Barack Obama Has Just Handed Iraq Over To Tehran

By Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi 
This comment was published in The Daily Star on 22/11/2010 

The Obama administration’s Iraq policy is in chaos. Seven months after Iraq’s national elections, the United States has publicly denied taking sides in the wrangling over who will be prime minister. Privately, however, the US is backing the incumbent, Nuri al-Maliki.

The United States has applied tremendous diplomatic pressure on Iraq’s Arab neighbors to get them to accept another Maliki term in office. Most have refused. Initially, the US backed Maliki in order to keep the Sadrist bloc from gaining a share of power. But that has now backfired, since the Sadrists are the only group other than Maliki’s coalition of Shiite parties that supports the incumbent.

One unsettling consequence of Washington’s diplomacy is that it has reinforced Iran’s role in Iraq, because Maliki is Iran’s preferred candidate to become prime minister. Thus, at the very moment that the United States is leading a global campaign to isolate Iran over its nuclear program, it is also strengthening Iran’s regional position.

The US-Iranian dispute is not limited to the nuclear issue. American efforts to re-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have faced adamant opposition from Iran, which maintains its 30-year-old policy of opposing any effort to promote peace in the Middle East. Iran exerts significant influence on both state and non-state actors whose support is indispensible to any long-term peace in the region.

First among these is Syria. Post-election Iraq was an obvious opening for the US to place a wedge between Iran and Syria. While Iran promotes the Shiite religious parties in Iraq, Syria’s interests in Iraq tilt toward secular nationalism, as represented by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s coalition, which actually defeated Maliki in the parliamentary elections that were held earlier this year. Indeed, Syria has supported Allawi for the past seven years. Yet, in the wake of intense American and Iranian diplomatic pressure in favor of Maliki, Syria has apparently shifted its support toward him accordingly.

The impact of this American misstep has already been felt, emboldening Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his provocative recent visit to Lebanon, which included a public appearance in Hizbullah-controlled areas near Israel’s northern border.

The Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, have so far resisted US pressure to endorse Maliki. They cannot forget that Maliki was in charge during the time when ethnic cleansing of Baghdad’s Sunni Muslims was taking place. They regard Iran – and thus Maliki’s closeness to Tehran – as an existential threat. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, in particular, perceive Iran as inciting unrest among their own substantial Shiite populations.

Iraq’s political elites have resisted Maliki’s desire for a second term for two reasons. First, they are weary of renewed Iranian attempts to destabilize Iraq. Security forces recently intercepted suicide bombers entering Iraqi Kurdistan from Iran, with, Kurdish leaders believe, the support and training of Iranian intelligence.

Second, Maliki’s tenure has been worrying to those who believe in democracy and the peaceable transfer of power in Iraq. The incumbent prime minister has created security forces – some of which have reportedly acted as death squads – that are answerable directly to him, thus bypassing the constitutional chain of command. He has also replaced career army and security officers with cronies.

Last March, as rumors circulated that he was losing the election, Maliki asserted that state security would be threatened if he lost, and noted his responsibility to maintain order. When he did lose, he demanded a recount of the vote, not as a candidate, but in his capacity as commander-in-chief. The fact that Maliki, despite his incumbency, has been unable to secure a second term seven months after the elections attests to the widespread opposition to his continued rule among Iraq’s political class.

There is only one way to explain the Obama administration’s decision to exert such diplomatic pressure in favor of Iran’s favorite in Iraq: President Barack Obama is fulfilling his pledge during his presidential election campaign to disengage from Iraq during his first term.

In this, Obama is following the example of President George W. Bush, who let the US electoral agenda, rather than American – not to mention Iraqi – national interests, dictate Iraq policy. The Bush administration insisted that Iraq achieve various “milestones” – elections for which the country was not ready and the completion of a Constitution in six weeks – simply to create the appearance of substantive achievements ahead of the 2004 presidential election or the 2006 mid-term elections.

Similarly, the Obama administration is trying to force what it perceives as the easiest path to a new government in Iraq – even if it is pro-Iranian – not because this is in the US national interest, but to enable it to head for the exits more quickly in advance of the president’s re-election campaign in 2012.

The Obama administration’s policy in Iraq is now strengthening Iran regionally at the expense of America’s Arab allies, undermining America’s own efforts to forge a Middle East peace, and weakening Iraq’s nascent democracy. It is difficult to imagine a worse set of outcomes for US national security interests in this vital region.

Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi, director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University, served as Iraq’s ambassador and deputy permanent representative to the United Nations from 2004 to 2007, and was the principal legal drafter of its 2004 interim Constitution.

Diplomacy's Darkest Hours

By Shlomo Ben-Ami

This comment was published in The Jordan Times on 22/11/2010

Diplomacy is not having its finest hour nowadays. Quite the contrary: resistance to diplomatic solutions is a common thread in most of today’s major conflicts.

Afghanistan will continue to bleed until the allies finally recognise that only by engaging the Taliban do they stand a chance of ending the war. But the West will also have to recognise that conflicts with a potent cultural and religious component are simply not susceptible to a military solution - a realisation that points towards ending the ostracism of political Islam - Hamas and Hizbollah, for example.

Meanwhile, Iran’s unstoppable rush to develop nuclear weapons could prove to be a monument to the international community’s failure to stem the atomic tide in the region. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to be the diplomatic charade that it has been for many years now. And nothing has attenuated the tensions between Israel and both Syria and Lebanon.

History teaches that diplomacy all too frequently produces results only when backed by overwhelming power. Such was the existentialist worldview of US president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Theodore Roosevelt, a major advocate of American expansionism: “A just war is, in the long run, far better for a man’s soul than the most prosperous peace.”

A century later, another American president, Barack Obama, immersed in two hopeless wars in the Middle East, received his Nobel Peace Prize with an apology for “just wars”.

Indeed, the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates is not lacking in men - Roosevelt, George Marshall, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger - who either ended up recognising the limits of military power or were simply following Clausewitz’s dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Conflicts start to be ripe for diplomatic solutions only when the parties get trapped in an unbearably painful mutual deadlock. Without such a deadlock, neither United Nations resolutions nor premature peace initiatives can cut short the dynamic of war. It is only then that formulas for power sharing - such as those in Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Guatemala, or Iraq - emerge as a realistic alternative.

It was NATO’s robust military intervention, not European diplomacy, that created the conditions for the end of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Martti Ahtisaari fully deserved his Nobel Peace Prize for articulating a diplomatic solution to Kosovo’s drive for independence. But this could not be achieved before Serbia was militarily humbled. However encouraging, Czechoslovakia’s peaceful “velvet divorce” into two states has not been the norm in Europe or elsewhere.

If it were not for the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel and Egypt would never have reached a peace settlement. And it was the first Gulf War and Palestinian Intifada that created the conditions for the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and the subsequent Oslo Accords. After Rabin’s assassination, the notion has been gaining ground that any Israeli-Palestinian accord would be the “peace of the exhausted”, not Rabin’s “peace of the brave”. But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nonetheless sui generis: either the par?ies’ six-decade mutual deadlock is not unbearable enough, or they prefer to pay the price of conflict rather than compromise their national ethos. Such is now the loss of hope in a negotiated solution that those who advocate an internationally imposed solution seem to be gaining ground.

Internal conflicts that end not with mutual deadlock but with an overwhelming victory by one of the parties hardly ever produce diplomatic solutions. Long years of mediation and endless peace proposals in the Sri Lanka conflict failed to end the war and the devastation of entire Tamil communities.

“Peace” came about only with the total and unconditional defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels. Likewise, the failure of Chechnya, Biafra, Tibet, or the Kurdish areas of the Middle East to reach independent statehood is attributable entirely to their military impotence. By contrast, Eritrea, East Timor, and parts of the former Yugoslavia achieved independence by exhausting their occupiers and/or their internal rivals.

There are few cases where diplomacy actually succeeded in preventing war. Almost invariably, the greatest diplomatic successes have followed, rather than preceded, bloodshed.

In 1919, John Maynard Keynes told the statesmen of post-World War I Europe to abandon their vindictive patriotism for the sake of building a future of peace based on European integration. Alas, it took another world war to convince European leaders of the validity of Keynes’ approach.

The European Union - an empire built through diplomacy and consensus - emerged out of the ashes.

One should, however, resist falling back on fatalism. Colombia’s new president, Juan Manuel Santos, showed genuine courage in cutting short a march to war with Venezuela and calming down the entire Bolivarian axis (Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia) by reviving the region’s diplomatic channels. His was a truly revolutionary shift from the politics of sabre rattling to the hard work of establishing regional peace.

To be sure, much hope still lies in popular diplomacy, in civil society mobilising for peace. Frequently, governments need to be coaxed into accepting the inevitability of compromise, thanks to pressure from below. Civil society’s support for bridging the psychological gap between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland helped pave the way to peace. And Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, after 18 years of useless military occupation, largely reflected the immense impact of the “Four Mother?’ Movement” on Israel’s government.

But popular diplomacy alone never forces political leaders to end wars and make peace. Official diplomacy begins where the battlefield ends. Unfortunately, in today’s most consequential militarised conflicts, that boundary is still nowhere in sight.

The writer is a former Israeli foreign minister who now serves as the vice president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace. He is the author of “Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy”. ©Project Syndicate, 2010. www.project-syndicate.org

How Could Obama Have Agreed To All These 'Understandings' With Netanyahu?

By Yossi Sarid
This comment was published in Haaretz on 21/11/2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an ambiguous relationship with written documents. On the one hand, he doesn't want the minutes of his talks with representatives of the administration put down in writing lest he be taken literally, but on the other hand, he wants everything in writing, that is to say, everything he was supposedly promised.

Since his meeting with the U.S. secretary of state 10 days ago, Netanyahu has been staring out his office window wondering where the letter from Obama is. Over the past 10 days of confusion, one thing is clear: In formulating the "understandings," numerous misunderstandings have emerged.

	Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on September 1, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

Either someone did not speak clearly, did not understand or did not want to understand, or people changed their minds and wanted to retroactively rewrite the minutes of those talks.

How can we know? Let's turn to logic and see what it can tell us about what went on behind closed doors.

Does it seem logical that America would suddenly agree to exclude Jerusalem from the construction freeze? After all, it has never recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, not to mention the eastern part of the city, which it defines as a disputed area that is also up for negotiation. That has always been Washington's position, regardless of who served as president.

Is it logical for the United States to give up its position, which is the position of the entire international community, for a three-month freeze? If the administration was foolish enough to do so, it would immediately be recognizing greater Jerusalem as Israel's eternal capital, ending once and for all its status as an honest broker. That's simply illogical.

Is it logical that America have agreed not to renew its demands for a new freeze after the 90-day freeze is up? If so, it would be recognizing de facto Israel's right to rule all of the land of Israel and not only all of Jerusalem. Netanyahu, Lieberman and Yishai would be able to build in the territories at their discretion, with American authorized and documented permission. That's simply illogical.

Is it logical that of all people, Netanyahu, who knows the side streets of Washington as well as he does those of his boyhood neighborhood of Talbiyeh, does not know how things work there? Even gifts as fine and expensive as 20 stealth aircraft have to get Congressional approval.

To get the deal past his blind partners, Netanyahu is willing to sell essential, sustainable Israeli interests: a natural and unwritten alliance between traditional partners, a bridge of iron, as opposed to documents that have been genetically engineered in the State Department labs - a bridge of paper.

Would it not have been better for Netanyahu to have agreed to the freeze and ask nothing in return? He could have then returned from America and announced: I have agreed to the freeze because that is what we need now and is also the way to show gratitude to a country that has withheld nothing from us.

If he had done so, even his friends and rivals would have respected him. But if he had done so, he wouldn't be Netanyahu.

America's Role In Lebanon

By Ahmed Noor

This comment was published in The Guardian on 21/11/2010

Josh Block – a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) – recently argued that President Obama ought to confront Hezbollah in Lebanon in order to confront Iran. The objective, according to Block, is to arrest any threat to "US security and credibility around the world." He quotes Fred Hof, a deputy to the ineffective George Mitchell, who says: "Whether most of [Hezbollah's] members know it or not, and whether most Lebanese Shiites know it or not, [Nasrallah] and his inner circle do what they do first and foremost to defend and project the existence and power of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Hof's claim that he understands what motivates Nasrallah better than Hezbollah members and Lebanese citizens is grandiose and, at the very least, a gross oversimplification. But his article is published in the context of a concerted push for America to go to war – whether outright or attritional – with Iran. Only last week, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew across the Atlantic to ask Vice President Joseph Biden to launch a war against Iran on Israel's behalf. Biden – keenly aware that his responsibility is to the American people – declined. What's surprising about this episode is that Netanyahu's entreaties were conducted in full view of the White House press corps.

The pro-Israel lobby is aware that America is too over-committed to attack Iran. But America is evidently capable of taking on Hezbollah, an Iranian ally – and those who hope for this scenario see US involvement in the inquiry into the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri as a potential lever they can pull.

Hariri was assassinated in Beirut in 2005. The truck bomb that killed him claimed 21 other lives and caused hundreds of injuries. Syria – which was occupying Lebanon at the time – was quickly blamed for the murder. The resulting Lebanese and international pressure combined to end the Syrian occupation soon after.

The matter didn't end there, however. The United Nations commenced an investigation, culminating in the establishment of the Special Tribunal of Lebanon (STL). It's been more than five years and the tribunal's prosecutor now appears ready to issue indictments. According to reports and Hassan Nasrallah himself, the STL plans to indict members of Hezbollah organisation. 

Many in Lebanon are sceptical of the STL, which, for a variety of reasons, has little credibility in the country. The conventional understanding, and Block's argument bears this out, is that America and Israel seek to confront Iran and Syria on Lebanese territory. Lebanese suspect that the STL is foreign-sponsored attempt to undermine Hezbollah's democratic – it's a political party with elected parliamentary members – support among Lebanese citizens. One woman wryly put it to me this way: "Where's the special tribunal to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy?"

Many of us in Lebanon want to know the truth about Hariri's assassination. We want to see an end to the era of spasmodic political assassinations and international intrigues. But we're also aware that international players have an interest in manipulating the truth-yielding process to suit their geopolitical interests. More than anything, America's pursuit of indictments – Block notes that the administration just provided the tribunal with another $10m in funding – has tainted the STL's claim of independence. The question now is whether pursuing a discredited judicial process is worth sacrificing domestic stability.

Barack Obama's principal responsibility is to the American people. A war with Iran is not in America's best interest; neither is a confrontation with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a legitimate political party that reflects the aspirations of many Lebanese people. European leaders understand that and frequently meet with the party's representatives to discuss political differences. 

The best way for Obama to promote stability in Lebanon is by resisting calls for a policy of confrontation and, instead, engaging with its regional adversaries. But pursuing the fatally-flawed STL process is exactly the wrong thing to do right now. There's no doubt that the Lebanese deserve the truth – and they deserve stability. But the STL can provide neither.

Afghans Want Their Country Back- And Americans Should Listen

By David Ignatius

This comment was published in The Washington Post on 21/11/2010

America's first problem in Afghanistan is that the Afghan people in the key battleground don't understand why we're there: When pollsters read a simple summary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack and its aftermath to a sample of 1,000 young men in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, only 8 percent said they knew about this event.

The poll results convey a stark reality about this war: People in the Pashtun region of southern Afghanistan resent foreign fighters. Most don't comprehend why they have come or how they might offer a better future than would the Taliban. They feel that America and its allies don't respect their traditions.

When President Hamid Karzai complains about U.S. military tactics, as he did in a recent interview with The Post, he's expressing what many Afghans feel. Rather than getting furious at Karzai's outbursts, which is the normal reaction of U.S. officials, perhaps it's worth listening more carefully. After nine years of war, the Afghans want their country back.

NATO forces have done better over the past six months at winning "hearts and minds" in southern Afghanistan - but probably still not well enough to succeed without some changes in tactics. That's my reading of the new polling by Canadian researcher Norine MacDonald, which she showed me prior to publication.

MacDonald's polls offer a glimpse of some "ground truth" that's easy for visiting journalists, and also perhaps U.S. policymakers, to miss. She has been based in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah for more than five years, doing research for the International Council on Security and Development, a private group that's funded by foundations in Europe. She's a rare independent observer of this conflict.

MacDonald conducted her latest poll in October, following one she did in the two southern provinces in June. This time, she doubled the interviews to get a statistically reliable sample. On many issues, she got much more favorable responses than in June. But a majority of respondents still didn't support the U.S. mission or understand its rationale.

The numbers show that Afghans remain wary, even as U.S. troops pound the Taliban: 50 percent of those polled in October think recent military operations are bad for the Afghan people; 58 percent think it's wrong to work with foreign forces; 55 percent oppose military operations against the Taliban in their area; 72 percent say that foreigners disrespect their religion.

President Obama premised his strategy last December on the idea that as U.S. forces drove the Taliban from Kandahar and Helmand, local governance would improve and support for the insurgency would dry up in these key provinces. There has been some movement in that direction in recent months.

Here are some indications that Obama's core assumptions are still unproven: Only 31 percent of those polled believe that NATO forces are protecting the population; 51 percent say that their view of NATO forces is either more negative or the same compared to a year ago; 65 percent say that foreign forces kill more civilians than do the Taliban.

Perceptions of the Afghan army and police are improving in Helmand and Kandahar, but not sufficiently that people are confident they can take control. Fifty-two percent say the Afghan army is effective, and 39 percent say that about the police. But on the big question of transferring power, 61 percent believe that the Afghan security forces will be unable to provide security in areas from which foreign forces are withdrawing.

And here are the most chilling numbers of all: In the region that was Osama bin Laden's stronghold, 81 percent say that al-Qaeda will come back if the Taliban returns to power, and 72 percent say that al-Qaeda will then use Afghanistan as a base for attacks against the West.

MacDonald thinks it's not too late to turn these trends around. She argues that the United States and its allies need to make clear why they've come and explain why Afghans will have a better future working with the coalition and the Afghan government.

People want electricity, for example, so she suggests a simple choice: Future with us, lights on; future with Taliban, lights off.

To improve the U.S. image with young Afghans, MacDonald has an innovative plan for a "marriage allowance" scheme to help them finance their most passionate ambition.

Gen. David Petraeus has stepped up the "enemy-centric" side of counterinsurgency, tripling the number of U.S. Special Operations raids from a year ago. But MacDonald's polling data make clear that the "protect the population" side isn't succeeding yet. The trends are improving, but not enough.

The Demand For The Freedom To Assassinate!

By Tariq Alhomayed
This comment was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 21/11/2010
 
Much has been said about the ongoing ‘special’ negotiations on Lebanon, in anticipation of the potential reaction to the indictment rulings, in the event that elements of Hezbollah, or otherwise, are accused. The indictments of the International Tribunal, performing an inquest into the death of the late Rafik Hariri, are expected to be issued at any time, although no specific date has been set.
 
The bulk of what we hear and read, stemming from leaked information, is that the objective of these negotiations is to strengthen stability in Lebanon, and preserve civil peace. Essentially, this means that there is a group in Lebanon, with external support, that wants the blessing of Arabs, and others, to have the ‘freedom to assassinate’ in Lebanon. Thus, [according to this principle], anyone who assassinates a Prime Minister, a politician of any rank, or a media personality, should not be harmed; otherwise civil peace in Lebanon will be severely jeopardized. This means that the Arabs are following a ‘mafia-mentality’ in their management of the Lebanese crisis, instead of established laws.
 
This is the crisis that exists in Lebanon today, and it is the crux of the current negotiations, regarding the future of Lebanon, as well as the future of the International Tribunal of Rafik Hariri, and other Lebanese victims. Subsequently, we hear phrases such as “avenger of blood”, or “choose between justice and stability”, or that the International Tribunal “has become politicized”.
 
In reality, almost all parties concerned are not looking to put a stop to assassinations, and to support Lebanon’s stability both now and in the future. The simplest example of what we are saying here came from Michel Aoun, who was not alone in this regard, when he warned that issuing indictments before clarifying the issue of false witnesses, “will lead to the outbreak of hostilities”. Aoun believes that Hezbollah’s response will be stronger, because it considers itself to be innocent. Yet it is well-known that those who are innocent seek to prove their innocence, instead of destroying everything and everybody around them, and bringing down the house from the inside!
 
Here we are not accusing Hezbollah, or anyone else, but we demand that the innocent seek to show their innocence, without threat or menace. We also demand an end to solutions along the lines of “the Lebanese must choose between justice and stability”, as these only entrench the idea that assassination is an act of politics, an act which unfortunately has been happening in Lebanon for decades.
 
The unfortunate reality in Lebanon is that whenever the relevant parties, whether in Lebanon or the surrounding area, reach an ‘acceptable’ solution, this simply means that they have lowered their demand from the ‘freedom to assassinate’, to simply arguing that the punishment for the offence is too severe. Yet there does not seem to be a consensus that because assassination is a crime, the offender must pay a price to ensure it does not reoccur.
 
For the benefit of our region, one hopes that the United Nations will have a hand in the investigation of assassinations, or disappearances, in our region. This includes Lebanon, Iraq, or Somalia, or any region where there is no respect for human life. Otherwise, we will continue in our approach of “let bygones be bygones”, and we will accept assassinations as part of the political process in our region. Who can guarantee that an assassination will not occur tomorrow in Lebanon, or that a national political figure in Iraq will not be targeted, for example, if there is no one to pay the price?

Tents Of Rivalry In The Sahara

By Mohammad el-Ashab

This comment was published in al-Hayat on 21/11/2010

More than maintaining self-control, the picture reflects another aspect of the surrender to feelings of hatred that have grown between the parties to the Sahara conflict. To the extent that Moroccan forces have relied on reining in any emotional behavior while dismantling the camps of Saharan refugees, which were set up under the slogan of social demands for housing and work, it has been unacceptable for the angry protestors to resort to killing their victims.

Everything in the Sahara conflict has given way to this strong picture, while no political rhetoric has been able to sum up the reality of what happened. Some of the Spanish press borrowed images of Palestinian children run over by Israeli killing vehicles and presented them as though they were the victims of the intervention by Moroccan forces, while the bodies of the victims of the moral crime in Casablanca were featured prominently in the newspapers, which claimed they were victims of Moroccan “aggression” in the Sahara.

Some people in the media in Spain became embarrassed and apologized. Meanwhile, the image of a Saharan activist who was crying, and claimed that she knew the families of those Palestinian children, remained stuck in people’s minds. There was a predetermination to use mistaken headlines, when the press claimed that the pictures were of the El-Oyoun camp victims. However, members of the UN Security Council, as they reviewed tape of the El-Oyoun incident, concluded by condemning the violence, but refusing to form an investigative committee. Their message was a telling lesson about the impact of visual images; they present facts as they are on the ground, without assigning political dimensions that benefit this or that party.

The media aspect dominated the management of all characteristics and motives of the psychological war. Although the various types of deception do not change these types of wars, the biggest loser in what happened has involved seeing this ugly face of the conflict put forward. No party, whatever the cause it defends, should resort to this type of barbaric behavior, which has been invented by extremist organizations that are outside the law.

While there has been a surrender to emotion and the fabrication of false images to convince Spanish opinion of something that did not actually take place, the Moroccans have been keen this time to document what happened, using both sound and image. Although Moroccan public opinion did not accept the idea of some of its forces being slaughtered so brutally, the belief took root that power had become weakness, as the matter involved preserving the lives of the angry Saharans, who the Moroccans had repeatedly said, prior to their intervention, did not enjoy a free choice to continue dialogue, which was about to achieve its goals.

All of the expectations indicate that the Sahara conflict has entered a new phase. It was not possible for the conflict to go as far as boiling over, tension, and the excessive use of emotions, had it not gone as far as seeing the spread of desperation and anger, and because it is not a conflict with clear aspects and objectives. It was thus natural for it to spin out of control; the negotiations have not boosted hopes, the regional dialogue has not contained the repercussions of the El-Oyoun incident, and the positions of the parties to the conflict did not remain in their original position.

However, seeing any conflict over a cause move from one phase to another is something desirable and acceptable, particularly in terms of controlling the contours of the “game.” There are always political goals that dictate the management of the conflict, in such a way as to guarantee to the parties, or to at least one of them, that escalation and heating-up will be a calibrated process.

However, when the cards are re-shuffled and unaccustomed-to behavior infiltrates itself, the essential cause at stake becomes blurry.

The Moroccans have avoided labeling their partners in the negotiations on a political solution for the Sahara conflict, but they have to be concerned with the establishment of peace and stability in the whole region. In fact, they talk to their partners, along with other parties concerned with the regional conflict. It is most worrisome that the method of negotiation no longer accommodates all contradictions.

More dangerous than threatening to resort once again to arms is the possibility that another war has started. It is nothing new to see the parties to the Sahara conflict fire their guns. They did it when no solution seemed near. Today, nothing is easier than igniting fires. It will not be useful to ask who did it but to look for the fastest way to put out the flames. The El-Oyoun events remain a type of wound that leaves deep cracks in ideas, concepts and political wagers. To begin with, Saharans do not tend to be violent, and to them, erecting tents is an inherited tradition that stems from accord, and not from the type of enmity that leaves behind a profound gulf.