum seems to be picking up for the November meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, between the United States, Israel, and representatives of roughly half the Palestinians, to achieve a framework agreement for comprehensive peace negotiations, leading to permanent peace. In many ways we are back to 2000, when Israelis and Palestinians hurriedly huddled with Americans at Camp David to try and solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is at the heart of wider Arab-Israeli tensions.

That attempt did not succeed, due to deficiencies on the part of all three principal parties. We should avoid a similar rush-job scenario — driven again by the slightly hysterical urgency of a disheveled American presidency nearing the end of its term.

I have some comments for the Palestinians, who are hobbled by three major constraints going into the meeting: President Mahmoud Abbas is dangerously close to being seen by many in the Arab world as a hapless American-Israeli puppet; his political party Fateh has been largely discredited as a corrupt, bloated and inefficient burden on society and no longer represents majority Palestinian thinking; and, the absence of Hamas from the Annapolis meeting makes the Palestinian delegation’s credentials rather thin.

There is one way that Abbas can overcome these constraints, which recalls a major weakness that contributed to the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000: He should consult widely, deeply and sincerely with ordinary and politically-active Palestinians throughout the world, in order to be able to attend the Annapolis talks as a credible representative of the Palestinian people, not a finger puppet hand-picked by Condoleezza Rice and still playing by Dennis Ross’ old skewed and failed rules.

The hardest issue to resolve in this conflict comprises the status and rights of Palestinian refugees, of whom there are now some 4.5 million living outside Palestine (they were 750,000 when they first became refugees in 1948). All other contentious matters — land, sovereignty, recognition, settlements, water, security, Jerusalem — now appear solvable, given the years of negotiations that have taken place by the concerned parties. The Palestinian refugees issue, however, remains both intractable, and existential for both sides.

There is no excuse for Abbas to repeat Arafat’s mistake. Abbas would be immeasurably strengthened, and would negate his image as Condi’s Karzai-in-a-kefiyyeh, if he were to launch a blitz campaign of open meetings with Palestinian refugee communities around the world, to identify the main points that define refugee attitudes towards a comprehensive peace with Israel — what the Palestinians want, what they would give, and what they would be willing to compromise on. Abbas fools nobody by going to an American-Israeli-structured peace conference without the essential compensatory credibility card of speaking in the name of the proven majority of Palestinians everywhere. Fortunately, he can start this process by reading a fine volume that is easily available to him and to all Palestinian leaders.

In 2005-06, the Palestinian scholar Karma Nabulsi, at Oxford University, directed a remarkable participatory project that consulted Palestinians in every part of the world, to hear their views on the issues that concerned them. The Report of the Civitas Project, as it was called, was published last year by Nuffield College at Oxford. It offers powerful insights into a national community of Palestinians scattered all over the world, but also united by many shared sentiments and needs, and, more importantly, by common perceptions of their rights as human beings.

Nabulsi herself points out that despite the very different circumstances of Palestinians around the world, “one can immediately note certain key commonalities in our current Palestinian discourse: the desire for direct elections to the Palestine National Council (PNC), for the reactivation and democratic reform of the PLO institutions, for the implementation of the Right of Return.”

How these and other desires can be fulfilled will only be known if these positions are channeled into the negotiating process by fortifying and defining the Palestinian negotiators in the first place. Tough issues like the “right of return” and a democratic PLO will be negotiated and agreed upon through a consensual process, not by one side imposing American-Israeli rules or by another side ignoring the sentiments of its own people.

Fulfilling the legitimate rights of Israelis and Palestinians is the key to achieving peace. Israelis and Americans will be well represented and prepared at Annapolis, Palestinians less so. Now is the time to redress this perilous imbalance, and avoid the mistakes that were made in 2000. The Palestinian leadership must generate the vital legitimacy, credibility and sensible negotiating position that it requires to succeed in such a process. It can get these essential assets from only one source in the world: its own people. Condi Rice and Dennis Ross get you invited to long weekends in wooded Maryland estates; credibly representing your own people, by consulting them widely, lets you be taken seriously on such outings.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 08 October 2007
Word Count: 804
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CAIRO — Egypt is a towering enigma — sometimes monstrous, sometimes magnificent — that hovers above the rest of the Arab world like storm clouds over a dry prairie, bringing both life and destruction. Egypt is kaleidoscopic, ever-changing and dazzling, simultaneously wonderful and woeful. It remains the big riddle of modern Arab politics — the birthplace of constitutional democracy, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the modern police state — but also its most vaunted prize.

Efforts to paint this country in a single shade of color are common, but not very useful. Egypt is neither structurally diabolic, nor genetically enlightened. I keep coming back to Egypt for visits and make it a point to speak to both critics and members of the ruling establishment, along with independent analysts and citizens, because Egypt continues to be so potentially important for the future of the entire Arab region. It is a barometer that measures the Arab political condition, but also a rudder that defines the direction in which other countries move.

At the regional level Egypt has been politically immobilized for the past quarter century, following its peace treaty with Israel and close reliance on the United States, but it has not been made irrelevant. Politically and economically, the domestic scene has been stirring again in recent years, and the imminent transition to a new president in the coming years might signal an opportunity for change. The problem is that this confounding land continues to send mixed signals on how it wants to change.

I experienced this again during my most recent visit to Cairo a few days ago, when a blisteringly critical report on political trends in the country by the US-based Freedom House coincided with fresh evidence that Egypt’s economic and investment reform program has been one of the most striking success stories in recent Arab history.

The question that fans, critics and analysts of Egypt must answer is more clear now than it was a few years ago: How do we reconcile an impressive capacity for real economic and administrative reform, including the creation of millions of new jobs, with a reinvigorated authoritarian political system?

The good news on the economic and reform front is real, despite its anchorage in the ever-perplexing context of a heavy-handed political system. The government that took office in 2004 has shown that it can implement serious economic reforms that generate results. Simultaneous reforms in areas like business registration, promoting foreign and domestic investment, tax codes, monetary policy, trade, and privatization seem to have convinced the business community that Egypt is serious about change — in commerce and administration, at least.

The results are striking. Registering a new company now takes three days in a single office, rather than the two or three months in dozens of offices. Direct foreign investment has increased from $2 billion in 2004 to an expected $11 billion this year, rising from under 2% to over 5 % of GDP, with new investments mostly in the non-petroleum sectors. Gross Domestic Product growth has doubled in three years, to 7% annually. Unemployment dropped from 11.6 % to 9 %, and inflation is under control.

These gains contrast sharply with the fact that most middle class Egyptians can barely make ends meet, as reflected in growing labor unrest and large, persistent strikes throughout the country.

The Freedom House report stated frankly and accurately that, “the Egyptian government supports the evolution of democracy in Egypt in its rhetoric but continues to quash it in practice.”

In its annual governance performance survey entitled “Countries at the Crossroads,” the group said that “the Egyptian government has become more authoritarian and repressive over the past two years, despite its language to the contrary. The freedom of political parties and civil society actors has become increasingly restricted, the judiciary is punished for seeking independence, and a long-term state of emergency has been largely institutionalized.

The Egypt report’s detailed analysis is all the more useful because it was written by two respected independent authors, Professor Denis J. Sullivan and Kimberly Jones, J.D., of Northeastern University in Boston.

I do not know the political implications of, or the answer to, why a police- and army-dominated modern Arab security state can achieve brisk economic reforms, high growth rates and massive job expansion, in a manner that other Arab countries can only envy, without attempting any serious political reform. But I suspect that this is the right question to ask, as we continue to grapple with the enigma of an entire region of nearly 300 million Arabs who have not been able to achieve or sustain a single breakthrough to credible democracy.

One day soon — we are not there yet — some brave leader in some Arab land will muster the courage and the confidence in his people to modernize politics and citizen rights, along with tax laws and trade protocols.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 03 October 2007
Word Count: 803
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BEIRUT — Why am I not surprised that the latest spontaneous popular revolt against an authoritarian government — in Myanmar — has been sparked and led on the streets by religious figures? Because men and women of organized faith have regularly taken the lead in populist movements for political change throughout the world in recent decades. Myanmar should help clarify parallels in the Middle East and other regions, where religious and political forces are at play simultaneously in society.

The people and institutions of religion are usually the last resort available to ordinary men and women who find themselves degraded by their own autocratic systems or foreign oppression. Prominent examples in our lifetime include Martin Luther King and the American civil rights movement, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Bishop Desmond Tutu and the end of the South African Apartheid regime, Jaime Cardinal Sin who helped overthrow the Marcos regime in the Philippines, Hamas and Hizbullah’s challenge to the Palestinian and Lebanese authorities, respectively, the Muslim Brotherhood’s challenge to the Egyptian regime, and the collective role of the Catholic Church in overthrowing repressive regimes throughout Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Each country’s case has reflected unique local conditions, but always with a clear common denominator: When ordinary people are denied a means to express or redress their grievances through a participatory and accountable political system, they will turn to other means to change intolerable conditions. Some emigrate, a few take up terrorism or criminality, a few others join militias and gangs; but the overwhelming majority do none of these things. Instead, they pray for solace and strength, and then they organize and mobilize for action to change their lives for the better. Religion becomes the last resort for political change because of three critical factors inherent in the divine exercise: legitimacy, hope, and change.

All three of these were on display as thousands of red-clad, bare-footed Buddhist monks led crowds of up to 100,000 through the streets of the capital Yangon a few days ago. Religious leaders, along with tribal elders, enjoy the highest legitimacy among the general population in most societies around the world. Religion by nature offers people a sense of hope and a better day ahead, when they seem to be engulfed in misery and endless suffering. Religion also provides a compelling mechanism for change, by mobilizing large numbers of people who fearlessly stand up to their oppressors, and who are motivated in part by religion’s inherent demand for more humane and orderly societies in this life. In the Abrahamic tradition of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the powerful figures of Moses, Elijah, Jesus, John the Baptist, Mohammad and others overtly challenged and changed the political order of their day. Change and challenge was their operating method, a better day ahead in this and the next life was their promise.

So it was understandably worrying to the Myanmar regime to see hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women take to the streets behind their beloved monks, just as it was heartening to the rest of the world that would like to see the end of such dictatorships. Not surprisingly, the military regime has cracked down on leading monasteries in and around the capital, having already imprisoned or exiled civilian democracy activists. When politics and religion join hands, watch out, especially if you are an incumbent authoritarian regime.

Myanmar offers a valuable opportunity for observers around the world to recognize more clearly the complex but important relationship between four forces that often get hopelessly confused: individual identity, political ideology, religious values, and national condition. When religious figures lead hundreds of thousands of people in the street to challenge unjust orders and autocratic regimes — whether in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s, Tehran in the 1970s, East Berlin in the 1980s, Manila and Cairo in the 1990s, or Myanmar in the 2000s — we should understand this as a rare convergence between the forces of personal identity, politics, religion and nationhood.

In all of these cases — with the possible but still ongoing exception of Iran — the religious forces that came to the fore to lead the battle against dictatorships subsequently receded to the spiritual and personal realm, after a new and more equitable political order had been established. The goal is always political and national transformation, not creating a religious society.

Myanmar today should help us appreciate the critical difference between religious and political forces at play in any society. When you see thousands of religious leaders and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people on the street acting in a daring, slightly irrational, manner, look for the political, social and economic discontent in their lives that is manifested in religious symbolism. It is always there, if we care to see it, throughout the Arab-Islamic world today, as it has been in Alabama, Myanmar, Tehran and East Berlin.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.</i>

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 1 October 2007
Word Count: 808
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BEIRUT — French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner a few days ago offered a very apt, very French, comment on the real significance of the Middle East peace conference the United States hopes to convene this Fall, calling it “a very light, weak, magnificent possibility.”

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the matter slightly more interesting a few days ago when she announced that the United States would hope to invite the members of the Arab follow-up peace committee to participate, among whom are Syria and Lebanon. September 24, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel welcomed Syrian participation, as long as Syria played by the rules established by the United States and the international Quartet’s “road map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The Arab countries for the most part have remained coy about whether they would attend the talks, arguing that the agenda, aims and participants in the meeting have to be made clearer before any decision is made.

Meaningful progress towards a permanent, comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace is possible, and should neither be dismissed nor allowed to pass without a serious attempt to make it succeed. The fact that all the principal parties are dancing around the issue and seem eager to break through towards a credible negotiation reflects the real desire for resolution through peaceful talks, rather than perpetuating a wasteful and inconclusive conflict.

But this possibility is light and weak for two important reasons that should not be dismissed: legitimacy and motives. The legitimacy issue is about whether the United States is the right party to bring all the players to the table. The US is not formally mandated by anyone to foster permanent Arab-Israeli peace. Its past attempts to do so — except for the Egyptian-Israeli peace at Camp David under President Jimmy Carter over a quarter century ago — have never succeeded because it has never been able to play the role of a truly impartial and fair mediator, preferring to act as Israel’s guardian, arms supplier, and advocate.

Washington’s credibility also has been badly hurt by its hostility towards two key players — Syria and Hamas — and its enthusiastic support for Israel in last summer’s attacks on Lebanon. It is hardly in a position to summon the players to make peace when its own policies seem more focused on waging war and promoting conflicts throughout the region.

The US’ motives are also suspect. President George W. Bush’s sudden re-engagement in Arab-Israeli peace-making appears to many to be a desperate and insincere attempt to salvage some sort of foreign policy success in the waning months of his largely discredited presidency. We can be generous and assume that Bush, Rice & Co. have finally heard the message the rest of the world has been sending to them for years — the critical importance of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict as a priority towards making progress on other hot issues in the Middle East. Yet even if this were a newfound American motive, its good intentions are almost totally negated by the style and substance of Washington’s behavior — lecturing, boycotting and threatening some of the key parties on the Arab side, and inviting them to a gathering where the rules are written ahead of time by the United States and Israel.

The “magnificent possibility” of peacemaking, however, remains a prize to be snatched. The flaws in the United States’ legitimacy and motives are a consequence of its policies and Israel’s, and they can be corrected by adopting more reasonable policies. It would be useful, for example, for Israel and the United States to state clearly that they will freeze the expansion of Jewish colonies and settlements in occupied Arab lands, as a gesture signaling their compliance with the requirements of the road map, and an indicator of their wish to succeed in the upcoming peace talks. It is simply not realistic to expect a meaningful gathering to take place in the fall when Israel continues to colonize occupied Arab lands, refuses to speak with elected representatives of the Palestinians, and launches attacks against Syria.

Israel and the United States have the right to demand the same thing from the Arabs, who also have much to do. But the Arabs have made their peacemaking intentions clear. The Arab world has repeatedly announced its desire to negotiate a permanent, comprehensive peace with Israel, via the 2002 Arab peace plan that has been reaffirmed by several subsequent Arab summits.

None of this is new, which is why Condoleezza Rice’s sudden interest in promoting a new round of Arab-Israeli peace talks seems so lacking in credibility and seriousness. This looks like an attempt to impose American-Israeli will on Palestine in the same way that military action tried to impose a similar will on Iraq. Using foreign military might to impose a political order on the Middle East will not succeed. It seems incredible that this basic lesson has not been learned over the past half century.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 26 September 2007
Word Count: 818
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The intense political focus on Iraq in the United States continues to revolve around the theme of how soon the US might be able to substantially withdraw its troops. Democrats who won a majority in the Congress last November have run up against the limits of their slim majority. Their lack of a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto means they are unable to force changes in George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq.

The tenor and narrow focus of the public debate here in the United States accurately reflect the general public sentiment that has been shaped by the administration’s policy. This holds that the United States has removed a brutal dictator, given the Iraqi people an opportunity to embrace freedom and democracy, and the noble job is done. The main theme that dominates discussions about Iraq here these days is about the feuding Iraqis who seem unable to forge a national consensus or a government that promote reconciliation and power-sharing.

There is no significant questioning of either the moral, legal and political right of the United States to invade Iraq, or of the repercussions of that move. The larger questions of what the American adventure in Iraq has done to the entire Middle East remain largely unaddressed here, at a time when those larger issues assert themselves more clearly in the Middle East itself. If the United States plans to maintain large numbers of troops in Iraq for many years — a distinct possibility, as evidenced by American troops in South Korea and Germany, half a century after wars there — then a whole new political and security dynamic emerges and needs to be considered.

The long-term presence of US troops, following the demise of Baathist Iraq, means that the security architecture in the Middle East will reflect the balance of power among four principal parties: the United States, Israel, Iran and Turkey. For the Arab world, this is an enormous problem and an embarrassment. The security system for the Arab world is being defined and maintained almost totally by non-Arab powers, including several that have been hostile to Arab interests.

One problem with this situation is already evident, as we witness the United States, Israel and Iran, among others, fight their battles in Lebanon and Palestine through local proxies. Recent events indicate how the different conflicts and confrontations in the Middle East have become linked. Events in one area could easily trigger clashes or even war in other areas, or across the board.

The Israeli air attack against northern Syria last week remains shrouded in mystery. Reports suggest, without confirmation, that the attack was aimed at some sort of facility related to the production or storage of weapons of mass destruction — with possibly a North Korean or Iranian link. The very close ties among Syria, Iran and Hizbullah mean that any attack against one of them could trigger responses by the others. Hamas also has close ties to these three.

With Iraq out of the way, Israel sees Iran and Syria (to a lesser extent) as its main strategic threats. Iran’s nuclear program is something that Israel, the United States, Europe and others say they cannot live with. A military strike to set back the Iranian nuclear program remains very likely during the last months of the Bush administration. Iranian senior military commanders said this week they have plans to strike at Israel if they are attacked. If Syria is attacked or threatened, it is likely to use Lebanon as an arena for retaliation against Israeli and American interests.

The American attack on Iraq seems to have triggered a sense among some parties in the region — Syria, Iran and friends — that fresh American or Israeli threats must be countered, or pre-empted, by decisive military and political resistance. No party in the region can credibly take on the United States militarily, but the Iraq situation and Hizbullah’s performance in last summer’s war both suggest that powerful militaries can be checked or even defeated, if one has the perseverance to stand one’s ground and fight.

Some of the parties in the Middle East will fight to the finish, because they feel they are engaged in an existential battle for their survival. Turkey is concerned primarily about the situation of the Kurds in neighboring states, but Israel, Iran and the United States take a wider view of security issues in the region. When not a single Arab state is directly involved in promoting stability across the region via a balance of power among the key military powers, this leaves the Arab world as a hapless arena for proxy battles by Israel, the US and Iran. This situation is totally untenable, and cannot be sustained for long. Some state or non-state force within the Arab world will emerge in the years to come to fill this vacuum of Arab power and influence.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 24 September 2007
Word Count: 811
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BOSTON — My rather surrealistic trip from Beirut to London to Boston coincided with three rather sharply juxtaposed events in Lebanon, Great Britain and the United States.

In Lebanon, a chronically turbulent and mystifying political governance system remains stalled and immobilized, while masses of citizens are dissatisfied and worried. Meanwhile, the three top leaders of a north Lebanon-based Qaeda-style jihadist militant group (Fateh el-Islam) that fought the Lebanese army for over 100 days escaped the siege and the defeat of their followers. Mass political malaise and terrorism go hand-in-hand, in Lebanon and elsewhere.

In Great Britain, the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) released a report this week clarifying the global terror threat, stating that Al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself since September 11, 2001, and is able to carry out large-scale attacks against Western countries. It said that the American-led “global war on terror” is proving ineffective.

In the United States, following the Congressional hearings into the situation in Iraq, I encountered the fantasy world of the George W. Bush administration that keeps putting coins into a video game machine and blasting away at bad guys who seem to increase, rather than die away. But this is not a game: This is our world. The Bush administration’s central argument — that it must fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq before the terrorists strike the US heartland — has now moved from its initial political dishonesty and wasteful self-delusion to the criminal stage of being a real menace to global stability and security because of its proven capacity to promote, rather than deter, terror.

It is painful to watch otherwise intelligent and honorable American officials either acting as fools or taking us for fools, by continuing to claim that they wage a war in Iraq to fight terrorism, when the facts show two opposite trends: Existing terror groups and networks remain strong, and new terror recruits and organizations are coming to life, predominantly in response to American, Arab, and Israeli policies.

The main problem at hand is not just the capacity of Al-Qaeda to organize terror attacks, create loose global networks of militants, or inspire new recruits to the movement. The problem — as the honest IISS report stated — is that “Al-Qaeda’s ideology appears to have taken root to such a degree that it will require decades to eradicate.” It also points to a growing process of radicalization within Islamic countries, and among Islamic societies in Western countries, especially Muslims in Europe.

Growing communal radicalization and greater Qaeda-linked organizational capabilities feed off each other. They are also nourished by the policies of Arab, Asian, American, European, Russian, Israeli and some other governments around the world that drive ordinary and decent young men, and a few women, into the criminal world of terror.

More ominously, American, Israeli and Arab policies have spurred increasingly radical public opinion around the world, manifested in the steady growth of mainstream Islamist political parties such as Muslim Brotherhood groups, Hamas, Jamaa Islamiya, and others like them. Everywhere in the Middle East, and in many parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, hundreds of millions of disenchanted men and women are being steadily radicalized because they feel so politically abused and demeaned, by their own societies and by foreign powers alike. They find neither solace nor the promise of a decent life in either the policies of their governments or the projection of Western power around the world.

These are not Qaeda-linked terrorists, but they provide the mass base of disenchanted popular sentiment from which the Al-Qaedas of this world eventually recruit the mere hundreds of people they need to become foot soldiers, safe house keepers, scouts, drivers, financiers, technicians, web masters, and suicide bombers.

The United States and its allies have put into this battle the greatest combination of global military, economic and intelligence-gathering capabilities ever assembled in the history of the world — and yet they are not succeeding, let alone winning. Why? Because the political, economic and military forces that foment discontent, degradation, and radicalism around the world are now, on balance, greater than the forces that promote stability, decorum and a decent daily life for ordinary men and women.

My journey this week from Lebanon to Great Britain and the United States has been a straight line through three political cultures that interact with terrorism in very different ways: Middle Eastern societies often breed radicalism and terror; Europeans incubate some terror but also increasingly analyze it more accurately; and, the United States, for the most part, refuses to acknowledge that terror is partly home-grown Arab-Asian deviance, and partly a response to American-Israeli foreign policies that wander comfortably among callousness, brutality, and criminality.

Not surprisingly, the terrorism problem persists, and the threat will continue to grow — until we drop foolhardiness and reckless amateurism as guiding principles of many American, Arab and Israeli policies.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 17 September 2007
Word Count: 800
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BEIRUT — This week’s sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States sees the top American military and diplomatic officials in Iraq speaking to the US Congress about American strategy in Iraq. The juxtaposition is noteworthy: Six years ago, a small band of Al-Qaeda militants attacked the United States and killed some 3000 people. Today, an army of over 160,000 American troops wages a war in Iraq that has seen tens of thousands of people killed since 2003. Neither policy makes much sense to anyone in the world, other than to those fanatics on both sides who decided to pursue these actions.

If we wish to assess our world six years after the 9/11 attacks, we should do so without perpetuating the crippling analytical mistakes that have been made on all sides — but especially in the United States. The main mistake continues to be the capacity to view one’s own country, values and policies as righteous, innocent and well-intentioned, while viewing the enemy as evil and dangerous. We’ve seen this attitude among Arabs and Israelis, Americans and Islamic militants, Turks and Kurds, Syrians and Lebanese and other such pairs of foes. To learn how we reached this point of ever-expanding conflict, in order to find a way out, we must transcend the habit of simply demonizing the other side while ignoring our own faults. Arabs, Israelis, Iranians and Americans, above all, must find a way to jointly examine the whole cycle of relationships, conditions and policies that have bound them together in an increasingly violent sequence of events in recent decades.

Neither 9/11 nor the Anglo-American war on Iraq occurred in a vacuum. Anyone who followed events in this region honestly and comprehensively would have been aware of the growth of militant Islamist groups since the 1980s. These groups were visibly motivated by, and targeted, three parallel foes: conservative Arab regimes, Israel, and the United States. The Al-Qaeda phenomenon has continued to spread in the form of small, local militant groups, because the conditions for its nourishment remain largely unchanged. The war in Iraq and the situation in Palestine-Israel only provide new incentives for the growth of Islamist and other radicals. We should expect more, not less, manifestations of Arab-Islamic extremism in the years ahead.

The same applies in the other direction: People throughout the Middle East should not be surprised if the United States, Israel, or others soon launch overt or covert attacks against Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas in Gaza. These are the four principal parties that the dominant Western-Israeli political elite has singled out as dangerous, and has designated for containment, punishment, or removal from the scene. Some form of assault on one or more of these parties is certain in the coming years.

There are three main reasons why the US-led West and Israel will not leave the Middle East alone to define itself: global reliance on Middle Eastern energy; the strong American commitment to Israeli security (in the form of superiority over the rest of the Middle East); and, continued anger and fear related to the 9/11 attacks and the Al-Qaeda phenomenon behind those attacks. American-British-Israeli extremism and militarism will certainly rear their heads in new forms in the months and years ahead.

Conditions for stability and prosperity throughout the Middle East are moving in two different directions. Small pockets of prosperity and stability are emerging in places like Dubai, western Amman, Doha, bits of Cairo, and other such isolated quarters that have joined the global economic train. Most of the rest of the region is polarized in the other direction: mass economic stagnation, mediocre educational standards, deteriorating environmental conditions, and limited ideological expression opportunities.

Consequently, political stress is a dominant condition throughout the Middle East. It will be made worse in the short run by three main issues: a) the continued treatment of Iraq as a problem of incompetent native Arabs (now called Sunnis and Shiites) who seem unable to grasp the gift of freedom that a benevolent American army has given them; b), the fantasy peace-making in Israel-Palestine directed by the American-Israeli refusal to deal with democratically-elected Hamas; and, c) applying a harsher standard to Arabs and Iranians than to Israel when applying UN resolutions and global treaties.

We cannot predict how and when mounting Arab-Iranian humiliation and a sense of dehumanization will manifest themselves, no more than we can say when the American-Israeli-led West will move against Iran, Syria or others. The sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, though — like this year’s 60th anniversary of the partition of Palestine resolution — should remind us that traumatized people do not acquiesce passively in their agony and perplexity, but rather they fight back, often violently and irrationally. To fight and eliminate the militarism and terrorism of our age, we must first acknowledge that they do not spring onto the world stage whimsically and without cause.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 11 September 2007
Word Count: 813
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BEIRUT — The United Nations is a creature of very mixed lineage, simultaneously undertaking some remarkable peace-keeping, conflict-resolution and humanitarian work, while using sanctions, threats, and boycotts to carry out the policies of powers that dominate the world scene — especially the United States.

Is the UN the embodiment of hope, equality and decency for all human beings? Or is it the social services agency and military clean-up subcontractor for NATO?

The new Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, revealed the best face of the organization this week when he visited Sudan. He met with the government in Khartoum and also visited refugees in the shattered Darfur region, sparking a renewed commitment to October peace talks between Khartoum and several opposition, rebel and government-linked armed groups. The talks will be mediated by the UN special envoy to Darfur, Jan Eliasson. Ban and Eliasson embody the UN’s reliance on respected and talented individuals who can speak to all parties in a conflict, in order to achieve peace, security, stability and basic rights for all.

At the same time, however, the UN is also a partner in the global politics of pressure, contention and debilitating double standards. Security Council resolutions in 2004 and 2005 imposed sanctions on some parties in Sudan, and the United States seems eager to pass more through the council. The UN in Sudan, therefore, is simultaneously applying Security Council sanctions, threatening tougher new sanctions, sending in over 20,000 peace-keepers, delivering significant humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced people, mediating peace talks, and raising the Darfur issue higher on the global agenda through actions like the secretary general’s visit.

This is a fitting symbol of the UN’s multiple and often contradictory roles in the world today, where it is asked to do an impossible series of tasks that respond to the needs and aspirations of very different audiences. The UN should thoroughly review its optimum role in a transforming world, because its existing contradictory policies risk damaging its credibility and efficacy for years to come.

A clear, consistent, credible UN mission is all the more important because it is achievable. A massive worldwide constituency wants the UN to play a strong role, according to two recent global public opinion polls by the BBC and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Both revealed majorities who view the UN positively and favor dramatic steps to strengthen the UN, including giving it the powers to form a standing peace-keeping force, regulate arms trading, and investigate human rights abuses.

Post-Cold War, the world witnesses a large demand for a countervailing force to American-led global dominance. Ordinary people and governments alike around the world seek a means to achieve stability and security through the consistent application of the rule of law, rather than through the whimsical militarism of American and British video-age commanders-in-chief. If ever there was massive market demand looking for supply, it is global public opinion’s quest for a strong, equitable, independent United Nations.

The current status of the UN is confusing, contradictory, and probably debilitating in the long run. The UN cannot credibly advocate democracy and good governance through the work of its specialized agencies, while at the same time joining the “Quartet” and boycotting the democratically elected government headed by Hamas in Palestine. It is not logical for the UN Security Council to sanction countries and lower the living standards of their citizens, while simultaneously offering humanitarian assistance to counter the impact of its own sanctions. The UN as an institution cannot expect to be taken seriously if it applies very different standards of enforcement to its Security Council resolutions on the basis of whether compliance is demanded of, say, Israel, Syria or Iran.

Ban Ki-moon and his colleagues would appear to face a tough choice: Do they give in to the strong-armed pressure tactics of the new Big 4 — the United States, Great Britain, Israel and Micronesia — or do they resist the narrow ideological concerns of a few powers and instead insist on affirming the equal rights of all states and people to enjoy a common level of security, legitimacy, sovereignty and life’s full promise?

The choice is not that hard, in reality. The UN as an organization must decide if it reflects only government views or the common rights and sentiments of universal public opinion, i.e., is it an instrument of power, or the enlightened embodiment of the rule of law? It must affirm if it is the universal interlocutor that speaks to all human beings for the cause of promoting peace and security, or if it is a discriminating utilitarian instrument of big power partisanship and zealotry. This must be one of the easiest choices in world history. This seems like a good year to have it reaffirmed.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 08 September 2007
Word Count: 794
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