Rami G. Khouri | ukwatch.net

Europe Should Put Its Mouth Where Its Money Is

Tim Holmes — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:27:18 +0000

It has been instructive in Germany this week, talking to Europeans involved in Middle East issues during the run-up to the Paris conference on Palestinian aid — where Monday $7.4 billion was pledged, over three years, to the Palestinian half-government headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Europeans seem again to respond to the challenges of engaging in the Arab-Israeli conflict with their usual financial generosity and political wishful thinking.

The European Union’s 27 members and other states can and should respond to the new post-Annapolis situation by carving out a decisive policy that enhances their strengths rather than institutionalizes their weaknesses. It would be collective stupidity for Europe once again to provide billions of euros in aid to Palestinians that are wasted, physically destroyed, or totally negated by Israeli militarism, American bias, Palestinian divisions, or Arab passivity.

Europeans will provide around $2 billion of the money pledged in Paris, making them the single biggest donor to Palestine, while their political role seems to be moving in the other direction. Europe should redress this balance, and play a political-diplomatic role that is commensurate with its economic prowess. Europeans should explore how to return to their role as the guardians of the rule of law, international legitimacy, political morality and the international peace-making consensus that is enshrined in UN resolutions and global conventions — grandiose aims, I admit, but shouldn’t someone stand up for these things if the Americans, Israelis, and Arabs do not?

A German diplomat in Berlin deeply involved in these issues explained that Europeans working behind the scene, while increasing their peace-keeping and economic involvement on the ground, “are developing the tools that allow Europe to influence events,” especially by constructively prodding US policy. But I see little hard evidence for this view, however sincerely it is held. Europeans seem to ignore the reality that economic, political, and diplomatic conditions are steadily worsening, not improving, as indicated by several developments this past week.

In an unusual political statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for immediate political action to contain the “deep crisis” in the West Bank and Gaza. It charged that Israeli policies in the occupied territories have denied the Palestinians the right to live a normal and dignified life. The ICRC director of operations for the Middle East said: “In Gaza the whole Strip is being strangled, economically speaking, life there has become a nightmare,” adding that humanitarian aid will not solve this problem.

The Red Cross also issued a report, Dignity Denied, which depicts harrowing everyday conditions for Palestinians who find it increasingly difficult to access jobs, medical care, and even food. It says that only “prompt, innovative and courageous political action can change the harsh reality of this long-standing occupation, restore normal social and economic life to the Palestinian people, and allow them to live their lives in dignity.”

The World Bank last week also said that a combination of new aid pledges and Palestinian government reforms will have little impact if Israel maintains its harsh restrictions on travel and trade.

Also this past week, results of a new public opinion poll by the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research suggest that supporting the Abbas-Fateh government financially is unlikely to pummel Hamas into political submission. And it discloses that a total lack of confidence in the Annapolis process is keeping Hamas’ and Fateh’s popularity stable — 31 percent support for Hamas and 49 percent for Fateh — almost identical to their respective shares last September.

These developments would suggest that throwing more money into a situation of continued occupation and resistance is not a sensible policy, but rather must be matched by political action to resolve the root causes of the conflict. Europe would do better to combine its fiscal generosity with parallel political gumption and backbone. It may not have the power to prod Arabs and Israelis into a successful negotiation, but it does have the moral force to say clearly what such a negotiated peace requires, what are the dictates of accepted law and legitimacy, and how all sides are falling short in their commitments to pursue these routes towards peace and security for Arabs and Israelis alike.

Europe should pause for a moment as it starts writing billions of euros of new aid checks for development and security projects that American-supplied Israeli fighter jets are likely to bomb into smithereens again next year — as they have in recent years.

Europe would do well to reflect on its dilemma, which the respected German think tank director Dr. Volker Perthes articulated last week: “Europe has steadily become more involved in the Middle East and Arab-Israeli issues in the arenas of economy, diplomacy, politics, security and peace-keeping, but seems less able to translate engagement into influence to change things.”

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Three Cultures, Three Views of Terror

Tim Holmes — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:50:23 +0000

My rather surrealistic trip from Beirut to London to Boston coincided with three rather sharply juxtaposed events in Lebanon, Great Britain and the United States.

In Lebanon, a chronically turbulent and mystifying political governance system remains stalled and immobilized, while masses of citizens are dissatisfied and worried. Meanwhile, the three top leaders of a north Lebanon-based Qaeda-style jihadist militant group (Fateh el-Islam) that fought the Lebanese army for over 100 days escaped the siege and the defeat of their followers. Mass political malaise and terrorism go hand-in-hand, in Lebanon and elsewhere.

In Great Britain, the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) released a report this week clarifying the global terror threat, stating that Al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself since September 11, 2001, and is able to carry out large-scale attacks against Western countries. It said that the American-led “global war on terror” is proving ineffective.

In the United States, following the Congressional hearings into the situation in Iraq, I encountered the fantasy world of the George W. Bush administration that keeps putting coins into a video game machine and blasting away at bad guys who seem to increase, rather than die away. But this is not a game: This is our world. The Bush administration’s central argument – that it must fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq before the terrorists strike the US heartland – has now moved from its initial political dishonesty and wasteful self-delusion to the criminal stage of being a real menace to global stability and security because of its proven capacity to promote, rather than deter, terror.

It is painful to watch otherwise intelligent and honorable American officials either acting as fools or taking us for fools, by continuing to claim that they wage a war in Iraq to fight terrorism, when the facts show two opposite trends: Existing terror groups and networks remain strong, and new terror recruits and organizations are coming to life, predominantly in response to American, Arab, and Israeli policies.

The main problem at hand is not just the capacity of Al-Qaeda to organize terror attacks, create loose global networks of militants, or inspire new recruits to the movement. The problem – as the honest IISS report stated – is that “Al-Qaeda’s ideology appears to have taken root to such a degree that it will require decades to eradicate.” It also points to a growing process of radicalization within Islamic countries, and among Islamic societies in Western countries, especially Muslims in Europe.

Growing communal radicalization and greater Qaeda-linked organizational capabilities feed off each other. They are also nourished by the policies of Arab, Asian, American, European, Russian, Israeli and some other governments around the world that drive ordinary and decent young men, and a few women, into the criminal world of terror.

More ominously, American, Israeli and Arab policies have spurred increasingly radical public opinion around the world, manifested in the steady growth of mainstream Islamist political parties such as Muslim Brotherhood groups, Hamas, Jamaa Islamiya, and others like them. Everywhere in the Middle East, and in many parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, hundreds of millions of disenchanted men and women are being steadily radicalized because they feel so politically abused and demeaned, by their own societies and by foreign powers alike. They find neither solace nor the promise of a decent life in either the policies of their governments or the projection of Western power around the world.

These are not Qaeda-linked terrorists, but they provide the mass base of disenchanted popular sentiment from which the Al-Qaedas of this world eventually recruit the mere hundreds of people they need to become foot soldiers, safe house keepers, scouts, drivers, financiers, technicians, web masters, and suicide bombers.

The United States and its allies have put into this battle the greatest combination of global military, economic and intelligence-gathering capabilities ever assembled in the history of the world – and yet they are not succeeding, let alone winning. Why? Because the political, economic and military forces that foment discontent, degradation, and radicalism around the world are now, on balance, greater than the forces that promote stability, decorum and a decent daily life for ordinary men and women.

My journey this week from Lebanon to Great Britain and the United States has been a straight line through three political cultures that interact with terrorism in very different ways: Middle Eastern societies often breed radicalism and terror; Europeans incubate some terror but also increasingly analyze it more accurately; and, the United States, for the most part, refuses to acknowledge that terror is partly home-grown Arab-Asian deviance, and partly a response to American-Israeli foreign policies that wander comfortably among callousness, brutality, and criminality.

Not surprisingly, the terrorism problem persists, and the threat will continue to grow – until we drop foolhardiness and reckless amateurism as guiding principles of many American, Arab and Israeli policies.

Neglected Normality

Tim Holmes — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 03:19:49 +0000

I had a very unusual experience Friday morning as I was going through my pleasant early morning routine while sitting in my easy chair on our balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, reading the newspapers, drinking coffee, listening to the BBC radio news, and watching my water turtle Jerry show me his back flips and other new maneuvers which he perfected overnight while the rest of us slept. The unusual thing was that there was not a single news item about the Middle East on the BBC radio news.

I do not exaggerate when I say that it may be the first time in around 36 years of regular listening that the morning bulletin did not carry Middle East news.

Jerry the water turtle seems to have picked up on the fact as well, for he was particularly athletic that morning, even slightly exuberant, perhaps because of the refreshing change of not having to listen day in and day out to the news that dominates the Middle East: violent wars, terrorism, assassinations, kidnappings, refugees, civil strife, stalemated governments, foreign invasions, hostage-taking, beheadings, militias, sanctions, regime changes, military occupations, armed resistance, illegal immigrants, religious fanaticism, corruption, police states, rigged elections, human rights abuses, stressed economies, presidents for life, and many other such depressing phenomena.

I wondered whether consumers of mainstream radio, television and newspaper news around the world who primarily receive a diet of depressing and violent news about our region are receiving an accurate picture of the realities of my Arab society and other Middle Eastern lands. I was able to contrast this Western news-anchored view of a troubled Middle East with the personal experiences of two graduate students friends of our sons who came to the Middle East for a two-week vacation this month.

They visited four different corners of the Arab world — Dubai, Beirut, south Lebanon and Damascus. It’s hard to get a more representative sample of the modern Arab world than these four examples of oil-fuelled hyper-urbanism, a war-scarred but fun-loving cosmopolitan metropolis, a tense and brutalized front line in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and a tough security state where the government rules with an iron fist.

The experiences of our American friends and the coverage of these regions in the mainstream American and Western press are as different as night and day. On the ground here, the visitor sees and experiences the full range of issues that define contemporary Arab society, the good and the bad together: extremism and compassion, suspicion and hospitality, destruction and construction, tension and relaxation, political concerns and the assertion of a powerful humanism, anger at American policy but a warm embrace of individual Americans.

Especially in places like Damascus, Beirut and south Lebanon, visitors from abroad experience the nuances and subtleties of daily life, political sentiments and social-cultural dynamics that unfortunately are largely missing from the global media’s reporting on our region.

Global reporting about this region has presented it almost exclusively as an arena of aberration and violence, seen primarily through the lens of conflict and extremism, emotionalism, exaggerated religiosity, and deep ethnic or religious prejudice. The underlying human rhythms, prevailing moral norms, and routine cultural and political values of the 500 million or so Arabs, Iranians, Kurds and Turks are not presented accurately or fully.

The world has been told repeatedly — if fleetingly — about the intemperance and drama of Dubai’s skyscrapers, Gaza’s tensions, Fallujah’s killings, and Hizbullah’s defiance and militancy. The American- and British-dominated global news media seem to have much less time for Arabs who don’t carry knives, cut off heads and arms, shoot machine guns, launch grenades, or talk on gold-plated cell phones.

Western journalists and editors in particular may be consistently missing the most important story in the Arab world: the quest by millions of ordinary people to create a better political and socioeconomic order, anchored in decent values, open to the world, pluralistic and tolerant yet asserting indigenous Arab-Islamic values. The wholesale attempt to transform autocracies into democracies, and corrupt and often incompetent police states into more satisfying and accountable polities, is a saga of epic — and often heroic — proportions. Most of the global news media for some reason ignore this, and instead relentlessly focus on Islamist violence, Israel, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, terrorism, oil, democracy and its absence, and the American army in Iraq.

By reporting on the Arab world primarily in terms of its public and political deviance, rather than its human ordinariness and the rhythms of its many different neighborhoods, the Western media leaves little if any space to convey the defining reality of ordinary Middle Eastern lives. It’s refreshing to get an occasional break from this menu of madness, but it would be better to get a more comprehensive and accurate daily picture of the good and bad in our lands.

Opportunity or Hoax?

Tim Holmes — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:13:14 +0000

I was in Europe earlier this week speaking with assorted current and former officials, experts, and diplomats about the general situation in the Middle East, when the news broke of the expected appointment of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as special envoy of the Quartet (US, Russia, UN, EU) for Arab-Israeli peace-making. It is hard to know if this is a joke, an insult, or a possible positive new beginning.

My mixed feelings and those of many others in the Arab world are the result of years of watching both the Quartet and Blair speak lofty rhetoric, but fail to follow up with practical, even-handed deeds. If there is an award for the combined negative credibility of an institution plus an individual, the Quartet and Blair should be its first recipients. Neither of them has much to stand on in terms of a track record of accomplishments in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and both are tainted by a legacy of lofty aims, nice rhetoric, and meager results.

Blair’s negatives in the Middle East are well known, and are not counter-balanced by his many successes at home or in Europe. His main problem is not only that he has been hypocritical or partial to Israel and the United States rather than truly even-handed; it is also that his policies have contributed directly and abundantly to the precise Arab-Israeli conflict and associated tensions in the Middle East that he is now apparently going to try and resolve. Appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.

Blair has spoken for years about pushing for peace and two states in Palestine and Israel, yet he has repeatedly come down on the side of the Israelis in demanding that Israel’s security should be guaranteed before any progress can occur. Last summer he declined many opportunities to condemn Israel’s over-reaction in attacks against Lebanon, and instead went along with the American-driven policy of helping Israel to attack Hizbullah and all Lebanon. His speedy support of the Israeli-American boycott of Hamas after its election victory last year was impressive only for its unthinking haste.

His enthusiastic war-making in Iraq on the basis of lies and mistaken assumptions has caused immense suffering and waste in the entire region, and has badly expanded the cycle of terror and brutal counter-violence in the name of fighting terror. He has been a champion of misdiagnosis of the problem of terrorism, and has consistently offended Arabs and Muslims with his Texas-sized exaggeration and mistaken analysis of the relationships among Islam, terror and political trends in the Middle East. He has crowned this legacy of analytical and diplomatic deficiency with an absolute refusal to acknowledge that foreign policies of the US, UK, Israel and others could be contributing factors to the violence, anger and terror that plague the Middle East.

His subservience to the United States in Iraq and Palestine-Israel has been a shameless and humiliating examples of obsequious spinelessness. He repeatedly pledged himself to promote Arab-Israeli peace and to work behind the scenes to influence the United States positively in this direction — consistently without success, perhaps even without sincerity from the start.

We should view this appointment with a great deal of skepticism and with little expectation of any real progress. The institution of the Quartet and the individual Tony Blair are both limping in terms of their political legitimacy and credibility in the Middle East — but neither is beyond repair.

Blair’s own weaknesses and inconsistencies should not detract from the fact that the Quartet was a good idea when it was formed a few years ago, but it has failed because it has not been equitable and fair to both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has lacked a mechanism for applying its principles on the ground, and has tended to succumb to American policies. Europe in particular has been hurt by the exercise, finding itself increasingly perceived as having moved towards the Israeli-American position on most issues, and having largely abandoned its former posture as an impartial supporter of international legitimacy and legality as enshrined in UN resolutions.

The revival of the Quartet, behind Europe’s prodding, since last winter and the expected appointment of Blair suggest a possible opportunity for real change. This could be an opportunity for all those who wish to learn from their mistakes to do so — Arabs, Israelis and Quartet members — and to replace their past deficiencies with a more decisive and even-handed approach to peace-making that has a chance to succeed.

Yet there are no clear signs that the Quartet members seek to change their approach to Arab-Israeli issues. I suspect we are in for some huge new disappointments, as show business replaces the hard work of even-handed peacemaking, and dazzle replaces real diplomacy. I hope I am proven wrong. I am prepared to wager a fish and chips that I am not.

Rushing Toward Catastrophe

Tim Holmes — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:15:10 +0000

The separation of the West Bank and Gaza into separate political entities run respectively by Fateh and Hamas is a calamity. The rush by the United States, Israel and Europe to resume aid to the emergency government in the West Bank set up earlier this week by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will turn the calamity into an even greater catastrophe.

The Palestinian people are now divided into six distinct communities: Gaza; the West Bank, and Arab East Jerusalem (under varying degrees of Israeli occupation and control); the refugee camp residents throughout the Arab world; other Palestinians in the Middle East not living in camps; and the global Palestinian Diaspora. This worsening fragmentation of the Palestinians is certain to lead to grater radicalization and more proficient resistance, which will spill over into other societies in the region, and perhaps globally. This trend has been consistent since 1948.

Consequently, on its northern and southern Arab borders Israel today is flanked by two militant Arab movements — Hizbullah and Hamas — that combine powerful ideologies of religion, nationalism, resistance and self-assertion. Neither of these movements existed 25 years ago, but both have achieved power and prominence today. They are the natural consequence of allowing Israel to perpetuate for decades its repeated attacks, dehumanizing occupations and brutal colonization, while the United States and Europe fiddle and the Arabs nap.

Hamas and Hizbullah are among the most effective and legitimate political movements in the Arab world: They have forced unilateral Israeli retreats that no Arab army could induce; won elections democratically without resorting to the gerrymandering or ballot box stuffing that most American-supported Arab regimes live by; provided efficient service delivery and local governance to their constituents; and, demonstrated a spirit of sustained resistance to Israeli occupation that appeals to the desire of ordinary Arabs to restore some dignity to their battered lives and to their shattered, hollow political systems.

We should criticize such Islamists for some of their policies and ambiguities. But it is a big mistake to confront and fight them mainly because they challenge Israel, are friendly to Iran and Syria, and represent vanguards of regional Islamism, for these three attributes precisely define much of their indigenous efficacy and legitimacy. Those who wish to fight Hamas and Hizbullah would do better to help address the indigenous grievances in Lebanon and Palestine that gave birth to them and continue to underpin their popularity.

Such movements are strong also due to the third trend we witness this week: The continued insistence by Israel, the United States and Europe — now an explicit team — to intervene in domestic Palestinian and Arab politics in favor of one side in the regional ideological struggle that defines the Middle East. Hamas, Hizbullah and Islamists generally represent at one level a reaction to foreign interference, a desire by ordinary Arabs to exercise true sovereignty, and to avoid becoming US puppets, surrogates of Israel, or social welfare wards of Europe.

US-Israel-Europe repeat two enormous mistakes when they side blatantly with Fateh and President Abbas, try to destroy Hamas, and crudely bribe the Palestinians with cash. Such approaches will only hasten the long-term erosion of Abbas and Fateh’s already thin credibility and legitimacy. As in Northern Ireland with its shared Protestant-Catholic government, a combined Fateh-Hamas government is the most realistic way to move towards stable, recognized and secure statehood for both Palestinians and Israelis.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Monday sounded even more incoherent and incredible than usual, as she heaped abuse on Hamas and praise on Abbas and his emergency government, and repeated the now impish American commitment to moving towards a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. Only simpletons or sinister people can foster domestic strife between Palestinians, ignore the most powerful, democratically-elected mass movement in Palestine, and also speak of promoting a negotiated peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Rice and the United States are neither simpletons nor sinister, so why do they behave as if they were?

Three missing ingredients for Israeli-Palestinian peace remain on display this week: The lack of a single, legitimate Palestinian government with a clear policy on making peace or war with Israel; the lack of an Israeli government that is prepared to negotiate a fair peace that responds to both Israeli and Arab legitimate rights, rather than demanding unilateral Palestinian and Arab submission; and, the lack of an impartial external mediator who can prod both sides towards a fair, negotiated accord anchored in UN resolutions.

All three of these negatives will be exacerbated by the Fateh-Hamas confrontation and by the American-Israeli-European response to events in Palestine. The world miscued when it refused to engage Hamas after its election victory last year, and again after the Hamas-Fateh unity government earlier this year. One must be truly stupid, or brutally malicious, to repeat the same mistake a third time.

Can US/UK Rediscover Diplomacy?

Tim Holmes — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:45:37 +0000

This past week has been filled with intriguing diplomatic activity in the Middle East in the form of American and British contacts with the three principal parties that Washington and London see as trouble-makers and bad guys, namely Iran, Syria and the Hamas half of the Palestinian coalition government. It is not yet possible to draw firm conclusions about the consequences of the past week’s contacts on the basis of the scanty available evidence, but some fascinating options seem to be in the air now that were not so plausible last week. The implications for American policy in the Middle East are particularly important.

The three principal contacts that occurred last week were the British-Iranian exchanges that led to the release of the 15 British sailors the Iranians had captured in the Gulf; a British diplomat’s meeting with the Palestinian Prime Minister from Hamas to seek the release of the abducted BBC correspondent in Gaza; and US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s talks with the Syrian leadership in Damascus. Also, in the same vein of diplomatic novelty where stern rigidity had once reigned, the US State Department declared that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not rule out holding bilateral meetings with Iranian officials at the next meeting of Iraq’s neighbors in Turkey later this month.

I have followed these events from two fascinating places in the United States — the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where I have been lecturing, and the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where I attended an international conference on strategic threats around the world. In discussions with Middle East experts, scholars, foreign policy specialists, ex-officials and others who follow strategic threat issues around the world, it seems that the policy elite in the United States is in the midst of serious self-analysis and reassessment.

Behind the bravado and exaggerated confidence of President George W. Bush, many Americans who follow foreign policy issues exhibit a string of telling sentiments. They are aware of and uncomfortable with the isolated position the United States has worked itself into throughout the world. They are irritated and often angered by the constant criticism of US foreign policy they hear from most parts of the world. They are totally lost and clueless about what to do in Iraq, now that their government has brought that country and the entire Middle East to the brink of catastrophe, anchored in sectarian warfare. And, most importantly, they are debating very intensely the possible options and alternatives to the current hard-line American policy towards Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizbullah and others who line up with them in defying and challenging Washington.

Last week’s events, coming so soon after high-level Saudi-Iranian meetings and flatfooted Arab and Israeli calls for renewed peace-making, hold out the simple prospect that talking with your foes, antagonists and nemeses is not only a real option, but also could be a productive one that is mutually beneficial. The release of the British sailors by Iran was a welcomed end to that episode, which was primarily a consequence of relying more on diplomacy and direct contacts than boycotts or military threats and maneuvers. The happy ending is important, but the process that led to it is also significant.

Iran is the most extreme example of the new attitude to the United States and the United Kingdom that has spread to many quarters of the Middle East in the past few years, especially since the Anglo-American attack on Iraq. It is characterized by a combination of defiance and resistance, anchored in an explicit, if slightly reckless, fearlessness that also is projected towards Israel. Many in the West characterize this as madness, irrationality, or incomprehensible extremism or fanaticism. Many in the Middle East, on the other hand, point out the limited options the US and UK have at hand to force a change in the policies of defiant Middle Eastern states or militant organizations.

The key question is, how should Western countries respond to this sort of behavior? A serious debate is underway in the United States about this point, reflecting primarily the perceived dangerous situation that Washington has created for itself and for the Middle East through its Iraq adventure. The Bush administration is not totally blind to this fact. It is not making any dramatic changes in its foreign policy, but it does appear to recognize that some adjustments and symbolic or logistical shifts must occur in what had heretofore been a rigid and aggressive foreign policy. This is due both to domestic politics and foreign policy consequences. Staying the course, for Washington these days, is a recipe for certain foreign policy catastrophe, and political exile for the Republican Party.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.