Attacking Israel's Diplomats: The View From Iran

By Babak Dehghanpisheh

The attack sounded all too familiar. An assassin on a motorcycle reportedly slapped a magnetic bomb on a car on Monday afternoon and rode away as the occupants scrambled to escape the vehicle. Nearly half a dozen similar attacks in Tehran have targeted scientists linked with Iran's controversial nuclear program in recent years. And Iranian officials have pointed the finger at Israel and the U.S. as the culprits behind the assassinations. But this time it was different: the target was the wife of an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi, who was injured in the blast along with a driver. Another explosive device attached to an Israeli embassy vehicle in Tblisi, Georgia, was found and defused on Monday afternoon.

So is this the Iranian regime's attempt at payback? Israeli officials certainly seem to think so. "Iran is behind these attacks, and it is the largest terror exporter in the world," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told members of the Likud party on Monday afternoon. Iranian officials quickly dismissed the accusation. In a report published on the semiofficial Fars News Agency website, Ramin Mehmanparast, the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said these charges were leveled at Iran as part of a "psychological war" against the country. "The finger needs to be pointed at those countries who openly support terrorist actions, especially those of the Zionist regime," Mehmanparast said. "These countries have to explain why they defend and support the actions and crimes of terrorist groups in Iran and other countries in the region." An article published by the semiofficial Mehr News Agency about the attacks and Netanyahu's accusation ran with an equally blunt headline: "The Zionist Hype Has Begun."

If an Iranian link is found to either of the bombs, it would signify a marked escalation in the covert war between Iran and its perceived enemies. And it wouldn't be particularly surprising. Iranian officials were enraged by the attacks against the nuclear scientists and have promised revenge. The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a scientist who worked at the Natanz uranium-enrichment plant, in mid-January seems to have been the last straw. "We will not neglect punishing those responsible for this act," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said after the killing last month. General Masoud Jazayeri, the spokesman for Iran's Joint Armed Forces Staff, was even more explicit. "The enemies of the Iranian nation, especially the United States, Britain and the Zionist regime, or Israel, have to be held responsible for their activities." The Iranian government has organized a number of events to commemorate Ahmadi-Roshan's assassination and to send the message that his death won't go unanswered. One recent event was an odd BASE jump from Tehran's landmark Milad Tower last week, in which the participants wore T-shirts emblazoned with Ahmadi-Roshan's picture as they parachuted down from the top of the building.

The assassination of Ahmadi-Roshan last month, coupled with a tightening of international sanctions against Iran and persistent rumors of an Israeli attack, has led to a siege mentality in the country. And the government's hard-line supporters have become even more conspiracy-minded. It's worth noting that some members of the Basij militia who attacked the British embassy last November were carrying pictures of another recently assassinated nuclear scientist, Majid Shahriari.

The Israeli diplomat's wife who was targeted on Monday was reportedly flung from the vehicle by the force of the blast, according to an Indian journalist who arrived on the scene shortly after the attack and posted photos on Twitter. The diplomat's wife was rushed to the hospital, where she is reportedly in critical but stable condition. The attack will no doubt prove to be an embarrassment for the Indian security forces because of its proximity to the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Israeli leaders have accused Iran of involvement in other attacks that were foiled in the past month. One was an alleged plot to attack Israeli tourists in Thailand that was reportedly going to be carried out by a Hizballah agent. Another was an assassination attempt against the Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan, which borders Iran. Two Azerbaijani nationals were arrested in that plot. The Iranian government struck back on Sunday when they summoned the Azerbaijani ambassador and gave him a protest note claiming that some of the assassins of the Iranian scientists had recently travelled to Azerbaijan before heading to Israel to meet Mossad agents.

Despite the fiery rhetoric coming out of Tehran, there hasn't been any concrete evidence yet tying the Iranian government to the plots in Thailand or Azerbaijan or the attacks on Monday. In fact, the Iranian chief prosecutor, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, said in a press conference on Monday that Iran had submitted a file against the "Zionist regime" to international courts and intended to pursue the cases of the assassinated scientists through legal means. Meanwhile, Iranian nuclear scientists and Israeli diplomats will no doubt be watching their backs.

-This report was published by Time Magazine’s blog on 14/02/2012

Egyptians Renegotiate - With The US, Israel And Themselves

By Faisal Al Yafai

                                                                          Supreme Military Council of Egypt

How much can a country change in a single year? On the anniversary of Hosni Mubarak's fall from power, Egypt is still convulsed daily by protests. Sit-ins in Tahrir Square continue. Relations between "the Square", which is shorthand for the Egyptian public that supports the protests, and the generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) are tense and characterised by mutual mistrust. The stability and calm sought by the outside world is a work in progress.

Yet beneath the surface, decisive changes have taken place in the past 12 months. There is a tension at the heart of the Egyptian revolution between making cosmetic changes - arguably elections, and even a new president - and genuine, deep-rooted change.

Egyptians, even those who do not support the Square, are in favour of fundamental change. The Scaf generals are now torn between the Square and the newly elected parliamentarians, who are also uncertain. No decisions can be taken without regard to Tahrir. That, certainly, is new.

This three-way struggle continues daily. What is happening is a systematic renegotiation of the social contracts that have held Egypt firm (for which, read: stagnant) for decades. In this mix is the tentative renegotiation of the close relationship with the United States and, by proxy, the peace treaty with Israel. A more democratic Egypt will bring closer alignment between the wishes of the people and state policy.

In this climate, everything is political. The violence that followed a football match earlier this month escalated into days of clashes and riots - all aimed at the military, which protesters accused of orchestrating the violence. The Supreme Council is in a bind: the generals seem to be looking for ways to transfer to civilian rule while keeping intact as much of the old guard as possible. But the Square has set as its target that very system.

The presidential election, previously scheduled to begin in June, has been brought forward, with nominations to be accepted in March. In itself, a change of two or three months isn't meaningful, but what it represents is significant: the people have spoken.

In other ways, too, the rules of the game have been altered from a year ago. In the past two weeks, Egyptian activists launched a campaign on social networks to boycott companies owned by the army. Activists argue that military-run companies deprive the economy of investment and competition. By naming companies owned by the generals, they hope to further pressure Scaf, while raising awareness of the real role of what is often described as the "deep state".

This is a brave step, inconceivable a year ago, because information about these companies is considered a military secret. It is a further demonstration of how much Egyptian society has changed, and how the previous social contracts are being rewritten.

This renegotiation is not a mere metaphor for social change. Last month, the UAE's Damac Properties settled a dispute with the Egyptian government over the value of land purchased by the company during the Mubarak era. Several other companies have also been involved in the review of contracts after protesters objected to deals struck during Mubarak's rule.

The Supreme Council is not stationary in this situation, even if its acts are sometimes opaque. A mass raid on 17 NGOs at the end of last year has led to the detention and possible prosecution of 43 foreigners, including 19 American citizens. The arrest of these citizens prompted US government officials to suggest the estimated $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) annual aid package to Egypt might be in jeopardy. In response, Cairo cancelled a high-ranking army delegation, in a diplomatic row that would have been extremely unlikely in the Mubarak era.

This may be an elaborate bluff on Scaf's part, an attempt to exert some leverage over the United States, which at least in public has been supportive of the protest movement. Or it may be an attempt to pander to public opinion; Egyptian society is generally suspicious of the intentions of the United States, which was the primary patron of the Mubarak regime.

Yet this may be a bluff on both sides. No institution in Egypt is closer to the United States than the army. For Washington, there is no real question of withdrawing aid, which is the cornerstone of US policy in the region. Aid has always been the price the US government had to pay for the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, to placate Cairo as Israel continued its occupation of Palestinian land.

But what is happening is that the generals - slowly, tenuously, pushing back when they can - are being forced to listen to what the Egyptian people are saying. This is not a perfect system: the people of Tahrir have no formal mandate and parliamentary elections have, in the minds of many, supplanted their political role. Better, ideally, for Egypt to speak through the ballot box.

But with the army still in charge and electoral politics still being defined to offer as many Egyptians as possible a voice in public affairs, Tahrir Square remains the megaphone through which the people - a large proportion of the people, at least in spirit - can speak and demand that the generals listen. That is a sea-change from a year ago. Egypt may not be stable, but these days is far from stagnant.

-This commentary was published in The National on 14/02/2012  

Syria's A tragedy… But It's Not An American Problem!

BY DAVID RIEFF

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of (humanitarian) war. That, at least, is what much of the U.S. policy elite seems to be pushing for these days in Syria. That many of the "permahawks," like Fouad Ajami, Max Boot, and Elliott Abrams, who championed the George W. Bush administration's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, are now calling for supporting the uprising against Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship should come as no surprise to anyone. Nor should similar calls from most of the liberal writers and editors associated with the New Republic magazine come as a shock. They, too, have been remarkably consistent, and the magazine's current symposium on what needs to be done next in Syria is eerily reminiscent of the one it ran the year after the invasion of Iraq, which tilted so lopsidedly toward justifying the war, though not the way the Bush administration was prosecuting it.

What is surprising, though, is that despite the disaster of Iraq, looming withdrawal in what will amount to defeat in Afghanistan, and, to put it charitably, the ambiguous result of the U.N.-sanctioned, NATO-led, and Qatari-financed intervention that brought down Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime, is how nearly complete the consensus for strong action has been even among less hawkish liberals, whether what is done takes the form of the United States and its NATO allies arming the Free Syrian Army, opening so-called humanitarian corridors, or encouraging Turkey and a coalition of the willing within the Arab League to do so. British columnist Jonathan Freedland summed up this view when he wrote recently in the Guardian that the West must not "make the people of Homs pay the price for the mistake we made in Baghdad."

In reality, though, liberal interventionists were never as shaken by the lessons of Iraq as was commonly supposed. Anyone doubting this need only look at the extraordinary mobilization for some sort of humanitarian and human rights-based intervention in Darfur in 2005 and 2006. This movement included a number of figures who now occupy important positions in Barack Obama's administration, notably Susan Rice, now U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, and Samantha Power, now senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, and who are generally assumed to have played an important role (if not quite the central one sometimes attributed to them) in persuading Obama to intervene in Libya. Nothing is wrong with intervention, it seems (just as there is nothing wrong with drone strikes), just as long as it is done by good U.N.-loving, multilateralism-oriented Democrats from the coasts, rather than by ignorant, war-worshipping, vulgarly nationalistic Republicans from flyover country.

If anything, liberal interventionists now seem to feel they have the wind at their backs because of the acceptance by the United Nations of the so-called "responsibility to protect" (R2P) doctrine, which has been widely touted -- including by many of the most important human rights organizations that are often at odds with U.S. government policy (notably Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and some of their most important funders, notably George Soros's Open Society Foundations network) -- as resolving many of the ethical and operational problems that accompanied previous iterations of humanitarian intervention. In the words of Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter of Princeton University, who, until last year, was head of policy planning at the U.S. State Department, "R2P is a foundation for increased peace and respect for human rights over the long term, [and] each time it is invoked successfully to authorize the prevention of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave and systematic war crimes, and ethnic cleansing as much as the protection of civilians from such atrocities once they are occurring, it becomes a stronger deterrent against the commission of those acts in the first place."

Like so many of the fundamental assumptions of the human rights movement, there is something quasi-religious about all this. Writing recently on this site, Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister who is one of the principal intellectual and institutional architects of R2P, argued that over the past decade there is "universal agreement that state sovereignty is not a license to kill." He concedes that the Russian and Chinese veto of the Security Council's Syria resolution demonstrates that "for every two steps forward on R2P there is usually a step back" -- but Evans quickly dispenses with this caveat. He quotes U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, noting that henceforth the global debate will be about "how, not whether, to implement the responsibility to protect."

Welcome to the "End of History," human-rights style. Like Francis Fukuyama's famous argument, there is simply no basis other than our hopes and our preferences to make us think that though the road toward this radiant future, to use the old Soviet expression, will be neither straight nor smooth, nevertheless it only goes one way, and that is in the direction of progress, peace, justice, and rights.

It is this religious quality to the support for R2P that helps account for the odd reaction among those who believe that something must be done to stop the Assad regime's war against much of its own people despite the Russian and Chinese vetoes. Obviously, some of this is purely political posturing. But it is not only spin. The moral outrage, however misplaced, is real enough. In her contribution to the New Republic symposium, Suzanne Nossel -- formerly Richard Holbrooke's deputy when he was the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, founder of DemocracyArsenal.org, former chief operating officer of Human Rights Watch, and now executive director of the U.S. branch of Amnesty International -- illustrated this faith-based ethical triumphalism perfectly when she insisted that though the Russian and Chinese vetoes of the Security Council resolution had been "a sharp political defeat," it had also represented a "potent moral victory" and a "tectonic shift" in the advancement of a global human rights regime whose victory is now inevitable, no matter what kind of sovereigntist rear-guard actions the Russians and Chinese may continue to mount.

The implication is clear. Three years after the adoption of R2P by the U.N. General Assembly and more than a year after the beginning of the Arab Spring, not only is the Assad regime on the wrong side of history, but the Russians and Chinese are as well. In her New Republic piece, Nossel even goes so far as to imply that the Russians and the Chinese know this themselves. They cast their votes out of fear of this human rights-based future, she writes, claiming that the "bell of international condemnation and isolation tolling now for Damascus sounds an uneasy note in Beijing and Moscow." Even by the hubristic standards of the human rights movement, these are extraordinary claims. One doubts, however, that they will cause either Vladimir Putin or Hu Jintao to quake in his boots as this owl of Minerva flies by, presumably with a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights held in its beak.

Beneath all the incantatory bluster, however, a certain nervousness shows through. To judge by the fevered, angry response of U.S., French, and British officials, it seems as if they genuinely believed the Russians and Chinese would be obliged to truckle before the historic inevitability of the human rights revolution. How else to account for the spectacle of Ambassador Rice storming out of the Security Council chamber in fine, old, Khrushchev-era Soviet style once the vetoes had been cast, or her declaration shortly after that Russia and China had held the council "hostage" (one can only wonder how long until those words are thrown back at her the next time the United States vetoes a Security Council resolution on Israel-Palestine, as it has so often in the past).

Safely out of government, Slaughter was able to go further, demanding that the United States and its allies do something to bring the carnage in Syria to an end. Otherwise, she wrote, R2P would be exposed as a "convenient fiction for power politics or oil politics." So convinced is she of the positive value of the responsibility to protect as a force for peace and international security that she seems perfectly willing to envisage an end run around that pesky Security Council veto the Russians and the Chinese had the gall to invoke. To be legitimate, she writes, all that would be required from the United Nations would be the "authorization of a majority of the members of the [Security Council]," as an exercise of R2P, "with clear limits to how and against whom force could be used built into the resolution." Like the iconic U.S. officer in Vietnam who told a reporter that his troops had been obliged to burn the village in order to save it, Slaughter seems to be willing to undermine the structural foundations of international order, which, for better or worse, is based in large measure on the Security Council, in order to further it. Peace is war; war is peace. George Orwell, call your office.

Meanwhile, despite the astonishing propaganda barrage in the media (for once, CNN, the BBC, and Al Jazeera were all on the same page!) that for all intents and purposes endorsed the claims about dead and wounded made by the anti-Assad insurgents (the disclaimers tended to come at paragraph three or four of a print piece, or the tail end of a video segment), the reality on the ground in Syria was far more complicated. A McClatchy news story quoted U.S. government sources as confirming that the recent attack against a Syrian government building in Aleppo had probably been the work of al Qaeda, thus confirming at least to some extent the claims the Assad regime has made about the role of jihadists in the rebellion. Qaddafi made the same claim; it was dismissed at the time, but now appears to have had at least some foundation. In the Syrian case, though, there is no need to trust either Assad or anonymous sources in the U.S. intelligence world, because al Qaeda's support for the uprising has been confirmed publicly by Osama bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, in a recent video, praised the "lions of Syria" for their rebellion. And even if al Qaeda's role is overstated, the degree to which what is going on today in Syria pits Sunnis against Assad's Alawite base was underscored by the early January testimony to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by Israeli army chief of staff Benny Gantz, who said the Israel Defense Forces was already making contingency plans to cope with the thousands of Alawites likely to try to flee to Israel should Assad be driven from power.

These nightmare scenarios are anything but far-fetched. What is taking place in Syria may have begun in part as a democratic insurrection, but it has become a low-level (at least for the moment) interconfessional civil war. The last time we got involved in one of those was in Iraq, whose principal legacies, however unintended, are almost certain to be increasing Iranian power and influence -- and setting the stage for the disappearance of Christianity in one of its most ancient homelands. There is simply no reason to believe that things in Syria will turn out any better and at least some reason to assume that the result will be even worse. But in the brave new world of R2P, this does not seem to matter very much to a born-again liberal interventionism eager to flex its muscles.

During the Bush administration, Democrats often boasted that -- unlike the president and his aides, who were consumed by millenarian dreams of remaking the Middle East in the image of American democracy -- they were part of the "reality-based community." In fact, the neoconservatives were paragons of modesty compared with the liberal interventionists and R2P supporters who saw in Libya and now see in Syria the chance to move one step closer to remaking the world in the image of the human rights movement. Infatuated by their own good intentions -- and persuaded that their interventionist views incarnate a higher morality -- those who view Libya as a triumph and Syria as an opportunity to cement the practice of humanitarian intervention are in full crusading mode. If the looming victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the failure of the democratic project in Iraq, and the fact that the most significant political outcomes of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Yemen, and Libya have been instability and the victory of political Islam have not chastened them -- and clearly they haven't -- nothing will. Welcome to the second decade in a row of humanitarian war.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 13/02/2012
-David Rieff is the author, most recently, of Against Remembrance, a critique of political memory. He is completing a book on the global food crisis

Adding Fuel To Syria's Fire

By Anya Barry

                                 
                                          Russian President Medvedev and Syrian President al-Assad

Despite the widespread international denunciation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the government in Damascus continues to crack down hard on the country’s growing domestic opposition. “They are moving in a direction that completely shows that they are absolutely out of touch,” says Yasser Tabbara, the secretary general of the Syrian National Council (SNC), a government opposition group. Other countries in the region have experienced revolutions, but Syria remains in a state of uncertainty. At the UN, China and Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government’s actions, making a coordinated international response even more difficult.

Meanwhile, as the conflict rages on, Syria continues to receive shipments of military supplies—specifically from countries like Iran, Lebanon, and Russia. In January, Russia inked a lucrative deal with the Syrian government to sell approximately $500 million worth of military arms in the form of 36 Yak-130 aircraft combat jets. Russia’s actions have caused significant outcry from the international community. High-ranking officials such as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice as well as other Western diplomats have stated their strong disapproval of Russia’s move. Over the past 10 months, Syria’s escalating violence has resulted in the deaths of 5,400 civilians. Russia’s combat jets are specifically designed to shoot targets on the ground, which could lead to an increase in the civilian death toll.

Arms Embargo?

In response to the ongoing problems in Syria, the Moroccan delegation to the UN introduced a resolution calling for an arms embargo on Syria and for Assad’s resignation. Russia vetoed the resolution, claiming that it would precipitate regime change and a possible civil war. As Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov stated, “there is no clear line between arms contraband that some countries engage in to support extremist forces in Syria, and the legal military-technical ties with this country.” Russia has claimed that the violence occurring in Syria is the result of opposition groups rather than Assad’s security forces. One rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, has been trying to smuggle weapons across the border through Lebanon, but the amounts pale in comparison to what the Syrian security forces have been receiving from abroad.

According to Business Insider, Syria is one of Russia’s largest weapons consumers, purchasing around $4 billion total in military supplies. Additionally, Syria’s port of Tartus, where Russia recently sent an aircraft carrier, serves as Russia’s sole naval base in the region. Russia has also invested around $19.4 billion in Syria’s infrastructure and exports about $1.1 billion in goods to the nation. If Assad were to resign, Russian business interests could be seriously put at risk. An additional motive for Russia’s staunch support for the Assad regime is the concern that if Syria’s government were to crumble, it could have a domino effect in the nearby Russian North Caucasus region.

Over the last 20 years, Russian arms exports to Syria have generally outweighed shipments from other countries, according to SIPRI. Since 1992, Russia has sold $525 million in military equipment to Syria. The largest of these sales occurred in 2009 and 2010, consisting of $162 million in exports each year. The only nation to come close to these sales is North Korea, with $306 million in exports, but it hasn’t sent anything since 2004. More recently, records show a significant transfer of weapons from Belarus, totaling out at $196 million between 2003 and 2008. Since 2006, Iran has also sold Assad’s regime $64 million in ammunitions and weaponry—an amount that has almost certainly grown in recent months as Syria’s turmoil escalates.

Iran, Lebanon, and Libya

Another recent development in the conflict in Syria is the shipment of Iranian arms, by trucks disguised as vegetable and fruit produce, across the Iraqi-Syrian border. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki granted permission for the arms to be shipped through Iraq, enraging the Syrian opposition. Originally, Iran intended to send the weapons into the country by air, but Turkey demanded that the planes—which were in their airspace—land for inspection. Iran turned to the land route through Iraq instead.

Lebanon has also developed into a lucrative source of black-market arms deals across the porous border it shares with Syria. According to reporter Nicholas Blanford, the consumers of these black market weapons are generally protesters angry at the president and his regime, or those who feel the growing need to protect themselves due to the escalating unstable climate in Syria. These black-market weapons are fueling an increase in violence in several cities along the Lebanese-Syrian border, such as Homs, where Syrian opposition members have established their stronghold. The Lebanese government itself has placed its support in Assad’s government, since stability in Damascus translates into economic security for Lebanese exports. 

One nation has voiced particularly strong support for Syrian opposition forces—Libya. In October, the newly formed government in Tripoli was the first to recognize the SNC, the country’s main opposition group. The Libyan government also went so far as to open the nation’s borders to any Syrian refugees who wished to take up residence in Libya.

One month later, Syrian rebels from the SNC met with members of the Libyan government, requesting military assistance. As Wisam Taris, a human rights worker with connections to the SNC explained, “The Libyans are offering money, training and weapons to the Syrian National Council.” Since that time, there have been many rumors that the SNC has negotiated with Libya to secure arms for the more militant Free Syrian Army. The SNC, which has emphasized nonviolent resistance, has denied the rumors. “The Free Army must act in a way suited to the goals and the aims of the SNC,” explains SNC member Khaled Khodja. “The duty of this group is to protect, not to attack.”

Solutions for a Complex Conflict

When asked whether the United States would consider arming the Syrian rebel forces, White House spokesperson Jay Carney responded, “We are not considering that step right now.” Officials in the State Department have hinted, however, that this option is not altogether off the table. In Congress, Senator John McCain (R- AZ) has voiced his own support for arming the opposition: “We should start considering options, arming the opposition…. the bloodletting has got to stop.” But the White House has remained adamant that sanctions and international pressure have gradually weakened Assad’s regime.

At this point, the Obama administration has wisely chosen not to add fuel to the Syrian fire. Giving military aid to either side of the Syrian conflict will make civil war more likely and prevent the citizens of Syria from achieving any semblance of justice and freedom.

Diplomatic solutions, moderated by the Arab League, must continue to be applied to pressure Assad to respect the demands of his people and give up power to an individual of their choosing. Lebanon must discontinue its funneling of black-market arms into Syria, and Russia and Iran must suspend their shipments as well. In a glimmer of hope, Russian officials have hinted that, should the Assad regime show signs of decline, they would back a UN resolution. As one top Russian official stated, ‘“if sanctions could help stop violence and maintain stability... we would be the most decisive supporters." Convincing Russia to stop the flow of arms to Syria might ultimately have more impact on Assad’s behavior than all the diplomatic efforts of the international community.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus on 13/02/2012

Syria: Intervention By Process Of Elimination

This is a chance for stakeholders to commit to removing it from its metaphorical resistance axis and reorienting it with its neighbourhood

By Mishaal Al Gergawi

An image grab taken off the official Syrian TV shows the scene of a blast in Syria's second largest city of Aleppo on February 10, 2012.

After Russia and China vetoed the Syria resolution in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Bashar Ja'afari , Syria's ambassador to the UN, asked if it made sense for a country (read regime) to step up its campaign against its own people on the eve of such a resolution. He explained further, deducing that this was proof that there indeed are militant terrorist groups in Syria who are committing those crimes.

But the track record of the Syrian regime's army and iron grip over the state raises serious questions of exactly how such a group would be able to effectively bombard the city of Homs with heavy artillery and tanks for so many days undetected — these are not suicide bombers. What everyone at the UNSC seems to agree on is that the death of civilians must stop; the latest UN estimates place the death toll above 6,000. So here is the point: For the sake of thwarting the Syrian argument, it doesn't matter who's doing the killing. If it is indeed the Syrian government then they've lost their legitimacy. And if it is the armed terrorists groups that can shell Homs and more recently Daraa days on end with the Syrian regime helpless, then the latter's legitimacy has been lost on the grounds that it can no longer maintain order, let alone protect its own people.

In short, whether the regime and its apologists (old Arab leftists, resistance axis states, Hezbollah, Russia, China etc) admit to its actually committing those crimes against its own citizens or not is irrelevant as long as they do admit that such atrocities are taking place.

The world's responsibility is to stop the massacre of civilians. If the Syrian regime wants to accuse a vague collective of anti-Baath, Muslim Brotherhood and pro-Israel terrorists so be it. But it should also know that a regime that cannot stop such a group, evidently with tanks and heavy artillery, for 11 months has already declared itself unable to maintain order, let alone lead. This is no longer about a blood detesting ophthalmologist-turned-president by process of accidental fraternal elimination. This is about kids with blown jaws but do not die for another day, this is about children dying in their parents' funerals and others skinned and beheaded. Syria is, both, the most politically entrenched and the most morally demanding conflict we are yet to deal with since the advent of the Arab Spring. The question now is how do you deal with an exponentially rising death toll — the death toll in December was 5,000.

Complicating matters further, the opposition groups are not completely united. There is Burhan Galioun's Syrian National Council (SNC), Hussain Abdul Azim's Syrian National Coordination Committee (NCC), the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Free Officer Corps, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, independent Islamists and youth activists divided into several national coalitions. There is still the question of the Alawites themselves, as well as the Shiite and Christian minorities and Kurdish interests. Should the Syrians miraculously succeed in toppling the regime on their own, regional and international players will do to Syria what its Baathist regime, among others, did to Lebanon. Left to their own devices, a civil war among the Syrians seems inevitable.

Peace-keeping mission

Of course there are still some diplomatic tactics that must play out; the GCC has expelled Syrian ambassadors last week. There is still the recognition of the SNC by the international community, uniting the opposition around it and the Friends of Syria pressure clique. Alas, the comments of Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, after his visit to Syria that Bashar Al Assad had promised him to end bloodshed while the shelling of Daraa and Homs continued paves the way for military and political intervention.

And so because of all the above, I propose a long-term mission of military and political intervention. It would begin with a military intervention to topple the regime, roughly along the lines of what a fellow writer recently wrote in a UAE newspaper about "Turkish-Jordanian-GCC [ground troops], fighting the regime on both northern and southern fronts, with US and Nato air and intelligence ground support." In addition, I suggest simultaneously offering a general amnesty with a deadline for the regime's military and civilian apparatus in return for immediate defection, which would likely hasten the implosion of the regime.

It would then require a peace-keeping mission that would also be embedded with observers to ensure Syrian people's own transition to a representative democracy (read guarantees about rights of minorities) backed by a sustainable economy. Arming the FSA or any other opposition group at this point could lead to the emergence of post-Al Assad militias; we've seen glimpses of this in Libya. After Al Assad is toppled this would lead to retributions that would eventually turn into a sectarian war, one that is sure to have a regional fall out; think Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Turkey and Jordan just to name a few. This is a chance for Syria's stakeholders to commit to removing it from its largely metaphorically resistance axis and reorienting it with its neighbourhood. It is also one of those rare cases where the long-term responsibility of Syria's neighbours' to its crisis is driven by idealism and realism.

-This commentary was published in The GULF NEWS on 13/02/2012
-Mishaal Al Gergawi is an Emirati current affairs commentator

Is Doha The New Arab Political Capital?

Qatar's popularity seems to be on the rise especially since the Arab Spring, as the country is perceived as being on the side of the Arab masses and doing something tangible to help them achieve their goals. On the other hand, there are those in states like Syria, Tunisia and Libya who resent what they see as its meddling in their internal affairs

By Omar Shariff

                                                           Doha's skyline at night

For the past few years, and especially since the beginning of the ongoing Arab Spring, Qatar has perfected the art of punching above its weight in regional and international affairs. And it has done so primarily — though not always — through the projection of soft power. When Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the United States, Doha launched the $100 million (Dh367 million) Qatar Katrina Fund to help the battered citizens of the richest and mightiest nation on earth.

Putting its unbelievable wealth to good use, it took the lead in the reconstruction effort following Israel's war against Lebanon in 2006; so much so that the Iranian-allied Hezbollah's TV station, Al Manar, repeatedly broadcast a well-choreographed song thanking Qatar for its efforts. Again, following Israel's ruthless assault on Gaza in 2008/2009, Qatar was there with a helping hand.

But it is with the onset of the Arab Spring that Doha truly seems to have found its calling. Tiny Qatar's ambitions, apparently, know no bounds. It is trying to emerge as the major powerbroker in the Arab world, replacing traditional heavyweights like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It took the lead in organising the Arab and international effort to topple the deranged dictator in Tripoli, to the extent that it also carried out air raids on regime targets in Libya in tandem with Nato jets. "It's Qatar's moment in Arab history," declared Professor Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, one of the UAE's foremost political analysts and a Gulf News columnist. "When regional powers like Egypt and Iraq are in retreat, there is room for daring and ambitious small states like Qatar to play a leading role. It is filling a vacuum in the region, as it has the resources to do so."

Some critics have accused Doha of harbouring an Islamist agenda for the region, a thought dismissed by Dr Abdullah. "No; Qatar just has a Qatari agenda. It's a very ambitious state, with the resources to match. There is no more to it."

However, Gassan Al Ezzi, a Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese University in Beirut and an international affairs commentator, had a different take on the issue. "It is a difficult question to answer. But it is clear that Qatar has supported Islamist parties, which won elections in Egypt and Tunisia, and would most likely support them if they win elections in Libya and other countries. This gives Qatar influence over the ruling regimes in the post-revolution countries, including the most important Arab state, Egypt. Besides, political Islam is not the same in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt or others. Even within the same country, there are differences. For instance, in Egypt, the agenda of the Salafists is not the same as that of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Gabriel G. Tabarani, a Middle East expert who is also the editor in chief of Miraat Al Khaleej and author of the book In Jihad's New Heartlands: How The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism, said that Qatar's intentions "remain murky". "Some say Qatar has a Napoleonic complex, others say it has an Islamist agenda. Qatar was very active in diplomacy even before the Arab Spring, but I cannot think of a specific interest that the country is pursuing through its expanding role. Qatar has no interests at stake. Its Arab Spring policy seems to be policy for policy's sake. However, Sunni revival via supporting mainstream Islamist groups in the countries that are witnessing change could make sense from a GCC security perspective to confront Iran.

"But for all the contradictions in its policies — and there are many — Qatar is advancing a decisive shift in Arab politics that many in the West have yet to embrace: a Middle East dominated by mainstream Islamist parties brought to power in a region that is more democratic, more conservative and more tumultuous. Qatar is a country without ideology. Its leaders know that the Islamists are the new power in the Arab world. This alliance will lay the foundation for a base of influence across the region." However, Tabarani did not feel that Qatar could be accused of having imperialist intentions. "I don't think it is the case. In terms of geopolitics, however much the role of the country has grown, the impact will remain limited. Bismarck has confirmed that the geography of the state is the permanent element in politics. Geography plays a role in determining the political influence of the state."

In Qatar's rapid ascendance in the region, there is no denying the central role played by the Al Jazeera TV station, especially the Arabic version, which has become a darling of the Arab masses. So has Qatar used Al Jazeera as a tool to promote its agenda? "Yes, absolutely," said Dr Abdullah. "It is a tool, and a very effective tool in Qatar's foreign policy. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think the BBC is a tool of British foreign policy, and CNN of American foreign policy and so on. This [Al Jazeera] is part of Qatar's soft power. And like any modern state, it is exercising it."

Al Ezzi seemed to concur. "As for the use of Al Jazeera as a tool, this is a reality we see everyday. But the station attained its present status well before the Arab revolts began; it was not only as a result of these revolutions."

According to Tabarani, one year ago, even those most optimistic about Qatar's potential could not predict that the Gulf state would one day be leading the Arab League and speaking on its behalf. "In fact the year of the Arab Spring has brought political change to several Arab countries, but even more so to Arab foreign policy with Qatar stepping in as a force in Middle East politics. However, I would not judge Qatar's foreign policy as smart or not. I'd say it's relevant."

Speaking about Qatar's role in Lebanon, Sahar Atrache, a Middle East and North Africa analyst with the Brussels-based think-tank International Crisis Group, said: "In Lebanon, Qatar was able to preserve very good relations with both the March 14 and the March 8 coalitions. Doha was a major funder of South Lebanon's reconstruction after the 2006 war. Its [current] stance on Syria has harmed its relations with Hezbollah, which are cooler today. Thus, it can't play the balancing role it used to. Instead, it chose to take the lead in most of the Arab uprisings."

Managing contradictions

Asked how had Qatar managed to emerge as the most dynamic Arab state in the Arab Spring, she observed, "For the past few years, unlike the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt under [Hosni] Mubarak, Syria or Iran, Qatar didn't fall into a Manichean division of the region. Thus it was able to manage contradictions in the region and developed good relations with very antagonistic forces (US/Syria and Iran; Hezbollah/Sa'ad Hariri in Lebanon). By doing so, Doha was able to fill a void left by other players. For instance, in Lebanon, when Syria and Saudi Arabia reached a deadlock in 2008, a ‘Doha agreement' was brokered. Qatar has relied on two major factors: its wealth that allowed it to fund a wide range of political parties, NGOs, research centres in the region, thus procuring it important leverages; and Al Jazeera, which it has used as a tool to promote diplomacy and discredit its rivals."

Atrache said that Al Jazeera thus "can't be considered as a professional, reliable source of information. In the Arab uprisings, it turned into a major player — not sure this is the media's role — and adopted biased standards in its coverage. Intentionally concealing the Bahraini revolt deeply contrasted with its very outspoken positions on Egypt, Libya, Syria …"

There is perhaps no government that dislikes the role Qatar is playing in the Arab Spring more than the regime in Damascus. Tabarani said that the diplomatic rift between Syria and Qatar has been simmering as the Arab Spring spread across the Middle East. "The tension between the two countries is now at its boiling point especially after the failed vote in the UN. Damascus sees Qatar as its main enemy now, and the main financier of the opposition. So their future relations if the Bashar Al Assad's regime stays is not promising."

However, regionally, Qatar's popularity seems to be on the rise, as the country is perceived as being on the side of the Arab masses and doing something tangible to help them achieve their goals. "On the streets of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria, they are all thankful to Al Jazeera, which in turn means they are thankful to Qatar, which in turn means they are thankful to the Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, who is probably the most popular man in the Middle East right now," said Dr Abdullah.

But a growing role for Doha in the region has also caused growing alarm. Quite apart from Syria, there are those in countries like Tunisia and Libya who resent what they see as Qatar's meddling in their internal affairs.

"Now, there may be people who are happy with its policies, and those who are unhappy. That is natural; Qatar should accept the fact that what it is doing will not be liked by 100 per cent of the people," Dr Abdullah noted.

He described Doha's role as "mind-boggling". "Qatar has played a constructive and positive role … in [the] Afghanistan [talks], in Yemen, Lebanon … sometimes on behalf of bigger powers in the region. By default or by design, Doha today is the political capital of the Arab world. And there's a lot of investment that has gone into this."

-This analysis was published in the GULF NEWS on 12/02/2012
-Omar Shariff is the deputy opinion editor of the Gulf News

Obama’s Middle Eastern Strategy: So Much For Plan A, But Where Is Plan B?

By Zaki Laidi

President Barack Obama with his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 

No sooner did U.S. President Barack Obama welcome home American troops from Iraq and laud that country’s stability and democracy than an unprecedented wave of violence – across Baghdad and elsewhere – revealed the severity of Iraq’s political crisis. Is that crisis an unfortunate exception, or, rather, a symptom of the failure of Obama’s Middle East diplomacy, from Egypt to Afghanistan?

Upon taking office, Obama set four objectives in the Middle East: Stabilize Iraq before leaving it; withdraw from Afghanistan from a position of strength and on the basis of minimal political convergence with Pakistan; achieve a major breakthrough in the Middle East peace process by pushing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlements; and open a dialogue with Iran on the future of its nuclear program. On these four major issues, Obama has clearly achieved little.

With regard to Iraq, since George W. Bush’s presidency, the United States has strived to exert a moderating influence on Shiite power, so that the country can create a more inclusive political system – specifically, by passing a new law on sharing oil-export revenues among the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish communities. Unfortunately, the precise opposite happened.

Kurdistan has embarked on a path toward increased autonomy, while the Sunnis are increasingly marginalized by a sectarian and authoritarian Shiite-dominated central government. This has implications for the regional balance of power, because Iraq is growing closer to Iran in order to offset Turkey, which is seen as protecting the Sunnis.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s remark during a recent trip to Washington that he was more concerned about Turkey than Iran exposed the huge gulf between Iraq and the United States, which now appears to have lost all significant political influence over Iraqi affairs. Indeed, in a disturbing development, the U.S. decided not to play its last remaining card in dealing with Maliki: arms sales.

There can no longer be any doubt that the occupation of Iraq was a huge strategic defeat for the U.S., because it ultimately served only to strengthen Iran. Yet Obama lacks a medium-term vision to deal with the seriousness of the situation – an oversight that, sooner or later, will cost the U.S. dearly.

One of two things will happen: either tighter containment of Iran through sanctions on oil exports will produce positive results and weaken Iran, or containment will fail, leading the U.S. inexorably toward a new war in the Middle East. It is not unlikely that some in U.S. foreign-policy circles regard the deepening Iraqi crisis as a building block in constructing the case for military intervention in Iran.

But Obama is nobody’s fool. He has registered the U.S. Congress’s hostility toward Iran and the desire to confront the Islamic Republic militarily. He believes, however, that he can avoid extreme solutions; in diplomacy, anything can happen, and the worst-case scenario is never guaranteed.

The problem is that Obama has a strong tendency to overestimate America’s ability to influence weaker actors. What is true for Iraq is also true for Afghanistan: Obama can pride himself on having eliminated Osama bin Laden, which was undoubtedly a success, but one that failed to address the root of the problem. Despite a 10-year military presence, involving the deployment of more than 100,000 troops at a cost of $550 billion, the U.S. still has not succeeded in creating a credible alternative to the Taliban. Worse, its political alliance with Pakistan has frayed.

Indeed, U.S.-Pakistan relations have regressed to their level before Sept. 11, 2001, a time marked by deep mutual distrust. Pakistani leaders obviously bear a heavy responsibility for this state of affairs. But if the U.S. has been unable to involve Pakistan in resolving the Afghanistan conflict, that failure simply reflects America’s refusal to give the Pakistanis what they wanted: a shift in the regional balance of power at the expense of India.

Pakistan, accordingly, froze cooperation with the U.S., because its leaders no longer saw much to gain in fighting the Taliban. The risk is that when the American withdrawal from Afghanistan begins – a process that has just been brought forward to next year, from 2014 – the U.S. will again seek to impose sanctions on Pakistan, an unreliable nuclear state that will react by strengthening ties with China and deploying Islamist terrorism.

Obama also sought to use America’s influence to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of his strategy for the broader Middle East. He initially thought that by pressuring Netanyahu to freeze settlements, he would succeed in reviving the peace process. But he was quickly and skillfully outmaneuvered by his ally, who knows how important the Israeli issue is to U.S. domestic politics. By putting Obama at odds with the rest of the U.S. establishment, Netanyahu forced him to retreat.

In 2009, Obama envisioned a settlement of the conflict through the strong commitment of the international community. In 2011, he asserted that only both sides’ willingness could ensure a successful outcome. Clearly, the U.S. cannot do much to resolve the conflict.

There is no overarching explanation for Obama’s successive Middle East failures, but there are a few factors worth considering: the increase in the number of asymmetrical conflicts, in which the traditional use of force is largely ineffective; increasingly blurred lines between difficult allies and intransigent adversaries; and major political differences between a centrist U.S. president and a Congress that is dominated more than ever by extreme ideas.

But Obama himself bears a large part of the blame. Contrary to what one might think, he does not have a real strategic vision of the world – a shortcoming reflected in his quick capitulation in the face of opposition to his proposals. Obama often has a plan A, but never a plan B. When it comes to conducting a successful foreign policy, plan A is never enough.

-This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 11/-2/2012
-Zaki Laidi is a professor of international relations at the Institut d’études politiques in Paris (Sciences-Po). THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org)