BEIRUT — It’s hard to know who appears more ludicrous and despicable, the Palestinian Fateh and Hamas leaderships allowing their gunmen to fight it out on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, or an American administration saying it supports the “moderates” in Palestine who want to negotiate peace with Israel.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday to underline American support for “moderates” committed to a negotiated peace with Israel, such as President Abbas. She also called leaders of “moderate” Arab states to rally their support for Abbas against Hamas. Surrealistically, this was happening when Hamas forces were routing Fateh’s security forces to take control of all public facilities in Gaza, and President Abbas was proving that the sort of Arab “moderation” he represents has little anchorage in reality any more, and little credibility with its own people above all.

Abbas declared a state of emergency Thursday and dismissed the Palestinian government, but the facts on the ground are that the Palestinian government is a fiction, and his state of emergency is a state of imagination. The “moderation” of Abbas and his Fateh movement was a noble nationalistic cause three decades ago. But Fateh’s own incompetence and creeping corruption — especially after taking control of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords of 1993 — have turned the movement into an embarrassment that is little more than a pathetic poster child and crippled errand boy for the American State Department.

Even in this moment of utter failure and complete humiliation — his presidential compound occupied, his guards dispersed, his government non-existent, his orders meaningless, his people sanctioned and starved — the quintessential Arab moderate Mahmoud Abbas found himself being defined in public by the American Secretary of State primarily in terms of his willingness to negotiate peace with Israel. Nevertheless, he persists, somewhat heroic and moving at one level, but overall a tragic and hapless figure whose ineptitude is matched by his irrelevance — except in the eyes of the American government that uses him as a convenient prop for its make-believe diplomatic games in Palestine. Even the Israelis long ago gave up on Abbas and his sclerotic Fateh movement, which has spawned the same sort of local militias and militant gangs that plague many other dysfunctional Arab countries.

The first lesson of this Palestinian catastrophe is about the Palestinians themselves, who must endure a fate that reflects the quality of their own leadership. Fateh dominated the Palestinian national movement since its inception over 40 years ago and forged a unified national movement, with realistic diplomatic goals based on a two-state solution that garnered great international support. All this was systematically wasted and negated in the past decade. Gaza looks like the ravaged Somali capital Mogadishu, because its political turmoil is slowly mirroring the Somali legacy of a disintegrating state replaced by feuding warlords.

Hamas shares some of the blame for this also, but much less than Fateh, because Hamas has only shared power for just over a year, and then only barely, because of the international financial boycott. We don’t know if Hamas will do a better job than Fateh, because it has not had the time to prove itself. Perhaps we will find out in the months ahead.

Another lesson we should draw from this situation is the devastating impact of Israeli, American and British hypocrisy, which has proved to be the historical midwife of Palestinian incompetent and violent self-rule. As long as Israel and its Western backers persist in their shameful double standards — demanding Palestinian moderation while accepting Israeli colonization and settlements, promoting Arab democracy while trying to strangle to death a democratically-elected Palestinian government, pressuring the Palestinians to negotiate agreements while wholeheartedly backing Israeli unilateralism that shuns negotiations — a credible, legitimate Palestinian government can never take root. It is a law of both physics and politics that deceit begets chaos, and delusion fosters destruction.

All concerned must collectively break this cycle of Israel’s brutal occupation and colonization, Palestinian domestic incompetence and self-destruction, American-British-led Western hypocritical complicity, and detached Arab ineptitude. The combination of these four dynamics persisting for years on end has been a catastrophe for all, resulting in radicalization and an increasing resort to militancy on all fronts.

Two things are needed to get the Palestinians out of this tragic fighting pit they have allowed themselves to become. The first is to acknowledge that they reached this low point through a combination of their own pedestrian politics and the low-grade morality of many others. The second is to engage the Palestinians primarily on the basis of their own rights and needs, rather than only as the expedient instruments of Israeli demands and American fantasies. If not, what you see is what you get.

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: 16 June 2007
Word Count: 799
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BEIRUT — The assassination Wednesday of pro-Lebanese government and anti-Syrian member of parliament Waleed Eido and at least nine others, in a powerful car bomb along the Beirut seafront, promises to catapult an already turbulent Lebanon into ever greater cycles of violence that many here see as being linked to regional actors and dynamics. The fact, timing, and context of Eido’s death may all be significant, and surely spell more dark days ahead for Lebanon and the wider Middle East.

Two prevalent accusations quickly engulfed the Lebanese scene in the hours after his death. One common view accused Syria of killing him as part of its alleged string of other assassinations and bombings that have sought to destabilize Lebanon since shortly after the Syrians were forced out of the country just over two years ago.

Another novel view heard in Lebanon today charges the United States with indirectly fomenting strife in the entire region — Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine all suffered terrible violence and attacks Wednesday — as a means of reasserting American-Israeli hegemony in the region by forcing more Arab governments to reply on American support in order to fight Syrian-Iranian-supported groups.

The reality is that nobody knows who is behind this killing and other attacks in Lebanon, though all seem increasingly connected in a spiral of political violence that now defines much of the region.

This assassination is doubly troubling because Eido (pronounced ‘ee-doh’) is the first Sunni prominent person assassinated since the late former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in a similar bombing in February 2005. All the other prominent politicians and journalists killed or injured in bombings since then have been Christians who were openly critical of Syria — which is why many Lebanese reflexively see Syrian hands behind these killings. The Syrian government vehemently denies its involvement, but it has also rejected the UN-mandated international tribunal that formally came into force Monday to try those who will be accused of the Hariri and other killings in the coming year.

Some Lebanese politicians immediately accused Syria and its Lebanese allies of killing Lebanese MPs and cabinet ministers as a means of whittling away at the pro-government parliamentary majority, in order to keep the country in a state of tension and instability so that Syria could reassert its dominance or control of Lebanon.

A few prominent pro-government ministers and MPs openly accused the deeply isolated Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud — whose term was extended by Syria for 3 years in October 2004 — of being equally guilty by association with this alleged plan to prevent a parliamentary majority from being able to convene to choose the next president this October. They fear that lack of a parliamentary quorum due to this string of deaths might prompt pro-Syrian Lahoud to try and remain in power. They also point out, for example, that Lahoud refused to sign the required documents to hold a special bye-election to replace assassinated pro-government MP Pierre Gemayel last November.

Eido was a member of the Future Movement headed by MP Saad Hariri, son of the late Rafik Hariri, who added his voice Wednesday evening to those who charged the killers of Eido with aiming to strangle Lebanon’s constitutional structures and bringing the state to a standstill. Without mentioning Syria by name, he called on the Arab League to assume its responsibility in stopping such attacks against one Arab country by another.

Some Lebanese also fear that Eido’s killing may spark new Sunni-Shiite tensions, which have not featured prominently in political dynamics here. Lebanon’s consensus-based governance system — when it works — is based on agreement among the Sunni, Shiite, Christian, and Druze groups that comprise the population. Political and communal tensions recently have crossed sectarian lines, and coincided more with pro-American or pro-Syrian-Iranian sentiments.

Another growing fear here is that Lebanon is now being deliberately destabilized along three simultaneous fronts: the Qaeda-like group fighting the Lebanese army in Nahr el-Barid refugee camp in the north; the successful or attempted assassinations of ten prominent figures who have been critical of Syria in the past two and a half years; and a dozen nighttime bombs in recent months all around Beirut and nearby suburbs that seem aimed more at terrorizing and destabilizing citizens rather than killing large numbers of them.

The United States has openly and decisively supported the Lebanese government in its fight on all three fronts, often explicitly siding with government accusations against Syria for allegedly promoting the attacks in Lebanon. Many pro-government Lebanese officials and ordinary citizens have accused Syria of sending the Fateh el-Islam gunmen to north Lebanon, which Syria also denies.

The facts of who is behind the three levels of violence and death in Lebanon will almost certainly ultimately become known, but for now the only thing that is certain is that Lebanon has become the most ravaged battlefield where regional and global warriors are facing off in an increasingly brutal contest that shows no signs of slowing down.

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: 13 June 2007
Word Count: 824
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DUBAI — The Gulf and Arabian Peninsula attract attention often for the fast pace of their physical development, with the striking new commercial and government complexes appearing in the skylines of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait, Manama and other Gulf cities. Yet something more intriguing and politically significant than spectacular architecture is taking place in the Gulf these days, and its impact is being felt around the region.

Dubai is the most extreme example of this hyper-growth Gulf-wide phenomenon. Its rabid pace of growth is expected to continue for another decade or more, bringing Dubai’s population of 1.4 million to over 5 million. More significant is the spillover of this phenomenon to other parts of the Arab world. The Arab Gulf’s public sector surplus income is finally filtering through to spur substantial private sector investments that are being channeled by Arab financial services firms into investments throughout the region. For the first time in many decades, significant new job creation is being generated mainly by the Arab private sector, rather than by governments, and unemployment rates are declining.

A generation ago in the 1973-85 first oil boom, most of the oil income was intermediated by Western banks and finance companies, the bulk went into building essential domestic infrastructure (roads, air and sea ports, power and telecommunications systems, housing, health care, schools), and the surpluses were mostly invested abroad. During the current high income cycle, the Gulf region is accumulating hundreds of billions of dollars that cannot be quickly spent by governments or invested at home by the private sector. The United States and Europe are less attractive investment destinations in the post-9/11 world of sanctions and financial embargoes, so more investments flow to Arab projects.

The recent increase in oil income, according to World Bank and Swiss bank executives who study the issue, has seen the Gulf countries, along with China and India, experience the fastest collective economic growth rate in the world, averaging 5-6 percent annually in the past five years. During that period, GNP for the Gulf region doubled, from $600 billion to $1.2 trillion. An estimated $700-800 billion will be accumulated in surplus income during this boom, and much of this is already being deployed within the Arab world.

Signs of this abound throughout the region, mainly in the form of intra-Arab advertising for real estate, telecommunications, tourism and financial services investments. Billboards on the highways to Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Doha and Dubai airports have a peculiarly similar look to them these days, as private Arab funds and sound investments seek each other out throughout the region. This suggests that the current boom may be sustainable, even when oil income declines, if today’s surplus funds are managed wisely and invested in sectors that have good long-term growth prospects.

The best sign of improving prospects for the Middle East region is that the education sector is experiencing a real increase in spending. This is a welcomed indication of future growth prospects in a global economy increasingly focused on knowledge and information industries. Jobs are being created at a faster pace than the new entrants into the labor force, which is driving down unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa region for the first time in 20 years or so. Unemployment has dropped from 14 to 11 percent in the past few years, the World Bank estimates.

Most new jobs are low-quality and low-productivity ones, to be sure. But combined with improved education standards, stronger links between the education and labor sectors, and more private sector training opportunities, new jobs now being created can set the stage for a shift into high-income, high-quality jobs, such as Ireland and Singapore have created for their citizens in recent decades.

The current oil boom has triggered two novel and important trends in the Arab world: accelerated intra-Arab private sector investments within the region, and governments that do not try to monopolize the economy but instead give their private sectors the opportunity to generate new investments, jobs and income. This can set the stage for the emergence of a strong, wide and deep middle class of citizens who have a vested interest in stability, security and prosperity. This contrasts sharply with the current majority of Arabs who are economically stressed, politically resentful of their own and Western governments, and just as inclined to cheer the destroyers as the builders of the existing Arab order.

Governments and globalization alone have not been able to achieve the sustained economic growth that is needed to shift the Middle East from a region of turbulence and violence to one of stable expansion and rising middle class prosperity. We have a new chance now to move in this direction, if governments, private sectors and foreign partners work together to achieve the elusive mix of democratic governance, efficient private sector-driven economies, resolution of major regional conflicts, and an end to destructive foreign militarism.

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: 09 June 2007
Word Count: 814
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BEIRUT — UN Security Council Resolution 1757, passed last Wednesday to establish an international court to try those who will be accused of killing former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others since February 2005, has sparked intense and justified debate. This is indeed a historic resolution, especially coupled with the ongoing international investigation into the murders and other bombings that have plagued Lebanon in recent years.

The confusing truth is that the positions of both the resolution’s supporters and opponents are correct to a large extent: The resolution promises justice and an end to impunity for the as yet unidentified killers and bombers; it infringes on Lebanese sovereignty; it exacerbates the existing domestic political polarization between the government and the opposition; it targets Syria and its friends in Lebanon; it ravages the Lebanese legacy of consensus-based national policy-making; and, it offers all Lebanese an opportunity to rally around a new political idea in order to move their country forward again.

As such the resolution is merely one more facet of the fundamental ideological war that has defined Lebanon and the Middle East for the past few years.

Resolution 1757, like the handful of other UN resolutions before it on Lebanon, is about the exercise of power as much as it is about the administration of justice. The power in question is that of the United States, the Lebanese government and their allies in the region, and, on the other side, Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and their friends. The American-led armada that invaded Iraq in 2003 offered one model of bringing about political change in this region, and it has been an ugly sight. The use of UN resolutions in Lebanon (and Iran) is the other option that is being attempted. The ultimate political aim is the same: Use diplomatic means to break the Syrian regime or force a Gadhafi-style complete reversal of its policies, like the Iraqi regime was broken militarily.

The use of UN Security Council resolutions to achieve this aim is legitimate in the eyes of the world, for two important reasons: A majority of Lebanese clearly wanted to see an end to Syrian domination of their country in 2005, and the same majority wants to stop the decades-old cycle of unsolved assassinations and bombings. The use of UN resolutions brings these different issues into one process, which is why the positions of both supporters and opponents are correct. The core issue at hand is to bring to justice those people who killed Hariri and the other victims — but the political contours of that aim are anchored firmly in accusations that Syria is involved in these crimes.

Syria’s insists it is innocent, yet it vehemently opposes the international court that would seem to be the best way to affirm its innocence. Targeting Syria axiomatically means targeting its friends and allies in Lebanon, such as Hizbullah, and its friends in the near abroad, like Iran. They will all fight back and try to quash this process, but they face a widespread global, regional and Lebanese demand to end the impunity of the killers and bombers who have terrorized Lebanon for so long.

The vote to establish the court comes at a time when the regional diplomatic dynamics in the Middle East are in flux. Americans, Syrians, Iranians and Saudis all simultaneously meet and negotiate, while also being aggressive and hostile to one another. New relationships and accommodations may well surface in the coming months, centered on the need to stabilize Iraq, remove foreign troops there, resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, and make a serious new effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli crisis.

The continued proliferation of Qaeda-like extremist groups throughout the region, such as Fateh el-Islam in Lebanon, represents a new threat and a prod to action. Such groups reflect the consequences of allowing the Middle East to drift in its sea of spiraling and increasingly inter-connected conflicts. Many in Lebanon and abroad accuse Syria of sponsoring Fateh al-Islam, which Syria also denies. Americans, and some Europeans and Arabs, see Syria and Iran as the vortex of conflict-promotion and mischief-making in the entire region, which is why they have worked so diligently in recent years to break the back of the regimes in Damascus and Tehran.

Resolution 1757 is the latest weapon in this war, and it is potent because it enjoys international and regional legitimacy, due to the prevalent Lebanese demand to bring the killers and bombers to justice. The rigorous international investigation underway and the judicial trials to follow will reveal who is guilty or innocent. In the meantime, we should not confuse the two core dynamics of this process: the noble pursuit of justice for Lebanon, and the brutal exercise of antagonistic state power by the United States, Syria, Iran and interested others, who will either reach a political accommodation soon, or recklessly fight to the death and leave this region, starting with Iraq and Lebanon, a devastated wasteland.

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 June 2007
Word Count: 822
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DOHA, Qatar — The Second Forum on Democracy and Political Reform in the Arab World that I attended this week in Doha, Qatar, is an exercise in hope and determination, despite the lack of practical results to date. The Arab region remains the world’s last collectively non-democratic region, having resisted the repeated attempts of Arab democrats, liberals, human rights activists, Islamists and constitutionalists to bring their societies into the growing club of democracies around the world.

One of the driving forces behind this gathering, Egyptian sociologist and democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, reminded us that the Arab world was part of the first three global “democratic waves” in the late 19th Century, between the two world wars, and after the mid-1970s, and Arabs remain eager to participate in the current wave.

Yet they are not part of today’s democratic trend, because Arab political systems remain firmly in the hands of soft hereditary monarchies or brutal security states. Nevertheless, Arab democrats and liberals persist. They meet, write articles, publish reports, hold conferences, create political parties and non-governmental organizations, occasionally demonstrate in the street and even sit and talk with their autocratic leaders, reminding them that non-democratic regimes are also non-sustainable.

So there is something impressive — even heroic at times — about the 350 Arab men and women from every corner of this region who gathered here in Qatar for three days to discuss in detail what needs to happen for Arab societies to become democratic. They look in detail into areas like the rule of law, independent judiciary, robust parliaments, active civil societies, quality education, open media, women’s participation, transparency and accountability, transitional justice, and the role of the private sector and foreign actors. When democracy raises its head one day soon in some Arab country, a cohort of old and young democrats alike will be ready for the occasion.

Some take hope from the fact that Qatar itself has hosted this gathering, seeing in this pesky Gulf emirate the potential for change from within the Arab world. Skeptics abound, noting Qatar’s own system of limited political participation. Others point to Qatar’s track record in shaking up the media scene with the formation of Al-Jazeera television a decade ago.

I gather that some Qataris and organizers of this Arab democracy forum were motivated in part by concerns that foreign-, especially American-driven, democratization initiatives in the Arab world were hurting rather than helping prospects for reform, causing Arab democracy activists to be discredited as American puppets — and silly fools — before their own people.

An alternative democratization mechanism is needed in the face of failed Western campaigns. An Arab-formulated, -funded, and -managed process is now being attempted, or perhaps just discussed. There is talk of an Arab Democracy Fund being established with seed funding from Qatar.

Perhaps the most impressive moment at the forum here — one of the reasons why hope persists — was the opening session with its two guests of honor. Ironically, the two were former military generals who seized power in coups, then handed over governance to democratically-elected leaders as they had promised: Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall of Mauritania in 2006, and Marshal Abdulrahman Siwar Al-Dahab of Sudan in 1985.

They both stressed the importance of democratic governance as the basis for stability and prosperity in the Arab world, and they acted on their words. Unlike most incumbent Arab leaders who speak democracy and practice autocracy, these two men removed dictatorial and corrupt regimes, organized democratic elections for new and legitimate leaderships, and stepped down as they had promised. They received long and warm applause from the audience here.

Are they examples who might pave the way for others? Not likely, given the current crop of “republican” Arab leaders like Hosni Mubarak, Bashar Assad, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Zein Al Abidin Bin Ali, Omar Hassan Al Bashir, and Muammar Gadhafi. Arab monarchies and emirates inherently are hierarchical and paternalistic, allowing various degrees of public participation and free expression but not ceding real control of power in the core areas of economy and security.

So it is hard to see where and how democratic change will come in the Arab world. That is why gatherings such as this Second Arab Democracy Forum are so impressive — not for their nonexistent democratic achievements, but rather for their persistence, faith and commitment. These brave and serious, but powerless Arabs believe deep in their bones that democracy will spur the sensible and stable statehood that has been such an elusive goal throughout the modern history of sovereign Arab states.

Their day will come. Until then, they meet, talk, write and honor the few honorable men among them who promoted genuine Arab democracy, even for brief shining moments.

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 May 2007
Word Count: 787
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BEIRUT — The United States makes so many abrupt changes in its strategy in Iraq, and its rationale for being there, that you need a direct feed podcast from the White House to keep up with the breaking news of its broken policy. The latest theme from the United States — it is not clear if this is new strategy, new threat, new trial balloon, or just massive frustration — is that it has limited patience with the Iraqis. If Iraqis do not get their house in order and grasp the democratic opportunity before them, the US will start leaving. We hear this from senior American officials, leading columnists and politicians, and it is the closest thing there is to a national American consensus on Iraq — abandon the mess you created in the first place.

This is an understandable American attitude, because no country wants to have its soldiers killed and money wasted in another country’s civil war. But it is not credible for the US — and its UK partner in crime — to play here the innocent bystander who is just getting out of the way of a local dogfight by Arabs who have been killing each other for centuries. To paint the Iraqis as hopeless hooligans and religious fanatics who cannot grasp the democratic opportunity the US-UK armada has placed in front of them, while affirming the pure intentions and gallant policy of the Anglo-American military assault, is simply one more distortion and grossly unfair and inaccurate analysis from the deceptive peddlers who dominate policy-making in London and Washington. This intellectual weapon of mass destruction only compounds the death, pain, fear and instability that Anglo-American policies have sparked all over the Middle East.

Historically, American and British policies in Iraq are among the most flagrant examples of Western colonial and neocolonial global abuse of power. They go into countries like Iraq like ordinary people go into an amusement park, a shopping mall or a casino: picking and choosing how they spend their time, getting what they want, changing from game to game and shop to shop, and leaving when they get bored, frustrated, or have nothing more to gain for themselves — regardless of the conditions left behind for the Iraqi people.

The American threat to leave Iraq is easy to grasp politically, but hard to fathom morally. Does the United States have any responsibility for the destruction, waste and fear that Iraqis have suffered in the past four years? How about the new cohort of terrorists and quasi-anarchists that have found inspiration and experience in fighting the Americans and instigating chaos in Iraq? Is the recent overt strife between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq purely an indigenous phenomenon, or should we ask if American and British policies have brought Iraq to its current condition and are partly or largely to blame for unleashing this new brand of ethnic and sectarian strife in the region?

The Bush administration cannot expect to play Arabs like yo-yos and have the world passively cheer its childishness. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and others repeatedly speak of their error in supporting Arab dictators for six decades, and now they have switched to supporting freedom and democracy for Arabs. That democracy-promotion process now seems to have been aborted, or simply sidelined, as Arab democracy has bred Islamist victors like Hamas. So the United States quietly shelves that approach and gets back to seeking stability, or fighting Iranian aims that its policies in Iraq and Palestine have helped to bolster in the first place. Now the US says it has limited patience and will get out of Iraq soon if conditions do not improve. This selective, self-serving flip-flopping disguised as grand strategy, with a touch of divine approval, is the worst sort of colonialism and neocolonialism rolled into one.

The British in Iraq have a similar track record that begs some sort of historical accountability. The British manufactured Iraq in the 1920s, supported it and its tyrants for much of the 20th century, then attacked and destroyed it in 2003, tried to rebuild it in their image once again, and now threaten to leave quickly. Creating Iraq, supporting it, destroying it, and now trying to recreate it have been a cumulative show of colonial incompetence and bravado that will go down in history as a great tragedy, if not a crime, that has come at a very high cost, especially to the people of Iraq and the Middle East.

The combined legacies and policies of the American and British governments bring us this summer to the latest phase of this tragic process of Western powers expediently toying with Arabs for their own convenience. This is one reason why the Arab world is riddled with a combination of local tyrants and pro-Western lackeys, but very few normal, effective leaders, or stable, self-satisfied citizenries.

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 May 2007
Word Count: 803
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BEIRUT — For the past several years I and others have been warning that the growing number of conflicts in the Middle East is pushing this region towards new forms of radicalism and trouble. The clashes between the Lebanese army and the Fateh al-Islam extremist militants that have rocked the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli since Sunday are the latest face of that phenomenon.

The fighting in Tripoli represents the local convergence of four separate conflicts that attest to the complex matrix of violence that plagues the Middle East today.

The four are:
• the uneasy legacy of tensions between various Lebanese forces and armed Palestinian refugee groups in the country, going back to the 1960s;
• the continued tensions between Syria and Lebanon since a popular uprising forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon two years ago;
• the regional spin-offs from the US-led war in Iraq; and,
• the expanding clashes of George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” which both battles and breeds assorted Islamist terror groups that pursue Al-Qaeda-like goals and tactics.

The convergence of these four distinct conflicts in the clashes in Tripoli this week is no surprise. The Fateh al-Islam group has been slowly building up its band of several hundred heavily armed fighters in the Nahr el-Barid refugee camp for nearly a year, while other militant Islamists have been expanding their small constituencies in north and south Lebanon. Lebanese, Palestinian and foreign officials alike have all expressed concerns about the potential for such extremists to gain a foothold in Lebanon.

The fighting in Tripoli erupted after Lebanese army forces pursued a band of Fateh al-Islam fighters who had robbed a bank, but the confrontation was inevitable in view of the steadily rising threat that such militants represented. Many Lebanese blame Syria for instigating the Fateh al-Islam threat as one of the ways that Damascus allegedly seeks to keep Lebanon in a state of turmoil. Syria vehemently denies the charge. Lebanese accusers insist Syria is trying to deflect attention from the international tribunal being established to try the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and half a dozen other prominent Lebanese in the past two years. Two bombs that exploded in central Beirut Sunday and Monday night are also widely blamed on Syria as part of this alleged campaign of destabilization. An ongoing UN investigation of the Hariri and other murders has pointed the finger in the direction of Syria, but its final conclusions — and the all-important evidence it is expected to reveal — will not be made public until at least later this year.

It is difficult to say precisely what Fateh al-Islam represents. It is a small breakaway faction of the Syrian-based and-backed Fateh al-Intifada group that has long opposed Yasser Arafat’s main Fateh guerrilla organization. Yet Fateh al-Islam is less of a traditional Palestinian group and is very much in line with the bevy of small militant Islamist organizations that have sprung up around the Middle East since the advent of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group. Though it is led by former Palestinian guerrillas, Fateh al-Islam’s fighters come from half a dozen Arab countries with a sprinkling of Asians as well.

Mainstream Palestinian groups in Lebanon such as Fateh, Hamas and the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization all openly oppose Fateh al-Islam and see it as a threat to themselves and also to the stability of Lebanon. The group’s several hundred fighters are concentrated in the Nahr el-Barid camp but have also established small toe-holds in adjacent Tripoli and also in a few other places in Lebanon, including other refugee camps in the south.

This latest eruption of urban violence should remind us of several basic facts that seem to get lost amidst the dramatic television pictures of yet another Arab city rocked by explosions and enveloped in smoke.

The first is that any legitimate political grievance that is left to simmer for decades on end — like the Palestine refugee issue — will eventually boil over and cause new problems.

The second is that using brute force to achieve unilateral political goals — as the United States has tried to do in Iraq — will inevitably spark a backlash. Some Fateh al-Islam fighters boast of fighting the US in Iraq, suggesting that Iraq is breeding new and more virulent terrorists.

The third is that a region bedeviled by multiple conflicts will inevitably see them link up with one another, as seems to be the case here with the Palestine, Iraq and Syrian-Lebanese conflicts converging into a single battle, at least for this week.

Where this convergent militarism rears its head next month is not clear — but you can bet your bottom dollar or dinar that it will, as long as local tyrants run Arab countries, foreign armies invade other Arab countries, and Israel continues to refuse reasonable Arab offers to resolve the Palestine refugee issue peacefully.

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 May 2007
Word Count: 808
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SWEIMEH, on the Dead Sea coast of Jordan — I write this from the Dead Sea in Jordan, at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Middle Eastern gathering of business, government, civil society and media leaders. Visible across the Dead Sea to the west is the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank and Jerusalem, and further west is Gaza, ravaged by Palestinian in-fighting, Israeli strangulation and assassinations, and American-Israeli-led fiscal sanctions.

Here at WEF, though, many Arabs and a few Israelis persist in the quest for a negotiated, just peace. There is a peculiar incongruity to hundreds of immensely successful and very powerful Arab, Israeli and international businessmen and women who meet regularly, yet cannot find the tools needed to change the mundane, often mediocre, policies of their political leaders.

This contrasts spectacularly with last week’s inauguration of a legitimate, elected coalition government that represents both the Protestant and Catholic communities and has restored local rule in Northern Ireland. This is a stunning example of what can happen when corporate leaders take the initiative to improve conditions for all citizens, thus forcing their politicians to follow and resolve their conflicts peacefully.

One person who has actively fostered peace, reconciliation and prosperity through business activity in Northern Ireland for years is the pioneering Cullinet software magnate John Cullinane. He has also tried a similar approach with Arabs and Israelis. His thoughts this week on Northern Ireland’s lessons for the ailing Middle East ring with deep credibility.

“Ironically,” he told me, “what was created in Northern Ireland, after four hundred years of strife and bitterness, was not just power sharing but a full-fledged democracy. Consequently, Northern Ireland has many important lessons for Middle East peacemaking, in my experience.”

He starts: “Getting any group of people to give up any power whatsoever is extraordinarily difficult, and virtually impossible. This can happen, though, with the fulltime effort and influence of world political leaders, other stakeholders, diasporas, and other interested parties, using every possible opportunity — because the antagonists cannot or will not do so themselves. Governments can only do so much — like negotiate cease-fires or arrange meetings — yet government agencies also seek good ideas from the private sector that they can support.”

This creates an opening for business leaders in the area “to get involved and use their influence to promote peace, and not leave things to the extremists from both sides of the conflict. G7, a group of seven business organizations which was formed in Northern Ireland to do exactly this, is a perfect example.”
He also says the diasporas of both sides of a conflict “have to help promote peace and economic development in a coordinated fashion. The Friends of Belfast is a good example.”

Cullinane continues: “Only the private sector can create the all-important peace dividend of jobs and economic development. Even the prospect of peace can set in motion a great economic revival in a depressed area.”

His own experience as a self-described “corporate and social entrepreneur” is that the fastest, easiest way to create jobs in a troubled area is call centers. Trade missions, peopled by representatives from both sides of a dispute, as “the most effective way to sell economic initiatives in a region with a history of conflict. For the sooner most people feel that they are better off, the easier it is for politicians to negotiate an agreement.”

He sees new opportunities in things like telemedicine healthcare services using the world wide web, cell phones, and other new technologies, something of a second generation of call centers. Such “smart” call centers are ideal where there is a strong medical tradition.

He explains: “Nurses and doctors in the Middle East could provided round-the-clock, week-long monitoring support for patients in America, locally, or in other parts of the world, even from their homes. The technology is available to do this now and the Middle East has the personnel to compete globally.”

One call center company, Stream International, put a call center in Derry, Northern Ireland that created 400 jobs for young Catholics and Protestants, at a time when it would be like putting one in Ramallah or Gaza today. It now employs 800, he notes.

There will be bumps in the road, he warns.

“There will always be those who will try to disrupt progress towards peace with violence, or question the motives of the other side; those promoting peace cannot let these acts, or views, deter them. It is remarkable how quickly political leaders can agree once it suits them to do so.”

If the conflict in Northern Ireland proved to be resolvable, he concludes, every conflict can be solved if the respective leaders want to solve it, or are helped or pushed to do so, and “this includes the Middle East.”

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: 19 May 2007
Word Count: 795
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BEIRUT — For a small country that usually does not make much news, Jordan is making a claim on the world’s attention with a series of fascinating consecutive events. Within the span of a week Jordan is hosting its annual gathering of Nobel Prize laureates at Petra, to bring the world’s best minds to bear on the challenges of peace and development in the Middle East; then hosts the annual World Economic Forum Middle East gathering that brings together 1200 top business, government and media people from around the world; and it caps off the week with meetings of senior officials from Israel, Palestine and the USA geared to prodding a renewed Arab-Israeli peace-making process, alongside a meeting of the new G-11 group of lower-middle income countries that seeks to spark a new aid, development and reform partnership with the world’s great powers.

King Abdullah II of Jordan has chosen a path of dynamic activism and big initiatives as the route to national well-being, though many around the world feel that his stirring talk of reform and democracy is frequently unmatched by deeds. Perhaps we now have a chance to test the seriousness of Jordan and other such countries in this enticing realm of democratic modernity.

The most intriguing new effort is this G-11 movement, which was launched last year by the heads of state of like-minded Lower-Middle Income Countries such as Croatia, Ecuador, Georgia, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, and Sri Lanka. They seek to obtain the best possible opportunities in the global economic, investment, aid and trade arena, which they promise to prod with sustained reforms in their economic, political and rule of law spheres.

From Amman, one of the key Jordanian architects of the initiative explained to me that more than 1.5 billion people — over a quarter of the world’s population — live in lower-middle income countries that aspire to break through to higher income brackets. The key for the G-11 is to combine prudent economic management that spurs engines of growth, while relying on “targeted help and results-oriented assistance” that would simultaneously accelerate reforms in order to achieve higher growth rates and allow millions to escape the poverty trap.

Skeptics would argue with justification that there is not much that is really new here in the G-11’s familiar language of reform and growth. It would be easy to dismiss this as merely another clever way for worried leaders of vulnerable countries in turbulent neighborhoods to stay in power and ward off the hordes of their own disenchanted and angry citizens.

My suspicion is that the G-8 and other world economic powers should acknowledge this initiative and positively challenge its owners to perform, and not just to talk.

The G-11 supplicants tell us they are committed to “following a path of prudent macroeconomic management, economic liberalization, ensuring adequate provision of services, especially education, health, and infrastructure, strengthening the rule of law, transparency, accountability, building good governance, zero tolerance for corruption, enhancing the role of civil society, and expanding freedoms to ensure wider buy-in national political, economic and social reform programs.”

This sounds like something from a Swedish governance seminar, but in fact it is the plea of a few Third World leaders who say they are prepared to make the plunge and the changes needed to move their societies into a more modern, prosperous, stable world. Are they serious? Are they sincere? There is only one way to find out: Test them, or, in the wily ways of Vegas poker, call their bluff. The G-8 should offer the G-11 the requested aid, debt and trade assistance, initially in a phased, selective and conditional manner, while working together with these countries to agree on a truly serious reform program that is both home-grown and adheres to global standards of democratic pluralism and the rule of law.

Ireland, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey and many other lands prove that economic growth and political accord are essential to transforming traditional, vulnerable and sometimes turbulent societies into stable, modern, and prosperous ones. Western efforts to transform Middle Eastern countries to date have failed, including the EU’s Barcelona process, the G-8 initiative, and the effervescent Anglo-American armadas that invade countries and topple their regimes.

The world needs a new and more effective approach to reforming and transforming developing countries. The Arab World in particular needs just one success story of a country that makes the transition to democracy, stability and prosperity. Others will follow.

The G-11 initiative may provide a means to move down this road. It deserves serious examination, and some high stakes poker moves. Jordan and its partners have taken a bold initiative. We should find out if they are serious, and call their bluff, because if they are, this is a poker game in which we all win.

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: 16 May 2007
Word Count: 797
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ISTANBUL — It’s hard to get away from a central fact of Middle Eastern politics and statehood: the role of the military and security in the business of government and the exercise of public authority. This is a largely unaddressed issue in the otherwise vibrant galaxy of political and economic reform issues being debated throughout the Arab World and other Asian and African states.

The Arab world collectively remains the last non-democratic part of the world for several reasons, one of which is the military sector’s direct control of institutions in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. The role of the military in public life has been a basic influence on Middle Eastern statehood since the early 20th Century, shortly after the advent of modern independent countries in this region. In recent years, and in some countries, it has probably worsened, not improved, as assorted military institutions — the armed forces, intelligence agencies, police and internal security services — play a more dominant and public role in decision-making.

Turkey is an important and rare case study in how civilian-military relations can evolve over time — and generally peacefully — to allow elected civilian politicians to exercise greater control over the military. That process is still underway, with two steps forward followed by one step backwards, and an occasional sideward shuffle, reflecting both subtlety and bluntness in this pivotal struggle that has defined this region for much of the past century.

I have had the pleasure of spending a few days in Istanbul this week at a gathering of international investors and financial analysts. Their positive view of many profitable investments in Turkey seemed unperturbed by the dramatic show-down outside — on the streets, in court, and in parliament — between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the military-backed, largely secular opposition.

Historically, Turkey’s armed forces have overthrown governments and closed parliaments, worked closely with incumbent governments they liked, and also have largely come to terms with the mild Islamist AKP government, after forcing its predecessor Islamist parties out of office and out of existence. The country’s continued movement towards European Union standards has seen the civilian elected political establishment slowly whittle away the military’s power to interfere in politics.

The military and many allies in secular political circles have now balked at the prospect of AKP simultaneously controlling the parliament, the prime minister’s office, and the presidency, and they moved politically to stop the AKP candidate from becoming president late last month. An explicitly political process will determine the outcome of this struggle in the months ahead, to the envy of Arab lands where no such thing is likely to occur any time soon.

In the Arab world, the relationship between the military and the civilian political class is not so dynamic. It is also not discussed very much in public, which is one reason our Arab public sectors tend to be inefficient and dominated by the military. The relationships between the military and the civilian politicians of the Arab world are varied, with precise power configurations reflecting a wide range of factors: colonial histories, post-colonial trajectories, tribal social foundations, the nature and size of royal families, the intrusive role of foreign powers, and the domestic balance sheet of natural wealth and assets.

Most Arab military sectors played a constructive foundational role in the early decades of state-building, often being the central instrument of state-formation and national cohesion. The military coups that started to define Arab governance, as early as the 1930s in Iraq, slowly saw most Arab “republics” transformed into centralized security states by the early 1970s.

Security-military organizations operate largely beyond the scrutiny of civilian governments, with neither their budgets nor their activities subjected to any sort of serious oversight or accountability. Many Arab security agencies operate with honor, restraint and efficiency; some others have spilled over into gangsterism, mediocrity and corruption. Most security-military agencies in the Arab world feel they are the guardians of statehood, political governance, public order and national ideology all rolled into one. So it is not unusual to find security services vetting the appointments of university professors or newspaper editors, while they also hunt down terrorists and lesser mischief-makers.

The unexamined link between Arab governance and the military-security sector needs to be slowly loosened, and then broken completely. The security agencies must be allowed to play their important defense, intelligence and police functions, while civilian politicians elected by the citizenry define national policy and ideology. One of the few advantages of being the last autocratic region of the world is that we can learn from the transformation of those who democratized before us. An important starting point for such a change to occur peacefully is for citizens and public institutions to start discussing the exact nature of the military-civilian relationships in our countries.

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: 14 May 2007
Word Count: 797
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