BEIRUT — At least a dozen different dynamics shape the deteriorating situation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the consequences this will have across much of the Middle East for some time. The crisis is being analyzed through a dizzying array of lenses. These include, notably (take a deep breath here) relatively recent Sunni-Shiite sensitivities, the rearing of wider Middle Eastern sectarian heads, long-standing geo-strategic rivalries in the Gulf region, reactions to big power policy changes in the Middle East, assorted domestic challenges, an evolving regional ideological landscape with multiple proxy battles (mostly in Arab lands), the long-standing face-off between Arab conservatism and revolutionary populism, and the impact of the last five years of popular uprisings and the subsequent counter-revolutions and civil wars in some countries.

The situation is made all the more complex by the fact that all of these forces and several others around the Middle East as well (social marginalization of some groups, economic disparities, environmental distress) usually all converge. They converge in regional ideological confrontations like this one, or in conflicts within single countries, such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or Lebanon.

Most of the contentious issues in play reflect man-made policies and decisions that can be reversed or tempered, thereby resolving both regional clashes and local confrontations. I leave it to both sides and their many supporters and public relations consultants in the region and in Western capitals to hash out the specific grievances, concerns, threats, and fears they all express against one another. The history of the modern Middle East has seen such active confrontations ebb and flow, occasionally exploding into war but usually being defused after just a few local bombings, burned flags, really shrill media editorials, and emptied embassies.

Such abatement of tensions usually happened due to the intervention of either a major regional power like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, or, in the past, Syria and Egypt, or one of the global powers acting unilaterally or through the UN Security Council. Here is the most striking and troubling aspect of the current Iranian-Saudi tensions: This Middle Eastern face-off between two regional powerhouses, whose mutual accusations spill over into many local conflicts within Arab countries, is taking place as traditional global powers that once kept our region in check watch from the sidelines, protect their interests, and wonder what they can do.

The big new element in today’s Middle East is the continued emergence of decisive leadership, unilateral interventions, and diplomatic and military initiatives by the three major regional powers of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey. These three states’ concerns and actions on the ground now have immense impact, parallel to the deeds of global powers and Israel that traditionally influenced major regional trends.

The short-term destabilizing impact of this is evident in the many conflicts and fragmenting states across the region. It reflects two interlinked and simultaneous historic dynamics: Big powers like the United States and Russia are recalibrating their relationships and interventions across the region, while the regional powers step up their involvements in other countries to fill the few voids or the new threats created by the big powers’ shifts.

The immediate big winners in this situation are political science and international relations professors, who have a bounty of material to analyze on how regional powers, smaller states, and even sub-national groups all enhance their political impact, as global powers recalibrate. Beyond Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, some of these actors with considerable new agency and impact in the Middle East include salafist and tribal Sunni groups in Iraq and Syria, Hizbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq.

The Middle East has never known such a situation in which regional and global powers alike, along with empowered local groups, all engage energetically in political and military actions in half a dozen different battlefields; they do this while also enjoying the capabilities of modern weaponry, alongside the fertile environments of some weakening and collapsing states. Neither global nor regional big powers are available this time to step in and restore order, because they are all in the ring punching away.

Our best hope to step back from the brink of wider regional conflagrations is for sensible and responsible people in all concerned lands, especially around the Gulf region, to grasp the catastrophes that will engulf much of the Middle East if current trends continue. The whole world is also threatened, should energy flows be disrupted. A frightening warning sign of this is the current fighting for oil installations in Libya between “Islamic State” troops and assorted Libyan groups. The dangers of something like this occurring in the Gulf region are becoming too great to ignore. I know that our societies are as capable of spawning sensible diplomatic initiatives that could calm things down and resolve the issues that aggravate relations, as they are of undertaking dramatic military and diplomatic moves that express their real fears. We shall soon find out.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2016 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 January 2016
Word Count: 821
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It is right for us to commemorate this week the day five years ago when Mohamad Bouazizi’s self-immolation in southwestern Tunisia sparked the Arab uprisings. But that is a limited window into the deeper, more important, story of both those (continuing) uprisings and the greater sagas of modern Arab history.

Political simpletons and sinister people around the world mostly bemoan the post-uprisings violence across the Arab world, wondering why the popular revolts did not lead to democratic transitions beyond Tunisia. A more useful and politically relevant frame through which to view the turbulent Arab world must go well beyond the past five years, and encompass instead the past century, from 1915 until today, for two critical reasons.

First, the modern Arab world in the past half-century or so had experienced many telltale signs of mass discontent and attempts to blunt the nasty edges of autocratic regimes; but these always failed, due to the unbreachable power of the autocrats (and their serious support from foreign powers in Moscow, Washington, London, Paris, Riyadh, and Tehran). Second, the structural and persistent strain in modern Arab history has not been the battle for democracy, but rather the quest for stable and legitimate statehood, including since the 1800s in places like Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and others.

The core problem that has plagued all Arab societies, without exception, continues to be the elusive quest for negotiated relationships between citizens and governing power elites that can define the following important dynamics which are critical for any stable society or state: identity, community, citizenship, statehood, sovereignty, nationalism, socio-economic dignity, governance and, ultimately, legitimacy. This is a huge menu, but it is also the normal menu of human-political-social relationships that every society in the world navigates on its road to stable statehood and a decent life for its citizens.

The Arab world experiences such erratic conditions and frequent violence these days because it has never seriously attempted to address these issues under sovereign conditions, so we remain without any consensus on how they all relate to one another. Not surprisingly, we continue to fragment into tribes, clans, neighborhoods, militias, ethno-nationalists, sectarian thugs and mobs, resistance movements, terrorists, ideological fringes, free market zealots, neo-colonial satraps and subjects, NGOized sub-cultures, corrupted and bloated state bureaucracies, massive militarized one-party governments, and other smaller units that we cling to for the rights, protections, services, voice, and opportunities that we expect but do not get from our sovereign states.

This is a distinctly Arab, rather than a wider Middle Eastern or Islamic, problem, because some other non-Arab Middle Eastern or Muslim-majority countries have successfully navigated this path. Historians will clarify in time why Arab modern states remain chronically and collectively erratic but broadly dysfunctional in their governance, defined by worsening disparities in their socio-economic conditions, and now increasingly rattled by national fragmentation, sectarian terror, and widespread violence in their political configurations.

For now, we would do well simply to acknowledge that fixing the troubles and dangers in our region requires that we honestly analyze how we got here since our encounters with modern statehood a century ago. The Hussein-McMahon correspondence of 2015-16 started the reconfiguration of Ottoman Empire Arab-majority lands towards some kind of Arab statehood. Ever since then we have been on a roller coaster ride of state development and de-development that includes impressive eras of growth and embarrassing moments of civil strife and foreign military assaults. Some states split into two and sometimes reunited, others were occupied and colonized, some disappeared and came back into history, many tried to unite with neighbors, and almost all Arab states have actively engaged in warfare against their neighbors or their own people.

The bumpy ride during 1915-2015 has seen Arab societies and states achieve many impressive things, in realms like education, industrialization, cultural expression, and others, alongside chronic criminal behavior by both some state powers and many non-state actors. Always, though, at the heart of this past complex century has been the elusive quest for citizen-state relations that are at once stable, satisfying, and legitimate. Oil, ideology, materialism, religion, ethnicity, tribal pride, historical memories and grievances, and, most recently, active warfare have all be used to stoke national solidarity — with partial successes in most cases, and lasting success in none.

The eruption of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia five years ago this week was an important milestone on this long and unfinished journey. It was the most dramatic and widespread simultaneous expression of Arab citizens’ mass discontent and their shared aspirations. We should honor all those millions who have participated in this latest noble quest for dignity and democracy, and enhance their ability to succeed by better understanding why success has been so rare in the past century of stubborn Arab paternalism.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 19 December 2015
Word Count: 790
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NEW YORK— Never in my adult life have I ever experienced in the Middle East and the Western world anything like the prevailing disjunction today between the “Islamic State” (ISIS) threat that preoccupies all publics and governments, and the apparent inability of political systems to deal with it coherently. This is a problem everywhere, and I mean literally everywhere, in the world, making Arabs, Americans Europeans, Israelis, Russians, Iranians and all other concerned people equal partners in this astounding example of collective political and strategic transcontinental incompetence.

Take Friday’s New York Times front page as an example of both widespread concern and lack of progress on ISIS. It included: several news stories about the latest Islamist terror attack in Mali, the aftermath of the Paris attacks last week, and ISIS networks in Belgium; opinion columns about how to respond to ISIS threats; a story about Hillary Clinton’s strategy for dealing with ISIS; a story on Russia’s concerns about growing ISIS links in the Caucasus region; assorted items linked to American state governors’ debate about allowing or forbidding Syrian refugees from settling in their states; ideas from broadly bizarre Republican presidential contenders about Muslims having to register in the United States; an editorial about how to respond to ISIS, and other bits and pieces. And this is just the front page!

This disproportionate amount of attention to ISIS terror threats is typical of the American public realm that I have experienced in the last two months in the country. Several broad trends are evident in public reactions to ISIS attacks in several countries and expanding American military involvement in Syria-Iraq. A heartening one is that, unlike 2001, some wise, honest, and diligent American journalists and political analysts are responding to ISIS much more coherently and maturely than American society’s broadly incoherent and emotional response to Al-Qaeda. These remain in the minority, however, and in general the political system and public sphere — especially the cable television world dominated by low quality, sensationalism and quasi-racism from Fox and CNN — are defined mainly by a combination of five troubling sentiments: perplexity (“why are we in the West being attacked?”), ignorance (“who are these people and what do they want?”), arrogance (“only American leadership and military might can rid the world of this scourge”), militarism (“this is the war of our generation and our national destiny, and we must fight them hard over there before they come to the United States to destroy us”), and emotionalism (“we have to remain tough, reaffirm our values, stand our ground, defend freedom, load our rifles, protect our children, wake up every day and eat our Cheerios without giving in to their devilish intimidation, and God bless us because we’re the greatest country ever to exist on Earth”).

Each one of these attitudes is bad enough on its own, but in combination they are a catastrophe. Indeed, the American-led “global war on terror” response to Al-Qaeda since the late 1990s has been a continuing failure and catastrophe. Though the United States has been largely shielded from major terror attacks since 2001, the rest of the world, especially the Middle East, has become a hell-hole of escalating violence that is mostly beyond the control of sovereign states and therefore is almost impossible to stop. To enjoy military and financial support from the United States and oil-rich Arabs, most Arab states have shut-down any serious political or economic reforms, which has worsened life conditions for most citizens and therefore expanded and deepened the pool of willing recruits to groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

I must acknowledge, though, an important new streak among Americans from all quarters, from senior political leaders in Washington who once shaped the cloddish war on terror, and senior think tank and donor foundation officials, to professors, students, journalists and members of the public I have engaged in many discussions in recent months. This is a more humble and inquisitive attitude that asks questions such as: Are we in the United States doing the right thing in the Middle East? Do people over there want us to continue? What can others do better than we can? How can we respond beyond military attacks? Why do we have to go back and fight again after decades of fighting over there?

This reflects the best aspects of American culture, which asks why things are going badly, and why legitimate aims like fighting terrorism are not being achieved. This attitude is not reflected by Fox and CNN, or most public political figures, and certainly not the traveling circus that is the Republican presidential hopefuls. It is, however, the dominant strain of comments and questions I have encountered in my many engagements in the United States during the past two months, both in public and privately.

“What can and should the U.S. do more effectively to defeat ISIS?” everyone asks. Nobody I have talked to or read offers a fully convincing answer to this critical question. I do not claim to have the answer, either. But in my next column, based on my extensive discussions in the United States with thoughtful Americans and others, I will suggest some principles that we should apply in order to have a better chance of coming up with concrete answers and suggestions. That would require our working together across continents with humility, realism, courage and rationality, instead of the cartoon-world toolbox that the U.S.-led West and leading Arab states have used to drive us all like cattle to this moment when our Arab lands are drenched in blood, war, and refugees, and the world’s great newspapers’ front pages mirror corresponding spheres of death, fear and perplexity.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 21 November 2015
Word Count: 940
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BOSTON — The devastating terror bombs Thursday in a south Beirut high-density residential and commercial area, following the apparent bomb that brought down a Russian civilian airliner last month in Sinai, indicate heightened will and ability by the “Islamic State” (ISIS) to widen its terror war against foes near and far. At least four important dimensions of these latest developments are worth pondering.

The first is ISIS’ strategy of carrying out dramatic attacks outside its territory, even as it fights for its life in the lands it controls in northern Syria and Iraq. It alerts us that ISIS will try to expand and defend its territory, but also will strike further afield when necessary to hurt its adversaries.

Its capacity to control land for long periods of time is being seriously tested now in areas like Ramadi in Iraq, and Sinjar and Aleppo in Syria. Local forces (Kurds, Iraqi militias), Syrian, Turkish and Iraqi state armies, and US and Russian air forces work together in various combinations to push back ISIS in its heartland, while Lebanese forces and Hizbollah fight it along the Lebanon-Syria border. Simultaneously, ISIS forces make forays into other vulnerable areas and take control of smaller villages here and there, to fortify ISIS’ central claim of creating an Islamic State and expanding the Caliphate.

The attacks in Sinai and Beirut offer ISIS followers and potential recruits another face of the organization, which is to retaliate firmly against those whom it considers foes, wherever those foes may reside. The Sinai attack targeted both Russia and Egypt, both of whom fight actively respectively against ISIS forces in Syria and northern Sinai. Hizbollah and ISIS have been fighting for the past two years in Syria and Lebanon. ISIS’ threat last week to carry out attacks in Russia, if implemented, would represent a dramatic new turn in its ability to act globally. If this happens, ISIS would be following in the footsteps of Al-Qaeda, which for the past 25 years has carried out terror attacks globally.

The second dangerous aspect of the two recent attacks is the confirmation that ISIS can use individuals or perhaps small cells of followers in other countries to carry out its destructive plans. This captures the real difficulty in defeating groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, which is not in destroying their headquarters or killing their leaders, but eradicating the underlying structural reasons for discontent and alienation among millions of individual citizens, across much of the Arab-Islamic world. That discontent and alienation ultimately generate desperate young men who join groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, or carry out lone wolf attacks to emulate them. It does not take much technical or logistical expertise to carry out suicide attacks or bombings like these recent ones, given the willingness of disoriented and hopeless young men to do such criminal deeds. The entry of Russia into the Syria war, the Saudi Arabian war on Yemen, Hizbollah’s battling ISIS and Jabhat el-Nusra in Syria, and Egypt’s hard crackdown on the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS-affiliated groups in northern Sinai will only increase the flow of recruits and suicide bombers who respond to ISIS’ tale of Sunnis being under global attack by “infidels” and “apostates.”

The third dangerous aspect of the ISIS attacks is their explicit targeting of Shiites, other “deviant” Muslims, and polytheists whom they see as apostates who deviate from the true faith that ISIS claims to assert in its Islamic State. The brief ISIS statement issued after the Beirut bombings mentioned Hizbollah as embodying the attributes in people whom hardline Sunnis see as apostates who should be killed, unless they repent and join ISIS’ true path. We should expect more vicious Sunni-Shiite warfare, as well as ISIS attacks against others in the region who do not share its narrow and militant interpretation of Islam.

The fourth important aspect of the bombings in Beirut in particular, but also in conflicts elsewhere in the region, is that most of the fighting is being done by non-state militias and political groups. These include ISIS, Jabhat el-Nusra and dozens of other Islamist and nationalist rebel groups in Syria, Hizbollah, four major Kurdish fighting forces in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and tribal and Iranian-supported militia in Iraq, to mention only the most prominent ones. Combined with the fact that Russian and American jet fighters dominate the Iraqi and Syrian air spaces, this means the Middle East has become a region in which active warfare, terror attacks, ethnic cleansing, and often barbaric sectarian violence are routinely the work of armed groups that may be beyond the control of any government. This does not detract from the fact that some Arab governments also actively engage in ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence.

All this augurs badly in the short term for the Middle East and perhaps for countries further afield that actively wage war in the Middle East. The deeper problem behind these troubling trends is the continued unraveling of state-centered, government-controlled societies in the Arab world (and this is mainly an Arab problem), in favor of tribal, ethnic, sectarian and ideological groups that often resort to arms to protect themselves and their turf. ISIS and the violence it has sparked must be seen as the cruel outcome of the last six decades of autocratic and authoritarian Arab states dominated by soldiers and social chieftains, to the almost total exclusion of citizen rights. This structural failing of the modern Arab world cannot be fixed by foreign armies and Arab counter-terrorism efforts, but rather only by transformations towards participatory, pluralistic and accountable governance systems. The sooner we all work towards that noble goal — in fact, our right as citizens — the sooner we can get out of the current cycle of death and chaos that plagues us all. Until then, ISIS and perhaps even worse phenomena will continue to plague our region and others who are sucked into it.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 14 November 2015
Word Count: 978
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