BEIRUT — One thought went through my mind Monday when I watched television reports on President George W. Bush’s bizarre little foray into Iraq at the same time that British troops were leaving the city of Basra. As both countries start making moves to eventually withdraw from Iraq, I — and many others — ask whether powerful countries like the United States and United Kingdom will ever be held accountable for their militarism around the world.

The UK and US are like runners in a relay race, handing off the imperial baton to each other in a violent rampage through history. Iraq is the most dramatic and destructive example of what happens when Western powers send their armies on missions around the world based purely on their own sense of empire or emotional needs. The British government is a complicit accomplice more than an equal partner in crime, because its main job has been to provide the illusion that a great international coalition of world powers is fighting selflessly for freedom and democracy in Iraq.

Yet the same question remains to be answered, when the world finds time for it: Should these governments be held accountable for the consequences of their behavior, just as they held Saddam Hussein and other bad guys accountable? Or do Western powers like the US and UK enjoy an impunity that allows them to sow death and destruction around the world? Are they effectively above the law for their deeds in Iraq, at a time when they say they wish to promote the rule of law in Iraq? Does the law apply to all, or only to the weak?

On the specifics of the American mission in Iraq, the American Pretzelmakers Association should give George W. Bush its Man of the Year Award for his continuing ability to twist reality into interlocking circles. His remarks in Iraq Monday, like his recent speeches in the United States, focused heavily on the importance of defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq so that it does not attack the US again. He told the troops: “You are denying al-Qaeda a safe haven from which to plot and plan and carry out attacks against the United States of America.”

Most of the world turns its head away in slight embarrassment for George W. Bush when he speaks like this, because of the profound intellectual dishonesty and imperial arrogance he reflects. The world knows that Al-Qaeda was able to enter Iraq and use it as a training ground only after the United States invaded and removed the Baathist regime. The problem of Al-Qaeda’s threat is a real one and must be addressed vigorously, yet the Anglo-American approach in Iraq is aggravating, not reducing, the problem of Al-Qaeda and its many local affiliates in many countries.

So we have four problems at once for which the guilty must be held accountable at some point:

First, Anglo-American armies move around the world doing what they wish, disregarding the many destructive local consequences of their deeds, including refugee flows, political radicalization, destabilization of moderates, promotion of militias and warlords, massive waste of money, and setting back prospects for genuine, home-grown democratization.

Second, the unchecked use of Western militarism that ignores the legitimate global consensus represented by the United Nations system generates broad disdain for international legitimacy among local actors who are at the receiving end of Anglo-American guns. This in turn accelerates two parallel responses: mainstream peaceful political activism that challenges and resists the West, and more militant and violent actions by small groups of Salafist Jihadists, who are motivated by both the call of Al-Qaeda and the policies of British and American leaders.

Third, British and American leaders add insult to injury by continuously inventing new rationales for their war-making in Iraq. They expect the world simply to forget what they originally sold us as reasons for invading (Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and defiance of UN resolutions) and instead expect us to rally to the war against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Yet, Bush and Blair gave Al-Qaeda their entrance tickets to Iraq, so the latest Anglo-American battle cry turns out to be as insulting as it is ineffective.

Fourth, this sort of Anglo-American militarism, adventurism, and arrogant imperialism slowly shakes the foundations of the global system that tries to achieve stability and security through some sort of balance of power that is based on legitimacy and accountability. When the big powers act with impunity — entering, destroying and leaving distant countries at will — smaller powers and ordinary people understand that we are playing without rules. When nobody is accountable, nobody has an incentive to behave rationally or peacefully.

If the Americans and British can enter, shatter, and leave Iraq as they seem to be doing — in a haze of intellectual skullduggery and a profound moral vacuum — the world may suffer much worse disorder and violence for years to come.

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: 05 September 2007
Word Count: 810
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BEIRUT — The interface between politics, nationalism, identity, and religion in the Arab-Islamic world has undergone a series of significant evolutions in the past few generations. The Moslem Brotherhood has been a consistent and significant phenomenon in the region since its founding in Egypt in 1928, but in recent decades has been joined by more militant Islamist groups that have used force against their governments, or used terror tactics against domestic and foreign targets. Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group emerged in the 1990s as a global threat to an extent, and in recent years, especially since September 11, 2001, many smaller militant groups that emulate or share Al-Qaeda worldviews and tactics have sprung up throughout the Middle East and other parts of the world.

This recent proliferation of militant Islamist groups that use violence and terror as a basic tool is to my mind the most significant development of our age — because it reveals the existence of a very extensive foundation of fundamentalist youth who provide a steady stream of recruits for movements like Fateh el-Islam, which has been locked in battle with the Lebanese army in north Lebanon for the past 100 days.

These movements are most often called “Salafist Jihadists” these days, reflecting their commitment to two key things: fundamentalist interpretations of Islam according to the days of the Prophet Mohammad, and a militant, aggressive posture that includes attacking those who stand in the way of creating pure Islamic societies. A single movement like Al-Qaeda in theory could be contained, beaten or broken up to the point of being neutralized. But this is virtually impossible to do in the face of dozens or perhaps even hundreds of smaller movements, or even cell-like groupings of a half-dozen people, that are loosely linked by shared ideologies, transferable technologies and intermittent logistical assistance or coordination.

Lebanon has become the latest visible battleground between these Salafist Jihadists and their opponents — who comprise just about everybody else in the region. The danger of the continuing proliferation of such groups is real, and frightening, given their willingness and ability to fight against conventional forces and established governments. But this bad news is offset somewhat by the fact that we actually know quite a lot about where these groups and their mindset came from. They are less mysterious than they are menacing.

Arab and other scholars in the region have followed and written about them for years, and now there are some good quality foreign language works that help the rest of the world understand the origins and causal stimuli for groups like Fateh el-Islam, Jund el-Sham, Usbet el-Ansar, Jundallah, Jemaah Islamiyya, the Ahbash group, and Ansar Allah, to mention only the main ones that have operated in Lebanon in the past generation.

A fine new in-depth treatment of one aspect of this phenomenon — the Salafist Jihadists in Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon — is the book Everyday Jihad: the rise of militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon that appeared recently; it is an English translation of the pioneering work by French university professor and researcher Bernard Rougier.

He meticulously traces the rise of globalized Salafist movements in the Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in the 1980s and 90s, as Palestinian history there was slowly “de-nationalized” and replaced by a global Islamist ethos. Rougier notes: “Fighters without a territory to defend, Palestinian Salafist militants have devoted themselves to defending the imaginary borders of identity, declaring themselves the protectors and guardians of the cause of Sunni Islam worldwide.”

Rougier shows how in the 1990s a small movement of hard core militants gradually expanded into the group now known as Usbet el-Ansar, some of whose members occasionally interchanged with other groups, including the now infamous Fateh el-Islam. The detailed story of Nahr el-Barid’s transformation into a crucible of Salafist Jihadism in Lebanon is chilling, but not surprising, given the many reasons for young men who despair of living a normal life to turn to militancy and join a global movement that promises them everything they dream of.

Two other shorter texts that appeared recently look at the wider canvas of all Lebanon, to trace how Salafist Jihadist movements developed in several places, including Tripoli, Sidon, Arqoub, and Majdal Anjar. They grew through “an intermingling of forces working at three levels: the local, the systemic and the individual”, according to Bilal Saab and Magnus Ranstorp in their journal article just published entitled “Securing Lebanon from the Threat of Salafist Jihadism” (in the journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism). Their earlier, shorter, article published a few months ago on the Brookings Institution website was entitled “Al-Qaeda’s Terrorist Threat to UNIFIL.”

Saab, a Lebanese national, is a Middle East security and terrorism analyst with the Brookings Institution, and Ranstorp is a terrorism expert with the Swedish National Defense College. Their latest article offers a timely overview of these movements’ history in Lebanon and some of their links with regional players. It also assesses the charge that Fateh el-Islam in particular is a Syrian creation and puppet, and debunks the idea that Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda cooperate locally or globally.

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: 01 September 2007
Word Count: 850
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BEIRUT — Lebanon in the past year has emerged as the latest terrain where Islamist fundamentalist militants and terrorists have taken root and, literally, exploded onto the political landscape. The three-month-old battle in Nahr el-Barid camp in north Lebanon, near Tripoli, is the most dramatic manifestation of this phenomenon, in this case pitting the Lebanese armed forces against the Salafist Jihadist group Fateh el-Islam. This battle appears to be nearing its end, but the war between such militants and their societies is in its early days.

The 30,000 or so Nahr el-Barid refugee camp residents long ago left the area for safer ground, the wives and children of the Fateh el-Islam fighters were evacuated a few days ago, and the remaining militants — anywhere between 50 and 100 is the general estimate — now seem ready for the final battle against the Lebanese army. Fateh el-Islam has threatened to take the battle beyond the camp area to other parts of Lebanon, and officials and knowledgeable analysts alike assume that sleeper cells and sympathizers are waiting to carry out attacks when they get the signal.

Fateh el-Islam fighters have already carried out attacks in other parts of Lebanon, including rockets fired into north Lebanon communities from Nahr el-Barid, and bombings in Mount Lebanon last year. Their capabilities are not to be frowned upon. Everyone has been taken by surprise by the ability of the several hundred militants in Nahr el-Barid to continue fighting for three months and more, as well as by their logistical supply capability and technical proficiency.

This is not your run-of-the-mill local terrorist cell that formed spontaneously in the afterglow of Bin Ladenism’s grand and monstrous entry onto the world’s ideological stage in September 2001. The Fateh el-Islam phenomenon raises important and urgent questions about the exact nature, provenance and implications of this sort of tightly organized group.

This is the latest analytical challenge to those in the Middle East and abroad who spend their time trying to understand the political, social, and religious currents that flow through this region and drive its politics and public opinion. It is vitally important not to get this one wrong, given the high stakes involved. When faced with understanding other such challenges in recent decades, many Arabs and foreign colleagues alike have tended to focus on the surface manifestations and analytical superficialities of such phenomena — whether mainstream Arab nationalism, tribalism, and non-violent, Muslim Brotherhood-type Islamism, or more marginal and deviant drug-, militia-, warlord- and gang-based cultures.

A new danger today is that our capacity to understand these movements for what they really represent may be clouded by the overarching ideological emotionalism that distorts the minds of both indigenous and Western actors. Many in the West allow themselves to see militant Salafist Jihadis like Fateh el-Islam only through the Bush-defined “global war on terror,” without sufficiently grasping the local and global root causes of radicalism — including American, British and other Western powers’ policies — that are easily traceable in the modern history of the Middle East. Obversely, those in the Middle East who delight at any sign of indigenous resistance to American-European-Israeli-Arab regime dominance are prone to put up with Salafist Jihadist criminality as an inevitable reaction to the many malaises of the modern Arab-Iranian-Muslim world.

Neither approach is very useful, and only condemns us all to more confrontation, destruction and death. We must understand correctly the root causes that drive the continuing proliferation of groups like Fateh el-Islam, if we hope to nip such criminality in the bud. This particular group will soon be defeated or killed in Nahr el-Barid, but what happens after that? Will their demise spur a reaction that generates new adherents to their cause? Can these groups be eliminated by military force? Are they playing by Bush’s slightly fantastic “global war on terror” rules, or do they operate in a totally different universe according to other criteria?

Various Arab and Western scholars and journalists have examined some of these issues seriously in recent years, so we do not have to be either mystified or terrorized by the Salafist Jihadist groups that are cropping up in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East, Asia and, increasingly, Western Europe. In my next column I will explore some of the pertinent findings of three such scholars — French university professor and researcher Bernard Rougier, Washington-based Lebanese researcher Bilal Saab, and Swedish analyst Magnus Ranstorp — who have provided some very timely texts that help us clearly understand why and how Salafist Jihadist movements proliferated in Lebanon in the past generation.

Because their works are available in English, they offer the non-Arabic-speaking world excellent windows into a complex world defined by a constantly evolving mixture of politics, identity, religion and nationalism that is often misunderstood at home and abroad, or willfully distorted by foreign ideologues with an agenda.

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: 29 August 2007
Word Count: 802
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BEIRUT — There is a special sadness to the diminution of giants, to great men and countries that choose to stoop low. Egypt, in this respect, mystifies us once again, as its ruling regime resorts to repression and harassment of those who would challenge it politically and demand more democratic governance.

Why a society with such a tremendous reservoir of human talent, historical legitimacy, state credibility, and modern political leadership in the Arab world would need to use authoritarian police state tactics against its own citizens who engage in peaceful politics is one of the great, painful tragedies of the Arab world. Egypt is one of the few Arab countries that can influence the rest of the region, given the power, legitimacy, and respect of its unique legacy of Arab statehood, nationhood, citizenship rights, constitutionalism, and pluralism. To lose Egypt to the emotional and intellectual dungeons of authoritarianism is to lose immense Arab treasure and potential.

I was reading two particular texts last week — James Daugherty’s book The Magna Charta, and an article in the current Middle East Report Onlinemagazine entitled “Boxing In the Brothers” by Samer Shehata and Joshua Stacher of Georgetown and Syracuse universities, respectively — when I also learned that the prominent Egyptian sociologist and democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim and his colleagues at the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development were once again being harassed and perhaps threatened.

The Magna Charta of June 1215 limited the power of the king of England and sparked three-quarters of a millennium of democratic transformation and constitutionalism around the world. This reached Egypt, Syria and other Arab lands in the early 20th Century, especially in the 1930s and 40s. The Arab world today, however, is often a landscape of authoritarian excesses, where massive police and security resources preserve the incumbency of the ruling elite and prevent any serious challenge to it. Many Egyptians and other Arabs persist in the spirit of those who promulgated the Magna Charta — ordinary men and women who want only to live in dignity, freedom and equality, who want their authorities to treat them and all citizens with respect and decency.

The Egyptian government in the past three years, however, has stepped up pressure on its critics and challengers, using a variety of traditional means: arrests and harassment, massive police intervention against demonstrators, legal charges that often include long periods of detention, mass arrests, semi-secret military trials, organized press attacks, and, most recently, constitutional amendments that whittle away opposition impact and entrench regime incumbency.

None of this is new or surprising, as the incumbent, military- and security-anchored National Democratic Party (NDP) and its antecedents have used these tactics many times before in the past half-century. What is surprising is why they feel they need to do this. Their Egyptian and Arab reservoir of legitimacy, national cohesion, identity, and regional influence is rich and enduring. They can stand like giants. Why do they choose to stoop low?

Scores of Moslem Brotherhood members are now on trial again in military court, peaceful student demonstrations are broken up, and activists like Dr. Ibrahim and his colleagues are arrested, threatened and harassed. An active press campaign is underway against Ibrahim and other Egyptian democracy activists. NDP members have filed legal requests to close the Ibn Khaldoun center and try its director and staff on the usual array of quite ridiculous charges, such as treason, harming the national interest, tarnishing the country’s image abroad, and showing contempt for religion.

When I caught up with Ibrahim in a London hotel a few days ago, he confirmed his concern that, based on advice from friends and colleagues in Cairo, a fate worse than jail might await some critics of the government, so he plans to stay out of the country for some time. His age and delicate health would make it hard for him to survive another round of jails, trials and personal abuse.

The government has also revived a tactic that was last used in 2001, which is to try civilians in military tribunals, including 40 Muslim Brotherhood members whose case by the government was initially rejected by civilian courts. Earlier this year the Mubarak government pushed through 34 amendments to the constitution, which Shehata and Stacher suggest aim to, “further solidify the legal underpinnings of authoritarianism in Egypt.”

Some of the amendments ban political activity based on religion, make it almost impossible for an independent candidate to run for president, eliminate the impressive system of judicial supervision of elections that had been established in 2000, and provide constitutional anchorage for wide-ranging anti-terrorism measures, such as using military and exceptional courts, and allowing the police to search homes and conduct electronic surveillance without warrants.

It is very sad to watch this spectacle, and harder yet for Egyptians themselves to endure its consequences. Watching men, women and countries of stature choose to become small is more pain than the Arab world should have to endure.

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: 25 August 2007
Word Count: 820
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BEIRUT — When you can hear the mortar and artillery of active warfare in the same car ride as the pestle and mortar pounding raw meat into a legendary culinary treat, you know that you are in the Arab world, specifically in Lebanon. Glory and tragedy coexist naturally here: epic human valor, passion and an indomitable love for life, alongside the most cruel and violent behavior.

Despite decades of political tension and wars, Lebanon remains the most dynamic, culturally effervescent, intellectually stimulating and economically entrepreneurial place in the Arab world. Last Sunday, it set a new standard for affirming its best and worst attributes. I had the pleasure of experiencing the former — a food festival, in the renowned tough-guy mountain stronghold of Ehden, celebrating the famous Lebanese dish called kibbeh.

The first annual Ehden kibbeh festival Sunday was newsworthy in its own right — where else can you taste 15 different kinds of kibbeh at once? But it was more striking for its juxtaposition against the ongoing fighting in the Nahr el-Barid refugee camp north of Tripoli, at the foot of the mountains below Ehden. For three months now, the Lebanese army has been fighting to uproot and arrest or kill the several hundred fanatic fighters of the Qaeda-like Fateh el-Islam group holed up in the camp.

Nahr el-Barid is a horror story for all concerned. The refugee camp has been totally destroyed, and its 30,000 or so Palestinian inhabitants have been displaced yet again, with little chance of resuming a normal life anytime soon. Nearly 140 Lebanese army soldiers have been killed and many others wounded, as have a similar number of militants. Rebuilding or moving the camp elsewhere will rekindle Palestinian-Lebanese political sensitivities. Only suffering, death, and political discord and disjuncture emanate from Nahr el-Barid. You hear the shooting and bombing as you drive by.

The artillery mortar of Nahr el-Barid contrasted sharply Sunday with the large stone-carved mortar in Ehden’s central square in which Susanne Dweiheh was pounding raw meat, spices, onions and cracked wheat into the famous kibbeh niyyeh (raw kibbeh, similar to French steak tartare). She was one of a dozen contestants who entered 15 different kinds of kibbeh into the tasting contest.

She was the only person who made her kibbeh niyyeh on the spot in the traditional hand-pounded way. Other contestants produced 15 different kinds of baked or fried kibbeh, in two other judged categories — flat kibbeh in a pan, and rounded balls of kibbeh.

Festival organizer Kamal Mouzawak of Souk et-Tayyeb, an organic food cooperative that has sponsored a series of other food festivals around Lebanon (for bread, fish, orange blossoms and mezze appetizers), expects more competitors and varieties next year. They organize these festivals, and their hallmark weekly organic food markets, to highlight the importance of food traditions, recognize the important role of small farmers and producers, and bring a divided country together around the common denominator of a good meal and a good time.

His group organized this festival in cooperation with the Lebanese non-governmental organization Inma’ (‘development’), with partial funding from the US international development agency, and with the cooperation of the Ehden municipality. Getting all the parties to cooperate on holding the festival was a huge challenge, but Mouzawak and colleagues succeeded in the end. Food triumphs politics, and Ehden — Lebanon’s kibbeh capital — did not want to miss this opportunity to strut its culinary wares.

I made the 90-minute drive to Ehden from Beirut because I am one of those who believe that among Lebanon’s greatest contributions to world civilization have been the alphabet and the raw, pounded, magically spiced kibbeh niyyeh. I wanted to experience in a new form the enigmatic Arab legacy of exuberant, warm humanity and festive communalism, alongside death and destruction. Ehden and north Lebanon around Tripoli offer both these days.

The streets in and around Ehden and the central mountains leading to it are full of gigantic posters of past political leaders who have been assassinated — from the Christian Franjieh, Gemayel and Muawad families — alongside posters from current claimants to power, including Hizbullah, Michel Aoun, Semir Geagea and lesser others. Death, assassination, murder, long-running clan feuds, and bitter political contestation hang in the air of central Lebanon’s hill country, just like the smoke from the nearby battle wafts over Nahr el-Barid.

Last Sunday, though, Ehden offered an interlude of culinary extravaganza, where all Lebanese gathered and reveled in a kibbeh jamboree. This was not so much a truce — for the political contests and military battles continue — but more like the affirmation of a parallel track of life: tough guys eating well, offering warm and legendary hospitality, using mortars to pound spiced meat instead of each other. Those who view our Arab world from afar should not ignore either of these realities, for together they define our integrated and often contradictory complexity.

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: 22 August 2007
Word Count: 806
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BEIRUT — A year ago this week, the 34-day war between Israel and Hizbullah came to an end, but since then the wider ideological battle between Israel-the United States and friends and Hizbullah-Iran-Syria and friends has only escalated and expanded. A regional diplomatic balance sheet one year after the war suggests that conditions have deteriorated on all fronts, with the possible exception of a renewed focus on resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Even there, though, the sincerity and the efficacy of the main players — Israel, the United States, the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas — are very suspect.

Lebanon has been the main loser from last year’s war, despite the sense of achievement among Hizbullah supporters who rightly take pride in the organization’s ability to fight Israel for 34 days and force it into a diplomatic draw. Hizbullah is discovering that proving one’s prowess in unconventional warfare and armed resistance requires very different skills from proving one’s skill and agility in political contests.

Hizbullah now finds itself in a much more difficult position than it did a year ago. Militarily it is more constrained by the presence of Lebanese and international troops in south Lebanon. The international community is maintaining and raising the pressure on Hizbullah’s military re-supply routes — presumably from Syria and Iran, primarily. Within Lebanon, Hizbullah’s bold challenge to the Lebanese government in which it once served has elicited a firm counter posture of political resistance, commensurate with Hizbullah’s military resistance to Israeli aggression.

More troubling for Hizbullah is the incremental criticism it has elicited among some Lebanese who were once admirers or neutral observers, but who now blame it for triggering the war, paralyzing the government, and weakening the economy. While Hizbullah’s own support base remains firm and substantial, its wider popular appeal is more vulnerable to shifts, and its alliance with Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun remains susceptible to changes in the mercurial Aoun’s own erratic public standing.

The Lebanese government for its part is not in much better shape. It battles on four fronts simultaneously: against the Hizbullah-Aoun-led opposition, the Fateh el-Islam militants in Nahr el-Barid refugee camp in the north, a perceived threat from Syria’s desire to reassert control in Lebanon, and the constant threat of economic deterioration due largely to the political uncertainties. It has become identified with the US-led drive in the Middle East against Islamists, Syria, Iran and others who challenge Washington and Israel. And this while suffering the continued discomfort — if not humiliation — of seeing the United States insist on keeping Lebanon armed forces limited in their capabilities, while giving Israel everything it needs to dominate the neighboring Arab states.

Israel drew lessons from the 2006 summer war and adjusted its armed forces capabilities and training accordingly, but politically it remains hampered by two cardinal problems: Its government has very low credibility at home, and it remains totally baffled by how to resolve peacefully the core conflict with Palestinian nationalism that has befuddled it since its birth in 1948. Its three soldiers who were taken prisoner by Palestinians and Hizbullah in 2006 — the alleged trigger for the war it launched against Lebanon — remain in captivity.

Conditions in Palestine itself also have deteriorated in the past year, with the West Bank and Gaza now effectively ruled by two different Palestinian governments. Both have domestic legitimacy, though Israel, the United States, Europe and other key players only deal with Abbas in his West Bank enclave, while boycotting Hamas in Gaza.

Wider afield, Iraq continues to plague everyone, the United States maintains pressure on Iran and Syria without any appreciable signs of change in Iranian-Syrian policies, and Saudi Arabia seems to have toned down its diplomatic dynamism of the past year.

The threat of terrorism continues to spread throughout the region, especially in the form of small, home-grown groups with strong regional links. Typical are the ones that have reared their heads in Lebanon recently, notably Fateh el-Islam, Jund el-Sham, and Usbet el-Ansar. The continued expansion and popularity of fundamentalist Sunni Islamist groups, both militant jihadis as well as non-violent Salafis, is the most dramatic and troubling ongoing development throughout the region.

It is intriguing that the Bush administration recently recommitted the United States — rhetorically at least — to working actively for a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace agreement via a regional conference this coming Autumn. There is no sign that the United States will mediate this issue in a balanced and just manner, pull back from its strong pro-Israeli bias, or engage the democratically-elected Hamas leadership.

Nevertheless, the revived American peace-making rhetoric is fascinating, if it reflects sincere acknowledgment that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict justly is the most important single step that can be taken towards addressing the many other conflicts that plague the modern Middle East — including last summer’s wasteful war and the many new problems, deadlocks and tensions it has spawned.

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 August 2007
Word Count: 808
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BEIRUT — The “reform” industry in the Arab world has been on a roller-coaster for the past 15 years or so, soaring high at moments of exhilaration and ambitious expectations, then plummeting to earth in gut-wrenching disappointment. Reforming prevailing political, economic, security and administrative systems in the Arab world is a critical prerequisite for any hopes for stability, prosperity and a normal life for the majority of citizens.

A new report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace captures accurately and fairly the important experience of one country — Jordan — where the reform agenda has been simultaneously dramatic and erratic. Jordan’s track record is important because its leadership has trumpeted reform as a major goal and achievement, it has make impressive progress in some areas, yet it has suffered serious shortcomings in others.

The pace and nature of reforms since the early 1990s have varied considerably across the Arab region. Some pockets of excellence and splendid efficiency in citizen-state bureaucratic encounters contrast sharply with most others that are a nightmare of wasted time, abuse, petty corruption and numbing inefficiency. The issue has become complicated in recent years with the injection of a foreign ideological component: primarily in the form of US-driven reform efforts that are now broadly tucked into Washington’s “global war on terror.”

Foreign assistance in promoting Arab reform should be welcomed in principle. Yet Western insistence on making Arab reform part of an ideological battle that downplays other critical issues for Arabs — such as foreign militarism and occupation — transforms the reform agenda from a critical need to a divisive distraction, or even an active political battleground. We see this in Tony Blair’s appointment as the Quartet’s envoy to help build democratic systems of good governance in Palestine — when Palestinians more urgently want to end the Israeli occupation. Trying to replace political and national rights with the niceties of reform agendas is a childish endeavor, tinged by unsubtle overtones of colonialism and racism.

Consequently, homegrown and Western political pressures are slowing down two vital areas where the Arab world must move swiftly for its own sake: economic-social reform and political democratization. Jordan is fascinating in this respect because it has pioneered some impressive and substantial reforms in areas like deregulation, trade liberalization, privatization and administrative efficiency. Yet, as the report by Sufyan Alissa of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut notes, “Initiated under severe economic crisis conditions, the reform process in Jordan [since 1989] has been slow, selective, and uncoordinated. Thus far Jordan has succeeded in stabilizing its economy and engaging in a process of trade and financial liberalization and privatization, but it has failed to find long-lasting solutions to major social and economic challenges facing the country.”

In other words, it is possible to engage in reform without substantially moving ahead economically or politically. Jordan’s reforms have boosted economic growth, attracted investment, and created many new jobs, allowing it essentially to stay in place and avoid any further economic deterioration. The combination of strong political and security institutions, international support, and high levels of remittances have assured Jordan’s social and political stability and eased social and economic pressures, without alleviating underlying problems and stresses.

Alissa says this has allowed the country to “postpone engaging in deep economic reform” to confront major social challenges and economic vulnerabilities in the areas of poverty, unemployment, public debt, and high dependency on foreign aid. This report does not even touch on the sensitive political issues of Jordanian, Palestinian, pan-Arab, Islamist and pro-Western political identity and allegiance that have confounded Jordan since soon after its independence. This focus on pure economic-administrative issues makes this report even more important and timely.

The most interesting part outlines the reasons for erratic, inconsistent or incomplete reforms. King Abdullah II and his band of young reformers will not be happy with this section, but it is the one they should read and ponder most intensely. The report says that the state’s capacity to implement thorough economic reform, “is limited by three key constraints: First, economic reform in Jordan lacks a clear constituency; second, it faces severe resistance from elites benefiting from the status quo; and third, previous reform efforts have failed to address social and economic problems affecting the majority of the population, which has undermined public support for the reform process. In addition, Jordan has limited institutional capacity to implement complex economic reform programs, adapt to changes, and handle their consequences.”

If the king and his young technocrats’ economic and administrative reform impulses are both genuine and deep — as I suspect they still are — they will use this report to spark a serious public debate, alongside more discreet private deliberations, on the reasons for their mixed report card on reform. In this, they could set an example for themselves and for other Arab countries that is badly needed.

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 August 2007
Word Count: 801
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BEIRUT — Lebanon and its politics have always been at once provincial and cosmic, both local and global. Last week’s bye-election in one predominantly Christian district confirmed this once again. The flood of analyses, opinions and predictions concerning the election result has been — like most things political in Lebanon — dazzling in its intensity but either fleeting or imprecise in its consequences.

The election results are important, though, for several reasons, both provincial and cosmic. This was a play within a play within a play within a play, with four distinct levels of symbolism at stake. First is the balance of power among Lebanese Christian leaders in the traditional Maronite mountain heartland; second, the balance of power between the Fouad Siniora government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, who are stuck in a devastating stalemate that has crippled the government and threatens to suffocate the economy; third, the relative strengths of Syrian friends and opponents in Lebanon and the Middle East, given the continued tensions that define Syria’s lingering posture in Lebanon and the intense resistance to it by many Christians and other Lebanese; and, fourth, the state of Arab popular support on both sides of the American- and Iranian-led ideological contest that defines much of the Middle East today.

We did not learn very much new from the election on any of these counts that was not known before. But it is possible that the election results — in the context of these other three political battles — may herald a historic new phase of Lebanese political history that has implications for the rest of the region in terms of the linkage between religion and politics. It is possible that Lebanese Maronite Christians, whose distinct status and critical mass in the mostly Muslim Arab world gave rise to the religion-based system of confessional politics in Lebanon starting in the late 19th Century, may lead the way in the de-confessionalization of the same Lebanese system.

The bye-election in the Metn region was held to fill the seat of assassinated former Industry and Trade Minister Pierre Gemayel — representing in Lebanese Christian terms what a Rockefeller represents in American capitalist terms: the bedrock of identity and power. Pierre Gemayel’s father, former President Amin Gemayel, ran for the seat but lost narrowly to an unknown, Camille Khoury, who was a surrogate for the powerful Christian leader and government opposition thorn Michel Aoun.

In this contest to gauge the relative balance of power among Lebanon’s Maronite Christian leaders, they both won and lost simultaneously. Aoun won in that his proxy candidate Khoury took the parliamentary seat, and he crafted a thin majority of voters from Christian and Muslim communities, but he lost because he took a much smaller share of the Maronite vote than the 60-70 percent he had expected. Gemayel lost because he did not take the contested seat, but he won because he took a majority of Maronite Christian votes and slashed Aoun’s support in that community.

Some people would argue that all this is as significant as election results in voting for the head of the pharmacists syndicate in Marseilles or an appeals court judge in Kansas City. At one level, this may be so. But these results carry real consequence because the Christians of Lebanon are now severely split and polarized politically, and their behavior will impact on the three other concentric ideological battles underway in Lebanon, the Middle East and globally.

It is too early to see the precise consequences of the severe split among Christians, especially the main Maronite community. Aoun and Gemayel, now the two leading Christian political figures, both represent solid electoral communities, and both are intimately allied to opposing camps in the Siniora government-Hizbullah face-off.

While the Sunnis, Shiites and Druze tend to enjoy strong national leadership and representation, the Christians do not. They have been fracturing for some years, under the cumulative and very heavy pressures of years of Syrian domination and manipulation, Israeli interference in Lebanon, and other domestic factors. Their main symbol of power — the president — is isolated and widely discredited now because the sitting president is seen as a Syrian surrogate.

Aoun’s return from exile in 2005, and his alliance with Hizbullah sparked the major intra-Christian fissure that was confirmed by the election Sunday. Consequently, each of the two main Christian camps has had to form strong alliances with the leading Muslim parties in order to preserve their clout and relevance. Aoun and Suleiman Franjieh joined with Shiite Hizbullah, and Gemayel and Samir Geagea with the Hariri-led Sunnis.

This suggests that a badly split Christian community must turn to ideological alliances in order to preserve its role and secure its interests. Whether this is an early sign of an organic de-confessionalization of the Lebanese political system is too early to know. But it seems worth watching.

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 August 2007
Word Count: 799
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BEIRUT — The riddle of American foreign policy in the Middle East this week became even more puzzling, following the announcement of major new military aid and sales packages to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and smaller Arab countries. The totals will top $70 billion over the coming ten years. The United States justifies this as part of its policy of fighting radicalism and terrorism, supporting moderates, and promoting an Arab-Israeli peace process.

It might also help the Man on the Moon learn to make really fine New York-style cheesecake.

American foreign policy in the Middle East combines impressive persistence with wildly erratic swings. It changes with the season and the political climate:
• promote and then ignore Arab democratization;
• boycott and then speak with Syria and Iran;
• disregard then actively engage in Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Simultaneously, it adheres to sacred principles, such as:
• Israeli military superiority over all the Arabs;
• sure access to oil;
• protecting friendly Arab regimes.

Such diplomacy, which is at once consistent and kaleidoscopic, generates a mish-mash of contradictions that only reinforce the low-quality policies of Arabs, Israelis and Iranians. The combination has resulted in frightening trends in the Middle East in the past generation: continued militarization, polarization, radicalization, and frequent destabilization.

This week’s latest American approach to the Middle East perpetuates this legacy, which is closely linked to several new factors in recent years: the messy war in Iraq, the increased regional clout of a nuclear Iran, and the growing strength of Arab mainstream Islamist political movements. Also, the Middle East sees the vulnerability of some Arab governments to economic and political stresses, ethnic and religious challenges to centralized state identities, widespread Arab skepticism of “democracy promotion” attempts, and the continued expansion of small but violent terrorist groups broadly reflecting Al-Qaeda-like worldviews.

Each one of these trends is exacerbated, not diminished, by the pro-military, pro-Israel, and pro-Arab autocracy policies the United States now reaffirms and intensifies. As if to ensure that its policies backfire and promote popular Arab, Iranian and even Turkish resistance, rather than acquiescence, Washington also routinely lumps together very different movements and sentiments in the region: the most powerful and legitimate Islamist movements (Hamas, Hizbullah), two very different state leaderships (Syria and Iran), and the equally distinct extremist terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. By seeing these forces as a common foe, and countering them with tens of billions of dollars of advanced weapons for Arab states, humiliatingly subjected to Israel’s approval, Washington guarantees another failed policy.

For such an approach combines three consistent, core American mistakes in the Middle East:
• wrong analysis of causes of popular and official sentiments,
• biased interventions in favor of Israel at the expense of Arab and Iranian rights, and
• using military tools to deal with political and socio-economic problems.

Back in the last century, this sort of thing was called “adding fuel to the fire”. Today Washington calls it “promoting moderate Sunni Arab regimes”, or, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday en route to the Middle East, “we are working with these states to give a chance to the forces of moderation and reform.”

Maybe the Man on the Moon would also like a recipe for hefty New York-style baked ribs, too.

Rice should counter this other-worldly dimension of her country’s policies by engaging with the realities of the Middle East, and focusing on the concerns and rights of all parties. If she could walk through any middle class neighborhood in the Arab world on her visit this week and touch the sentiments of ordinary men and women, she would discover important things. One would be that moderation and reform in the Middle East in the past generation have been retarded and even discredited — not fostered — by massive American military hardware and political bias. Another is that ordinary Arabs, Iranians and Turks want to have close, friendly ties with the United States, but to be treated as equals, not as fools.

Raising the intensity of American policies anchored in militarism, threats, sanctions and political bias will only make things worse. Trying to do this as a backhanded way of trying to stabilize Iraq, so that the US forces can leave, adds an element of shamelessness to a strong foundation of dysfunction. Couching this in terms of repelling Iranian ambitions may furthermore trigger two trends that the United States says it is trying to dampen: greater popular support for the Iranian regime, and that regime’s accelerated quest for serious defense capabilities, perhaps including nuclear arms.

The US-led “global war on terror” has played into the terrorists’ hands and expanded actual global terror networks and threats. This American plan to counter the influence of Iran, Syria and Arab Islamist and resistance groups is similarly likely to bolster their popular support, technical capabilities, political determination and policy coordination.

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: 01 August 2007
Word Count: 797
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BEIRUT — Here’s a little event that may have big implications. The Israeli education ministry has approved a textbook for Arab third graders in Israel that for the first time describes the 1948 war that gave birth to the state of Israel as a “catastrophe” for the indigenous Palestinians and their society. The Palestinians have always referred to 1948 as their nakba, or catastrophic national shattering, dispersal, exile, occupation and disenfranchisement.

This may be the first ever tangible sign that the Jewish, Zionist Israeli establishment is prepared to move in the direction of acknowledging what happened to the Palestinians in 1948, which is a vital Palestinian demand for any serious peace-making effort to succeed. Israelis in turn would expect a reciprocal Palestinian acknowledgment of Israel’s core narrative.

The new textbook states that “The Arabs call the war the Nakba, a war of catastrophe, loss and humiliation, and the Jews call it the Independence war.” It adds that, “some of the Palestinians fled and some were expelled following the War of Independence,” and that “many Arab-owned lands were confiscated.”

Unfortunately, the official textbook for Jewish Israelis in the same grade does not offer this Arab view, but sticks to the Israeli version of 1948 history as a moment of Jewish valor and national rebirth. Yet the new Arabic text may be significant if it reflects an Israeli capacity to become more historically honest, and sensitive to the legitimate political rights of their Palestinian foes.

The facts of the Palestinian Nakba in 1948 are quite well documented now by Israeli, Arab and foreign historians. Something like 750,000 Palestinians (about half the population) was driven out of or fled their Palestinian homes and lands in 1948, for various reasons. Those refugees now number over 4.5 million.

One of the biggest debates on 1948 is about motives, especially the Palestinian view that Zionist leaders and militias implemented a pre-planned ethnic cleansing campaign to systematically drive out the Palestinians in order to make room for a Jewish state. Israelis argue that Arab leaders told the Palestinians to leave so that Arab armies could attack the Jewish forces, or that Jewish attacks on Arabs were only in self-defense.

Much of this debate has been resolved by respected scholars. The most recent and complete treatment of this issue is a book by the Israeli historian and University of Haifa lecturer Ilan Pappe, entitled, appropriately, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006, One World Publishers, Oxford, UK).

Using mostly Israeli official sources, he methodically recounts the entire process that started in the minds of pre-state Zionist leaders who knew they would have to forcibly expel the Palestinians to create a Jewish state in Palestine — given that well over 90 percent of the land was Palestinian in the early 20th Century, and by 1948, the Jewish minority in Palestine owned just 5.8 percent of the land. He describes in detail the planning before 1948 — including files on every Arab village and its inhabitants — which would allow the Jewish militias in 1947-48 to start attacking, terrorizing and driving out Palestinians as soon as the British mandate ended.

Pappe goes through the details of Plan Dalet, “the blueprint for ethnic cleansing”, and shows how the Israeli forces worked systematically in every part of the land to attack, frighten, and expel the Palestinians, in order to secure the land for Jewish colonies and settlers. The historical details he provides are chilling, and worthy of serious discussion to understand exactly what happened in 1947-48 (because the Jewish Zionist attacks against Arabs started well before the May 1948 end of the British mandate; the first Jewish militia attacks to terrorize the Palestinians into fleeing were in December 1947, against the Palestinian villages of Deir Ayyub and Beit Affa in the central plain).

The main mission to drive out as many Palestinians as possible was formally approved by Jewish Zionist leaders on March 10, 1948. When it ended six months later, he says, some 800,000 Palestinians had been uprooted, 531 villages destroyed, and eleven urban neighborhoods in cities emptied of their inhabitants. Pappe concludes that the plan and its systematic implementation “was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity.”

Many Israelis will challenge Pappe’s account. Such a process should ideally spark an honest, comprehensive analysis that could lead us to an accurate narrative of what happened in 1947-48 — accurate for both sides, if it is to have meaning for either side.

An Israeli official textbook for Palestinian third graders that fleetingly acknowledges the Palestinian trauma of exile and occupation in 1948 is an intriguing sign of something that remains largely unclear. This something seems worth exploring, and reciprocating, if it indicates a capacity to move towards the elusive shared, accurate, truthful account of Israeli and Palestinian history that must anchor any progress towards a negotiated peace.

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: 28 July 2007
Word Count: 810
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