beirut calling

2004-04-21T08:04:00.000+02:00

Blogging over at Reason
Several readers have complained that BC hasn't been updated for months. Indeed, part of the reason is too much work, but also that I've been blogging on Reason magazine's Hit and Run blog.

I'm keeping BC alive, but for the moment the little time I have goes to H&R. Will be back soon, though, when things clear up.

2004-01-03T17:27:00.000+02:00

Golan grab?
Israel's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is denying that the Israeli government has approved a plan to double the population in the occupied Golan Heights. According to Ha'aretz, he told the BBC's Hard Talk program:

"There is no program, there is no policy, there is no expansion of Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights," Olmert told the BBC.

"He [Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz, who announced the decision] may have declared something... but in terms of the government policy... there is no such approved program..."

The statement comes amid mild hopes that Syria and Israel might resume negotiations on the Golan. While the prospect of serious talks still looks far away, the Syrians and Lebanese are "coordinating". As the Daily Star reported today:

A series of meetings will be held between Syrian and Lebanese officials in the next few days to pave the way for a possible meeting of the Syrian-Lebanese Higher Council in the next few months. The meetings are apparently intended to reinforce the image of complete cooperation between the two countries.

The article suggests the reason for this is increasing American pressure on Syria through the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. However, it is quite possible that it is also, and perhaps mainly, linked to the prospect of progress in talks with Israel. If such talks resume, Syria is very keen to keep a tight rein on Lebanon.

2004-01-03T12:58:00.000+02:00

The Battle of Algiers II
Christopher Hitchens has done a piece on the Battle of Algiers for Slate, the second in the online magazine in a few months. The first was written by Charles Paul Freund.

2004-01-01T09:44:00.000+02:00

Press review
My biweekly review of the Middle East press for Slate is an end-of-year roundup, with some interesting material on Syrian-Israeli relations. Since then, this New York Times story has cast the prospect of Syrian-Israeli negotiations in a new light--and showed where Ariel Sharon's priorities lie.

2004-01-01T09:39:00.000+02:00

We'll borrow this for now
The U.S. contemplated seizing Gulf oil fields in 1973 to break the Arab oil embargo, according to recently released British intelligence memorandum cited by the Washington Post:

It cited a warning from Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger to the British ambassador in Washington, Lord Cromer, that the United States would not tolerate threats from "under-developed, under-populated" countries and that "it was no longer obvious to him that the United States could not use force."

Seizure of the oil fields, the memo said, was "the possibility uppermost in American thinking [and] has been reflected, we believe, in their contingency planning."

Ironically, one danger was that Iraq might, at the USSR's instigation, move into Kuwait:

"The greatest risk of such confrontation in the Gulf would probably arise in Kuwait where the Iraqis, with Soviet backing, might be tempted to intervene," it said, presaging Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Presaging, yes: but the Arab world would have backed that intervention wholeheartedly, and regarded the U.S. as the threat to regional stability.

2003-12-31T07:53:00.000+02:00

My Lebanon 2003 roundup, for the Daily Star of Dec. 27.

A year of living dangerously

Whereas Lebanon could have been an Arab country deriving benefit from the US invasion of Iraq, namely through American appreciation for its free-market consociational model and its relevance in post-war Baghdad, the iron bond with Syria dictated otherwise. As the year closed, the bitter realization was that 2003 was a catastrophic follow-up to that climax of 2002: the Paris II economic summit held to help Lebanon emerge from its virtually insurmountable economic morass.

For much of the year, the Lebanese have had to contend with a virtual lockdown of their political system, provoked by a government of mostly pro-Syrian apparatchiks incapable of advancing a forward-looking policy agenda, grafted onto the more enduring personal rivalry between President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

This combination has suffocated even the vaguest of aspirations for domestic reform, all because the gentlemen in Damascus thought the new government would prevent Lebanon from turning into a fifth column while American soldiers entered Iraq. What the Syrians did not see, however, was that temporary quietude through a team of political heavyweights would lead to deadlock, and, therefore, threaten an economic revival necessary to ensure long-term Lebanese social stability. Lest we also forget, the Syrians need Lebanon as a safety valve to export hundreds of thousands of their laborers who might otherwise metamorphose into domestic Islamists if forced to rely solely on employment at home.

Lebanon’s Islamists showed a more paradoxical face in 2003. Even as Hizbullah behaved with remarkable pragmatism by mostly keeping the Shebaa Farms front quiet and negotiating a prisoner release with Israel, its Sunni counterparts were active in the shadows of Sidon and Tripoli. One might forget that this was a year in which an American missionary was killed in Sidon and several other foreigners the target of bomb attacks--and when militant Sunni Islamists were at the heart of fighting in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp.

Even as the public’s attention was focused on Hizbullah and its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, the real question was why the state behaved so passively toward the Sunni groups, who have posed a systematic domestic security threat in recent years--dating all the way back to the attempted Balamand bombing of Christian clergymen in the early 1990s.

Lax security and unanswered questions were also obvious in another highlight of the year, namely the rocket attack against Hariri’s Future Television station. It is not often that post-war Lebanon has had to contend with assaults against its politicians, and the general silence that followed the event suggested there was more than met the eye. If the effort was designed to intimidate Hariri, it only partially succeeded. Soon, both the Hariri and Lahoud factions were leaking damaging information on each other, and by year’s end the prime minister was openly drawing attention to his dispute with the president.

Looking ahead to 2004, the next battleground will be municipal elections scheduled for spring. Lahoud would like to extend his stay in office, but knows it will be difficult to justify a deferral of the presidential election in fall if local polls take place beforehand. On that basis alone, Hariri will support elections and, unless the security situation deteriorates dramatically, it is difficult to see him losing. Even Syria might flinch at the thought of postponing local elections that most Lebanese consider as relevant, if not more so, than legislative elections.

Then we must ask what will happen to Lahoud? The president has been peripatetic in recent weeks, even venturing overseas, when his modus operandi had been to avoid travel, except to countries having trivial local importance. If his mandate is to be extended, he must display verve and activity, and he has done so. Ultimately, however, his fate will be in the hands of others.

An extended or renewed mandate will be a tough sell for the president’s friends in Beirut and Damascus. Hariri is opposed to it, so too is Sfayr, and Parliament Speaker Nabih Birri has shown little enthusiasm. The Maronite community has never really been behind Lahoud and now, we hear, the Americans are whispering that whatever the constitution mandates on an election should be respected, although this can be read in contradictory ways. Lahoud will even be hard-pressed to find an ally in Paris, where President Jacques Chirac plainly backs Hariri.

So, will the corpse of 2003 resurrect in 2004? Everything suggests it might, since the alternatives could be disastrous, both for Lebanon and Syria. On the other hand the political leadership has rarely disappointed those predicting disappointment. But why fret? Whatever happens, the cast of characters will stay in office for the coming months; plenty of time to paint your new year black.

2003-12-31T07:49:00.000+02:00

More on the previous post: My article for the Daily Star today, but linked to the version posted on the Reason website, which, unlike the Star at present, actually has an article archive.

2003-12-29T16:06:00.000+02:00

Liberty, equality, fraternity
Alain Hertoghe sees anti-Americanism in French coverage of the Iraq war. His reward? Being fired by his employer, the French Catholic daily La Croix.

2003-12-28T09:03:00.000+02:00

Shammas on Said
Novelist Anton Shammas has written a very subtle short essay on Edward Said for the annual New York Times Magazine stiffs issue. Shammas, who is an Arab-Israeli and who famously and publicly argued that, as an Israeli citizen, he was entitled to full integration into an otherwise Jewish state, is now considerably more pessimistic about a Palestinian-Israeli peace.

He writes:

At the memorial service, a reading from the Arabic translation of his autobiography, ''Out of Place,'' replaced his English original in a moment of sheer magic, giving his life a home of sorts, a posthumous place, a mandate inside his virtual mother tongue. ''In his text,'' the philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote, in a passage that Said was fond of quoting, ''the writer sets up house. . . . For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.'' Arabic, that night in Beirut, was his house and his mandate.

It is interesting that when I first met Shammas, he felt that Hebrew would provide him with both his house and mandate, and indeed he told me how he did not want his Hebrew-written novel Arabesques to be translated into Arabic. Today I'm not so sure that he would agree with this. Language, for Shammas, may have become a source of betrayal and a symbol of expectations dashed, since it apparently was (as an exchange with AB Yehoshua suggested) and is (as his present pessimism confirms) insufficient to integrate him into Israeli society.

Shammas also writes:

In Said's essay ''On Lost Causes,'' he wrote that ''a lost cause is associated in the mind and in practice with a hopeless cause: that is, something you support or believe in that can no longer be believed in except as something without hope of achievement.'' But unlike some of us, Said never believed that Palestine was ''a lost cause.'' Rather, he believed that the intellectual has an ethical commitment to relentlessly and unflinchingly speak out, against all odds, against all grains and against all hegemonies -- real, imagined and self-proclaimed.

2003-12-28T08:41:00.000+02:00

At sea on O'Brian
Saw Peter Weir's film Master and Commander in a Beirut theater yesterday night, and thought of Christopher Hitchens' criticism, centered around the fact that Dr. Stephen Maturin is transformed into a mostly uninteresting character.

The summa of O'Brian's genius was the invention of Dr. Stephen Maturin. He is the ship's gifted surgeon, but he is also a scientist, an espionage agent for the Admiralty, a man of part Irish and part Catalan birth—and a revolutionary. He joins the British side, having earlier fought against it, because of his hatred for Bonaparte's betrayal of the principles of 1789—principles that are perfectly obscure to bluff Capt. Jack Aubrey. Any cinematic adaptation of O'Brian must stand or fall by its success in representing this figure.

On this the film doesn't even fall, let alone stand. It skips the whole project. As played by the admittedly handsome and intriguing Paul Bettany, Maturin is no more than a good doctor with finer feelings and a passion for natural history ... a superficial buddy movie is born out of one of the subtlest and richest and most paradoxical male relationships since Holmes and Watson.

The point is perfectly relevant. I would add that Maturin in the books is a somewhat menacing figure, for being unknown--Aubrey's equal, if not superior, in the use of weapons, and as capable of hard carnal desire as he is of scientific curiosity.

One note: in the original novel of the film (which I haven't read), the ship hunted down by Aubrey is an American one, not French as here, which would have been vastly more interesting a story in this day and age of allegedly eternal alliance with Britain. Just over a decade after the story takes place, England would burn Washington DC in the War of 1812.

Still, Weir's film is intriguing for returning us to the nautical adventure movie, which has been abandoned in recent years. Like the Western and 18th-century costumers, once-familiar genres, sea films now make only an occasional comeback and then, well, drift away. Expect Hollywood to pay some interest, though: Brad Pitt as Captain Blood.

2003-12-25T00:07:00.000+02:00

Liaison dangereuse
Chuck Freund sends a missive to Ayman al-Zawahiri.

2003-12-23T14:01:00.000+02:00

Silenced by Qaddafi
Last week the Sunday Telegraph in London asked me to pen a piece (along with one by the BBC's John Simpson) on the reaction in the Arab world to Saddam's capture. On Friday, however, Libya decided to give up its WMD, so the Telegraph didn't run my piece, as its priorities suddenly shifted.

So, here it is:

Saddam, alas, was no Hitler

BEIRUT--In the hours after Saddam Hussein appeared on television Sunday, Arab editorial writers scrambled to inject some meaning into the images of a once fearsome man—and former custodian of a state author Christine Moss Helms described in the 1980s as the “eastern flank of the Arab world”—transformed into a bewildered tramp.

A recurring reaction was that the episode, in particular Saddam’s reluctance to play Scarface and dissolve into a hail of gunfire, had somehow disgraced the Arabs. Most commentators in the region, but also Western observers and, even, Cardinal Renato Martino, the president of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace Commission, seemed to have but one word on their lips: humiliation.

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi in London, reflected this mood by writing: “It was a shock to us, and an insult to millions of other Arabs [to watch]…the Iraqi president submitting to the humiliating [American] medical examination; we would have liked to see him fight to the end and die a martyr like his sons and grandson, or choose the death of Hitler by firing a bullet into his head or swallowing poison.”

Lebanese publisher and journalist Talal Salman, an unrepentant Pan-Arabist whose Beirut paper, Al-Safir, has been among the most strident critics of the American presence in Iraq, also seemed troubled by Saddam’s craven exit: “It was an end worthy of a despot, an oppressor of his people, weak in the face of foreign occupation…Every dictator is a coward, he kills but doesn’t fight.”

However, was Saddam’s capture really a slap to Arabs frustrated at seeing their champions—Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Saddam himself—routinely pushed around by an alien superpower? For many it was, leading to often-voluntary amnesia regarding Saddam’s legacy. As Tunisian journalist Kamel Labidi wrote in Beirut’s English-language Daily Star, describing the reaction in Cairo to the capture: “Egyptian observers did not raise the issue of Saddam’s immense responsibility in bringing to its knees one of the wealthiest of Arab countries [and] in helping weaken an already tattered Arab world…”

However, this discomfort with Saddam’s fate merged with an understanding that he was also a splendid thug. A Damascus shopkeeper encountered on Sunday afternoon hardly seemed dishonoured by the arrest in Iraq. As he watched footage of the former leader, he smiled and remarked: “We got rid of him, but there is one left. Do you know who?” I hesitated: “No, you tell me.” He answered: “Osama bin Laden.” Somehow, I was not absolutely convinced it was bin Laden he had in mind, since the coded language of Arab societies will often substitute one villain for others much closer to home.

The humiliation argument also failed to adequately explain how much Arabs resent the suffocating reach of their autocrats, even if this is offset by powerful antipathy for the United States. In the immediate aftermath of Saddam’s arrest, this combination played itself out in a resort to conspiracy theories suggesting that the Americans had manipulated the incident. Saddam’s sister and daughter both argued he had been drugged, explaining why he had surrendered so quietly. The sister, Nawal Ibrahim Al-Hassan, explained: “If he were in full command of his mental capacities he would have resisted to [the] death.”

Other theories were more prosaic, seeking to explain the conditions leading to Saddam’s arrest. One account had it that Iran had collaborated in locating its old nemesis, in exchange for the Iraqi Governing Council’s expelling from its territory the Iranian opposition Mujahideen Khalq Organization. Another hypothesis was that the Americans had discovered Saddam’s whereabouts by intercepting his telephone calls to his second wife, Samira Shahbandar, who now lives in Lebanon with their son, Ali.

Arab conspiratorial thinking notwithstanding, the theories little approximated in duration those accompanying the fall of Baghdad last April, when it was rumoured that Saddam’s regime had been betrayed by its own security forces. It quickly became clear to all that the broken man on screen was indeed the former Iraqi leader, not one of his illustrious “doubles”, and that it was unlikely for someone in that condition to resist anyone.

But did the Arab world read into Saddam’s capture a general lesson about the fate of its autocratic rulers? Some did, and Arab-American academic Fouad Ajami summed up their argument most eloquently by writing: “Saddam is a crystal ball in which the rulers and the rogues in the region might glimpse the danger that attends them.” Perhaps, but it is doubtful that very many Arabs saw beyond the fact that Saddam’s captors were Americans. In the hierarchy of regional beefs, anti-Americanism still retains far more force than the overthrow of a brutal—yet also somehow palatable, for being home-grown—despot.

Saddam’s capture will not soon lead to an Arab liberal renaissance. However, the establishment of a truly open and democratic order in Iraq does have that potential, all the more so if it is soon transformed into an all-Iraqi venture. In that context, Saddam’s capture may one day take on more resonance in the region, though by then the Arabs will have likely airbrushed the Americans out of the narrative.

2003-12-23T13:52:00.000+02:00

A sheep in Wolfowitz clothing?
The Washington Post has an extended portrait of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The bottom line is that he's one misunderstood man.

Sez in one passage:

But to Wolfowitz, there is no contradiction between calculated policies and idealistic goals. Rather, he contends, they can reinforce each other. Indeed, Wolfowitz is most confrontational when he is most idealistic.

Nowhere is that more evident than in his advocacy of transforming the politics of the Middle East, a policy that frequently is attacked as unrealistically idealistic. As he put it to the Jerusalem Post earlier this year, "The idea that we could live with another 20 years of stagnation in the Middle East that breeds this radicalism and breeds terrorism is, I think, just unacceptable."

But some think Wolfowitz is out of his league:

Some see Wolfowitz's views on the Middle East as dangerously naive. "Wolfowitz doesn't know much about the business he's in," says retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, a former chief of the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the region. "He knows very little about war fighting. And he knows very little about the Middle East, aside from maybe Israel."

Wolfowitz responds, "I think I know a lot about Islam, as a whole, and I know a lot about the Middle East. I've been following it for a very long time." He also notes that the experts frequently have been wrong about whether one Arab state would attack another, as Iraq did to Kuwait in 1990, or what the reaction of the "Arab street" would be to the U.S. invasion of Iraq this year.

But to Wolfowitz, trying to change the Middle East is far from unrealistic. Rather, it is using universal ideals to achieve the practical end of curtailing terrorism. Just as much of East Asia democratized in the 1980s and 1990s, so too is there a chance that the Middle East could change radically. "It could," he says. "And it's certainly worth a try."

If that sounds a trifle Wilsonian, try Tim Cavanaugh's take on Wolfowitz for the Daily Star, which he reprinted on the Reason website.

2003-12-14T22:28:00.000+02:00

The Palestinians, Saddam and a Syrian
Work has made blogging all but impossible, but on the day Saddam Hussein was captured, some resurrection seems called for. Almost 10 days ago, I published an op-ed in the New York Times (the link is now pay only, but you can see a slightly altered version on the International Herald Tribune site here). The basic argument is that the Palestinian issue "for all its centrality to the Arab experience during the past half-century, and for all the justifiable grievances it has aroused...has, in many respects, rendered the Arab world impotent."

The argument is not a popular one in the Arab world, and there was the predictable criticism, including the natural conclusion that I was a Zionist. Yet I did get positive feedback from several Arab readers, and a stern rebuke from a supporter of Israel (indeed several), who could not stomach the fact that I described the Palestinians as "dispossessed."

On Saddam, I was in Damascus, in the office of a senior official when the news came through. He seemed unperturbed. Later on, in a tourist shop, I saw the owner looking at AL-Jazeera watching an American take swab samples from Saddam’s mouth for DNA samples. The Syrian smiled broadly: “We got rid of him, but there is one more. Do you know who?” I responded: “No, you tell me.” He answered: “Osama bin Laden.” And when someone else said: “And George Bush,” he feigned shock and, with a smile, said: “I don’t discuss politics!”

On this day, the Syrian didn’t care about Bush, even though he had just signed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. All he was enjoying was the collapse of an Arab tyrant.

2003-11-07T22:55:00.000+02:00

Back in town after three weeks of idle bliss. Not much to post, but here are two pieces I published in the past week. The first, for Thursday's Daily Star, urges the Arabs to welcome a second Bush term, since that would greatly enhance the U.S.'s remaining in Iraq; the second is my bi-weekly contribution to Slate's International Papers column.

More to come, though as a tidbit, I would recommend this Q&A session at Georgetown University with Paul Wolfowitz, somehow regarded as the new "dark prince" of the post-Cold War era. Here's a few choice quotes:

"You cited some things that Israelis have to change and you could make a longer list. You could have talked about settlements, for example. The President has talked about settlements, he's talked about the wall, he's talked about the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. There's no question that the President is prepared to put pressure on the Israelis to change. "

And this rather astute observation: "If the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Ghandi I think they could in fact make a more (laughter) - just very quickly - I believe the power of individuals demonstrating peacefully is enormous..."

Some of us who support the creation of a Palestinian state have been arguing that for a long time.

2003-10-06T19:58:00.000+02:00

From the archives
On another theme entirely, my friend Tim Cavanaugh has sent this link to an extravagant article he wrote in the dying days of Suck.com on the Virgin Mary's contribution to the anti-communist crusade, which she had planned to title The God that Failed, before copyright infringement laws prevented her from doing so.

In confession, Cavanaugh noted that the Virgin Mary had done much more than Pope John Paul II to rout the Reds: "Just another case of a man being praised for a woman's job," said he, genuflecting.

2003-10-06T19:41:00.000+02:00

Front line: Upper West Side
After an extended period of catalepsy, be prepared for 3 weeks of occultation. At the end of the week I will be off on what my friends consider a well-deserved, and my enemies a welcome, vacation.

After writing a piece on the death of Edward Said, and comparing him to Fouad Ajami (a piece you can find here or here), I received mixed reviews to this comparison of two different, yet maybe not so different men.

My favorite was this billet doux from a Lebanese admirer:

I was outraged to read in your October 2 issue Michael Young's article on Edward Said and Fouad Ajami. How can anybody in his right mind draw a parallel between Edward Said, the champion of all Arabs, the man who stood for the cause of all Arabs, that of Palestine, and put himself and his family at great risk living and working in New York, the bedrock of Zionism in the world today, to Fouad Ajami, a man who exemplifies to most Arabs the traitor who has sold his soul and mind to Zionism and to everything that is anti-Arab. Shame on you Mr Young , you have truly offended all free minded Arabs.

Well gosh, I am sorry. I didn't realize that Said took such a risk living in New York amid all those zany Zionists. At least he wasn't in the World Trade Center when they flew a couple of airplanes into it.

2003-09-27T20:16:00.000+02:00

Collusion across the southern border
Here is my weekly Lebanon comment from the Daily Star, on the impending (or is it?) prisoner release between Israel and Hizbullah. It argues that though enemies they may be, the Israelis and Hizbullah are united in seeing the deal as a means of screwing Yasser Arafat.

2003-09-27T20:13:00.000+02:00

Uday's failed assassins
An article in the Christian Science Monitor reveals the name of those who tried to kill Uday, Saddam's son, back in December 1996. He was hit by 17 bullets, but survived.

The story is interesting in two ways to me. First it reveals that arguably the most famous account of the attempted hit, the one written by the Cockburns in Out of the Ashes, is apparently wrong in several major details. The Cockburns said a group called Al-Nahda was responsible for the attack, and was founded by well-educated young Baghdadis. It turns out that the real culprit (if the Monitor story is correct) was a group called the 15 Shaaban group, which was made up of Iraqi Shiites from the south.

A second detail is that Saddam managed to find out who had carried out the attack thanks to the Jordanians, who handed over a 15 Shaaban militant to the Iraqi regime. He was tortured and revealed the names of the perpetrators. They were hiding out in the southern marshes, but one was killed and several of their family members were executed.

2003-09-27T19:57:00.000+02:00

Said comments
Among the comments on Edward Said, this one by Charles Paul Freund in the Daily Star (and which picks up on a theme he developed in Reason magazine here) is well worth reading. It's main thesis is that the Orientalist critique, though it survives, has in many of its manifestations hit a brick wall of sorts, so that one of it's primary characteristics today is its transformation into a form of "Occidentalism"--whereby it is the West that is "objectified" and rendered into an Other.

Christopher Hitchens has written a remarkably warm obituary in Slate, which manages to highlight Said's sensitivity and paper over the real differences between the two men in recent months, while also underlining that Said's political views were, at times, wrong. The real story is often in the details, and Hitchens affirms that the two were on speaking terms almost until the end, with Said recently demanding that Hitchens write about a Palestinian organization known as the Palestinian National Initiative.

The merit of both pieces is that they give Said his due without being reverential. It was also with some surprise that I learned in perusing Out of Place, Said's partial autobiography, that the doctor who had diagnosed Said with leukemia is an old family friend of ours--a piece of information surely of no general interest, except to show how small the world of the Christian Levantine is, even if Said often insisted that he did not identify with any such group.

2003-09-25T18:54:00.000+03:00

After the last sky
Edward Said is dead, and for those of us who were often highly critical of him, particularly in his later years, it's surely not a pleasant moment. Dying doesn't make a wrong right, but it does obligate one to look back a bit more closely and see if all the criticism was justified.

Below is the last piece I wrote on Said. He reportedly once asked what I had against him. Nothing at all. I was disappointed to see that the man who should have embodied the highest correlation of the best of East and West (to borrow poorly from Christopher Hitchens) somehow ended up having so little to offer when it came to helping direct the Arab world out of its pervading autocracy and narrow-mindedness.

I believe Said had one thing absolutely right, though: he understood that the only real solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a binational democratic state. Nothing to date suggests he was wrong; only that he got the timing wrong.

Here is the piece:

In praise of surrender?

They were issuing honorary doctorates last Saturday at the American University of Beirut, and you could have pretty much guessed the list of honorees before attending the ceremony, had you been invited.

I wasn’t, and read with trepidation in this newspaper that “hope for the future was a central element in all the recipients’ speeches.” The bane of university award ceremonies is that speakers are under contract to crank out hope, even if there is little to rustle up. The events are too costly to send the public home looking for cyanide or a razor.

However, a comparison of the writings of two of the accomplished literary honorees tells a different story. When university ends, real life begins and what Edward Said and Amin Maalouf represent outside the compulsory optimism demanded by the academy is well worth examining. In different ways, the two men illustrate the difficulties, at times self-inflicted, of the intellectual in a world where doctorates, honorary or real, often mean very little.

Was there ever a doubt that AUB would choose Said, who is on everybody’s short list for some kind of award? With him you’re playing it safe while also putting up a front of daring subversiveness. That’s because Said has convinced everybody he’s dirt in the eye of mainstream America, when in fact he is merely its avatar--both a foil of the American system, and someone who could have achieved pop status nowhere outside of it.

Said will forever be remembered for his book Orientalism, but few people look closely enough at his output as a columnist. Several books have been collated from Said’s commentaries, most often written in English for Arabic newspapers. That the articles preach to the converted is hardly their worst failing, though it is easy telling an Arab readership that the US is overbearing and that Israel abuses Palestinian human rights. Said wastes much time breaking down open doors.

What makes Said’s articles disappointing is that they offer no cures for the maladies he diagnoses. The French sociologist Raymond Aron, himself a columnist, wrote in his memoirs that he realized it was easy in his articles to publicly criticize the behavior of politicians; far more challenging was putting himself in their shoes and proposing realistic alternatives. With Said one gets variations on a single harangue. This intermittent promoter of hopefulness has become that most tiresome of stock figures: a Middle Eastern Cassandra incapable of proposing a way out of the region’s tribulations.

Sitting next to Said was writer Amin Maalouf, far more hazardous an honoree for preferring to speak in French. The message Maalouf brought was different than Said’s, being expressed most prominently in his 1993 novel The Rock of Tanios. One can indefinitely debate the novel’s autobiographical attributes, but even a cursory reading will show the book is very much an expression of the hopelessness of Maalouf’s generation.

When it was published, The Rock of Tanios attracted attention for the wrong reasons. The novel won France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt, provoking the usual shrieking from the literati divided over whether the book was worthy of their attention. Though the story was set during the Lebanese conflict of 1840, Maalouf was really thinking about 1975. And like his character Tanios, who, despairing of his own society, literally disappears at the end of the novel, Maalouf and his generation figuratively did so by going into exile once Lebanon’s civil war began.

In different ways, Said and Maalouf speak to the surrender of the intellectual. Where Said sees the intellectual as a vanguard for change and innovation, he uncannily personifies the contrary in his most popular writings. Where Maalouf won a prize celebrating the vitality of writers, he did so on the basis of a book acknowledging the failure of humanism and the futility of the intellectual in his own society.

A thought comes to mind: Are Said and Maalouf, who have fallen under Western eyes since leaving their countries of origin, also lingering victims of the Middle East? Is that part of them that remains attached to the region destined to point out the limitations of the intellectual? Was that high mass at AUB really as hopeful an event as the organizers would have liked to pretend.

2003-09-25T10:40:00.000+03:00

Aoun and Syria
Here's a link to my Daily Star article of today on the Syria Accountability Act, and a second one to an article written last Saturday for the Lebanon section of the paper. Both argue that Syria and the Lebanese government have provided supporters of the legislation with few alternatives.

The key role of Michel Aoun in all this might interest you to go back to this portrait I drew of the general in the Lebanon Report (which I edited) several years ago, after visiting him in his exile outside Paris--the first of two encounters.

I've always been ambiguous about Aoun, have little respect for his political skills, but also recognize that he has the keen instincts of a demagogue when it comes to gauging the public mood, which means he's often in tune with the public's discontent.

2003-09-19T14:08:00.000+03:00

Matt Barganier demands to be read
Received this response from Matt Barganier to my previous posting. Seems only fair to run his more serious points:

...Welch is obsessed with the 500,000 number. That’s fine, but he uses it as a mallet against the antiwar camp:

“[A] New York-based advocacy group called the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) concluded in a May 1996 survey that ‘these mortality rates translate into a figure of over half a million excess child deaths as a result of sanctions.’

“In addition to doubling the Iraqi government highest number and attributing all deaths to the embargo, CESR suggested a comparison that proved popular among the growing legions of sanctions critics: ‘In simple terms, more Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions than the combined toll of two atomic bombs on Japan.’ The word genocide started making its way into the discussion.

“Still, the report might well have ended up in the dustbin of bad mathematics had a CESR fact-finding tour of Iraq not been filmed by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes.”

The dustbin of bad mathematics? As I pointed out, the mere fact that CESR arrived at the figure the wrong way doesn’t debunk the figure. Also, I said that Welch put “most” of his effort into smearing the antiwar crowd; I granted that he throws a few softballs at sanctions. But why spend so much time calling everyone who blames the deaths on sanctions “loonies”?

As for my “sloppy thought”: Welch did mention more than one source for the 500,000 or higher number, including an Iraqi govt. report.

Also, I didn’t blame Welch for adjusting the excess deaths rate to 1989 levels. I merely mentioned that he did so. OK, so Matt Welch says it could be 420,000 dead kids. Garfield says it could be as many as 530,000. So again: Why spend so much time calling those who use the 500,000 “loonies”?

I also said that Welch was correct when he said that UNICEF doesn’t lay sole blame for the deaths on the sanctions. So what? Welch’s alternative culprits don’t make much sense. I spent a few words on that.

On the increased deaths: Did I misquote Welch? In the 2002 article, he said that deaths went down after oil-for-food. Hooray U.S./UN! In the Daily Star article, he said they went up. Bad Saddam! Give me a break, will ya?

Hey, I think you’re doing a good thing with the Daily Star. I read it at least once a week. But you oughta do me the courtesy of reading my stuff more carefully before you pull your guilt by association shit (Alouni) on me. (ouch. ed)

Best,
Matt Barganier

2003-09-19T00:05:00.000+03:00

Bargain analysis
Received this word from one Matt Barganier, at antiwar.com, on Matt Welch's piece of a few weeks ago, and with a snide remark on my comment on Al-Jazeera:

"Speaking of unimpressive reporting (al-Jazeera)--you oughta read Matt Welch's stuff before you print it", with this link.

My response is below:

Hey Matt,

This is Matt Welch’s fight, but since you rather vulgarly instructed me to read what I edit in the Daily Star, let me turn around and tell you to read more closely what you claim to critique in your shoddy text. In your mail you also snidely made an aside on my own column today on Taysir Alouni of Al-Jazeera. I imagine you two would get along very well.

You open: “Welch puts most of his effort into smearing critics of sanctions/war and absolving the U.S./U.N. of primary blame for Iraq's twelve-year humanitarian disaster.”

Maybe that’s how you read this concluding passage by Welch: “Which is an excellent reason to question their [sanctions] continued infliction upon countries such as Cuba, Libya and Myanmar. With the very notable exception of South Africa, the sanction tool’s track record in changing dictatorial behavior (or triggering regime change, which is often the real motivation) has been poor. Surely there must be some option between all-out war and a slap on the wrist, preferably one that doesn’t contribute to thousands of needless deaths.”

I think it’s pretty clear that what you have here is a statement of doubt on sanctions, not a smear of sanctions’ critics.

Second, you write that Welch “claims to debunk the frequently heard statistics about the size of the calamity.” Bullshit. All he claimed to debunk was that, according to UNICEF figures, sanctions alone were directly responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. He never offers a figure of his own--of which more later--and says that UNICEF never cited an absolute figure either. His stats are basically designed to prove that the numbers game is inconclusive.

When you write: "Welch cites the original UNICEF report for the years 1991-1998 as one source for the 500,000 figure," his whole point was that UNICEF did not cite that figure, at least in the way it was understood. (By the way were there any other original sources for the figure? Sloppy thought.) What the report said was: "If the substantial reduction in the under-five mortality rate during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998."

In plain terms, that meant if 1980s trends (read for the entire decade) continued uninterrupted there would have been half a million fewer deaths. What Welch pointed out was simply that if you based the excess death figure just on 1989 figures (and in the Star piece he did not say that a 1989 base year was "more accurate"), the excess deaths figure would be lower. It's not a value judgment he was making, but recognition that throughout the 1980s the stats changed, so that as you moved nearer the end of the decade, the estimates (the 500,000 figure constantly cited) fell somewhat. That’s all.

Then you write: “He then invokes a 1999 study by Richard Garfield, a nursing professor at Columbia University, which sets the 1991-1998 death toll between 106,000 and 227,000. This debunks the myth of a half million, right? Not exactly. Garfield's updated estimate for the entire 1990-2002 period is actually 350,000 to 530,000. In other words, the authority Welch uses to contradict UNICEF and other purveyors of what he calls "the Iraqi babies scam" says that total deaths could be 6% higher than the "scammers" proclaim!”

C’mon Matt, reread what Welch wrote. He doesn’t contradict UNICEF for God’s sake, he makes the case that UNICEF never said what it was wrongly quoted as saying. Welch actually never confirms or denies the 500,000 death figure; in fact if you cite him on the 1989 base year, you’re saying that Welch is closer to believing the 400,000 figure, which is high enough. In fact Welch didn’t cite any figure at all for death estimates. What he did do was say that the deaths were not solely caused by sanctions, and that quote came from UNICEF. His citing of Garfield shows that he’s willing to accept a high death toll, but it’s not an absolute figure he’s after, it’s what caused the deaths?

And as Garfield’s figures showed, deaths actually went up in Iraq when money flowed in after oil-for-food. You never actually disagree with that stat by the way (indeed you cite it), so perhaps you might suggest a reason why it did go up? Why not offer an answer?

Finally you misread what Welch said in this passage: “UNICEF found that under-five mortality actually decreased in the autonomous north, while doubling in Saddam-controlled regions, giving pro-sanctions (and pro-war) advocates evidence that the Iraqi dictator was largely to blame. (It is also true that the north received far more international aid.)”

You make this out to be a cop-out. In fact Welch doesn’t argue this from the perspective of someone who is pro-sanctions or pro-war. He merely observes that pro-sanctions (and pro-war) advocates exploited the figure. His parenthesis I read as an effort to qualify the argument of the pro-sanctions and pro-war crowd. Is Welch pro-war? I don’t know, nor have I ever discussed the matter with him. But he does cite UNICEF to the effect that war was one of the factors in the babies’ deaths, and to the best of my knowledge Welch nowhere has condoned killing babies, so you might find your answer there.

2003-09-18T23:59:00.000+03:00

Taysir Alouni, again
Many readers will have come here through the critical piece I wrote in the Daily Star today on Taysir Alouni, Al-Jazeera's correspondent accused of being an AL-Qaeda operative, which Reason picked up here.

2003-09-13T20:26:00.000+03:00

Bashir Gemayel
Tomorrow is the 21st anniversary of the death of Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon's president-elect in 1982, before he was killed in a bomb explosion, apparently set off by an agent of the pro-Syrian Syrian Social National Party (SSNP), reportedly at the order of a current SSNP minister, no doubt in collaboration with the Syrian intelligence services.

Marking the occasion, I wrote this commentary for the Daily Star, while outside my window people not long ago finished commemorating the anniversary (celebrated a day early this year). It's odd to see how so many are young, with no possible memory of Bashir. That's similar to the age of the supporters of Michel Aoun, the former head of the military government between 1988-90, who also seem to have little recollection of the days when the general was all howitzer and brimstone.

2003-09-07T19:22:00.000+03:00

It's rare for me to post an entire article of mine, but this piece from the Daily Star in mid-May (which I regretted writing around the time of the Aqaba Summit, and which I cannot link to a URL) has suddenly become strangely relevant -- again.

The road map is dead
The policy of the US and Israeli governments to isolate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been a fiasco. That was always expected when the Bush administration and the Sharon government reduced the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to one individual--one who now has every incentive to demolish the road map to peace.

The absurdity of the Israeli position might be gauged by reading through a Jerusalem Post article on Monday, following the spate of Hamas attacks against Israeli targets at the weekend. The article highlighted the debate within the Israeli cabinet over whether to banish Arafat. In the end, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided against it.

As the paper reported: “Sharon said that from his point of view removing Arafat from the Mukata would create a ‘less comfortable’ situation for Israel than if he continues to be holed up in his compound.” It also noted: “Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who in the past was a major proponent of expelling Arafat, said at the meeting that now he should not be removed … To do so, according to Defense establishment officials, would severely weaken Abbas.”

The passages show the sheer ludicrousness of the Israeli position. Both Sharon and Mofaz effectively admitted they could not circumvent Arafat, after months of advocating a policy based on the premise that the Palestinian leader could be marginalized. Worse, one of the justifications for not exiling him was that this might harm Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, the very man supposed to represent a legitimate alternative to Arafat.

The Israeli defense minister probably caught his own inconsistency, because the Post article continued: “Mofaz said that there (are) now effectively two concentrations of power in the PA, and that Arafat is doing everything he can to trip up Abbas and keep him from gaining real control.” However, it is apparent that Abbas’s chances of gaining control are minimal: “Mofaz also said he has his doubts about Abbas seriousness in taking overall security responsibility.”

These facts alone suggest it was a bad idea to turn Arafat into a foe of a negotiated settlement. It was plain from the outset that the Bush administration, encouraged by Sharon, missed the forest for the trees. By focusing on undermining the Palestinian leader, the US and Israel gave Arafat the road map as hostage. The only problem was that while the US administration probably did this involuntarily, Sharon is delighted to see the plan founder.

In an editorial yesterday this paper pointed to a discrepancy in Washington’s strategy, namely that it seeks to remove a man who, for all his faults, “is the closest thing the Arab world has to a legitimately elected leader.” There may be some truth there, even though Arafat is as authoritarian as they come. However, he so controls the reins of power in the Palestinian territories that he never allowed a credible alternative to emerge from within his Fatah movement.

One of the aspects of the road map that is most intriguing is that while it sets up a detailed mechanism to make Arafat less relevant, it does not, and cannot, bar him from political life. He will always retain an ability to clog up the process, and his control over patronage, combined with Palestinian rage against Israel and the US, would probably mean he could win an election scheduled for the first phase of the plan. That would have the effect of turning the road map on its head, making Arafat its chief implementer rather than prime target.

Sharon wants to make changes to the road map and empty it further of its content. He can do this because US President George W. Bush is unwilling to put his weight behind the plan. That’s why one should expect little vigor from Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was remarkably demure last week when Sharon implied he would talk to Bush directly about the road map, before telling an Israeli paper that he had no intention of dismantling settlements.

Neither Sharon nor Arafat will go through with the road map as it now stands. That leaves Abbas more exposed than ever. His only true friends are the self-deluded American and European officials who somehow believe he can hammer out a plan that most Palestinians loathe with an Israeli government that loathes it too. Meanwhile, Hamas and Islamic Jihad trash what remains of Palestinian credibility, giving Sharon more arguments to avoid dealing with essentials.

The road map is virtually a dead letter, and its sponsors are to blame. That means the US, but also the EU, the UN and Russia, all of which backed a plan containing the seeds of its own destruction. One might blame the sordidness of Sharon and Arafat. Yet the feelings of both men were always clear, and it is probably fair to say that no plan could bridge their differences.

2003-09-06T19:02:00.000+03:00

Spanish Inquisition
Al-Jazeera’s high-profile correspondent, Taysir Alouni, has been arrested in Spain, allegedly for having contacts with members of Al-Qaeda, including members of a cell discovered in Spain. Al-Jazeera ran a story on the arrest on its website, and noted the move had “been met with condemnation by the media network and non-governmental organizations.”

More interesting, however, was this report on the arrest in the London-based Al-Hayat, which remarked that Syria (Alouni is Syrian) had warned the Spanish authorities of his “suspicious activities” and had been watching him for years, because it accused him of being a member of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood. According to Al-Hayat, Alouni has long been banned from entering Syria for that reason.

Is Alouni guilty? Who knows? If he’s not--and the Spanish accusation against him must be read before even thinking of imparting guilt--he certainly erred when it came to his journalistic credibility, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq. He may not deserve prison, but if Al-Jazeera really claims to represent something new in the Middle East, he deserves to at least be fired.

2003-09-06T10:26:00.000+03:00

For those who didn't reroute here through the article, here is my comment for the Lebanon section of the Daily Star on recent efforts at political and economic reform in Lebanon. I say "efforts" with considerable difficulty, because this all is nothing more than a transparent ploy by the president, Emile Lahoud, to build up momentum, particularly in Syria, so that his mandate will be extended or renewed next year, which will require what is bound to be an unpopular constitutional amendment.

For aficionados of Lebanese politics only.

2003-09-06T10:17:00.000+03:00

The end of Zionism?
Here is a truly remarkable piece titled "A Failed Israeli Society is Collapsing," written by the former Knesset speaker, Avraham Burg, written for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot, reproduced in The Forward, and now reprinted in the International Herald Tribune. In many ways, it says it all.

Burg writes: "It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun..."

"...The biblical landscape is charming. From the window you can gaze through the geraniums and bougainvillea and not see the occupation. Traveling on the fast highway that takes you from Ramot on Jerusalem's northern edge to Gilo on the southern edge, a 12-minute trip just west of the Palestinian roadblocks, it's hard to comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised Arab who must creep for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to him. One road for the occupier, one road for the occupied."

Burg's proposal? "Do you want democracy? No problem. Either abandon the greater Land of Israel, to the last settlement and outpost, or give full citizenship and voting rights to everyone, including Arabs. The result, of course, will be that those who did not want a Palestinian state alongside us will have one in our midst, via the ballot box."

2003-09-06T09:26:00.000+03:00

Worst and dimmest
I haven't posted anything in two weeks, which should be a cause for celebration. The usual blogger lament stands: work makes blogging, and much else, impossible, so let's try to make up for some lost time.

Here is a rather angry piece I wrote for the Daily Star's opinion page on Ehud Barak, who was cited in the recent Or Commission report on the gunning down of Arab-Israeli protestors in 2000. I've never cared for Barak, who was always more bluster than anything else, and have found his post-election defeat persona even more insufferable than the one he had while in office.

I still recall what he told Benny Morris in the New York Review of Books exchange with Robert Malley and Husseing Agha, describing Arabic culture as one "in which to tell a lie ... creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judaeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't."

Coming from a man who often proved to be a splendid liar himself, this was truly remarkable.

2003-08-22T19:32:00.000+03:00

Held in low esteem
My friend Chibli Mallat is being excoriated for a clause he wrote in a commentary in today's Daily Star on the bombing against UN headquarters in Baghdad. Chibli wrote: "I promised de Mello to write to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whom I hold in high esteem, about the usefulness of a UN role, and I did."

Evidently, his holding Wolfowitz in "high esteem" was too much for some. Alas, I cannot out Chibli's private correspondence, which simply proves that academics are monumentally petty people, but I do take perverse pleasure in seeing that the ideological divide on Iraq is as sharp as a knife--and that Western intellectuals especially are impaling themselves on it.

It's a Zuleika Dobson moment: mass suicide by different ideological suitors, and the river is filling with bodies. Oh well, at least Saddam is gone.

For a PDF view of today's Star opinion page, go here.

2003-08-21T21:48:00.000+03:00

I would like to claim laziness as my reason for not posting anything to this site. But that's not it at all. I've had problems with the Blogger website that I can't explain. Error messages all over. Hope to make up for that anon.

2003-08-17T09:18:00.000+03:00

Two opinion pieces in this week's Daily Star are well worth looking at, both the work of historians: David Abulafia of Cambridge has written on the deal between the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and Sultan Al-Kamel in 1229 to share Jerusalem. The compromise, which came during the Crusades, was an effort by both men to avoid a confrontation (Frederick, who was also king of Sicily, was an Islamophile), and Abulafia used the incident to make a commentary on any future Palestinian-Israeli deal on Jerusalem.

Military historian Douglas Porch has written a commentary on how the German and Japanese occupation models are not examples to emulate in Iraq, but, on the contrary, ones which should be avoided by the U.S. The piece is drawn from a longer one he wrote for the National Interest magazine.

2003-08-09T18:32:00.000+03:00

Hi, Bye
"It's good to get them in a dialogue while their opinions are not fully formed on matters large and small."

With these words from Christopher Ross, the special coordinator for public diplomacy at the State Department (and a former ambassador to Syria), the Bush administration has declared its intention to subvert Arab minors--at least political minors. Ross was speaking about the new State Department (taxpayer) funded Arabic-language magazine Hi that is distributed in over a dozen Arab countries, according to the Washington Post.

The Post reports: "The premiere issue of the glossy, full-color 72-page monthly appeared in July with a cover story on the experiences of Arab students in American colleges and shorter articles on yoga, sandboarding, singer Norah Jones, Arab American actor Tony Shalhoub and marriage counseling -- the latter story illustrated with a photo of Dr. Phil McGraw, the Oprah-spawned TV tough-love guru.

"It doesn't contain a word about the American invasion of Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Afghanistan or al Qaeda. Nor will future issues. The magazine's editors and its State Department funders plan a resolutely apolitical magazine."

That's very interesting. A lifestyle magazine geared towards a young Arab audience is supposed to be a subtle way of getting Western values across. However, I wonder whether those who imagined a publication that will cost U.S. taxpayers $4 million per year have actually reflected on how culture is used in the Arab world.

Their shaky assumption is that Arab youths will absorb Western values by reading about Lenny Kravitz and Norah Jones. In fact, whether we're talking about the Arab world or elsewhere (but particularly the Arab world), there is always a gap between embracing a Western cultural image or icon, and internalizing the values it represents to cover most other aspects of ones life. Culture in this day and age offers a menu, so that you can have Madonna as an entree and Bin Laden for dessert (as several 9/11 hijackers proved). The interaction between the modern and the traditional is constant in the Middle East, and, so, the impact of a lifestyle magazine might be very limited indeed.

A second objection I have is whether it is worth paying that much money when Arabs already have access to Western shows, films and music through satellite channels and other media. Plus, Hi's readers in most Arab countries (who can pay about $2 a copy) will also be that those who have access to and can afford a plethora of Western magazines already being distributed. (Even in the most closed Arab countries, many Western publications can be found, though sometimes delayed; their distribution is limited, however, and they’re often priced out of the local market.)

Moreover, Hi’s potential readers are the educated elite of the Arab countries, and most already know the U.S. anyway. The State Department may be preaching to the converted--or conversely to an elite that will robustly reject conversion.

Far more useful than Hi from a U.S. "public policy" perspective is to simply allow more Arab students into the U.S. and let them be educated in American universities. Instead, what we see now is the opposite. Some might complain this will cause another 9/11, but (a) the vast majority of Arabs in the U.S. are and have always been perfectly decent folk, and (b) there are ways to ensure that a minority of them won't threaten U.S. security, while protecting the majority's civil rights.

2003-08-09T13:23:00.000+03:00

From the archives: As I was buying a newspaper today, I crossed paths with the minister and Phalange Party leader Karim Pakradouni, two bodyguards in tow. Pakradouni was Flamingo-like in his white polo shirt and slacks, and struck up a conversation with whatever moved in his blast zone.

In tribute, I reprint below a portrait I drew of him several months ago in the Daily Star, which earned the owner of the paper a telephone call from a Pakradouni associate (and the usual gratitude from me).

The perils of Karim
Several years ago a friend and I were invited to interview Karim Pakradouni at his home. I had just reviewed his latest book where I described Pakradouni as a chameleon, a man of contradictions, and, in so many words, an opportunist. When I asked whether he thought the review was fair, he hardly missed a beat before answering: “Yes, yes.”

Of course that was Pakradouni being versatile, since it was obvious he had not read the review and couldn’t care less whether it had been fair or not. But had he read it, Pakradouni would probably have answered in the same way, since a defensive rejoinder would have required a direct approach deeply distasteful to a spirited rogue who thrives on oblique movement.

In those days Pakradouni was still the number-two man in the Phalange Party, deputy to the no less elastic George Saadeh. By a stroke of luck, and opportune political backing, Pakradouni has since scaled the unanticipated, if scarcely dizzying heights of party leadership, and today finds himself a government minister. This has pushed him into unfamiliar territory, since to buttress his trembling power base the chameleon has turned into a demagogue.

The instrument of this metamorphosis is the debate over “balanced development.” As minister for administrative development, Pakradouni has called for the more even geographical distribution of state funding, framing the issue as one of constitutional necessity. In fact, he’s been playing confessional politics, provoking a cabinet row last week after contending that more government money went to schools in Muslim areas of Beirut than in Christian ones. He followed this up Wednesday by stating that the bulk of state funds for expropriation purposes were earmarked for Beirut, at the expense of Christian areas outside.

Pakradouni has to pay his way in the government, and what better means to satisfy his benefactor, President Emile Lahoud, than to stick it to Prime Minister Rafik Hariri? However, the Phalange leader also has other constituencies to please, because he knows that his popularity is as thin as his consistency. Pakradouni probably assumes that if he is to leverage his ministerial portfolio into a parliamentary seat, he must become a spokesman for Christian resentment.

Can he succeed? Pakradouni’s past might provide an answer. Like Claudius, who feigned idiocy to survive his murderous nephew Caligula and become emperor, Pakradouni emerged strengthened from the internecine Lebanese Forces wars of the 1980s. An Armenian Orthodox, he was regarded as too communally weak to threaten the ruffians fighting for the militia’s leadership. That’s why Pakradouni politically (and physically) outlasted virtually all the men he served: Elie Hobeiqa and Samir Geagea, but also three presidents--Elias Sarkis, Bashir Gemayel, and his current arch enemy, Amine Gemayel.

But this journeyman’s political journey began before the war. Pakradouni was instrumental in initiating contacts between the Phalange and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in the early 1970s, and he did the same with Syria once the war started in 1975. After such a variegated tour it was stunning to hear Pakradouni once say, in answer to a question as to how he could change his politics so often, that it was not he who had changed, but the surrounding circumstances, to which he had had to adapt.

The only problem with Pakradouni’s reputation for flightiness is that it has made him incapable of generating loyalty. Always too clever by half, the Phalange leader has now been co-opted by the president’s men, useful only for as long as he plays their game. With or without them, however, he is politically irrelevant as an autonomous force, his only real merit being that he is living proof of Lebanon’s good-natured promotion of the ideologically amoral.

Pakradouni’s rise merits recognition in another regard, namely as a provocation against Lebanon’s sectarian system. That an Armenian, and an Orthodox no less, should stand at the head of an essentially Maronite Catholic party, is a splendid reminder of how the postwar Lebanese political order disdains even a semblance of legitimacy. On the contrary, illegitimacy is what guaranteed Pakradouni’s ascent. What better man to acquire than one who could only assemble a few thousand votes in Beirut during the 1996 parliamentary elections?

So, the answer seems obvious: Pakradouni will not succeed in surfing into parliament on a wave of Christian popularity. He may well end up in that august institution (which teems with men far worse than he), but not thanks to any freshly minted esteem. That’s Pakradouni’s dilemma: he’s been for so long considered the ultimate middleman that it’s almost impossible to take him seriously as one of those whose interests must be mediated.

The only thing the Christian demagogue act will do is irritate Hariri. It’s a pity, but also very instructive, that the leader of a once venerable party should today find himself reduced to a mere gadfly. Then again who thought Karim Pakradouni would ever make it this far in the first place?

2003-08-09T12:27:00.000+03:00

Overrating Powell
A few thoughts on the reports earlier this week in the Washington Post that Secretary of State Colin Powell might not remain for a second Bush term, assuming there is one. But first a short aside to this New York Times link suggesting that those Iraqi trucks Powell pointed to as WMD production facilities were, it seems, actually designed to make hydrogen...for weather balloons.

Now back to the Post reports: I'm rarely one to agree with Newt Gingrich, who has his own agenda in trying to undermine Powell, but there is truth in what he says about the secretary of state as regards the Middle East. If one institution can be said to have protected and abetted the stalemate in U.S.-Arab relations for decades, if one institution helped ensure that successive administrations would ignore issues of democracy and human rights in the region, it was the inevitably “moderate” State Department.

Why did this situation occur? In part because for a long time there was a core of so-called Arabists at the State Department who genuinely believed in the possibility of domestic Arab reform, and who sensed that a more aggressive approach on democracy might permanently alienate regimes and abort such reform. (China hands, I recall, used much the same rationale after the Tiananmen massacre). So what ensued was a paradox: the State Department, motivated by a desire to cooperate with Arab regimes in the hope they would improve, gave them an incentive not to do so.

A second reason is bureaucratic indolence. The State Department, like any other large bureaucracy, tends to preserve the status quo because that is what is bureaucratically safest. In the Middle East, transformation not only threatened to shake up existing (and often painstakingly engineered) relations with Arab regimes, it also gave competing bureaucracies an opportunity to meddle in State’s affairs.

In the first year of the Bush administration, Powell’s myriad shortcomings (for example, “smart sanctions” in Iraq) were concealed by the fact that foreign policy was not a Bush priority. Powell didn’t try to change things, and no one really cared. Such a minimalist philosophy, however, couldn’t work after 9/11. In contrast, from the outset Powell’s competitors at the Pentagon took a different tack. Initially the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, came in with a plan to reform the armed forces, and after 9/11 that penchant for change--that delight in keeping perceived opponents constantly off balance--was used to steer the administration towards war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

While I have many reservations about the neocon philosophy, it has certainly not brooked stalemate--stalemate that we in the Arab world have spent decades whining about, whether when mentioning our own sclerotic and repressive Arab regimes, or those regimes’ relations with the U.S. Does it make sense today to turn around and consider as the Arabs' best friend the man (and his department) who has fought the most to ensure a continuation of this stalemate?

We needn’t approve of the neocons’ excessive militarism to point out that they, far more than Powell, have at least acted in consequence with the stated ambitions of the U.S.--to advance democracy and open markets. Are the neocons hypocritical? Yes, as relations with North Korea show. Are they unfair? Again yes, as they have shown in their uncritical devotion to a perfectly abysmal Sharon government in Israel, despite the fact that its policies are compromising a U.S. peace plan and quite possibly Israel’s own future. Do they have too great a belief in military power? Plainly, and Iraq certainly requires better U.S. “people skills” if Iraqi minds are to waver America’s way.

But at least the neocons have relocated the foreign policy debate to where it should be: in the realm of innovation, not deadlock. It’s in that realm that the old-line realists, so-called left-liberals, multilateralists and just plain old State Department wonks have to fight back. They haven’t done so, and their dearth of ideas suggests that if Powell goes next year, it may create a potentially dangerous imbalance in the administration, assuming Bush is reelected, but it certainly won’t cost Washington any fresh ideas.

2003-08-09T11:20:00.000+03:00

Here's the link promised in the previous posting: my Daily Star commentary on Hizbullah's attack in the Shebaa Farms yesterday.

2003-08-08T21:47:00.000+03:00

Hizbullah and Syria are set up
I'll be posting a link to my Daily Star commentary on the subject tomorrow, but as some of you may have heard, there was fighting in southern Lebanon today, specifically in the Shebaa Farms area. Hizbullah bombed Israeli positions, and Israel retaliated with aerial bombardments and artillery fire.

The U.S. reaction to this, according to the Associated Press, was as follows: "The Bush administration responded angrily Friday to Hezbollah's shelling of Israeli positions in a disputed Lebanese border region.

"American diplomats told Lebanon and Syria that the administration was seriously concerned about what a U.S. official described as a "calculated and provocative escalation'' by the extremist group and told the two Arab governments it was important to restrain further attacks."

I'm not one to defend Hizbullah very often, but the fact is the party was magnificently set up. It didn't initiate the fighting out of the blue; it was reacting to a car-bomb assassination--almost surely organized by Israel--of a Hizbullah member last Saturday in Beirut's southern suburbs. My theory is that the Israelis killed the man in order to provoke precisely the response that came today.

Why? Because too quiet a south Lebanon border was drawing American attention precariously away from Hizbullah and Syria. With both the Sharon government and Washington hawks keen to push Syria into a corner--if not worse--and disarm Hizbullah, it simply wasn't convincing anymore to blame Syria and the party even as they scrupulously adhered to a de facto ceasefire in the border area. So they were provoked, and by retaliating did exactly what Israel wanted them to.

Now the U.S. is again demanding that Syria end its support for Hizbullah, even as the U.S. Congress is contemplating voting on a piece of legislation known as the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003.

That leads to a wider question: since May 2000, when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon, the Shebaa Farms has been used by Hizbullah and Syria as a pressure point on Israel. Now, with a friendly administration in the U.S., Israel has turned the tables, so that any kind of fighting there can now be used to build up the American case against Hizbullah and Syria.

The party and Syria were set up a week ago. That's surely unfair, since they had effectively ceased to attack Israeli troops beforehand. The only solution, however, is for them to abandon the farms option altogether and send the Lebanese Army to the border area. That was the Lebanese aim back in 1978 after the Israeli occupation started, and it was implicitly embodied in U.N. Security Council resolution 425, demanding an Israeli pullout from Lebanon.

There is no reason for the measure not to implemented now, with the Israelis gone.

2003-08-08T21:18:00.000+03:00

Two pieces from the Reason website are well worth pondering at length. Jacob Sullum has a nice word to say about Arnold Shwarzenegger's bid to be Californian governor, which is perfectly understandable inasmuch as the "Austrian Oak" took time off to attend, of all things, a Reason Foundation banquet.

Chuck Freund has a worthy piece on why Joseph Stalin wanted to kill John Wayne. One of Chuck's operating theories is that he wanted to do so to save the career of Johnny Weissmuller, who, after his years as the one-and-only Tarzan, was by then falling off the vines.

A footnote: My grandmother was once riding with Weissmuller in a London taxi, when for no reason at all he let out that Tarzan yell. Her reaction, decades later: "He wasn't a very bright man, you know." Maybe not, but making Cheetah look smarter was good for box office.

And since we're on the subject of Chuck, he wrote this fine commentary for the Daily Star on the premature burial of Arab culture.

2003-08-03T08:33:00.000+03:00

Full court press
Here was the Bush administration openly threatening Belgium because it allegedly overstepped its prerogatives by accepting international human rights litigation in its courts, only for us to now realize that much the same thing is occurring, well, in...the United States.

According to today's New York Times, American courts are accepting a considerably larger number of trials having foreign implications, including human rights trials. Said one legal scholar: "If we're going to try these people for violating a nickel-and-dime contract, why can't you sue them for genocide?"

True, the administration has been consistent, opposing such litigation both at home and abroad. The only difference is that Washington has threatened to take retaliatory action abroad, in one case telling Belgium that it would seek to move NATO headquarters to another country if such trials continued.

It could always threaten U.S. courts that if the litigation continues it will move the federal capital to...Brussels.

2003-08-02T13:10:00.000+03:00

You pay, they forget
On a topic related to this site--the perennial drawbacks of state intervention--today’s New York Times has an interesting story by historian Douglas Brinkley on the Library of Congress’s decision to unpack and publish thousands of items from warehouses and storage facilities belonging to the Federal Writers’ Project, a program of FDR’s Works Progress Administration. Much of the material is now available on Internet.

Two ironies come to mind reading the piece. The first is that one public-funded entity has decided to salvage the lost works of another. Is that a bad idea? Hardly, since there seems to be material in the warehouses and storage facilities that adds to a better historical understanding of 20th Century America. It’s just that resurrecting the FWP treasure trove only confirms again what a waste large government-funded projects, particularly artistic projects, tend to be. Had the private sector been given access to all those piles of FWP junk, we could have picked the stuff up at Borders years ago, and the government could have actually made some money off of it, instead of paying twice for the same project.

The second irony is that, as the Times story reports, many of the FWP writers (including John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Conrad Aiken, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Arna Bontemps, Malcolm Cowley, Edward Dahlberg, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Kenneth Patchen, Philip Rahv, Kenneth Rexroth, Harold Rosenberg, Studs Terkel, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright and Frank Yerby) were later reluctant to be identified with the project at all, even though it did pay them $20-25 a week during the Depression.

The reason was simple: as artists none wanted to be remembered as government factotums (John Cheever described his job as fixing “the sentences written by some incredibly lazy bastards.”) However, since many came from the political left, and a few even championed the splendid experiment taking place in the Soviet Union, where the state consumed all, it was a revealing insight into the fact that when writers must choose between ideology and image, they tend to prefer the latter.

2003-08-02T11:39:00.000+03:00

Syrian instincts
Here's an article I published in today's Daily Star on Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Sharaa's sinister comment last weekend that American pressures to force Syria to disarm Hizbullah would “awaken [Lebanon’s] confessional and religious instincts.”

The most disturbing word Sharaa used, I wrote, was “'instinct', as if the Lebanese were instinctually awaiting the moment they could resume murdering one another, after years chafing under the unsettling burden of a 13-year peace."

It has long been a part of the Syrian political dicourse to argue that Syria alone stands between peace and carnage in Lebanon. Those of us who have seen how the Syrians operate here know better. Of course they have an advantage over us, as the Syrians don't know anything about confessional and religious instincts. Nothing at all.

2003-08-01T17:23:00.000+03:00

Opinionated
One aim of mine at the Daily Star opinion page is to examine the different currents of thought in the U.S. leading up to the Iraq war. Last week Chris Toensing looked at the neo-imperial urge in Washington, and on Thursday I cast my four eyes on the neoconservatives, asking, "Why do they keep winning."

Next week Tim Cavanaugh will look at our brother libertarians and ask how they fared during the war, while Chris will chime in again on the liberal left.

2003-08-01T16:56:00.000+03:00

Saddam wanted out
According to a front-page story in today's Al-Hayat, citing "Arabic sources", Saddam Hussein recently sent his henchman, Abed Hammoud, to the Americans to cut a deal. It went something like this: that attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq would cease if Saddam and his family were allowed to leave Iraq. The Americans refused, assuming that Saddam made the offer because he was close to being captured, and promptly arrested Hammoud. A few days later Uday and Qusay were killed in Mosul.

The story is interesting for several reasons. However, what intrigued me was the fact that Hammoud, who will surely be put on trial by the Americans or by an Iraqi government, should have so willingly agreed to go on a mission that was almost certain to lead to his arrest. Why did he agree to do so? There are a number of possible explanations: he had no choice; the Al-Hayat story is false and Hammoud was captured; he was running interference for Saddam. A strange episode whichever way you look at it.

Al-Hayat also has another interesting front-page story from Iraq, reporting on a statement issued by a group of Kuwaiti Shiite clerics in which they complained that senior Iraqi Shiite clerics and their supporters in Najaf had been systematically attacked in the past two days by supporters of Shiite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr. The Kuwaiti clerics also asked Coalition forces to intervene to restore order.

One question is whether those predicting an American quagmire in Iraq have sufficiently taken into consideration the fact that internal Iraqi divisions--indeed inter-sectarian divisions--have bought the U.S. more time to rebuild the country. If so, who's complaining?

2003-07-29T20:28:00.000+03:00

Damascus Spring-let?
This from ArabicNews highlighting the reaction of the Syria Civil Society Revival Committees to the Assad regime's decision (No. 408) to "separate" the Baath Party from the Executive branch.

This effectively means that the Baath Party will no longer have the state apparatus in a full-nelson. How likely is Syrian President Bashar Assad to succeed? His father tried implementing the decision, but failed. In a sense, Bashar may be doing this the wrong way around: generally when bureaucracies become major headaches, the best option is to circumvent them, preferably through the private sector. That's sort of what Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri tried to do after 1991, though he spoiled the whole thing by becoming the prime dispenser of private-sector patronage.

Assad, however, wants to weaken the Baath apparatus, but offers no substitute or parallel structure to replace it. Up to now, SYrian private-sector reforms have been advancing at a snail's pace. Plus, Assad continues to rely heavily on the intelligence services and the Baath to impose his writ. This gives both the security services and the party an incentive to collaborate in blocking presidential reforms.

In a nutshell, Syria may very simply be incapable of domestic reform. Once change becomes serious, Assad becomes irrelevant, much like Gorbachev.

2003-07-26T12:39:00.000+03:00

Baker's field?
The Washington Post is reporting that former Secretary of State James Baker III, after languishing in the purgatory of finding a solution to the Wetern Sahara problem, may have something more substantial to do soon--in Iraq.

If Baker accepts (and he might not), it could mean the tide is shifting away from the imperial to the less ambitious realist conservatives in the U.S. For one view of how Washington is debating its imperial future, see this very interesting article by Chris Toensing (of the left-leaning Middle East Report) published in today's Daily Star opinion section.

2003-07-26T12:25:00.000+03:00

For reasons we need not develop, but which have nothing to do with political censorship, the Daily Star decided not to publish this commentary of mine in the Lebanon section today. I was happy to comply, and, so, am posting it here for anyone who might be interested:

Engaging Hizbullah

In June, the CNN correspondent in Beirut, Brent Sadler, played me an outtake of an interview he had conducted with Information Minister Michel Samaha. In the tape Samaha made a rather confusing claim that once regional circumstances changed, Hizbullah would help in the fight against terrorism.

What, we pondered, could he possibly mean?

Thanks to American journalist Seymour Hersh--who spoke to Samaha for a New Yorker magazine article on US-Syrian relations--we now know. Hersh wrote: “Samaha…told me that Hizbullah has stabilized daily life in southern Lebanon, by controlling and monitoring the sometimes violent activities of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in squalid refugee camps scattered throughout the area. He argued that America was making ‘a foolish mistake’ by not trying to engage Hizbullah. The group…complied with Syria’s insistence that it prevent would-be Palestinian suicide bombers from crossing the border into Israel.”

Before getting to the filling of Samaha’s statement, let’s nibble at the crust: Who told the minister that Hizbullah had any desire to “be engaged” by the United States? Or that this could lead anywhere. The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, tried doing so, as did the British ambassador to Lebanon. Though both efforts were defensible, it was not clear what they achieved, or that they were preferable to the status quo. “Engagement” is a nice word, but it often means little more than seeing two latent antagonists photographed next to one other.

Then there was Samaha’s innovative, duly copyrighted argument that Hizbullah is a source of stability in the border area, and a force prepared to wrestle with Palestinian militants on their way to fight Israel. Not surprisingly, the minister’s predecessors never used that line, mainly because it’s a pretty tough sell. However, what Samaha did was to conflate two Syrian messages--one on Hizbullah, the other on the Palestinians--transmitted several years ago to an American ambassador by the deputy parliament speaker, Elie Ferzli.

At the time Israel was still occupying southern Lebanon, but the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was beginning to toy with the idea of withdrawal. The Syrian messages, which according to one source came in a single statement, were roughly this: “If Israel withdraws, we might be able to control Hizbullah, but not Palestinian groups in Lebanon, who, after all, wish to liberate their land from Israeli occupation.”

What the Syrians were saying in a nutshell was that if the Israelis left south Lebanon, they would continue to face military pressures from across the border. As it turned out the Syrians had their cake--sort of--and ate it too: Hizbullah pursued its military operations after 2000, albeit in that netherworld known as the Shebaa Farms; and in March-April 2002 unidentified gunmen, widely suspected of belonging to Palestinian groups from the refugee camps, carried out cross-border attacks, including one on March 12 against an Israeli bus in which six Israelis (and the two attackers) were killed.

For obvious reasons, Samaha avoided mentioning that most (if not all) of the March-April 2002 attacks were conducted with Hizbullah’s collaboration--at least if one believes politicians, journalists, and international civil servants in Beirut. Unfortunately, local officials have been so focused on defending Hizbullah against its Western detractors, that they have also drifted over into casting doubt on the aptitude of the Lebanese state. When Samaha says that Hizbullah brings stability to the south, he’s also saying that a militia can do so more effectively that the lavishly-funded Lebanese army.

One wonders whether Hizbullah was that keen to read Samaha portraying it as an efficient guardian of Israel’s borders. The party has indeed turned the tap on and off in the border area, but it also has an image to preserve. To hear the information minister exposing the worms in the party’s woodwork, and all that to make Hizbullah more palatable to readers of the New Yorker and to Americans in general must have been a tough nut for Nasrallah to swallow.

But surely not half as tough as it must have been for the Bush administration, which is currently debating whom to include in a revised list of enemies. One can imagine Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reading what Samaha told Hersh, especially that bit about America’s “foolish mistake” in not engaging Hizbullah. “I’ll engage Hizbullah, all right,” he might grumble; “I’ll engage them with every weapon system we’ve got.”

Who knows, Samaha might even end up a celebrity, like another Arab information minister we won’t soon forget.

PS--Thanks to Nicholas Blanford for correcting the date of the bus attack against northern Israel in March 2002.

2003-07-25T16:28:00.000+03:00

It's the dream of any newspaper or author to occasionally publish the more outlandish letters received from readers. Often, however, these so expose the pathologies of the letter writer, that one keeps them under wraps to preserve a minimal amount of decorum.

However, what follows is a rather odious example of what the Daily Star receives (forwarded to me personally)--a letter that is apparently not written by someone who talks to his refrigerator, but which is also contemptuous, mildly racist, and, ultimately, baffling as to where the author is coming from. I was tempted to print the author's name and email address, but then thought anonymity more appropriate.

"It is interesting to note that even on an issue as the recolonization of the Middle East (Iraq and Israel) Lebanese society is divided with some of the Maronites supporting the colonizers. You have had 2 articles sympathetic by your Mr. Young and some Christian lawyer. These Lebanese Maronites never lose a chance to place themselves against mainstream sentiment, including other Christians, in the region and their country. It is a sectarian death wish resulting in further isolation. They also fail to understand that us Westerners don't mind using them but no matter how much French they speak or imitate Western dress and mannerisms, although crudely with a distinct lack of taste, they will in our eyes always be Arabs. And watching a group obsequiously suck up to you simply breeds contempt. Suckholery is never respected."

What was that about lack of taste?

2003-07-25T13:31:00.000+03:00

Abu Mazen and Munich
Many readers will have come to this site through the link provided by Slate in the piece posted yesterday on Mahmoud Abbas, asking whether he was somehow involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage takeover. The information is based on a book published in 1999 in France by Muhammad Daoud Oddeh, knowns as Abu Daoud. I reviewed the book in The Nation, here.

No doubt some readers will consider the piece a hatchet job to discredit Abbas (Abu Mazen). In fact I had no such intention. My point was (assuming what Abu Daoud said was true--and he devotes several chapters to proving the allegation) that it is hypocritical to assume that Abbas is a moral paragon, while Yasser Arafat is not. Ultimately, Arafat is the elected Palestinian leader, and he's the person the U.S. should deal with. In the end both he and Abbas had the checkered past of any member of a militant armed group.

It is silly to simply assume that one is completely different from the other, particularly when the assumed good guy still takes his orders from the bad guy, and when the bad guy's popularity is vastly greater.

In much the same way, Palestinians regard Ariel Sharon as a thug, a view I entirely share, having witnessed at first hand his devastating work in the summer of 1982. As I write in the Slate piece, Palestinians and Israelis will only build peace on a bedrock of short memories.

2003-07-24T08:55:00.000+03:00

Here is a link to my comment in today's Daily Star on the Elisabetta Burba affair. Reason will be publishing a version of the Star piece on its website later on.

Far more interesting is Richard Sale's comment (largely based on his UPI report posted earlier here), but which sums up the issues more concisely, and includes quotes from an interview with former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy.

2003-07-23T22:55:00.000+03:00

Two article links to better understand the contending agendas in Washington vis-a-vis Syria. Earlier I posted Richard Sale's long UPI dispatch on what happened on the Syrian-Iraqi border several weeks ago.

Now Seymour Hersh has weighed in with a piece in the New Yorker, confirming many of Sale's revelations and adding several of his own, including (for local Lebanese interest) Information Minister Michel Samaha's absurd claim that Hizbullah actually protects Israel's border from radical Palestinian groups. As Samaha knows well, the cross-border attacks by Palestinian groups in April 2002 (which included an attack against an Israeli bus, causing several fatalities) was conducted with Hizbullah assistance.

Another article worth reading is this piece I commissioned for the Daily Star op-ed page from the American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka, who warns: "In the old days, Washington’s threats rarely meant much. But times have changed and Assad and Hizbullah remain very much in Washington’s sights."

Her article is a warning to the Syrians, who remember Pletka from the days when she was an aide to Senator Jesse Helms. On a visit to Beirut she made a number of statements that made Syria, well, uncomfortable.

2003-07-23T19:39:00.000+03:00

More Burbalings
I will be linking BC to a commentary in tomorrow's Daily Star on Elisabetta Burba, who last weekend admitted to being the source for forged documents alleging that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger--a claim White House advisors (who knew the papers were forgeries) put into George Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

While Burba told Italy's daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published Saturday that she suspected at the time that the documents were fakes, she nevertheless passed them on to the U.S. embassy in Rome and kept quiet when the Bush administration highlighted them to justify war against Iraq. Indeed, her interview with the Milan paper seemed little more than an effort to cover up for her transgressions, which may or may not have been the result of pressure from the Italian government, and in particular Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who owns Panorama magazine where Burba works.

From my perspective, however, the story only exposed Burba for the charlatan that many Lebanese knew she was. That's because in September 2001 she wrote a scandalously sloppy and misinformed piece for the Wall Street Journal Opinion-Journal, which you can read here. Basically, she claimed that the Lebanese had applauded the Sept. 11 attacks, though she cited no convincing evidence whatsoever.

I had pounced on her in the Daily Star and also in this article in Reason, which was a slightly altered version of the Star piece.

It's time Burba wiped yellowcake off her face.

2003-07-23T19:19:00.000+03:00

My friend Fawaz Gerges has been targeted by Campus Watch's Jonathan Calt Harris. While I'm not a big fan of CW or its one-sided analytical skills, Harris does raise some genuine problems with a certain critique of the Arab world in American Middle East academia that tends to play down the threat of militant Islam, and play up America's responsibility for all the region's woes.

I tried to address this issue on the Reason website back in 2001.

2003-07-20T10:44:00.000+03:00

Saghiyyeh on Iraq
Al-Hayat published a very lucid commentary by Hazem Saghiyyeh in its Saturday edition, an English translation of which can be found here.

After opening on a comment on Abdel Karim Qassem's failed efforts to revive Iraqi nationalism at the expense of Arab nationalism, he addresses the growing opposition to the newly-established transitional ruling council.

He writes: "[M]aybe there are many criticisms on the transitional ruling council in Iraq. On its prerogatives. On its representation. On its formation stemming from an American occupation. However, one thing must never be repeated: no one should say that the transitional ruling council and hence Americans are inventing sectarianism. No one should say so, especially those who are supposed to have a nationalistic awareness.

"These people must do something totally different: reconsider their role and admit that the representation within the ruling council is wider than any representation they would have ever dreamt of making in any of their countries. Hence, they ought to reconsider their sense of awareness, which divides any country as soon as they set foot in it. Iraq is one of the best examples of nations disintegrating because of the nationalist mentality."

Incidentally, the piece is not well translated. The sentence "In 1963, the Baathists ousted Abdulkarim Qassem. Before he collapsed, he came under a violent campaign led by Nassiriyah followers" should read ..."under a violent campaign by followers of Gamal Abdel Nasser."

2003-07-19T11:22:00.000+03:00

Those interested in domestic Lebanese politics might want to look at this piece of mine on the current debate over how to subdivide the Mount Lebanon muhafaza (governorate) in the 2005 parliamentary elections.

The debate has been provoked largely by President Emile Lahoud and former Interior Minister Michel al-Murr, who are looking for ways (a) to ensure that Lahoud's presidential mandate, which ends next year, will be extended or renewed (through manipulation of the constitution); and (b) to water down the Christian protest vote in the Metn region, which gave them a spanking in a by-election last year for the seat of the late Albert Mukheiber.

2003-07-19T10:22:00.000+03:00

What really happened on the Syrian border?
Thanks to Richard Sale for sending on this report he wrote for UPI on the border incident several weeks ago between U.S. and Syrian forces. It's not often that I'll post an entire story, but this is well worth it:

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Syria raid killed 80
By RICHARD SALE, UPI Intelligence Correspondent

Depicted by the Pentagon as a mere border skirmish, the June 18 strike into Syria by U.S. military forces was, in fact, based on mistaken intelligence and penetrated more than 25 miles into that country, causing numerous Syrian casualties, several serving and former administration officials said.

Although diplomatic relations between the two sides have been frosty after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the two nations have close intelligence ties, which have become strained as a result, these sources said.

"I think this was a deliberate effort to disrupt cooperation between U.S. and Syrian intelligence agencies," an administration official said.

According to a report in The New York Times, administration officials said that attack, carried out by Task Force 20, a Special Operations force, was based on intelligence that a convoy of SUVs, heading for Syria, was linked to senior fugitive Iraqi leaders.

"The (intel) was that senior Iraqis, perhaps even (former Iraqi leader) Saddam Hussein were getting out of the country," a State Department official told United Press International.

The ensuing raid "was conducted under the rules of hot pursuit," an administration official told UPI on condition his name not be used.

In the same Times report, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended the attacks, saying it was based on "solid intelligence."

"We had good intelligence, and it indicated that there were people moving around during their curfew close to the border in a convoy of SUV's and our forces went in and stopped them," the Times quoted Rumsfeld as saying.

But one administration official described the intelligence as "totally false," and a former CIA official labeled it "flimsy" and another former U.S. intelligence official called it "almost non-existent."

One former senior CIA official with access to current intelligence information said he believed the source of the intelligence was Israel, which for months has said either Saddam or weapons of mass destruction were being smuggled into Syria.

"The Izzies (Israelis) have been pitching this to anyone who would listen," the former CIA official said. Chief Israeli Embassy spokesman, Mark Regev, said only: "I simply don't ever discuss such matters."

But Anthony Cordesman, national security expert that the Center For Strategic And International Studies, defended the intelligence and the attack it triggered: "You have to act quickly on rumors in that situation. You have zero time."

He also pointed out that U.S. means of intelligence-collection in the area suffers from "extremely serious limitations."

For one thing, unmanned aerial vehicles or drones "can produce only a limited coverage of patterns" while even signals intelligence "can be fragmentary and unreliable," he said.

And the question of Israeli intelligence? "Do we tend to over-rely on the Israelis? Probably, but you have to remember too that the CIA is permanently pissed by Israel and likes to discredit it," he said.

A former very senior CIA official told UPI: "Too often the Israeli intelligence product is hard to distinguish from Israel political messages." The Times report said Task Force 20, supported by helicopters and AC-130 gunships, struck the convoy and a housing compound "in a village not far from the Syria border." Task Force 20 captured 20 Iraqis, all of whom were later released, the Times and other news reports said.

But one senior administration official told UPI the attack crossed "25 miles or more" into Syria, and the Pentagon had initial reports of 80 Syrians "who were KIA (killed in action)."

Cordesman said he believed this to be possible because "the fighting between our forces and the Syrians was extremely intense."

But instead of capturing any high-value Iraqi targets, the Task Force destroyed "a gas smuggling ring," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. This official labeled the attack "a colossal blunder." His view was supported by a half a dozen administration officials interviewed by UPI.

The former senior U.S. intelligence official said the Task Force had destroyed SUVs "on both sides of the border" that had been fitted out as mini-gas tankers. The Task Force blew up "a great number of these vehicles," causing huge explosions and fireballs when they were hit, he said. "The explosions could account for the casualties," he said.

A spokesman from U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said: "We are unable to comment on any cross-border raids, especially if they involved Special Forces."

Serving and former U.S. intelligence officials attributed a political motive to the attacks, alleging they were designed to disrupt cooperation between the CIA and Syrian intelligence.

"Syria has given us invaluable help on hunting down members of al-Qaida, and they were instrumental in ex-filtrating some major Iraqi fugitives back to Baghdad," one former senior CIA official said. "That is not to everyone's liking."

In early May, two top Iraqi biological scientists who had been hiding in safe havens in Syria were ex-filtrated back to Iraq where they were captured by U.S. military forces, former CIA officials said.

A U.S. intelligence official told UPI: "It was a gift to Secretary of State Colin Powell" and also an effort by Damascus to compensate for its apparent lack of cooperation with the United States in closing the Damascus offices of Palestinian militant groups, which are on Washington's list of terrorist organizations.

But CIA-Syria cooperation was far more extensive, former and serving U.S. intelligence officials said.

According to these sources, Syria and the CIA have a joint exploitation center based in Aleppo, plus Syria turned over to the agency all its intelligence networks in Germany as well as all of Syria's cover companies there. As a result, the agency learned that Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker Mohammed Atta once worked in Germany for a Syrian cover company, these sources said.

"Syria was not the only source, but they were very helpful in this matter," a former senior CIA official said.

The CIA was also grateful to Damascus for giving early warning of a planned al-Qaida attack on U.S. installations in Bahrain, using an explosives-laden glider, which would be invisible to radar, according to these sources. "The Syrians have been an incredible help in sharing intelligence," one serving U.S. intelligence officer said.

Senior Pentagon leaders, who administration officials describe as being very close to Israel, have been unhappy with the increasingly close CIA-Syria ties and used the June 18 attack to disrupt the CIA-Syrian intelligence relationship.

"I think that certain Pentagon officials want to see (Syrian president) Bashar Assad deposed and Syria sign a peace treaty with Israel," said former senior DIA official Pat Lang.

But other U.S. officials disagreed.

"Syria is playing a double-game," said one administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Hamas terrorists are returning to Damascus, a lot of towns in East Syria are nothing but transit points for Iraqi officials who are free to go in and out. I wouldn't put much trust in Syria." But a serving U.S. intelligence official disagreed.

"Syria is obviously making an effort. It has gotten the message of our military victory and our aim of democratizing the region." He added: "Syria clearly realizes that it has a great deal to gain by being a friend of America and everything to lose if it turns away from friendship."

As of now, the Pentagon had ignored State Department requests for additional details on the June 18 strike, administration officials said. Four days of phone calls to the Office of the Secretary of Defense brought no comment from any Pentagon official.

2003-07-18T17:55:00.000+03:00

I privatize you
The New York Times has this interesting story on the Pentagon's consideration of a plan to establish a private force which would be made responsible for guarding pipelines, government buildings and hundreds of other Iraqi sites. Reportedly, a U.S. company, Kroll Inc., would be responsible for setting up the force.

The rationale is twofold: that the members of the force would be former soldiers, who could therefore be provided with employment; and that the force’s Iraqi makeup "could help ease tensions created by the atmosphere of foreign military occupation."

As a Kroll Europe executive put it: "Our sense is that the military has too much on their plate right now, and that these are issues that need to be addressed, and the way to do that is through the private sector."

I'm not one to oppose privatization, and there are aspects of the plan that are quite worthwhile. However, a few things come to mind: first, that the plan is a way to avoid too much interaction between American forces and Iraqis; second, that it's the Pentagon's way of avoiding sending new troops to Iraq, while also allowing disgruntled soldiers already there to be redeployed home; and third, that the Bush administration is looking for ways to avoid rising casualties.

So what's wrong? A few things, most importantly that the decision is based largely on a negative reading of what the U.S. should be doing in Iraq. The catchword is "avoidance." Rather than engage the Iraqis, the Pentagon is disengaging, which is at least partly an admission of failure of America's ability to win Iraqi hearts and minds. Some might argue that it's not up to soldiers to do that, anyway. If so, then why hasn't the occupation administration worked on setting up more effective liaisons with Iraqi citizens? Why is it that an invisible wall continues to divide the coalition and the Iraqi people?

Unlike Niall Ferguson, I don't think the U.S. should embrace an imperial destiny. However, at this point the question is moot: the Americans are in Iraq, and the only way to make the situation there better is to show the Iraqis that they have made a long-term national (not private sector) commitment to Iraqi stability, democracy and prosperity--something that has been sorely lacking since the war ended.

A privatized force really doesn't do that. It can solve some problems, but unless the Americans rebuild a non-Baathist army and use it as an instrument to help bring about national integration, there seems little point asking Americans to foot the bill--as they will be doing for this supposedly private force.

2003-07-18T17:01:00.000+03:00

I wrote this article on the inadequacy of the left's critique of the Iraq war for the Daily Star. Tim Cavanaugh was kind enough to pick it up for the Reason website, provoking what I see was a rather spirited exchange.

One of the things that made it spirited was a glaring error, namely my reference to George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and The Road to Wigan Pier as "novels." Under the circumstances, a reader might assume I was mentioning two books I had never read. I can confirm, wiping egg off my face, that I read Homage once and Wigan Pier twice.

Will that change anything? We're invariably viewed by the light of our latest erratum.

2003-07-16T23:04:00.000+03:00

In tomorrow's (Thursday) Daily Star I look back on Christopher Hitchens' shift from left to right on Afghanistan and Iraq, and determine that all this time he has, in fact, remained a radical--in stark contrast to his liberal critics who somehow think that the overthrow of a tyranny by the U.S. is in and of itself tyrannical.

One of my points is to show the bankruptcy of the left's critique of the Iraq war, and I cite this article by one Ammiel Alcalay in Al-Ahram Weekly. I will link my comment tomorrow, but in the meantime read Alcalay's genuinely pathetic, confusing, contradictory and, let's not beat around the bush, mediocre article. Incidentally, he teaches in New York, where, I'm sure, he imagines himself a dissident.

2003-07-16T19:51:00.000+03:00

Back with some links
To say I've been lax updating this blog would be roughly equivalent to saying that a corpse is lax with respect to hygene. Indeed, this entire blog may soon metamorphose into a running commentary on my laxity, with apologies thrown out between empty postings.

Truth be told, the bulk of my efforts are currently directed at editing the Daily Star's op-ed page, with the remainder devoted to cranking out articles owed to patient people several generations ago. And all this in a hot summer climate that is as conducive to reflecting about politics as would be a Tyson half-nelson.

In that case, perhaps I can at least link readers to some of the Star's commentaries that strike me as off the beaten track, though I'm assuredly playing no favorites:

Chuck Freund has written a fine piece on Leon Uris's death and how his book Exodus shaped perceptions of Israel for a long time. Chibli Mallat was in Germany last week for a Bertelsmann conference and brings back this comment on a George Weidenfeld proposal. Turkey specialist Philip Robins offers this view of four contending Turkish approaches to the US. And Nermeen al-Mufti offers this interesting look at Iraq's Turkmens, though she didn't do this for us, but for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting

2003-07-07T19:14:00.000+03:00

Thanks to Nick Gillespie for this link to a story from the Cincinnati Inquirer on the plan to build a $100m amusement park in Lebanon.

This passage is noteworthy:

"There is a Wild West section - even though Speigel recommended against it.

"You don't want to Americanize your theme park, he told the investors, with culture and scenes from an American history that might not appeal to a broad cross-section of Middle East customers.

"No, no, they told me. 'We know the Wild West. We watched Maverick on TV, Bonanza.' They said we want the Old West area," Speigel said."

Not sure what the cosmic significance of that is, but for a clue, check out Chuck Freund's commentary on Arab music videos in Lebanon's Daily Star, and what it says about the prospects for character reinvention, or "individuation", in the Middle East.

2003-07-07T00:05:00.000+03:00

Here is a link to an article of mine published earlier this week in the Daily Star, on the issuing of honorary doctorates to a number of Arab celebrities, including Edward Said, Amin Maalouf, Helen Thomas, Carlos Ghosn, and Lakhdar al-Ibrahimi.

I mention only Said and Maalouf in the piece, arguing that both men in different ways (through their lives, but in Maalouf's case expressed as well through his novel The Rock of Tanios) embody the hopelessness of the intellectual in the Middle East: Said because his rants never propose a solution; Maalouf because he had to exile himself from a Lebanon descending into civil war to be able to flourish, and then was lucid enough to express this in a novel.

In this context I must point readers to Fares Sassine's brilliant review of The Rock of Tanios in the Fall 1994 issue of the Beirut Review, which I edited. I can provide no link, but the Review is available at some U.S. university libraries, or from the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.

It's one of those rare things: a review that gives value to the book being examined, and that in many respects is better than it.

2003-07-06T23:33:00.000+03:00

Noah's lark
Thanks to my friend Tony Badran, I can report that the New York Times weekly book section is highlighting Noah Feldman, the ghostwriter of Iraq's future constitution, in particular his book After Jihad. Jonathan D. Tepperman has written what seems a lucid review of the book (which, admittedly, I haven't read), or at least of the issues raised.

According to Tepperman, Feldman's point is to argue that Islam and democracy are not incompatible, but then he adds: "Where [Feldman] parts company with the right, however, is in his unflinching insistence that democracy in the Arab world should be Islamic in character (although he hedges on just what that will mean)."

I can't judge a book I haven't read, but from a reading of the excerpt provided by the Times, two things come to mind: first, that Feldman has taken a conscious decision to see the glass a quarter full rather than three-quarters empty: he's right that Islam and democracy are not incompatible in theory, but the particular social contexts existing in the Middle East makes it far more likely that Islamist governments that are the by-products of decades of frustration and, often, repression will not be democratic and will not reflect the fact that, as Feldman writes, "Islam has a rich if imperfect tradition of tolerating intra-Islamic diversity of opinion on matters of religion."

Nor do Islamist movements that consider themselves morally in the right and sanctioned by God have any qualms about crushing perceived enemies.

Secondly, Feldman seems to have not a thing to say (again in the very slight window provided by the Times) about non-Muslim minorities in Arab countries. In a key passage he writes:

"If there is to be any way out of the impasse, it will have to come from imagining some kind of Islamic democracy. A democracy of Muslims with Islamic content need not be Islamist democracy, governed exclusively by Islamic law. It is far more likely to draw on Islam's values and ideals while simultaneously incorporating democratic principles, legal protections, and institutions. But even Islamist democracy, if it can be imagined, might have some advantages over autocracy."

But what about non-Muslims? Are they to be shoehorned into this rather convenient intellectual construct, no matter how progressive Feldman makes it sound? The Christian will legitimately ask: "Why should I pay the price for an Islamic democracy? Because Feldman thinks I will be respected as a second-class citizen; as a dhimmi?"

Maybe Feldman provides an answer later on in his book, but this formulation doesn't leave him much room to do so.

2003-07-02T19:58:00.000+03:00

Silvio tongued
Silvio Berlusconi has made a grand entry as Italy takes over the six-month presidency of the EU, saying this to a German member of the European Parliament who accused him of having conflicts of interests between his political role and media interests:

"Mr Schulz, I know there is in Italy a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of Kapo. You'd be perfect,'' Berlusconi exclaimed to jeers in the chamber."

Guess that means Berlusconi's Lega Nord ally, Umberto Bossi, won't be doing a screen test for the role as expected.

2003-07-02T19:40:00.000+03:00

FYI -- Blogger has updated many of its blog sites, and one of the ensuing advantages is that BC permalinks now function. One of the perennial problems had been that I had no way to link readers with specific entries. Hopefully this will take us out of the Ice Age, where the blog had been languishing.

2003-07-02T14:00:00.000+03:00

Shame, shame, shame. I've been lax in my postings, largely because I have taken on editorial chores at the Daily Star, where I am settling in as op-ed editor, a situation still to be finalized.

More soon, I promise. Meanwhile, why not look at this piece from the Reason website on literary mythmaking in the Middle East by Chuck Freund.

2003-06-24T00:45:00.000+03:00

Some of you might have arrived at BC through this link. If not, here is my weekly International Papers offering for Slate, on the Middle Eastern issues of the day from (mostly) regional newspapers. In this column, the Dead Sea summit, Bahrain and Israel warm to each other, and Abdel Karim Qassem makes a comeback in Iraq ... next to Khomeini.

2003-06-24T00:36:00.002+03:00

Alive and still dying
Sunday's issue of The Observer had a story suggesting that Saddam Hussein and at least one of his sons were transformed into soup somewhere near the Syrian border by an American Hellfire missile. The story cited "military sources". The damage was such, the story reported, that U.S. forces had to conduct DNA tests to determine if those killed were indeed the Hussein Al Takritis.

One passage read: "Despite previously unfounded US claims that Saddam had been killed during the bombing of Baghdad before the invasion by America and Britain, the sources indicated that they were cautiously optimistic that they had finally killed the target they described as 'the top man'."

Now the New York Times and the Washington Post are saying the whole thing was crap, with the Times reporting: "American officials said they had no reason yet to believe that Saddam Hussein or his sons were among the Iraqis killed in the strike. Several senior American officials said today the possibility that Mr. Hussein or his sons, Uday and Qusay, were among the Iraqis traveling in he convoy had been seen as small from the outset."

More importantly, the Times reveals that in the attack against what is now much more vaguely termed "a convoy suspected of carrying fugitive Iraqi officials", missiles may have hit their targets on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Iraqi border, injuring several Syrian border guards. The Post reports: "A Bush administration official said last night, however, that U.S. forces followed the convoy into Syrian territory and attacked it there. The Americans, the official said on condition of anonymity, were 'in hot pursuit and wound up crossing the Syrian border.'"

This leads one to wonder whether The Observer wasn't fed hogwash to cover for what was surely a more serious matter, namely a U.S. military attack against a sovereign country. Confusing the issue is the fact that, allegedly, according to Saddam's henchman, Abed Hammoud, the Syrians might have sheltered Saddam and his brood for a time, before expelling them.

That the Saddam story might have been a cover-up for the Syria attack is a big jump, but it will teach newspapers to fall for anonymous "military sources" hook, line and sinker.

2003-06-20T19:57:00.000+03:00

Laborious party
The line of the month from Israeli Labor Party Knesset member Matan Vilnai: "I'm convinced that after the Titanic hit the iceberg and began to sink, some people in the dining rooms were discussing elections for temporary chairman of the Labor Party ... What is taking place here today is a farce, the complete opposite of rebuilding and rehabilitating the party."

This followed a vote in the party for temporary chairman, after the resignation weeks ago of the former party leader, Amram Mitzna. Vilnai had sought a vote on a permanent chairman now, instead of delaying the process for a year. In his typical way, Shimon Peres won the vote by almost losing ... receiving 49.2% of the votes cast, after he had hoped to be acclaimed by a majority of the party.

The question is whether Peres will take Labor into a coalition government with Sharon. What a dumb question: for an answer realize that Peres' entire psychological makeup is directed at ensuring he remains in office so he can ward off old age. That was the strategy he adopted as minister in the previous Sharon government, where he couldn't have cared less about really advancing a peace agenda, as long as he could keep jetting around as a VIP.

Labor will form a coalition with Likud, it will sort of back the "road map", but it doesn't have a strong enough "peace core" in the party to hold Sharon too closely to the details of the Quartet plan, which will give the Israeli prime minister the cover he needs to make piecemeal concessions, but little more.

At every stage of the post-Madrid peace negotiations, Peres was never the high-priest of peace he liked to pretend to be; he was an often pedestrian elongation of the PM of the moment: he only looked good until 1995 because Yitzhak Rabin took the tough decisions and the risks; he looked mediocre after 2001 because Sharon gave him nothing, nor did Peres ask for anything; and under Barak he was unmemorable, because the PM wanted to hog the limelight. And when he became PM after Rabin was killed, Peres unleashed the sordid, bloody Grapes of Wrath operation on Lebanon, hoping it would win him an election. Instead he lost by a hair to Netanyahu because outraged Arab-Israelis boycotted him.

Peres is a sinister hypocrite and the fact that Labor should put its fate in his hands is a sign of how low the party has fallen. The result? Vilnai could be right: this could be a senseless final round before Labor sinks into the North Atlantic.

And who does one blame? That odious cretin Ehud Barak, who proved you could have a high IQ, murder people efficiently, and still be a basket case. Rarely has someone been able to do so much, and yet done so little.

2003-06-19T22:53:00.002+03:00

Apologies to readers for the delay in posting material. It's been one of those nightmare work weeks. Here are a few links, though, to fill the empty spaces. I edited this piece by historian Niall Ferguson for the Daily Star. It's a robust defense of the American empire. The Star's website has inverted the link, however, with that to another article by George Irani. (PS -- The link problem has since been resolved)

Readers might also want to look at this necessarily oblique article on the rocket attack Sunday morning against the Future Television station of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Not oblique enough, however, so you can't see who I (and virtually everybody else in Beirut) believe is responsible. If it's not direct enough, though, here is my Monday International Papers column for Slate that might beat a bit less around the bush.

2003-06-13T23:28:00.000+03:00

Not called soccer here
Will take a rest from politics today and propose a subject of far greater magnitude this summer off-season: football (or, if you prefer, "soccer"). Here is a link to a mildewed web article I wrote for Reason on football and the new world order just around the time of the 2002 World Cup--a competition I remember with great bitterness as one great team after another was knocked out by small fry. Particularly painful was Italy's elimination at the hands of South Korea, thanks to the refereeing of a certified Ecuadorian crook. I am utterly elitist when it comes to the sport and would regard a World Cup final between, let's say, Ghana and the Cook Islands as Armageddon.

I propose a short reading list of books on football, not all of which I have read, in anticipation of the coming season (at least in the northern hemisphere). Because of the damned small text boxes, this will roll over into another box below:

*** Alex Bellos' Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, a rousing account of Brazilian football, and the sociology and stories surrounding it. Visit Alex's fine website for more on the subject. Incidentally, he's the Guardian's man in Rio.

*** Tim Parks' magnificent A Season with Verona, on his following the Verona football team around Italy when it was still playing in Serie A. Alas, Parks would spit on me as a Juventus supporter, but his book is the funniest thing I've read in years.

*** Eduardo Galeano's Soccer in Sun and Shadow. Haven't read it but my lefty friends swear by it.

*** Bill Buford's Among the Thugs, on his hanging around with football hooligans. Haven't read it yet, but it comes highly praised by Jonathan Raban and Martin Amis, who don't really strike me as football aficionados.

2003-06-13T23:27:00.000+03:00

*** Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. Another one as yet unread, but describes Hornby's obsession with Arsenal I believe (and then promptly disbelieve). Again, highly rated with an idiotic Roddy Doyle blurb describing it as "funny, wise and true."

*** Joe McGinniss' The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro is also apparently worthwhile, though the team was not amused when McGinniss wrote about their less memorable private habits. Evidently several players were scoundrels, which surely explains why they could handle a ball.

*** And finally Hunter Davies' The Glory Game, published in 1972 and now considered a classic. It's subject: Tottenham Hotspur FC, which I only really bothered to follow when Argentina's Oswaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa played for the team.

2003-06-11T15:16:00.000+03:00

My thoughts on the "road map" and the recent poll conducted by Israel's Jaffee Center for Staregic Studies (see below), for the Daily Star.

2003-06-11T15:13:00.000+03:00

Blix fires away
Hans Blix uses the "B" word in a Guardian interview, noting:

"I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media. Not that I cared very much."

Looks to me like he did. And what of those WMDs? Blix said: "He 'remains agnostic'. Only time will tell -- although that is passing by "quite fast and instead of talking about [finding] WMD they're talking about the programmes.

2003-06-10T18:13:00.000+03:00

Debka on Syria
Debka File, which usually doubles as a fount for Israeli disinformation is reporting the following:

DEBKAfile Reveals in Exclusive Syrian Report: Opposition leaders arrested ahead of June 21-22 municipal elections to stem defections from ruling Baath.

Assad plans major government shakeup. To be sacked: PM Miro, defense and foreign ministers Mustafa Tlas and Farouk Shara. Dr. Buthaina Shaban candidate for foreign minister

Firas Tlas son of Mustafa revealed as organizer of Saddam-Assad clandestine smuggling operations and holder of WMD’s secret locations after their clandestine removal from Baghdad, Tikrit and al Qaim.

This paragraph was especially entertaining: The hard-line Farouk Shara, a carryover from the president’s father’s administration, is fighting a rearguard action on his way out as foreign minister - mainly against the ministry’s head of information, Dr. Buthaina Shaban. High profile in the aftermath of the Iraq War, she is the favorite to replace him. Last week, Shara committed the unthinkable solecism of shouting at Dr. Shaban in the presence of British visitors, “I don’t need your help!”

Will Shaaban succeed Sharaa? With all due respect to a self-made lady, she has none of the diplomatic memory or experience that he does, nor does she have the same credibility with Sunnis that makes him so useful to the regime. Moreover, Shaaban is Assad's instrument to help partially control the foreign ministry, fulfilling an old rule of the late Hafez Assad, namely that it is always best to install parallel lines of communication downwards so as to better control subordinates. Isn't using Shaaban against Sharaa (and vice versa) better than giving her more power at his expense? One never knows, though, maybe it is Sharaa's time after all

As for Miro's and Tlass' sacking, really no news there: Miro has long been considered ripe for the chopping block and Tlass is, frankly, nearing that time when he should be dusting off an office at the great defense ministry in the sky.

2003-06-10T17:53:00.000+03:00

Bush on Rantisi
The White House has reacted this way to the assassination attempt against Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, according to Ha'aretz:

U.S. President George W. Bush was "deeply troubled" by an Israeli assassination attempt on a leader of the militant group Hamas and he fears this could undermine Palestinian anti-terror efforts, a White House spokesman said on Tuesday.

"The president is concerned that the strike will undermine efforts by Palestinian authorities and others to bring an end to terrorist attacks and does not contribute to the security of Israel," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

Two thoughts come to mind: (1) Why didn't the Bush administration apply this logic during the past year and more, after Israel began its systematic campaign of assassinations? After all, virtually everyone recognized that such strikes undermined efforts by the Palestinian authorities to bring about an end to terrorist attacks (and Hamas, according to Israeli chief-of-staff Moshe Yaalon, almost agreed to a ceasefire in 2002, demanding only that the assassinations cease) ; and (2) Bush's reaction seems to confirm the gist of the previous posting that the U.S. may well take a sterner tone with Israel and play down its anti-terrorism rhetoric in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to get the "road map" off the ground.

On another note, if the news is confirmed that Rantisi's son Ahmad was killed in the attack, it would be another case of an Islamist militant losing his son to the Israelis: Hizbullah's Hassan Nasrallah lost his son, Hadi, in an anti-Israeli operation in southern Lebanon; Abbas Musawi, Nasrallah's predecessor, was killed with his son by an Israeli helicopter in 1992; and now Rantisi ...

Needless to say, other than Musawi of course, a son's "martyrdom" means political capital down the road for the father. Nasrallah famously declared that he was "happy" to have lost his son in an anti-Israeli operation, prompting someone to comment: "What's he like when he's sad?"

PS -- Ahmad al-Rantisi was injured in the attack against his father, so you can ignore part of the previous.

2003-06-10T15:08:00.000+03:00

Bush's problem with Sharon
An interesting article in Ha'aretz on the irritable exchanges between U.S. president George W. Bush and Israeli officials in Aqaba. It also creates a context for the previous posting.

Here are some passages: "At the advance request of Israel, Bush's aides put security problems at the top of the agenda for discussion. 'The first thing that Bush was required to talk about was security,' says the participant, adding, 'It was a request of the Israelis. So [Bush] asked Dahlan to give a briefing.'

"According to the source, Dahlan gave an excellent five-minute synopsis of the situation, and concluded by saying to Bush: 'There are some things we can do and some things we cannot. We will do our best. But we will need help.'

"Mofaz burst in at the end of Dahlan's presentation and said: 'Well, they won't be getting any help from us; they have their own security service.'

"You could see that Bush was irritated, says the participant, and he turned on Mofaz angrily: 'Their own security service? But you have destroyed their security service.'

"Mofaz shook his head and said: 'I do not think that we can help them, Mr. President,' -- to which Bush said: 'Oh, but I think that you can. And I think that you will.'

"Then Bush turned to Abbas - again according to a script insisted on by the Israelis - and said: 'Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps you could give an overview of the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.' Abbas outlined the increasingly dire situation of the territories, saying that the humanitarian crisis was deepening, and that while recent actions of the finance minister had eased the problems, the insertion of new funding was necessary.

"Sharon then interrupted and said: 'The insertion of new funding must be dependent on your good behavior.'

"Bush was again visibly irritated: 'You should release their money as soon as possible. This will help the situation.'

"Sharon shook his head: 'We have to deal with security first, and we will condition the release of their monies on this alone.'

"Bush peered at Sharon: 'But it is their money ...'

"Sharon said: 'Nevertheless, Mr. President ...' and Bush interrupted him: 'It is their money, give it to them.' "

Then: "After that meeting, Bush turned to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and said, "We have a problem with Sharon I can see, but I like that young man [Dahlan] and I think their prime minister is incapable of lying. I hope that they will be successful. We can work with them."

2003-06-10T14:34:00.000+03:00

Targeting Rantisi
Israel today tried to assassinate a senior Hamas official, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, but succeeded only in injuring him. Whatever else one might say about the assassination attempt (or about the Hamas attacks against Israeli troops on Sunday), it is another harsh blow against the luckless "road map." It will probably lead to the interruption of all contact between Hamas and the Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas, when Hamas had been showing signs of reconsidering its refusal to discuss a ceasefire.

Maybe what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won't admit is that a majority of Israelis are far more willing to give up occupied land in exchange for peace with the Palestinians than he is. In yesterday's issue of Ha'aretz, there was a report on an opinion poll conducted by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. It showed that 59 percent of Israelis accepted the removal of all settlements located outside major settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, compared to 50 percent last year. Remarkably, 56 percent (compared to 48 percent last year) supported “a unilateral withdrawal from the territories in the context of a peace accord, even if that meant ceding all settlements.”

Sharon and his ministers consider this tantamount to surrender. The effort to kill Rantisi, and Hamas' certain retaliation, will surely ensure that a land-for-peace compromise is further delayed. Now we'll see how committed Bush really is.

2003-06-07T11:04:00.000+03:00

No "road map' for Lebanon
Here is an op-ed I wrote in today's Daily Star arguing that Lebanon does not need a "road map" to peace as Lebanese officials are demanding. Alas some slight ambiguities were overlooked when I sent on the piece.

For example, in a passage I write: "A separate Lebanese-Israeli track is unrealistic today. But the principle of self-contained Lebanese-Israeli negotiations while Syria negotiates too is not."

Readers may not see the distinction between a "separate Lebanese-Israeli track" and a "self-contained Lebanese-Israeli track." All that means is that Lebanon and Syria can coordinate, but Lebanese-Israeli issues should be solely dealt with by the Lebanese and Israelis, not integrated into the Syrian-Israeli track. A separate track implies complete autonomy; a self-contained track implies coordination with Syria but autonomy on those bilateral Israeli-Lebanese issues in which Syria need not involve itself.

2003-06-07T10:52:00.000+03:00

Miller's crossing?
After being one of the leading disseminators of the theory that U.S. weapons teams had found evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, Judith Miller of the New York Times today publishes a story that goes some way to casting doubt on that theory.

A group of American and British intelligence experts are challenging the administration's view that the trailers found by American soldiers (and cited by George W. Bush as proof of an Iraqi WMD program) were, in fact, mobile WMD production plants. The doubters have cited technical problems with the government's theory (which was outlined in this administration white paper on the CIA website):

The skeptical experts said the mobile plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production, peaceful or otherwise. Its lack of availability between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.

For further reading, this report from the Fourth Freedom Forum examines evidence the U.S. and British governments chose to ignore when making their case for war in Iraq--information that would have weakened their case.

2003-06-07T10:37:00.000+03:00

No evidence yet that King Fahd has died, so the previous posting may have to be discounted. One clarification, though: because of their differences, the king's brothers and Abdullah essentially agreed to maintain him on his throne, though they could very well have deposed him, as was done when King Saud was replaced by King Faysal. In not doing so, they were preserving the status quo, much like the Chinese leadership did when Deng Tsio Ping was senile but was still referred to as a paramount leader.

2003-06-06T18:29:00.000+03:00

Is King Fahd dead?
There is no evidence that he is, but I belong to a specialized mailing list where the question has been posed by one of the participants, citing "converging information" and alleged reports that the Al Saud princes have been asked to return home. If the story is true (and again there is no evidence that it is), it would be a key moment in Saudi Arabia, since, though he was physically and mentally disabled, the king, by his mere presence, was the ingredient maintaining unity in the family. With him dead, Fahd's brothers, particularly Prince Sultan and Prince Nayef (all children of a Sudairi mother), and his half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah, must agree a successor. It is known that there are strong rivalries between the Sudairis and Abdullah.

2003-06-05T19:00:00.000+03:00

Chuck Freund, who charitably contributes to this blog, has just written a fascinating piece for the June 2003 issue of Reason on the "revolutionary implications of Arab music videos." As he has argued here on several occasions, the great value of such videos, which feature singers in a variety of situations ("Arab football players; Arab lovers driving a pickup truck through the American desert; Arab heroes of Gothic vampire melodramas being stalked by beautiful ghouls; veiled Arab women of the Islamic golden age; Arab couples searching for each other in a chromed, retro 1950s universe; Arabs haunted by mysterious desert symbols that hold the key to forgotten identities; medieval Arab countesses in their Spanish castles; and even science fiction Arabs confronted by mustachioed alien children from outer space") is that they have the "power to stretch the boundaries of their viewers’ imagined selves."

Her argues further: "If the audience for these videos uses them to foment a long-term cultural revolution, it would hardly be the first time that 'vulgar' forms were at the center of significant social change. In fact, 'low' culture has almost certainly done more to transform the modern world than has 'high' culture." This theme Chuck developed at greater length in this story from the March 2002 issue of Reason.

2003-06-05T18:37:00.000+03:00

A number of readers probably linked to this site through either version of this (one) article I wrote on Salam Pax for the Daily Star in Beirut and for Reason. They restate what I had written in the earlier posting below, but expand somewhat on it. For those who did link through them, sorry for the runaround.

2003-06-03T20:11:00.000+03:00

Young on ... that other blogger
Here is Chuck raising the standards of this website by displaying his habitual erudition, even when it comes to--of all the forlorn topics--Abdel Karim Qassim. And all I have as a backhand is a comment on the person many Westerners regard (perhaps to their peril) as the true face of Iraq: Salam Pax.

Tomorrow, Salam will begin a bi-weekly stint at the Guardian newspaper. No doubt some of his immediacy will be lost as he shifts from an unmediated blog to the combat zone of a daily newspaper, with its archipelagoes of interests to navigate through. However, wistfulness aside, Salam will also become more relevant, since it means a person widely recognized as an Arab liberal (regardless of whether he really is one) is being given a pulpit in a major international newspaper.

I must confess the Salam Pax craze left me cold for a long time. I read many a Dear_Raed entry over several weeks and I really wouldn’t be displaying sour grapes if I said that there was something about the blog that initially disturbed me, aside from its bumpy style. What bothered me was the sheer oddity of reading what sounded like a precocious American teenager writing on the very antithesis of such an archetype: Saddam and his system.

Then the fog lifted and it occurred to me that that was precisely what made Salam pertinent. In the end, one does not go to him to have insights into how the poorer Iraqi Shiites felt when they recently converged on Najaf to commemorate Ashoura. Nor would I necessarily ask him to tell me how the Sunni tribes around central Iraq are faring, as they see the country's sectarian balance shift. What Westerners do see in Salam is (a) a new Arab pop icon who speaks a language they can understand; and (b) someone who bucked a stifling and murderous Ba’athist system thanks to a simple form of information technology they use daily.

In effect, they see someone who has sought (along the lines of what Chuck was proposing a few weeks ago) to impose his individuality in a region that discourages this. Is Salam Pax the hope of Iraq? Probably not since he’s unknown in his own country (and has had to maintain anonymity, largely, it seems, because he’s gay). However, he is valuable because he has no qualms about addressing his Western readers on their own terms, mainly to better affirm the fact that that he’s an Iraqi.

2003-06-01T22:58:00.000+03:00

Freund on Abdel Karim Qassim
On Tuesday, May 27th, Michael cited signs of "a resurgence of sympathy" for Abdel Karim Qassim, the nationalist leader of Iraq who was overthrown by the Ba'thists in 1963. Rehabilitating Qassim, wrote Michael, allows Iraqis to discredit Saddam's regime as well as the Americans. Michael added that because Qassim was a secular nationalist, "support for him could be one way people have of showing their rejection of an Islamic Iraq."

But those now reexamining Qassim include Americans, too. Eric Davis, for example, is the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. He has been rummaging through Iraq's modern history, seeking evidence of Iraqi civil society that might serve as the foundation of a liberal future. As Davis argued in a recent paper distributed by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, "Qasim's fate offers many lessons for the current situation in Iraq."

Davis credits Qasim with being "the only ruler of modern Iraq who eschewed sectarian criteria in ruling the country. His refusal to exploit sectarian divisions for political ends, his focus on social justice, such as the need for land reform, and his own ascetic lifestyle made Qasim the only truly popular leader since the founding of the modern state." On the other hand, "his authoritarian rule, however non-violent, gradually isolated him from the citizenry, facilitating his overthrow in 1963."

Davis is obviously not interested in rehabilitating Qassim. Both in his paper and his recent book, Memories of State: Politics, History and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq, he seeks to disprove what he calls "two misperceptions of Iraqi politics and society": that ethnic conflict is endemic to Iraqi, and that Iraqis lack a tradition of civil society, cultural tolerance, and political participation. Qassim is for him a moment in modern Iraqi history, to be understood in the context of anti-British efforts, mixed feelings about Pan-Arabism, the post-Ottoman rise of professions, contending political parties, even the Free Verse movement of the 1950s.

At best, a renewed Iraqi interest in Qassim may support Davis' general argument, since it suggests the vitality of the civil-society tradition he is defending. At worst, it may be whitewashing a prior authoritarianism. At a minimum, it suggests that Iraqi history is now a factor in that nation's immediate future, and that ever more people -- Iraqis and others -- are vying to assign that history meaning.

2003-05-31T18:30:00.000+03:00

The perils of Karim
For those still interested in domestic Lebanese politics, this opinion piece of mine in today's Daily Star might be of interest. It's a severe portrait of Karim Pakradouni, the head of the Phalangist Party and current minister of administrative development, who has been servant to virtually everybody in his long political career, and who today bends to the will of Lebanon's president, Emile Lahoud.

2003-05-31T18:20:00.000+03:00

What they didn't notice Wolfowitz say
As debate continues over what Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz actually said in a Vanity Fair interview about the administration's highlighting of WMDs in Iraq, here are a few links that might be of interest. The Pentagon has published this transcript of what Wolfowitz said; the New Republic has this analysis of the exchange; Glenn Reynolds has this take on the thing, with more links; and Fred Kaplan in Slate deconstructs the whole weapons imbroglio

Meanwhile, George W. Bush doesn't see a problem. Of course the U.S. has evidence of Iraq's WMD program, he told Polish television, and the Washington Post reports this exchange with his interviewers:

"You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons," Bush said in an interview before leaving today on a seven-day trip to Europe and the Middle East. "They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two."

From my perspective, a more interesting passage in the Wolfowitz Vanity Fair interview is the one where he says:

There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed--but it's huge--is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things.

What we see here is Wolfowitz buying into the utterly ridiculous argument that Bin Laden reacts to incentives, when it was perfectly clear from the Riyadh attacks a few weeks ago (which came after the Bush administration announced its military withdrawal) that whatever the U.S. does, Al-Qaida will not cease its anti-American operations. Very odd to see a senior official implicitly discussing carrots and sticks when addressing Al-Qaida, when the thrust of administration thinking on the matter since Sept. 11 has gone in a completely different direction.

2003-05-30T15:31:00.000+03:00

Converting Iraq?
Tim Cavanaugh at Reason has put on his miter to write about a subject that is getting less coverage than it deserves: Evangelical Christians and postwar Iraq.

He observes: "Now there are many reasons to be concerned about seeing evangelicals unleashed in the Arab world -- not least of which is their tendency ... to see the Middle East as a playground for enacting millennial fantasies ... But these alarms over evangelical missions in Iraq overlook two points.

The first has to do with religious freedom. Proselytizing, converting, passing out literature, importuning people with your witnessing, even vituperating rival religious beliefs, may all be fairly irritating in practice, but they are also essential to the very concept of freedom of worship. A countryside dotted with motivated, suspiciously cheerful missionaries is a signal that religious liberty is in good shape. Certainly a faith as total and dynamic as Islam can withstand the relatively feeble attractions of a few born again missionaries ...

The second point is less obvious, but will be familiar to anybody who has seen how the evangelization process works in Arab communities: When evangelicals proselytize Arabs, they don't focus on Muslims but on Christians. Specifically, on followers of the traditional eastern churches -- Orthodox, Coptic, eastern-rite Catholic, and so on -- that occupy small minority positions in the Middle East.

2003-05-30T14:46:00.000+03:00

Landing Salam Pax
Salam Pax exists and just to prove it he'll soon be a hack for The Guardian, which will begin publishing his Baghdad Blog next Wednesday. The paper has a profile here.

Link via Matt Welch on Reason's Hit and Run.

(Jeff Jarvis catches the Guardian doing some suggestive censorship on one of Salam's postings.)

2003-05-30T14:31:00.000+03:00

Chalabi's patsies?
Over at Slate, Jack Shafer is continuing to pit-bull Judith Miller's sloppy coverage of the Iraqi WMDs, and he provides a link to this Howard Kurtz article from the Washington Post highlighting a heated exchange of emails at the New York Times between Miller and Baghdad bureau chief John Burns. Evidently Miller filed a piece on Ahmad Chalabi without telling Burns, when she knew the Baghdad bureau was preparing a "major" piece on him.

Burns lambasted Miller, who replied: "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper, including the long takeout we recently did on him. He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper." Kurtz noted she also wrote that the army unit she was traveling with, the Mobile Exploration Team Alpha, "is using Chalabi's intell and document network for its own WMD work. . . ."

As Shafer writes, the exchange is significant because it confirms that Miller's source for the WMD stories she filed (in particular one story suggesting that an unidentified Iraqi scientist had key information on the whereabouts of WMDs) was Ahmad Chalabi. The stories have failed to pan out, raising questions as to whether Chalabi manipulated Miller to advance his own agenda.

From the above exchange, conspiracy theorists might also speculate that Miller's pre-empting of the Baghdad bureau story might have been a way of (a) protecting her good access to Chalabi by torpedoing what could have been a critical Times story by another reporter, and (b) paying Chalabi back for the information he had given her.

That leads to the point of this posting. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was also the source for the Sunday Times story which reported that three Al-Jazeera employees were on the payroll of the Iraqi intelligence services. A few days ago the station's director-general, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, was dismissed, leading to speculation that the episode was linked to the Times revelation. However, this link hasn't been substantiated. If Miller was indeed a patsy, it might be time to double check whether the INC, which has no sympathy for Al-Jazeera, also manipulated the British paper when it passed on documents purporting to prove the treachery of the Qatari station's employees.

2003-05-28T15:08:00.000+03:00

Narcissism at Hizbullah
I have written a highly critical commentary on Hizbullah in today's Daily Star. This follows a speech last Sunday in which the party's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, called on the Lebanese authorities to delay presidential, municipal and parliamentary elections in order to avoid domestic divisiveness at a time when the U.S. purportedly threatens the Middle East. He asked that they, instead, back Hizbullah's resistance priorities.

I described this as "narcissism", and point you to the following paragraph:

If that was the party’s message, then it must have come as a shock to hear Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, assert on Sunday that Damascus would continue to back Hizbullah for as long as it limited its operations to defending Lebanon against Israeli threats. By interpreting the party’s efforts in such a narrow way, Assad was perhaps thinking of the alleged Hizbullah bomb-maker caught off the Israeli coast a few days ago. With Damascus worried about how the Palestinian-Israeli “road map” might affect its own fortunes, it is not about to cede the initiative for heightened regional violence to a Lebanese militia.

2003-05-28T14:58:00.000+03:00

A firing at Al-Jazeera
Recently, the Iraqi National Congress gave documents to the Sunday Times purportedly proving a link between Al-Jazeera and the Iraqi intelligence services. Now the Qatari station has fired its director-general, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, suggesting the accusations may have been true. A distinct possibility is that some of the station's people were on the Iraqi payroll, and that al-Ali was made to pay for this, even though he was not personally involved.

I took a more sanguine view of the affair in my International Papers column in Slate a few weeks ago. Here's the relevant paragraph:

Al-Sharq al-Awsat also led with a report splashed in Britain's Sunday Times suggesting that between August 1999 and November 2002, Iraq's intelligence services had ties with three unnamed employees at the Qatari satellite TV station Al Jazeera—two cameramen and an official in the "external relations" department. The Iraqis allegedly used the relationships to shape the station's coverage of news about Iraq. The Times story was based on intelligence documents found in Baghdad by the Iraqi National Congress and passed on to a reporter at the paper. Skepticism is in order since the INC is hardly a neutral purveyor of information, given its hostility toward Al Jazeera. What's more, the charges are less important than they were played up to be. They did not suggest an Iraqi-Al Jazeera connection after the outbreak of war (information the INC would surely have publicized had it been available), when coverage was more crucial. The disclosures about the Al Jazeera official were also fairly trivial: He is said to have handed the Iraqis copies of two letters sent by Osama Bin Laden to the satellite station, and he apparently helped get individuals expressing the Iraqi viewpoint invited onto some shows. Given Al Jazeera's sympathies, that was hardly a feat. Arguably, the most remarkable thing was that only three Al Jazeera staffers were on the take, since wealthy Arab governments routinely buy influence in media outlets.

If those are still the facts, I stick by my judgment. Andrew Sullivan, however, is less tolerant, arguing that Al-Jazeera is "an adjunct to Islamo-fascism."

2003-05-27T19:21:00.000+03:00

Qassim's rebirth
Fascinating story in today's Al-Hayat, suggesting that there is a resurgence of sympathy for the former Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim, best known today for being Saddam Hussein's target when he was still a young Ba'ath militant. Reportedly, Iraqis took down a statue of Abdelwahab al-Ghariri (who was killed in Qassim's assassination attempt) and scrawled this on the cement stand: "Forgive us our leader ... it's time to again give you consideration." This resurgence of Qassim's popularity is a source of anxiety for the U.S. and the U.K., who know he is remembered as a far-left ardent nationalist who overthrew the Hashemite monarchy and had little sympathy for the West.

Qassim's post-mortem rehabilitation is interesting, since it serves two simultaneous purposes: it allows Iraqis to discredit Saddam's regime, but also the Americans. It is also interesting because Qassim was a hardcore secular nationalist, with no sympathy for Islamist movements, so support for him could be one way people have of showing their rejection of an Islamic Iraq. The phenomenon should probably not be confused with the rehabilitation of someone like Stalin in Russia, since it seems to be motivated less by nostalgia than by an effort to shape ongoing developments in Iraq.

2003-05-26T19:12:00.000+03:00

Young on the poverty of Arab intellectuals
Chuck's citing of Tom Segev opens a helpful door in this exchange on liberalism, that leading to the most cheerless room in the Arab mansion: the one populated by its intellectuals. In a Reason article last year, I raised the same point Chuck did, arguing that Israel's so-called "new historians" (who initiated the post-Zionist dialogue) challenged Israel's founding myths by "basing their arguments on a powerful premise: that Israel's behavior often contradicted the humanist principles they believed their state should epitomize."

Many things can be said about the new historians, not least of which is that they do not consider themselves part of a unified "school". Indeed, last year a dispute broke out between two prominent new historians, Avi Shlaim and Benny Morris, over whether Ehud Barak had really made historic concessions to Yasser Arafat at Camp David. Mortarboards flew, and in the melee Morris (who sided with Barak) showed he could be as much a servant of Israeli power as its intellectual adversary.

In the end, this type of dispute is exactly the medicine Arab intellectuals need. Self-doubt is scarce in the world of Arab ideas, and it is pitiable to see there is no serious Arab revisionist historiography to challenge the way governments project themselves. This may be difficult in Arab countries (and some historians have produced ground-breaking works outside the Middle East), but this only confirms the point: to be an intellectual in the Arab world often means sharing the worldviews of one’s government, while simultaneously deploring its methods.

So Chuck and I can agree: Individuation, or the process of developing sovereign identities over those imposed from the outside, is indeed part of the Arab world's salvation. What Chuck misses, I think, is the extent to which Israel's new historians are a product of Israel’s successive triumphs: in effect they could challenge the country's myths because its reality was secure. In other words open societies (though I have reservations as to whether Israel fully qualifies for that category) require a self-confidence lacking in the Arab world, where defeat is perceived as the norm.

Must the incessant Arab lament end? Surely, but I fear Chuck hasn't yet answered my original question: Given what we have in the region today, what practical processes (on the ground) can enhance liberalism's chances of succeeding? What can bring about the transformations that both Chuck and I agree are essential to turn our debate into something tied into reality?

2003-05-25T23:26:00.000+03:00

Ibrahim Hamidi freed?
I've just received an SMS message informing me that Ibrahim Hamidi, the former Al-Hayat bureau chief in Damascus, has been released. He had been arrested at the end of December for publishing an article that irritated members of the Syrian elite, including the president, Bashar Assad. The news has not been confirmed independently.

2003-05-25T23:09:00.000+03:00

Freund on Israeli individuation
Last weekend, Michael posed a series of challenging questions about how the Arab world is supposed to attain liberalism if the U.S., "the practical sponsor of liberalism," behaves in a way that isn't supportive of liberalism. Michael cites the example of " Washington's overtly Shiite-centered strategy in Iraq," arguing that if the U.S. is engaged in "a potentially divisive communal game, the Arabs will not behave differently."

I agree with Michael's larger point: If the U.S. fails to enable an open system (of free expression, markets, etc.) to develop in Iraq, a historic opportunity will have been squandered at the expense of Arabs and Americans both. But my argument is that it is the open system that will eventually generate a broadened Arab liberalism, not the example of (frequently self-interested) actions by the occupying American government.

I think there's a lesson to be taken from the Israeli experience, and how its society came to generate a critical "Post-Zionist" dialog despite conditions (continuous external threat, internal communal tensions) that would seemingly reinforce a limited number of communal identities. According to Tom Segev, the Israeli journalist and author, it was Israel's open media that invited citizens "to discover themselves as individuals distinct from the national collective," a transformation that led to further revolutions in journalism, historiography, and much more. Segev calls this transformation "Americanization," but I would argue that it is inherent in an open system, and has little to do directly with the U.S.

(By the way, the Israeli example also addresses another of Michael's concerns: that many Arabs may well prefer a communal identity because they perceive it as a secure identity. Michael is right to highlight the point. But a liberal system wouldn't prevent them from making such a choice, any more than it has prevented Israelis or Americans from adhering to communal identities when they have chosen to do so.)

What Segev is describing is the process of continuous individuation, an apparent inevitability of liberalism. Segev singles out the media as the tipping-point influence, but that's certainly too simple a view; the process is neither simple nor passive. Nor, for that matter, is the process as simple as I'm making it sound. Perhaps we'll be able to follow its progress in Iraq.

2003-05-24T20:34:00.000+03:00

Beirut's Daily Star has failed to post Saturday commentaries on its website, which prompts me to do something I usually avoid: post my weekly contribution to the paper's Lebanon section here. Because text boxes are too small, the article continues into succeeding boxes, ending with the word "stake".

Disarm Ain al-Hilweh
It is intriguing to see that a government willing to dispatch agents to hassle Lebanese Forces sympathizers at a funeral in far off Bsharri cannot care a hoot about a Palestinian state-within-a-state in Ain al-Hilweh.

Interior Minister Elias Murr had this to say on his return from a recent trip: "We are against fighting in the camp and strongly deplore the killing of innocent people. As to the gangs inside the camps, such as Esbat al-Ansar and others, we will not permit them to foment disorder in territory under state control, and these people will face justice one day."

The statement was laudable in its intent and bizarre in its context. It begged the obvious question: Why can't the Lebanese Army simply disarm the camps and arrest those fomenting disorder in territory verifiably not under state control? After all, most of us have spent a decade paying a tithe to ensure the army receives a lion's share of budget spending, and have utter faith that it can prevail. [Continued]

2003-05-24T20:32:00.000+03:00

[Resume] Perhaps military doctrine dictates otherwise. In much the same way as the army cannot be deployed on the border with Israel, our officers have possibly deemed entry into Ain al-Hilweh (which incidentally harbor the killers of several of their military intelligence comrades) as strategically imprudent. Or, there could be other reasons that are more complicated.

For elucidation we should look at the perennial rivalry between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Syria. Though such things aren’t publicized, it is Syria’s yearning to deliver Lebanon’s Palestinians to an overall regional settlement. As Damascus contemplates its depleted hand, it still has some cards to play in Lebanon, one of them its control over the refugee camps in Beirut, Tripoli and the Biqaa. With the Rashidiyyeh camp in Tyre under Arafat’s influence, Ain al-Hilweh has become the main battleground between Syria and the Palestinian leader.

This raises another question: If the Syrians want to undermine Arafat, why not just send Lebanese units into Ain al-Hilweh to liquidate his men? One reason is that the Palestinians would unite against the army, since all their factions agree on the need to preserve the political and military autonomy of the camps. What would ensue is a veritable bloodbath, forcing the Lebanese to police a hostile and impoverished environment for years. Isn’t it better, many argue, to simply contain the Palestinians in the camp, even if it means letting them kill each other?

There is another reason. An unstable Ain al-Hilweh usefully reminds outside countries that the Syrian presence in Lebanon is necessary, particularly if the camp is home to Al Qaida-linked Islamists. It is also a source of manpower for anti-Israeli operations if Syria requires such military leverage. For example the cross-border attacks by Palestinians against Israel in April 2002 were, arguably, Syria’s way of expressing displeasure with the Saudi initiative adopted a few days earlier at the Beirut Arab League summit, which Syria was annoyed with. [Continued]