eng1549

Realizing a Nation’s Potential

The Future of Democracy in the Middle East

Everything But A

Caryle Murphy

Daniel Brumberg

Noam Schimmel

Game

Dr. Ahmadinejad: How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Live With The Bomb By Amar Toor Issue 1549, 15 March 2010

Editorial

Cover

Established in 1987 by Prince Ahmad Bin Salman Bin Abdel Aziz

Established by Hisham and Mohamad Ali Hafez

Editor-in-Chief

ADEL Al TORAIFI

Managing Director TARIK ALGAIN

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The Majalla Magazine HH Saudi Research & Marketing (UK) Limited Arab Press House 182-184 High Holborn, LONDON WC1V 7AP DDI: +44 (0)20 7539 2335/2337 Tel.: +44 (0)20 7821 8181, Fax: +(0)20 7831 2310

Dear Readers, to The Majalla Digital, this week our issue brings W elcome to you an analysis of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear intentions.

Amar Toor’s comparison of Ahmadinejad and Stanley Kubrik’s infamous character Dr. Strangelove, provides insight in to the personality of the man behind Iranian nuclear ambitions in this lighthearted yet informative feature. In addition to this feature, Pulitzer Prize winner Caryle Murphy evaluates the reform and expansion of the Saudi education system as a means of combating socioeconomic challenges in her article Realizing a Nation’s Potential.

We invite you to read these articles and much more on our website at Majalla.com/en. As always, we welcome and value our readers’ feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments or contact us if you are interested in writing for our publication.

Sincerely, Adel Al Toraifi Editor-in-Chief 04

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Issue 1549

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Contents 08 Geopolitics Realizing a Nation’s Potential

11 In Brief Around The World Quotes Of The Week Magazine Round Up Letters

18 Features Dr. Ahmadinejad:

How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Live With The Bomb

25 News Analysis Maliki leads the Iraqi parliamentary race

28 Ideas Everything But A Game

THE MAJALLA EDITORIAL TEAM London Bureau Chief Manuel Almeida Cairo Bureau Chief Ahmed Ayoub Editors Paula Mejia Wessam Sherif Daniel Capparelli Editorial Secretary Jan Singfield Webmaster Mohamed Saleh

15 March, 2010

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33

33 People Interview

The Future of Democracy in the Middle East Profile An American powerbroker heading to Syria

41 Economics International Economics When Sanctions Work International Investor The Future Remains Unwritten

Issue 1549, 15 March 2010

Submissions To submit articles or opinion, please email: editorial@majalla.com Note: all articles should not exceed 800 words

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51 Reviews Books

Elixirs for the Middle East Readings Reports

Discriminating In the Name of the Law

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58 The Political Essay Too Big To Fail?

Mr. Wael Al Fayez w.alfayez@alkhaleejiah.com Tel.: 0096614411444 F.: 0096614400996 P.O.BOX 22304 Riyadh 11495, Saudi Arabia

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Geopolitics

Realizing a Nation’s Potential The reform and expansion of the Saudi education system is a crucial endeavour to address the Kingdom’s social, demographic and economic long-term challenges. It is no easy task, and to achieve it a three fold recipe is required—strong leadership, patience, and persistence.

S

itting in his spacious Riyadh office, Khalid Al Khudair smiled as he recalled how “everyone laughed” when he started building Al Yamamah University on the desert outskirts of this city. “Too far out,” people said. Then, the first crop of 126 students plummeted to 40 in just one semester because many could not cope with the course work. The new university was “too hard,” people said. But Al Khudair persevered.

Today, Al Yamamah has 1,400 students— half of them women—and is recognized as one of the kingdom’s most innovative and forward-looking private universities. Still, critics remain. They send Al Khudair emails and text messages complaining that he is spreading harmful “liberal” ideas among Saudi youth. New acquaintances sometimes turn cold and distant when they discover that Al Khudair is Al Yamamah’s founder. The middle-aged businessman is not perturbed by the flak because he sees himself on an historic mission. “If we go back to our Islamic history, we created a lot of things,” he said. “I think we have to be part of the world. We have smart people….I want my students to think they can have the Nobel Prize one day.”

Al Yamamah’s success in such a short time—it opened in 2004—is evidence of the thirst for better education opportunities in this oil-rich kingdom. In the last decade, but particularly since King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz ascended to the throne in 2005, there has been a growing realization among policy-makers that Saudi Arabia must revamp and expand its entire education system if it is going to meet the kingdom’s long-term demographic and economic challenges. Those challenges include a youth boom: About 70 percent of the country’s 22 million citizens are under 30. They include high unemployment rates— almost 7 percent among men and 25 percent among women. Moreover, if Saudi Arabia is going to successfully diversify its economy away from near-total dependence on oil, as well as its dependence on foreign labor— which was 51 percent of the nation’s total work force in 2007—then it has to develop its own people into skilled, educated workers. The king has made education a top priority; 26 percent of the national budget is now devoted to this sector. In 2009, that amounted to $32.5 billion. A good deal of that money has gone towards expanding higher education. A 15 March, 2010

Caryle Murphy

decade ago, Saudi Arabia had only eight public universities. Now there are 26, as well as 8 privately run universities. And 70,000 Saudis are now studying abroad on government scholarships.

Many Saudis appreciated the need for education reform decades ago. But this need became more urgent after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States carried out by 19 suicide hijackers, 15 of them Saudi.

This gave impetus to the efforts of those who want to broaden the horizons of Saudi youth by upgrading education. Mohammed Rasheed, who served as education minister from 1995 to 2005, was one of them. He is proud, he said in an interview, of what he managed to accomplish: Getting girls schools put under the same ministry as boys, for example, and modernizing math and science curriculums.

But all too often, Rasheed said, his attempted reforms ran into resistance from conservatives who feared that change would dilute the religious component of education. They saw reform as dangerous appeasement of the West, especially the United States. When Rasheed campaigned for replacing rote memorization with a more interactive teaching method, the kingdom’s 400,000 K-12 teachers objected, he recalled, because “they were not used to it.” Even top officials in his own ministry “would agree with me” on new initiatives “but then I found out they were implementing something different from what I wanted.”

This resistance, which stems from a religious culture suspicious of any change, is one of three major obstacles to improving the Saudi education system, according to Ahmad Al Eisa, author of the 2009 book, "Education Reform in the Kingdom." The lack of a detailed vision of education reform from the political leadership, and the highly centralized structure of education also are blocking effective reform, his book states. Al Eisa,

who has been in education for 30 years and served as Al Yamamah’s first president, argues that the current system, rather than being renovated, should be rebuilt from the ground up. Labor Minister Ghazi Al Gosaibi called Al Eisa’s book, which was published in Lebanon and not available in bookstores here, “the most important book talking about a public issue within the past two decades.” Al Gosaibi also wrote that resistance to education reform is due to “strong ties between the prevailing values and the education system,” which creates the impression “that any attempt at educational change is an assault on the constant values of society.” This connection is even stronger when it comes to educating women and girls.

Here, the trends all point in one, revolutionary direction: Saudi females are getting more and more educated every day. Today, women make up more than 58 % of university students.

But more needs to be done, according to a bold new report by Mona Al Munajjed, a sociologist and senior advisor with Booz & Company’s Ideation Center in Riyadh. As Al Munajjed writes in “Women’s Education in Saudi Arabia, The Way Forward,” the government needs “to formulate an educational reform strategy for young women that includes major structural changes in the school system and that will respond to the demands and priorities of a dynamic society.” The curriculum at girls’ schools through the secondary level is “dominated by religious studies and Arabic,” the report stated. And at university, the fields of study open to women “are limited”, and “do not correspond to the needs of the labor market.” “We have to upgrade ourselves, we women,” Al Munajjed said in an interview.

“We have to be aware of what’s happening around us.” Most importantly, she added, “we have to differentiate between the local customs and traditions, and religion. There is too much confusion between them.”

Sorting out that confusion will be no easy matter; Which is why strong leadership, along with mountains of patience and persistence, is needed to bring Saudi education up to its full potential.

Pulitzer Prize Winner in Journalism in 1991, is an independent journalist based in Riyadh.

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Issue 1549

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In Brief Around The World

Quotes Of The Week

Magazine Round Up

Letters

US - Iran conflict moves to Afghanistan The escalating American-Iranian tensions have recently displayed the potential to involve not only allegations of Tehran's interference in Iraq's affairs, but also a new confrontation in Afghanistan. In recent statements, The U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has accused Iran of supporting the Taliban movement.

"Iran is playing a double sided game in trying to undermine the Afghani government in addition to U.S. and NATO efforts by helping Taliban," Gates said during a recent visit to Issue 1549

Afghanistan. The visit coincides with the Iranian President's preparations to visit Afghanistan in order to meet with his Afghani counterpart, President Hamid Karzai. However, Ahmadinejad has decided — after Gates' visit— to delay the visit to the second half of March.

The U.S has launched the operation "Muashtarak" aided NATO forces against the city of Marja in the southern Helmand province as part of its war on Taliban. The operation started on February 13, to become the

largest operation since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Consequently, Ahmadinejad's expected visit Afghanistan is viewed by analysts as an attempt to fortify the already strong Iranian-Afghani relations and establish Iranian presence in the region to highlight the American failure in dealing with Taliban.

This step is also traced back to the strong economic ties between Iran and Afghanistan, which are under threat from the American presence.

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In Brief - Around The World

Around The World

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3 Afghanistan 1 Thailand Army reinforcements were rushed into Thailand's capital as tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched Monday on a key military headquarters demanding that the government dissolve Parliament. Some 100,000 Red Shirt protesters who have been camped out along a boulevard in the old part of Bangkok have given Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva a noon deadline to meet their demand for new elections.

2 Saudi Arabia The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) denied reports that Riyadh had agreed during talks with Mr. Gates, to influence China to support a new round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. “This issue [about Iran sanctions] is not true, it was not discussed during the visit of the Secretary of Defense who was in the kingdom recently,” said SPA citing an official source 15 March, 2010

The latest bomb attacks in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar were a warning to US and Nato forces, the Taliban say. A Taliban spokesman said the attacks were in response to a planned major offensive by international forces against militants in the region. At least 35 people were killed and some 57 injured in the blasts in Kandahar, Afghanistan's third largest city.

The main target appeared to be Kandahar's prison, officials said, though no prisoners escaped.

4 Belgium The euro-zone has agreed a multibillion-euro bailout for Greece as part of a package to shore up the single currency after weeks of crisis.

Senior sources in Brussels said that Berlin had bowed to the bailout agreement despite huge resistance in Germany and that the finance ministers of the "euro-zone" – the 16 member states including Greece who use the euro – are to finalize the rescue package soon.

5 North Korea North Korea has internally decided to return to long-stalled six-nation talks on its nuclear arms activities in early April. The decision came as North Korean leader Kim Jong-il reportedly may soon visit China, amid growing pressure for Pyongyang, hit by U.N. sanctions after its nuclear test in May 2009, to return to negotiations.

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In Brief - Around The World

8 Iran

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The US State Department condemned Iran's persecution of religious minorities following the Iranian authorities' detention of Baha'is and Christians in recent months. Iranian authorities have detained more than 45 Baha'is in the last four months, and as many as 60 Baha'is are imprisoned in Iran on the basis of their religion beliefs, the State Department said.

9 Sudan The Justice and Equality Movement (Jem), seen as the main rebel group in sudan said the government and the rebels were then supposed to agree on a number of difficult issues before signing the final agreement three weeks later.

6 Jordan Jordanian sources said King Abdullah has ordered his security forces to bolster protection of the Israeli embassy and diplomats in after a failed attack in January 2010.

They said authorities would bolster VIP protection and provide advanced equipment for Israeli convoys.

"The king believes that an attack on the Israeli presence in Jordan has strategic implications," a Jordanian source said.

Issue 1549

7 France French voters scarred by economic crisis dealt President a and his conservative leadership a stern blow by strongly favoring leftist candidates in regional elections, according to near-complete official results.Some took their worries about immigration and France's growing Muslim population to the ballot box — helping the far right National Front party upset predictions and perform strongly in Sunday's firstround voting to choose regional governments.

10 Israel The Israeli cabinet approved the construction of a NIS 1.35 billion barrier along the border with Egypt, designed to prevent terrorism, drug smuggling, illegal infiltrations and human trafficking. “There is broad agreement that we need to protect the State of Israel and its future as a Jewish and democratic state,� Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said during the cabinet discussion on the matter about the need to keep out infiltrators.

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In Brief - Quotes Of The Week

Magazine Round Up

Quotes Of The Week

"The responsibility for the difficulties in China-US relations does not lie with China; it is up to the US to mend frayed relations"

China Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi

1 "Any relationship is a twoway street. It is fair to say that our relations have just gone through a difficult patch but we are determined to re-establish a forward-looking relationship" American State Department spokesman PJ Crowley

"Netanyahu would have to make some difficult decisions in order to advance the Middle East peace process" Defense Minister Ehud Barak

"This peace process cannot go on forever, now is the time for decisions" Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat

15 March, 2010

Magazine Round Up 1 Newsweek The Right Woman for the Job

Europe’s indebted governments are on the verge of being engulfed in a crisis which has exposed deep chasms within the European Union. Economic uncertainty has sheared 10 percent off the euro’s value against the dollar and unemployment and recession plagues the 16 countries which use the common currency.

This article proposes that Angela Merkel, is the most capable person to lead the EU out of such crisis. Yet the widely respected leader of the world's seventh-most-competitive economy, so far seems unwilling to assume the mantle of leadership. Newsweek’s Stefan Theil argues that if Germany overcomes its grip on the status quo of inwardly looking political leadership, Merkel may be able to assume the role she is best suited to.

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2 TIME The Iranian Riddle

This essay tackles the enigma of the Iranian Government. Author Parsi accuses the government of seeking to confuse the outside world on with regards to its goals. He further suggests that leaders in Tehran are convinced that opacity will buy them security. Given this, Parsi acknowledges that it is not surprising that the Obama administration has struggled to find a successful Iran policy. Parsi argues that the American government should display patience and avoid confrontation in relations with Iran.

2 3 The New Yorker No Credit Where Credit is Due

he New Yorker looks at Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s financial stabilization policies to relieve banks of toxic assets and provide relief for struggling homeowners. The author argues that such policies have successfully contributed to the reversal of America’s economic crisis. Yet, at the same time, taxpayers remain under-impressed by these policies and the men in charge. This article provides an insight into why this may be and includes interesting commentary from Geithner and others directly involved in the financial recovery process.

Cover Of The Week

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The Economist Gendercide

Where have all the girls gone?

It is widely known that impoverished countries have unnaturally high numbers of boys. The imminent catastrophic consequences of this phenomenon are discussed in this article. One stark example is China, that alone stands to have as many unmarried young men as the entire population of young men in America. In 1990 Amartya Sen put the number of missing females at 100 million and this articles proposes that the number is now even higher. However, the article is not all bad news, it also recounts South Korea’s success in reducing gendercide. The country’s social policies are discussed in this article as an example of how countries such as China can raise the value of girls and correct the gender imbalance.

Issue 1549

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In Brief - Letters

Letters

LAST ISSUE

Al Qaeda’s Condolences It is not unlikely that the Pakistani security agencies and the U.S. are responsible for recent bombings and in order to justify the American presence in this region as well as to distract the world's attention from acts of al Qaeda.

Hussein Yasser

15 March, 2010

Who Will Have The Last Dance Turkey now needs a sweeping constitutional reform aimed at decentralization and democratization in the country. These reforms have been delayed for too long, hence, the Justice and Development Party along with the Turkish Parliament have to push for these reforms during membership talks with the European Union.

Matteo Stendardo

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In Brief - Magazine Round Up

Issue 1549

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Features

Š getty images

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Dr. Ahmadinejad: How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Live With The Bomb By Amar Toor Issue 1549

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Features

Dr. Ahmadinejad:

How I stopped worrying and learned to live with the Bomb Amar Toor

There are significant parallels between Ahmadinejad and Kubrik’s most memorable character, Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Strangelove was an extremely trigger-happy, suspiciously double-talking character that so many in 1960s America feared—the same kind of characterization, in fact, that many in the Western media have now branded upon Ahmadinejad. But is there really a madman lurking far beneath the placid surface of Iran’s President?

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove

Kubrick’s classic 1964 film S tanley Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned

to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb places some of the most morbid Cold War-era nuclear fears and attitudes under a searing satirical lens of stygian-black comedy. Released at the zenith of Cold War frigidity and paranoia, Strangelove tells the story of a rogue US general who, having apparently lost his mind, suddenly pulls the trigger on a fleet of nuclear warheads aimed at Communist Russia, threatening global extinction.

The nuclear hysteria upon which Kubrick based his satirical film has certainly died out, but many of the core nuclear fears at which Kubrick takes such deft jabs are still very much at the center of international discourse. Nowhere are they more pertinent than in Iran, where the Islamic 15 March, 2010

Republic has, justifiably or not, stepped into the Soviet Union’s gargantuan shoes as the newest nuclear threat to mankind.

Strangelove in Iran More than 40 years later, both the film and its message, are as resonant in today’s cavernous media amphitheatre as they were at the height of Cold War tensions.

As global attention centers ever more intensely on Iran and its apparent push toward nuclear armament, the principle personages, as in any film or narrative structure, have gradually come into more refined relief.

And, as the line dividing media consumers from producers blurs to nearly indiscernible levels of turbidity, we all become atomized Truffauts, Kubricks,

or, as the case may be, David Lynches.

We read and construct media the same way any director, screenwriter, or novelist structures a narrative—namely, around easily identifiable characters and personalities.

Heads of state become leitmotif shorthand for countries, populations, and policies.

Barack Obama is as synonymous with the US as Paul McCartney once was with The Beatles, as Charlton Heston was with Ben-Hur, as Rush Limbaugh will forever be with Oxycontin. We impose cinematic and literary archetypes on to political storyboards because character-driven tales are, quite simply, more exciting to read.

The Iranian political landscape may be complex and multifarious, but it’s not 20

Features

immune to our own storytelling devices.

to love the bomb?

Although the country’s political architecture is actually anchored by a triumvirate of theocratic, presidential and militaristic constituent regimes, the “face” of Iran, the singular personage that’s emerged as its representative actor, its foremost team captain, is, without question, President Ahmadinejad.

Dr. Ahmadinejad

But what kind of character is he? Where does he fit in the current political drama that we as media consumers have constructed for ourselves? What role does he fulfill? Does he have the onscreen charisma and James Dean-like swagger to actually carry our nuclear film? Or is he more of a niche character, deigned to play a small, predictable role but do it to absolute perfection, à la Jerry Orbach?

Is he, perhaps, the Dr. Strangelove of the 21st century?

Though he makes only a handful of appearances onscreen, Kubrick’s most memorable character, by far, is the film’s namesake—the deranged (and ambiguously Nazi) scientist known only as Strangelove. In what may be the most economically brilliant performance in cinematic history, Peter Sellers brings to life a character so profoundly enigmatic, so anomalously German, and so inarguably deviant that one can’t help but be lulled into the hypnotic spider web that Sellers casts across the screen.

Granted, Strangelove is no head of state— no nation, no matter how desperate, would be that suicidal. And Sellers’ portrayal is unquestionably more demonstrative and exaggerated than anything we’ve seen from Ahmadinejad in the public sphere.

But circumstantial differences aside, there remain several significant parallels.

Even though he’s technically working under the American regime, Strangelove is plainly cast as an extreme caricature of the same trigger-happy, suspiciously double-talking character that so many in 1960s America feared—the same kind of characterization, in fact, that many in the Western media have now branded upon Ahmadinejad.

But is there really a madman lurking far beneath the placid surface of Iran’s President? Has Ahmadinejad finally and inexorably stopped worrying, and learned Issue 1549

Everything about Ahmadinejad—the man and the fable—speaks to relative normalcy; relative, obviously, because compared to other leaders of either perceived or real nuclear threats, he comes across as, well…tame.

There doesn't seem to be any traces of inflated egomaniacal nucleotides in Ahmadinejad’s DNA North Korean President Kim Jong-Il is, by most accounts, certifiably insane. Both his promethean ego and his diminutive embonpoint suggest dictatorial tendencies and inferiority complexes of the Napoleonic variety.

The man known domestically as “Dear Leader” has manicured such an absurd myth about his messianic origins that the official North Korean records describe his momentous birth on Mount Paektu as a near biblical event peppered with "flashes of light and thunder,” upon which “the iceberg in the pond of Mount Paektu emitted a mysterious sound as it broke, and bright double rainbows rose up."

When Kim Jong-Il boasts of his nuclear warhead collection, there’s indeed a measured and understandable ripple effect of concern that radiates throughout the international community. But no one’s really that surprised. After all, Dear Leader simultaneously claims, in all seriousness, to have drilled 11 holes-in-one the first time he ever picked up a golf club.

There doesn’t seem to be any traces of similarly inflated egomaniacal nucleotides in Ahmadinejad’s DNA. There doesn’t even appear to be much of the showmanship that has become the global calling cards of both Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Libya’s Muammar alQadaffi. Ahmadinejad’s stage presence, by comparison, is borderline soporific.

While his plaintive eyebrows and densely compact eyes render him low hanging fruit for political cartoonists, Ahmedinejad’s actual behavior, at first glance, seems downright vanilla. This is a man, after all, who ascended to high political office on the wings of plebeianism. His entire campaign was built upon the premise that he was just “one of the guys,” a man with the same blue-collar origins of the working class Iranians to whom he so openly pandered during his 2005 presidential election.

He further strengthened his populist credo and symbolically reinforced his commitment to the conservative working class by famously removing the opulent furniture in the presidential palace and replacing it with more acceptably modest pieces. His wife still packs him lunch every day. Calling his suits “modest” is like calling Rembrandt “talented.” Cut out of a martinet’s cloth, the staunchly conservative Ahmadinejad represented an orthogonal right turn from the socially moderate regimes that preceded him.

On occasion, however, Ahmadinejad has displayed curiously contradictory behavior, and has given us brief, puzzling glimpses into a more complex individual.

The same man who ushered in a new era of social conservatism is also the man who, last summer, so tirelessly stood by his initial choice for First Vice President, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. The move upset not only the Supreme Leader, who immediately ordered his resignation, but also irked many in his conservative base who weren’t so keen on a high elected official who’d previously been videotaped enjoying a wholly inappropriate dance performance put on by Turkish women.

Ahmadinejad, the “man of the people,” also happens to be the same man who infamously claimed that a halo-like light hovered over his head during a 2005 speech at the UN. He maintains, furthermore, that every world leader present for the speech did not blink for the entire 27-minute duration. These are hardly words you’d expect from a supposedly austere, religious conservative, or, for that matter, from a man of science with a PhD in engineering—both of which Ahmadinejad claims to be.

Despite these wrinkles, though, he continues, in speech and in public, to hold 21

Features to his self-perpetuated image of normalcy.

More importantly, when compared to many of the same men with whom he’s often mentioned in the same breath, he still comes across as the only relatively coherent member of the group.

For all his quirks, he’s still nowhere near as volatile (or senile?) as Kim Jong-Il. And you definitely won’t see him dressed like the veritable Austin Powers extra that Qadaffi has become.

So why is the international community so incensed over someone so relatively normal? Could it be because of this normalcy? Is the West warier of Ahmadinejad’s more calculated game of double talk and duality than they are of North Korea’s impulsive Dear Leader?

It’s a reasonable explanation; a cagey, mysterious adversary, after all, is always worthy of attention, in any forum. And a cagey, mysterious adversary with nuclear capabilities is worthy of extra attention.

But does it necessarily make him another Strangelove? Do nuclear capabilities have the transformative power to turn an otherwise sibylline world leader into a spastic, charlatan of an antagonist?

The answer, of course, depends on the fiction we construct around Ahmadinejad’s nuclear ambitions, the editing and splicing we use to piece together the story, and the creative license with which we allow ourselves to do so.

However unique each iteration may be, each auteur remains restricted to the same material, the same constituent bits of reality with which to assemble the Ahmadinejad mosaic. And only in examining each individual piece of radioactive mini-narrative can we even hope to remove the veil, and unearth the true Strangelove or Regular Joe buried underneath below.

How He Learned to Stop Worrying… and Love the Bomb?

At some point over the course of his presidency, Ahmadinejad, like the blundering characters in Strangelove, simply stopped worrying. While he hasn’t done anything as drastic as pulling the trigger on a nuclear warhead, his nuclear rhetoric has certainly become 15 March, 2010

more emboldened and, at times, brazenly confrontational.

Ahmadinejad is certainly not responsible for planting the seeds of uranium enrichment in Iran, but during his time as president, they’ve blossomed like never before. After a group of exiles revealed that Iran had resumed uranium enrichment activities that had laid dormant ever since the 1979 Revolution, then-President Mohammed Khatami confirmed in 2003 that the country had been secretly working since 1985 to develop a nuclear fuel cycle, thus setting in motion the international cat and mouse game of inspections and sanctions that’s still in full swing today.

Is he as enigmatic and curiously placed as Kubrick’s zany creation?

Absolutely. Then again, though, so is all of Iran While Iran was embarrassingly forced to import gasoline in 2007 due to insufficient infrastructure to refine its abundant supply of oil, Ahmadinejad pushed full steam ahead with his nuclear program, while disclosing the details of the endeavor on a piecemeal basis to the rest of the world.

After deciding to hold a guided and highly publicized tour of the new Natanz uranium enrichment facility in April of 2008, even in the face of mounting sanctions handed down from the UN Security Council, Ahmadinejad appeared to be more contumacious than ever.

Just last month, at a ceremony celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad not only proudly declared Iran a “nuclear state,” but had some carefully articulated words for concerned Western powers, as well.

As some demonstrators in attendance shouted chants of “Death to the dictator!”, the President, from atop a flower-adorned platform, asked the West to “please pay attention and understand that the people

of Iran are brave enough that if it wants to build a bomb it will clearly announce it and build it and not be afraid of you.”

He went on to assert, “When we say we won’t build it that means we won’t.”

Iran has claimed, on numerous occasions, that they’ve cooperated with all of the UN inspections requirements and documentation. Inspectors, on the other hand, say they haven’t had any news from Iran since mid-2008.

According to a recently publicized February 14th report from the IAEA, Iran has now decided to move its entire stockpile of enriched nuclear fuel to an above-ground location—just a few months after claiming that they had no choice but to build an underground nuclear facility near Qum, because of the ever present threat of attack.

The anomalous move struck many as bizarre, and led to speculations that the Islamic Republic might be baiting Israel into striking the facility, as a means of unifying its suddenly divided electorate.

Others, meanwhile, have hypothesized that the move was intended as yet another bold confrontation with the West, in an attempt to gain leverage in future diplomatic negotiations.

As he’s done all along, whenever the currency of clarity and forthrightness are at an all-time high, Ahmadinejad continues to sit idly by, and let the speculation foment.

Dr. Strangelove? Or Dr. Strange?

So, is Ahmadinejad today’s Strangelove?

Not exactly. Does he aspire, in some way, to step into Sellers’ role of mad nuclear scientist? Not quite.

But is he as enigmatic and curiously placed as Kubrick’s zany creation?

Absolutely. Then again, though, so is all of Iran.

In many ways, Ahmadinejad and his life stand as a microcosm of the current state of Iran. His persona, like Iran’s nuclear and foreign policies, is one shrouded in a miasma of mystery.

His statements are often schizophrenic and contradictory, reflective of a state caught in the vortex between the pull of 22

Features religious conservatism and the ongoing push toward Western ideals of modernity.

Like Strangelove on screen, Ahmedinejad occupies a strange and peculiarly precarious space in the international political fiction we’ve engineered around Iran. We’re never sure how much sway Strangelove has over the US administration, and we’ll never know the extent of Ahmadinejad’s influence in Iran, either. He’s neither an absolute authority, nor a Wizard of Oz, relegated to rote, behind-the-curtain duties.

And, as with Strangelove, he’s a nearly impossible character to decode. Much as the true extent of Iran’s nuclear progress remains encased in an obscure box of arcanum, so too does the “true” character of Ahmadinejad remain blurred. As with every major politician, it’s become virtually impossible to separate the three-dimensional human from the twodimensional image.

Even if we tried to derive a “pure” idea of Ahmadinejad’s actual intentions, we would have to disentangle the complex web of power relations that govern the Iranian presidency, the Supreme Leader, and the Supreme National Security Council. Even the most advanced econometric evidence would be hard pressed to isolate a pure “Ahmadinejad factor” in the three-headed consensusbased process that dictates Iran’s foreign policy.

As in any film, though, we, as viewers, must sacrifice some basic level of objectivity. The only clay with which we can mold a character is the raw material before us—what we see on-screen, or read across headlines. While we can certainly deduce much from Ahmadinejad’s actions, circumstantial context remains paramount. The rhetoric may be fiery, and his speeches may be hawkish, but it’s critical to place Ahmadinejad’s recent actions within the recently transformed mise-en-scene against which he’s placed.

regime last summer perhaps heard the ominous drone of what Roger Cohen described as “the death knell of an ossified post-revolutionary order.”

In response, the Iranian leadership has turned to the haven of uranium enrichment. In ramping up the program, and, more importantly, ramping up his promotion of the program, Ahmadinejad and his brass have made their intentions blatantly clear.

Like Strangelove on screen, Ahmadinejad occupies a strange and peculiarly precarious space in the international political fiction A “nuclear state,” in their eyes, is a world player. By their ratiocination, a state that “goes nuclear” against the wishes of nearly every other government is even more fiercely autonomous. Iran, like a gambler watching his chips dwindle, has now put everything on the table, and has begun chanting an interminable chorus of “Hit me!”—even as the Obamas, Sarkozys and Merkels perched around the blackjack table shake their heads.

Ahmadinejad as Wallflower

Whether or not Iran actually plans on using enriched uranium for militaristic purposes remains unknown—perhaps even to Iran’s own leadership. By Ahmadinejad’s quasi-Buddhist philosophy, the journey seems to outweigh the destination. It seems that, for him, simply attaining, or even attempting to attain nuclear capacities might be enough of a roborant to restore a state that’s recently shown signs of frangibility.

Last July, for the first time in decades, Iranian discontent coagulated and manifested itself as palpable action. Now, barely seven months removed from this rupture, Ahmadinejad’s back is pressed squarely against the wall. The Iranian

The worry, however, is that simply building capacity won’t be enough, and that only international confrontation, induced either passively or actively, will placate an administration intent upon regaining control over its country.

Issue 1549

Defusing the Doctor?

We probably shouldn’t spend too much time constructing doomsday endings for our Iranian film script just yet. If anything, we should take solace in the fact that we’re not dealing with a Strangelove, but simply with a man and a country that, at the moment, are at a uniquely transitory inflection point in their respective evolutionary arcs—a prolonged mid-life crisis, if you will.

Does this mean we should treat the threat of a nuclear Iran as nonchalantly as Kubrick does? No. We should, however, always keep ourselves firmly grounded in the truth serum of context, and realize that Ahmadinejad and Iran, while certainly playing up the role of defiant adolescent to the West’s solicitous parent, are not de facto dangers.

Nor should we expect to see a transparent Ahmadinejad anytime soon. Opaque intentions shielded behind a poker-faced President only raise Iran’s bargaining value at the card table of international diplomacy. Much like Peter Sellers, Iran’s president is perfectly capable of playing numerous archetypes, and of sliding seamlessly between his bluecollar “man of the people” and his authoritarian “man of The Man” roles.

At the end of Strangelove, the wheelchair bound doctor suddenly finds the will to walk, and famously exclaims, “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!” just as the warheads zero in on Russia.

Don’t expect a similar 180 from the Iranian President.

Ahmadinejad may raise eyebrows. He’s unquestionably controversial, and eternally enigmatic. At the end of the day, though, he’s no Dr. Strangelove. He’s just another strange doctor, caught in a strange period of upheaval. When we eventually debunk the myth of “Ahmadinejad as Madman,” we’ll all be able to stop worrying, and, perhaps, begin reconsidering the “bomb” at the epicenter of our Iranian screenplay.

Amar Toor is a Paris-based freelance writer and consultant at the OECD. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not reflect the policy or views of the OECD. 23

15 March, 2010

News Analysis

Maliki leads the Iraqi parliamentary race

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News Analysis

Maliki leads the Iraqi parliamentary race Shaky elections mark the beginning of Iraq’s pursuit of democracy Wessam Sherif

the dire D espite situation—terrorist

security attacks killed around 38 people, 6200 candidates from 86 factions stood in Iraq’s parliamentary elections. The elections have recorded a ground breaking 62% turn up rate, making it one of the biggest ever parliamentary “battles” in the Middle East.

Partial preliminary results from Iraq’s 18 districts have shown that the incumbent Prime Minister has maintained a sturdy lead over his rival Ayad Allawi. Maliki's State of Law coalition leads the parliamentary race by bagging the votes in 7 provinces, including Baghdad and the Shi'a dominated Basra, while Allawi's alIraqia coalition trails behind having clenched 5 provinces. The battle in the oil rich predominantly Sunni district of Kirkuk between the Kurds and the Arabs has surprisingly ended with the victory of al-Iraqia, despite 15 March, 2010

expectations of coalition victory.

the

Kurdistania

According to the preliminary results, it seems unlikely that any of the commanding coalition will get the needed majority of votes to form a government. Consequently, al-Maliki has already started talks with rival parties in order to form a coalition government, a process which could take months before announcing a new governmental structure.

The slow pace of vote counting has led to the delay of the announcement of the results more than once, which has raised many eyebrows among the opposition who claims that elections might have been tainted by fraud. The claims were backed by reports from election monitors who highlighted the interference of security forces in rigging the votes by urging the voters to vote for a specific list of candidates

in some provinces. The monitors claim to have seen “a number of security forces even within the voting hall”.

The claims have been refuted by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who urged the parties to respect the results and refrain from making allegations with providing substantial evidence.

Several Western countries have backed al-Maliki up reiterating many of the allegations might be nothing more than attempts at discrediting the polls by opposition parties.

The elections mark a Shiite electoral battle between the two leading coalition parties, the State of Law and the more secular al-Iraqia coalition.

Results will be officially released by the end of the current month. In the meanwhile, many Western nations have hailed what they called “the success of the voting process”.

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Ideas

Š getty images

15 March, 2010

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Everything But A Game By

Noam Schimmel

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Ideas

Everything But A Game Responding to Child Poverty in Egypt Noam Schimmel Despite making great strides in lowering child mortality rates, Egypt has a long way to go in improving the living standards of its child citizens. The importance of assessing government run development programs is highlighted when Egypt’s advances are compared to those of Morrocco. Despite sharing similar challenges, their development trajectories may diverge substantially as a result of different government initiatives. Egypt should focus on addressing the causes of child poverty rather than responding to these social challenges symptomatically.

An Egyptian boy plays with a ball at the poor area of al-Zabbalin in Cairo © getty images

A

boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, eyes flashing with enthusiasm takes me to the second floor of a shelter for orphans and street children in Alexandria, eager to show me his room. When we get to his room he looks for something beside his bed. Moments later, he hands me a chocolate bar.

Many images linger from my visit to community development projects in Egypt.

But it is the memory of this boy and his desire to share even though he has very little in the way of material things himself 15 March, 2010

that resonates most for me. His gratitude at being given the chance to live in a safe environment, with access to schooling and adequate meals was palpable—it was more than gratitude he was expressing, it was the joy of dignity, respect, and opportunity.

this had more than halved to 36. Its infant mortality rate for infants under the age of 1 stood at 68 in 1990. By 2007 it had dropped to 30. Despite this progress, Egypt has a long way to go to secure the human rights of its child citizens.

Egypt has made great strides in lowering child mortality rates. The UNICEF 2009 State of the World’s Children Report illustrates the significance of these improvements in child welfare indicators.

In 1990 Egypt had an under-five mortality rate of 93 per 1,000 births and by 2007

In the 2009 State of the World’s Mothers Report, issued by the NGO Save the Children, Egypt ranks 22 on the Children’s Index rank (which measures child welfare) for what it classifies as “Tier two less developed countries.” To put this in an Arab states context, and this ranking is

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Ideas significantly better than Syria’s ranking of 55, Morocco’s ranking of 57, Libya’s ranking of 46, and Algeria’s ranking of 41.

Only three Arab countries do significantly better in this ranking than Egypt: Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain.

However, these generally strong numbers for Egypt are deceptive because Egypt fairs very poorly when the overall welfare of mothers and women are taken into account.

A child’s well being is deeply informed by his/her mother’s access to education, healthcare, economic resources, and equal legal rights. With consistently poor results in these rankings it is highly possible if not likely that Egypt will lose momentum and child welfare nationally will stagnate and soon decline.

When the first UN Arab Human Development Report was issued in 2002 it focused on three key deficits that were preventing and slowing development in the Arab world: access to knowledge and education, women’s rights, and political freedoms. These remain key areas of concern. The lack of access to education and the lack of women’s rights have a particularly debilitating impact on children as they perpetuate a poverty trap and the marginalization of girls.

Egypt is unique in the Arab world and faces exceptional human development challenges because of the large size of its population. Arab countries that have been able to achieve major improvements in child welfare tend to have both smaller populations, such as Jordan, and are significantly wealthier, such as Bahrain and Qatar. It is helpful to compare Morocco, a country with a similar GDP per capita as Egypt’s (according to the World Bank’s latest 2009 data, per-capita GDP stands at $2,580 in Morocco and at $1,800 in Egypt) with Egypt. Morocco, like Egypt, suffers from extreme poverty and high income inequality as well as an extensive problem of unemployment. According to UNICEF, its under-five mortality rate in 1990 was very close to Egypt’s, standing at 89 per 1,000 births. By 2007 this had dropped drastically to 34 per 1,000 births.

The development trajectories of Egypt and Morocco may diverge substantially in future years, however, as their governments prioritize different areas for government expenditure. Morocco currently seems more invested in improving access to information, promoting the rights of women, and increasing educational opportunity. If these areas receive sufficient Issue 1549

funding and are developed sustainably they are likely to yield significant improvements in Moroccan human development and the welfare of Moroccan children. Egypt’s massive military expenditures in particular undermine its capacity to combat poverty effectively and to provide for the needs of its children.

Although there is an enormous gap between the needs of Egypt’s children to access their human rights as established in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: including access to decent education, healthcare, shelter and sanitation facilities, and nutrition and Egyptian social realities, there are also successful child centered community development projects across the country that are making a tangible difference in the quality of life for Egyptian children and youth.

A diverse group of NGOs are active in Egypt working with children. Some work under the auspices of large and familiar international NGOs such as PLAN, Save the Children, Oxfam, and CARE who partner with local Egyptian NGOs. Others are smaller NGOs without an international affiliation.

The project with street children I visited in Alexandria is sponsored by the childcentered development NGO PLAN International. Major areas PLAN has focused its programming on include increasing school attendance, the creation of clubs where children have safe places to read and play, promoting the rights of girls and women, village savings and loans programs, revitalization and expansion of health and nutrition programs for children, and improving access to clean water and sanitation services.

PLAN places a unique emphasis on educating children about their human rights as children and providing them with opportunities in the media, community gatherings, and with government officials to communicate their concerns, needs, and experiences of human rights deprivations.

While working on a local level to provide holistic support to children and to enable them to realize their rights to survival, development, and protection, PLAN also strives to promote child welfare on a larger scale across the nation..

Egypt’s greatest challenge is to scale up interventions like PLAN’s communitybased programs and to use the financial and human resources of the state to do so, while coordinating them effectively. What

are now projects limited to relatively small communities and reaching only a small percentage of Egyptian children and youth need to be expanded extensively. According to Save the Children, 54% of girls in rural Upper Egypt are not enrolled in school, for example. Ensuring universal enrollment in school for Egyptian children and improving teaching methodologies—which are often rote and involve memorization rather than interactive learning, a more effective way of engaging students—is one area the Egyptian government needs to prioritize.

Some social challenges, such as the large and growing population of street children in Cairo and Alexandria are intricately connected to an array of complex and longstanding social problems: crime, poverty, domestic violence and child abuse that goes unpunished. There are many projects in Egypt that address these problems symptomatically rather than structurally, i.e. drop-in centers for street children that provide the immediate basic needs of children and reduce their vulnerability but do not address the underlying causes of their homelessness. This is not to underplay the importance of providing children that are already living on the street with their needs—rather, it is to emphasize that such a response is by its very nature partial and unlikely to lessen the number of children migrating to the street nor the push factors that cause them to do so.

The lack of an organized and well financed government response in partnership with civil society to structural causes of child poverty and deprivation of child rights is common throughout the developing world and is not unique to Egypt. However, given the huge child and youth population of Egypt, the social, economic, and political consequences of not finally addressing this issue intensively and comprehensively poses a threat to the stability of the Egyptian state, in addition to the impoverishment in both human and financial terms that it causes to Egyptian society and Egypt’s children in particular. Egypt’s success in decreasing child mortality during the last two decades indicates that there is cause for hope. If political will matches the economic and human resources that Egypt possesses then the future of Egypt’s children will better reflect their human rights, intrinsic dignity, and potential to the benefit of Egyptian society at large.

London-based researcher and human rights practitioner with extensive development experience in the field.

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15 March, 2010

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People

The Future of Democracy in the Middle East Daniel Brumberg, acting Director of the United States Institute of Peace’s Muslim World Initiative Issue 1549

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People - Interview

The Future of Democracy in the Middle East Daniel Brumberg, acting Director of the United States Institute of Peace’s Muslim World Initiative.

Professor Brumberg discusses with The Majalla the latest report by the United States Institute of Peace. He raises questions regarding the appropriate measures that the US should put in place to protect its security interests in the region, highlighting the role of democracy. Brumberg also discusses the conditions that are necessary for liberalized autocracies to promote democratization.

© getty images

Brumberg is acting director Daniel of the United States Institute of

Peace’s Muslim World Initiative.

Brumberg is also an associate professor at Georgetown university and a former senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy and Rule of Law Project. His research focuses on issues of democratization and political reform in the Middle East and wider Islamic world.

With a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, he is currently working on a comparative study of powersharing experiments in Algeria, Kuwait and Indonesia. A brief review of his most recent publication with the United States institute of Peace was published last week on The Majalla.

15 March, 2010

The Majalla: Do you believe there is an incompatibility between Islam and Democracy?

No, I don’t think there is an essential incompatibility between the two. It is the case that in any religious system— whether it is Judaism, Christianity or Islam—if a government is supposed to be based on religious precepts there is going to be a certain tension.

I think democracy faces a broader problem that is not related to Islam.

Religious ideas do not sit very well with democracy because religion, by its very nature, insists on very strict notions of moral life. If you look at studies that compare the Arab world to the Islamic world, you will see that

where you have Muslim majority societies such as Indonesia and Senegal, in which democracy is done remarkably well, there is no evidence to suggest that it is the Islamic nature of Muslim majority societies that accounts for the presence or absence of democracy. There is some aspect of Arab politics and the Middle East that is to account for the phenomenon and not Islam itself.

Q: What processes do you think are necessary for political reform in the Middle East?

Political reform is not a new phenomenon in the Middle East, it did not begin with the Bush 34

People - Interview administration’s effort to promote it. In fact, there was a long legacy of state instigated political reform that goes back many decades.

The primary example of that is Egypt in the 70’s and the political liberalization undertaken by the late President Amar Sadat. This is a good example of how regimes have used and invoked political reform not as a mechanism for actual democratization, but actually as a mechanism for holding on to power.

So political reform as an instrument of state power is an old phenomenon in many Middle East states, not all, but many.

The question that I am interested in, and the question that the USIP report tackles on reform and security is the extent to which the state managed game of political change—in which the state defines the rules for political change— can go beyond by a game that is largely defined by the state and move towards a pattern of political reform that is much more substantive and has a basis in the society itself.

Q: Is political reform in the Middle East then primarily a bottom up or top down process?

It has to be both, in part because of the extent to which the boundaries of reform have been determined by states and regimes. Yet the US has based its hopes for democratic change in the Middle East largely on the hope that civil society groups and NGOs, through their own activism and their own actions, will be able to compel regimes to engage in political reform. That hope, what we call in our field a demand side approach— that demand is coming from civil society—has not been fulfilled.

There has to be a supply of democratic change from above. Therefore regimes have to see beyond the limits of reform that they have so far imposed, and that means a form of political liberalization that is wider.

It also implies a genuine dialogue

between regimes and opposition.

Not the kind of dialogues you had between Egypt and elsewhere which are choreographed by the state. That’s typical of the region.

Regimes are constantly engaging in dialogues but they are mostly really monologues, not dialogues with a goal of defining a political formula that moves beyond the boundaries of state managed political reform.

not face the possibility of an election in which you or your allies will be politically isolated. Algeria is a great example: the regime extends protection to non-Islamist groups afraid of going back to the elections of 1988-89. So non-Islamist groups get protection from these regimes, but so do Islamist groups. That’s the name of the game, you have to protect everybody.

There has to be a supply of democratic change from above.

Therefore regimes have to see beyond the limits of reform that they have so far imposed

Even the Egyptian state, which does not allow the Ikhuwan-ul-Muslamin to establish their own political party, is very god at co-opting the Islamist message in the regime itself. It also has had a section of the NDP extend support to Islamists and to conservative Muslim leaders.

States are good at creating their own constituencies and playing them off one against the other. It’s a divide and rule tactic, but these tactics are in part made possible because they are based on the fact that there are constituencies that prefer the status quo of state managed liberalization over the black hole of full democratization. That’s really what counts.

Q: How do you explain the ability of liberalized autocracies to endure despite predications of their inevitable downfall?

There are several reasons why they have succeeded so far. These regimes are not based solely on coercion and force. They provide goods and services, and they provide patronage, they have their own organized constituencies. They are able to buy political support to some extent by distributing all kinds of favours and goodies from the state. So they are not really coercive in that sense, they are patron states. But also these regimes extend the kind of protection to various groups in society. It’s a kind of protection in which the regime guarantees the safety of all groups, particularly those nonIslamist groups who are afraid of the outcome of a fully democratic game.

What the state does is essentially liberalize but not democratize.

Therefore you can participate but

Q: For the case of Iran, what type of political struggle do you think would promote democracy?

Iran is in some sense a mirror image of the case of the Arab world. In the Arab world you have semi-secular regimes that extend protection to all kinds of groups but particularly non-Islamist groups—bureaucrats, the business community, secular intellectual. In Iran it’s a regime rule

by Islamists, and they extend the protection of an autocratic state to their constituencies and the clergy, the true believers, the hardliners who want to maintain a close relationship between mosque and state. As a result those who control the Iranian state speak not simply for themselves, but also for a constituency of several million or more for whom any political liberalization is a threat because liberalization is seen as 35

People - Interview Q: The US has made various efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East. Do you think any of these have efforts have had the long term benefits that the US was looking for?

Algerian rescue workers and bomb experts stand in front of a destroyed building near the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) offices © getty images

opening the door to the non-Islamist opposition. Iran is a highly divided society and it is ruled by an elite that sees any form of democratization as a slippery slope towards its own downfall. As a consequence there is no real incentive from those in power to make any concessions to the opposition. The problem is that the opposition doesn’t really have the power to bring down the regime. The most likely scenario will be one of conflict and stalemate for some time, maybe even years.

Q: How do you assess policies from the West towards Iran that encourage sanctions? Do they promote change, or do they do more harm than good?

Broad based sanctions, or what we call crippling sanctions, hurt the opposition more than the regime. As a result, broad based sanctions on say imported gas are probably very counterproductive in terms of any resolution of the conflict between the regime and the opposition, and in their ability to provide some measure of political liberalization. Target sanctions which are the coercive apparatus in the revolutionary 15 March, 2010

guard make a lot more sense. These would probably be supported by the opposition. But broad based sanctions such as the kind that are supported by the US Congress are going to hurt the opposition much more than help them.

Q: What kind of target sanctions, in this case, would be most effective?

Economic and financial sanctions on the capacity of elements within the revolutionary guard to do business overseas, to import technology and capital, and to essentially service their own constituencies within the security apparatus would be most effective.

Some of those targeted sanctions have been proposed by Congress and are getting more attention. Those are the kind of sanctions that the Obama administration is now supporting. In fact that the Obama administration has come out and said that the broader sanctions in Congress are wrong and counter-productive. There are a set of ideas in sanctions that can help more than they can hurt.

Sanctions for the Congress are a way of making a statement in support of the opposition but it’s a statement that can do more harm than good.

Under the Bush administration there was both much continuity with previous administrations, and yet somewhat of a break. The break came in the form of the language of US support for democracy and the substance of our policies. Under the Bush administrations we began to speak to states much more clearly about the need for reform. At the same time we supported civil society groups. So this equation which I mentioned before—the demand side reform vs. supply side—was addressed by the Bush administration.

The problem there was that there was a real hesitancy, once Islamist made advances in Egypt and Palestine, to support the pressure on regimes.

The last two years of the Bush administration were spent reverting to the more traditional US policy to rely on civil society groups instead of pressuring regimes themselves.

We are probably now back on that traditional policy.

It is a policy that is largely risk free because we promote political reform by supporting civil society groups which don’t really have the capacity to force regimes to change. We can appear to be supporting democracy without jeopardizing our relationship with regimes—the cake and eat it too strategy.

So we had a period of two to three years under the Bush administration which turns out to be in retrospect quite exceptional. Even during the last two years of the administration we were back to a policy of supporting political reform and not democracy, because they are not the same. Whether we are ready now to walk the walk and really support democracy instead of patterns of political change that are ultimately 36

People - Interview determined by regimes remains to be seen.

Q: Implicit in your answer is the possibility that even a democratic country would not be US friendly.

Is that the case?

That is a possibility. Governments, including the United States, do not like uncertainty, especially in the diplomatic field. But we really don’t know what the foreign policy of regimes in the region would look like if Islamist played an important part in the regimes as a consequence of elections. Elections leading to power sharing arrangements that would be inclusive of Islamists wouldn’t necessarily change the foreign policy of these regimes because that power sharing formula would have to be negotiated. It is also unlikely that if Islamist had a stronger role in government in either Egypt or Jordan, that they would scrap their peace treaties with Israel. Also, we don’t know what any of these dynamics would look like in the context of a successful peace process between Israel and Palestine. Its probably the case that there can be no real progress in terms of democratization in the region in the absence of a parallel effort to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a successful resolution and a just one.

Q: What policies do you think are necessary for Afghanistan to build its credibility and improve its stability?

The problem with Afghanistan is that you have had elections in the absence of a strong state. In the absence of a state that has a strong legitimacy, elections are bound to be really about the distribution of patronage, like the paying off of war lords, than it is about strengthening the legitimacy of the state. So you need a functioning army, you need to fight corruption, you need patterns of government that are legitimate and efficient for democracy to work. The effort to Issue 1549

fix the state by democracy alone, to some extent, flipped the formula.

The problem with Afghanistan is that you have had elections in the absence of a strong state. In the absence of a state that has a strong legitimacy, elections are bound to be really about the distribution of patronage For example if you have a military preying upon the local population, all the elections in the world would probably strengthen forces opposed to the state because the state is seen as predatory. That doesn’t mean the democratic process should be suspended, but that in parallel with that process, there should be a focus on issues of economic reform, education, corruption, governance and so on. If you don’t do that, democracy will probably be destabilising instead of stabilizing.

Q: Will the surge in troops in Afghanistan by the US be able to achieve its intended objectives?

I doubt it. I think the surge planned is probably inadequate for achieving the strategic aims defined by the administration. I hope that I will be proven wrong. It seems to me that politically it was impossible to make the argument for a larger surge than the one defined by the administration and they will try to make it work within the troop increase, but considering the timework defined, we have a very limited window of opportunity to strengthen the state and the army

giving them a capacity to both address the Taliban militarily and politically. The goal is not simply to decimate the Taliban but have a military strong enough to force them to negotiate, but that requires a military that is strong well trained and doesn’t depend ultimately on the US. That is a lot to accomplish in the timeframe established by the Obama administration. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed.

Q: How do you assess the upcoming elections in Iraq, especially considering the disqualification of candidates allegedly affiliated to the Baath party?

I think if the disqualification isn’t overruled [the decision was postponed until after the elections] its going to do great harm to the legitimacy of the elections. If the Sunni community is given a reason to boycott the elections it increases the readiness of some Sunni actors to go back to the old days with an insurgency against the regime. That will increase the fear factor of the Shiite community and undermine prospects of SunniShiite reconciliation. In the last year we have seen this pattern where the two sides go to the brink and then step back from it, we may still see it but if they don’t step back this disqualification is going to really harm the election process.

If it’s not thrown out we may see an election that is seen by the Sunni community as illegitimate. Al Qaeda and its mobile operatives are resorting to the use of bombings to rekindle the civil war that occurred in Iraq. That hasn’t happened because Shia leaders haven’t taken the bait, but this disqualification makes the process of reconciliation difficult.

Interview conducted by Paula Mejia 37

People - Profile

An American powerbroker heading to Syria Robert Stephen Ford, the next US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, the new US envoy to Damascus, is a crafty behind-the-scenes powerbroker. He is one of the foremost Arabists of the US Foreign Service, played an important role in Iraq, and spent two years in Algeria. His mission is a tough one. He will seek that Syria facilitates regional stability, and will try to lure Syria away from Iran’s sphere, while Israel ratchets its bellicose language against Damascus. The question is—will he handle the spotlight?

© getty images

R

obert Stephen Ford, the next US ambassador to Syria following a five-year absence, is “an avid reader of history and a diplomat.” That’s how he describes himself in his Amazon profile.

What this discreet career diplomat doesn’t say is that he has become one of the foremost Arabists of the US foreign service, crawling up the ladder over the last quarter of a century, mostly in Arab countries.

He’s a savvy powerbroker who has quietly bent Middle Eastern politics, most noticeably in Iraq.

But for the first time, Mr. Ford will be operating under a spotlight as he tries to lure Syria away from Iran, all while Israel ratchets 15 March, 2010

its bellicose language against Damascus. Will he take the heat?

Mr. Ford will not be arriving to rekindle a friendship, either. After all, Syria was included in Bush’s era “Axis of evil” in 2002, and it gained world pariah status for its yet unclear role in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005.

US sanctions are still in place. But Damascus has regained much of its clout in the region since.

President Bashar al Assad has mended ties with his Arab neighbors, without surrendering them with Tehran, and he is

cozying up to regional powerhouse Turkey to increase his bargaining power in the standoff with Israel.

To be sure, Syria convinced western diplomats it can play both ways. The invisible hand of Damascus has been credited with convincing Hamas to accept the Arab-proposed peace offering to Israel, with easing sectarian tensions in Iraq via Sunni politicians, and with Hezbollah’s recent shows of restraint, both inside and outside Lebanon.

President Barack Obama, unlike his predecessor, does not demand that Syria sever its relations to Iran, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and 38

People - Profile Hamas. But he does want Syria to facilitate regional stability.

And that’s where the new ambassador comes in, probably this summer, after the Senate confirms the nomination.

Ford has an impressive track record when it comes to brokering solutions against all odds.

Working behind the scenes as counselor of political affairs of the US Embassy in Baghdad, he has been credited with playing a critical role in mending Iraqi sectarian divisions in every single milestone: the January 2005 elections, the establishment of the transition government, the writing of the new constitution, the October 2005 referendum, the December 2005 national elections, and the 2009 provincial elections.

Initially after the 2003 invasion, Mr. Ford was sidelined by Washington hawks who saw little need for co-opting Iraqis into collaborating. But his knowledge was critical when the Bush administration backtracked to reincorporate Sunnis back into the political mainstream. In Iraq he also apparently reinforced his democratic idealism. Back in 2006, during an online chat with Americans when he worked in the US embassy he said: “There are two forces at work in the Arab world now: those who want more freedom of choice and religious fundamentalists who want to shut choice off.”

Before returning to Iraq in 2008 to his current post as deputy head of mission, he was ambassador in Algeria for two years. His record there is mixed. US interests were well served, bilateral trade boomed, and he led a return to good diplomatic relations.

But he was also harshly criticized Issue 1549

for intruding in internal affairs.

Algiers protested his embassy’s apparent premature warning of a terrorist attacks in 2007, which triggered chaos in the capital, to the point official media demanded that he be expelled. But that seemed more of an excuse.

Ford was pivotal in negotiating a bilateral nuclear cooperation deal, an experience that could well serve Syria if indeed insists on developing its own program What really made the government uncomfortable was his willingness to meet opposition groups openly.

It’s hard to say whether that was just an academic exercise or a calculated move to support democratic engagement. But doing so in Syria would be a bigger gamble. Regardless, in two years he steered US-Algerian relation to new highs, economically and diplomatically.

He was pivotal in negotiating a bilateral nuclear cooperation deal, an experience that could well serve Syria if indeed insists on developing its own program, especially when the other tender could well come from Tehran.

Ford’s priority is to sway Syria into isolating Iran, probably unattainable considering historic and economic bonds. But he could

certainly play a significant role in one of the most destabilizing elements in the region: the Golan Heights. His negotiating expertise could come in handy in Syrian peace talks with Israel that would have far-reaching ripple effects from Lebanon to Palestine, especially now that Tel Aviv has intensified its saber-rattling against Damascus.

Syria could also be critical in any future agreement between Palestinian factions, as well as reconciliation in Lebanon, via its ties to Hamas and Hezbollah. It’s equally decisive to Iraq’s future, not only by reigning in militant Baathist operating from its territory, but by simply securing its borders. Ford will also be tasked with cementing US influence in the country by strengthening bilateral economic ties. Syria is also a key transit territory into Europe for Middle Eastern gas from Egypt, Iraq, and Iran.

Ford has an arts and masters degree from Johns Hopkins School, where he specialized in economy and international studies. He served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, his first exposure to Muslim countries.

He joined the foreign service as an economics officer in 1985 and built his diplomatic career in Turkey, Egypt, Cameroon, and Bahrain, where he served as the deputy chief before he was sent to Iraq for the first time. He has multiple awards and speaks Arabic, French, Turkish, and German. His wife Alison Barkley is also a US diplomat working in the Iraqi embassy. Their official home is Baltimore, Maryland.

But how quickly they return will depend on how he handles the spotlight of reestablishing relations with Damascus. For now, his slate, like Syria’s, is clean.

39

15 March, 2010

Economics International Investor

Markets

When Sanctions Work By

AndrĂŠs Cala Issue 1549

41

Economics - International Economics

When Sanctions Work

Iran braces for an end to subsidies Andrés Cala

The populist government of Iran has been pressured into modernizing its economy by phasing out costly subsidies. Although past leaders have been unwilling to withstand the burden that the change in policies will entail, the prospect of crippling sanctions by the West has aligned its leadership in support of a 5 year subsidy reform plan. The reforms will save the country $100 billion USD a year in subsidies, while correcting market distortions, strengthening the middle class and diversifying the country's economy. This progress however will not come with out challenges, as a rise in costs will likely be followed by inflation.

© getty images

Iranians walk in a poor neighbourhood in the town of Ghaleh Hassan Khan on the southwestern outskirts of Tehran

ironic that Western pressure N Iton is Iran will be responsible

for accomplishing the unthinkable: convincing the populist government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to phase out costly subsidies and modernize the country’s stagnant economy.

For decades, the high echelons of Teheran’s political sphere have been debating on how and when to address the economy’s Achilles’ heel, but no leader has so far been willing to take the political blow, least of all Ahmadinejad. The growing reality of “crippling sanctions”, however, has finally lined up the respective powers–the Supreme Leader, Parliament (also known as Majlis), the Central Bank, and the government.

This month, Iran is set to begin the implementation of its five-year subsidy 15 March, 2010

reform plan, with a particular emphasis on energy products. The ultimate goal is to save up to $100 billion annually that should, if the policy that accompanies the plan is implemented correctly, help Iran modernize its economy and make it less vulnerable.

Geopolitics aside, the plan will no doubt be painful and risky. Nevertheless, it remains a necessary evil that will serve to correct severe market distortions, strengthen a rising middle class, and diversify the productive sector away from oil dependence.

The plan is not new either. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Iran’s Central Bank, and just about all economists have been advising Iran–and most other Middle Eastern countries—to do so for some

time. In fact, Iraq has already phased out most of fuel subsidies, regardless of its oil wealth. If done correctly, this will no doubt strengthen and modernize Iran’s economy, without abandoning the poorest to their fate.

The Economic Reform Plan, as it is known, became law in January after intense wrangling. Implementation is expected at the beginning of the next Iranian year (March 21), along with the new budget and Iran’s new five-year plan.

Subsidies on oil derivatives, natural gas, electricity, water, food, health and education will be phased out.

Savings of $20 billion annually, which will total $100 billion at the end of the five-year plan, will be managed by the government, but supervised 42

Economics - International Economics by the Supreme Iranian Audit Court, which oversees government spending.

A portion of the saved money will be used to compensate low-income families with cash for their extra expenses, a form of explicit subsidies favored by the International Monetary Fund.

The biggest savings are expected from oil derivates, which make the bulk of government subsidies. The cost of products such as fuel will be benchmarked to Gulf international prices, with a maximum 10 percent discount allowed. Consumer prices of gas, water, and electricity will also be matched with production costs.

Until now the government has indirectly subsidized energy prices by regulating what consumers pay regardless of international market prices or production costs of state energy companies. This has contributed to creating a huge hole the budget equal to more than 20 percent of the country’s GDP. It also promotes wasteful demand, especially from the largest consumers such as industry and wealthier households which squander resources because of their low cost. Demand for fuel, gas, and electricity have soared, making Iran increasingly dependent on costly foreign imports, and creating disincentives to exports.

In the case of natural gas, for example, distortions in energy markets cause Iran to miss around 20 percent of its GDP in potential natural gas sales, according to the IMF. This stands in stark contrast with Iran’s ambitious foreign policy objectives given the significant geopolitical clout that would accompany higher natural gas exports.

Productivity is also imperiled as a result of subsidizing. Unrealistic low industrial energy costs kill the need to improve industrial efficiency, thus making Iranians products generally of lower quality, despite at times being more expensive than foreign ones. Iranian products thus loose international market appeal.

Low gasoline prices have also led to increased smuggling across borders.

Authorities estimate that as much as 17 percent of local fuel production—equal to almost 11 million gallons a day—is Issue 1549

lost this way.

Urgency to phase out subsidies is also the result of Ahmadinejad’s populist policies, which are blamed for rampant inflation and high unemployment. Their exponential danger was exposed as the global economic crisis sent oil prices plummeting and the government was forced to use its reserves, without local demand being curtailed.

The subsidy agreement comes as the West—led by the U.S.—increased diplomatic pressure to ratchet sanctions on Tehran over its defiant nuclear program. Ahmadinejad, who still faces strong internal dissent and turmoil over his reelection last year—believed to have been at least partially rigged— ordered uranium enrichment 20 percent above the threshold needed for scientific purposes. Weapon grade uranium is over 90 percent enriched.

Ahmadinejad’s subsidy reform plan has also raised skepticism within Iran, where it is seen as a ploy to garner more support for his faction. He has fought for full control of the savings, even as the Majlis has tried to curb interventionism.

The budget proposal, which parliament still has to approve, is based on oil prices at $60 a barrel, significantly above the $37.5 per barrel used last year. The nearly $370 billion budget is almost 25 percent higher than last year’s $298 billion.

The skepticism was refueled recently after Ahmadinejad surprised parliament by including $40 billion of expenditure in the budget that would be paid with savings generated through subsidy reductions, according to Iranian media.

While the president backtracked after the Majlis rejected the move—reminding the president that the plan called for $20 billion of savings annually—concerns that Ahmadinejad could mismanage funds appear well-rooted.

The issue is still uncertain, as many things are in Iran until their final approval. The plan suggest that almost half of the savings will be redistributed as targeted subsidies to the most poor, another 30 percent will go to improving energy efficiency, and the remaining 20 percent will be kept by the government to offset losses in state-owned companies.

How the reforms are applied remains the question and ultimately a risk.

In terms of unrest, some 40 percent of Iranians are below the poverty line and at least 11 percent of the population is unemployed.

Mishandling the subsidy reform plan thus implies huge risks to internal stability. Government mismanagement could be costly, especially in the current political environment.

But the biggest risk really is related to inflation. Suddenly cutting subsidies means that prices will increase and that inflation will follow. That is manageable if done correctly though.

Current inflation stands at single digits, a great accomplishment considering that only a year ago it fluctuated between 20 and 30 percent. The IMF has also argued that inflation doesn’t have to accompany the subsidy reform plan. Malaysia, for example, increased prices of diesel more than 80 percent and kerosene almost 70 percent, accompanied by a 4 percent deflation. There are similar examples, although not as successful, in Indonesia, and Turkey that reinforce the importance of policy when cutting subsidies.

If anything, that illustrates that proper handling of subsidy-cutting benefit to the economy. In Iran’s case, of course, this will depend on how reform will be managed.

Ahmadinejad appears to have a plan, at least on paper. “Emphasizing a reduction of dependence on oil revenues and an increase of non-oil revenues, with a focus on industry, agriculture and housing — these are among the main attributes of the bill,” he said when presenting his budget.

Public investment on construction accounts for $110 billion, for example.

The real challenge, though, is diversifying the economy as much as possible.

“I would not want to pass up a unique opportunity offered by a populist administration courageous enough to raise prices to market levels. The icing on the cake will be if the government can combine price reform with achieving a greater equality in the distribution of income,” wrote earlier this month in his blog Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a Dubai Initiative research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Madrid based freelance journalist 43

Economics - International Investor

The Future Remains Unwritten Does the Doha Round still have a future?

The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations is stuck. A big part of the reason is the misconceptions present at the launch of the round. Member countries will most likely have to readjust their expectations if the round is to be concluded.

I

The classical model for multilateral trade negotiations would include trade liberalisation through tariff reductions and elimination of non-tariff barriers. This model includes an expectation of active participation by around 40 countries—accounting for 90% of world trade. Among other consequences, many GATT members in the 1960s and 1970s were thus peripheral to the process. This led to skewed results with much less progress in areas where developing countries had a major interest, but where the main players had a defensive attitude, such as agriculture and textiles.

The Doha Round began with a similar model and two major differences: first, following progress in tackling other types of barrier, there was heavy emphasis on the need to deal with trade distortions—especially the effects of export and domestic subsidies in the agricultural sector in the USA and in Europe.

Second, the active number of participants had swelled to potentially 120 or more.

Over more than eight years – November 2001 to March 2010 – the negotiations have limped along with moments of progress amid long periods of stalemate or failure: deadlines not respected, discussions collapsed with no result. A strong concentration on two sectors, agriculture and NAMA (non-agricultural market access) tariff cuts, failed to produce an agreed outcome; and also failed to generate the needed progress in other areas such as services, rules or intellectual property, which might have led to a more balanced deal.

There is doubt at least on whether the Doha Round will have a successful outcome. So why is that?

The most obvious factor is that the negotiators have been trying for so long to forge a deal acceptable to the 150 or so WTO members with a conspicuous lack of success. Even before the Round was launched in Doha, Qatar in late 2001, there had already been a collapse of talks in Seattle in 1999. A second collapse happened in Cancun, Mexico in 2003, when negotiations were already well under way.

Since then, a further Ministerial Conference in 2005 barely allowed the Round to survive, with little real progress; and there have been 15 March, 2010

Roderick Abbott further setbacks in 2007 and in 2008 and virtually no progress at all in 2009—the first full year of the Obama Administration.

As a major contributory factor to these regular stalemate situations one would mention, first, that the negotiating model, designed at the end of the 1990s, no longer fits the needs of the members. An effort was made at the Doha conference to re-engineer the model in a more development friendly direction— hence the other title for the Round, the Doha Development Agenda or DDA—but this too was not very satisfactory. It raised excessive expectations that poverty and marginalisation outside world trade would be attacked, but there was no real substance to the effort which would make that happen.

Second one would have to cite a lack of effective leadership, whether at the highest political level (G8 or G20 summits) or among the main players in the negotiation. When the membership rose rapidly after the Uruguay Round there was no immediate move to find a successor group to the Quadrilateral (USA, EC, Japan and Canada) which had previously exercised leadership. The G20 group of agricultural exporters was only formed in 2003, and this has slowly morphed into smaller groups (G.4 with sometimes G.5 or G.6); but they have proved unable to work out the shape of a negotiating compromise that different groups of countries with diverging interests can all accept. On the contrary, members are more and more divided into groups with mutually exclusive aims – for and against tariff preferences, for example; some focussed on agricultural exports while others (net importers) argue for food security.

A third major factor would be the aim for “an ambitious and balanced” outcome which now appears to be beyond the reach of most participants. A quick look at the negotiating complexities in the NAMA sector and in the effort to reduce domestic subsidies in agriculture will be enough to prove the point.

Modalities/flexibilities/special products/ variable coefficients: clearly the process has become too sophisticated (and complicated) and needs to be simplified and made more manageable.

So is there still a solution that can be found?

Many observers in the academic world and the media have written the Round off, with vivid language that includes long years of intensive care, ending in ‘rotting corpses’ and the crematorium. The author is a little more positive; the Round can still be saved but ONLY if leading countries realise that the ambitious original targets of liberalisation set in 2001 are no longer possible. Currently the major countries are hitting their heads against a brick wall, and there is little or no political will to make an effort to circumvent the obstacles. The WTO has embarked on its own stocktaking exercise to see what can be achieved in 2010; but in my view a scaled down version, with a phase one now and a phase two later, looks like the best alternative option.

A more realistic and sustainable target for tariff reductions and market access, coupled with commitments to freeze present spending levels on agricultural subsidies and gradually reduce from that level, is required. Less rigorous tariff cutting formulae will lead to fewer exceptions and fewer special deals to take account of specific features of individual countries. It will be less ambitious than planned – sure – but it could be achieved and would be better than a total failure. At this time, however, ideas such as this still cause political indigestion in Washington and in Brussels, although they might appeal more in Delhi or Beijing.

Former Deputy Director General at DG Trade in the European Commission and Deputy Director General at the World Trade Organization

44

Now you can follow the majalla anywhere anytime on your

Issue 1549

Economics - Behind the Graph

Islamic Finance Vis a Vis the Financial Crisis Measuring by Shari'a compliant assets estimates the global market for Islamic financial services to have reached $951bn by the end of 2008 recording a 25% increase from 2007's $758bn. The global market for Islamic financial

services has however experienced a suspension in 2009 following steady growth in the previous years. The assets are majorly constituted of commercial banks complemented by investment banks, sukuk issues, funds and taka-

ful. Islamic finance may have been less vulnerable towards the global financial crisis, yet obstacles still lay in the path of the Sukuk market which fell back in 2008, recovering the following year to reach $20bn issuance.

Geographic Distribution of Islamic Finance

Malaysia, Iran and GCC countries take up most of the shares of Global Islamic Finance, yet that market has not seized to expand. Islamic finance's reach is spreading beyond its conventional boundaries to reach new territories. Countries in the Middle East such as Turkey, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan and Syria have steadily growing Islamic finance, in addition to several Asian countries such as Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan and China. Furthermore, the ethical and environmental basis of Islamic finance has also attracted a significant customer base in Western countries such as the US, France, Germany and the UK. The customer base in these countries is not solely restricted to the indigenous Muslim populations.

Source: The Banker

Steady growth for Islamic Funds

Islamic funds have been growing continuously where Shari'a compliant funds have risen to 680 funds by the end of 2008, which is over triple the number of funds in 2003. The total value of these of funds is estimated

by Ernst and Young to have grown from $20bn in 2003 to $44bn in 2008.

Equity funds account for 40% of funds, with fixed income 16% and real estate and private equity 13% while cash, commodities and other funds make up the balance. 58% of the funds is invested in the Middle East and Africa, 20% is invested globally, 15% in Asia and 6% in America. The size of Islamic funds is small where two thirds is less than $100m and, most of which attracting only $10m to $15m.

Source: Ernst & Young Islamic Funds & Investments Report 2009

Sukuk recovery problems

Source: Zawya Sukuk Monitor, Islamic Financial Information Service, Moody's 15 March, 2010

The issuance of Sukuk jumped from 1$bn a year in 2002 to $34bn in 2007. The slowdown in the global capital market activity in 2008 has led to a sharp decrease in the issue of Sukuk to $15bn. Q4 of 2008 has witnessed Sukuk issuance rise from its trough of $6bn in Q3 to a $20bn recording a 30% increase. The financing problems at Dubai World have lead to the creation of uncertainties bearing in mind that most issuers in 2009 have been government or quasi government organizations. Quality Sukuk issuers still continue to attract demand from Islamic and non-traditional investors despite concerns. Hindering Sukuk market GCC is blamed on troubled investment companies, real estate market in the UAE and the credit deficiency in Saudi Arabia.

46

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Economics - Index Markets Page Output Latest -2.6 Q3 United States United Kingdom -5.1 Q3 -2.3 Q3 France Germany -4.8 Q3 Euro Area -4.1 Q3 Japan -5.1 Q3 UAE +7.4 2008 Barhain +6.1 2008 Oman +7.9 2008 Qatar +16.4 2008 Kuwait +2.5 2008 Saudi Arabia +4.8 2008 +4.3 Q3 Egypt Brazil -1.2 Q3 Russia -8.9 Q3 India +7.9 Q3 China +10.7 Q4 Hong Kong -2.4 Q3 Singapore +3.4 Q4

qtr

2009

2010

+2.2 -1.2 +1.0 +2.9 +1.5 +1.3 na na na na na na na +5.1 na na na +1.6 -6.8

-2.5 -4.7 -2.2 -4.7 -3.9 -5.3 -0.2 +3.0 +4.0 +11.5 +4.7 -1.0 +4.7 -0.3 -8.0 +6.5 +8.3 -3.2 -2.1

+2.8 +1.5 +1.6 +1.9 +1.4 +1.5 +2.4 +3.7 +3.8 +18.5 +4.4 +3.2 +5.4 +4.4 +3.0 +7.1 +9.3 +4.6 +4.8

Financial Markets

New York (Dow) New York (Nasdaq) London (FTSE 100) Paris (CAC40) Frankfurt (DAX) Singapore (STI) Hong Kong (Hang Seng) Barhain (BSE) Dubai (DFM) Oman (ASE) Qatar (DSM) Kuwait (KSE) Riyadh Cairo (Case 30) Japan (Nikkei) Mumbai (BSE)

Index March 10 3605.04 2358.95 5640.57 3943.55 5936.72 2862.29 21208.29 1500.51 1659.89 6654.71 6818.37 7436.8 6565.95 1538.2 1227.21 9099.62

% Change Since March 3 Since Dec 31 2.085291952 1.07551 3.431871196 3.957429 1.940284211 4.2060633 2.629264129 0.1834196 2.042668463 -0.3476331 2.856845109 -1.2192765 1.587887793 -3.0367356 -0.13776305 2.8986998 5.513778089 -7.9669324 -0.30770383 4.4892287 0.54175766 -2.0232298 0.413167346 6.159622 1.348597995 7.2559199 -1.26515652 9.8322028 0.733000624 4.2774478 0.51685495 -0.8665281

Bahrain Stock Exchange 1,550.000

1,500.000

1,450.000

4/

1

4/

01

0

0

9/

/2 0 01 10 /2 0 01 10 1 /20 9/ 01 10 2 /20 4/ 01 10 2 /20 9/ 01 10 0 /20 3/ 02 10 0 /20 8/ 02 10 1 /20 3/ 02 10 1 /20 8/ 02 10 2 /20 3/ 02 10 2 /20 8/ 02 10 0 /20 5/ 03 10 1 /20 0/ 03 10 /2 01 0

1,400.000

United States United Kingdom France Germany Euro Area Japan UAE Barhain Oman Qatar Kuwait Saudi Arabia Egypt Brazil Russia India China Hong Kong Singapore

Industrail Production Latest -2.0 Dec -6.0 Oct -3.8 Nov -8.0 Nov -7.9 Nov -4.2 Nov na na na na na na +6.7 Q3 +5.1 Nov +1.5 Nov +11.7 +18.5 Dec -8.6 Q3 -8.2 Nov

Prices Latest

Year Ago

2009

Unemployment rate latest

+2.7 Dec +2.9 Dec +0.9 Dec +0.9 Dec +0.9 Dec -1.9 Nov +0.7 Nov +1.6 Dec +0.8 Nov -9.9 Dec na +4.0 Nov +13.3 Dec +4.3 Dec +8.8 Dec +13.3 Nov +1.9 Dec 1.3 Dec -0.2 Nov

0.1 +3.1 +1.0 +1.1 +1.6 +1.0 +7.2 +5.1 +12.7 13.2 6.8 +9.5 +18.3 +5.9 +13.3 +10.6 +1.2 +2.1 +5.5

-0.3 +2.1 +0.1 +0.3 +0.3 -1.3 +2.5 +3.0 3.3 0 +4.7 +4.3 +11.8 +4.9 +11.7 +10.5 -0.8 +0.5 +0.3

10.0 Dec 7.8 Nov 10.0 Nov 8.1 Dec 10.0 Nov 5.2 Nov na na na 0.3 Dec na na 9.3 Q3 7.4 Nov 8.1 Nov 10.7 2009 10.2 2009 4.9 Dec 3.4 Q3

Trade Budget Interest Rate Balance Balance as a Current Account Balance Currency Units, per$ lastest 12 % of GDP 10 years Govt months Latest 12 months % of GDP 2009 latest Year ago 3 month latest Bonds latest 2008 $bn

-518.4 Nov -126.0 Nov -56.1 Nov +187.7 Nov +25.3 Nov +34.4 Nov +63.2 2008 +6.3 2008 +14.8 2008 37.0 2008 +62.5 2008 +212.0 2008 -25.4 Q3 +24.6 Dec +104.1 Nov -74.5 Nov +196.1 Dec -26.1 Nov +24.1 Dec

-465.3 Q3 -28.2 Q3 -56.7 Nov +158.0 Nov -109.6 Oct +133.4 nov +22.3 Dec +70.6 Dec +5.4 Dec +28.6 Dec +70.5 Dec +134.0 2008 -4.9 Q3 -24.3 Dec +47.5 Q4 _31.5 Q3 +364.4 Q2 +26.2 Q3 +20.9 Q3

-3.0 -1.9 -2.0 +4.2 -0.7 +2.7 +8.5 +44.6 +9.1 +27.9 +44.7 +28.5 -1.7 -1.0 +3.8 -0.7 +6.3 13.7 +12.7

0.61 0.71 0.71 0.71 91.2 3.67 0.37 0.38 3.64 0.29 3.75 5.44 1.79 29.7 45.9 6.83 7.77 1.40

0.73 0.78 0.78 0.78 87.6 3.67 0.37 0.38 3.64 0.29 3.75 5.55 2.36 32.8 49.1 8.84 7.76 1.51

3.66 4.10 3.47 6.17 3.23 1.33 na na na na na na 1.76 6.16 7.40 7.71 3.79 2.63 2.44

7,200.000 7,050.000 6,900.000 6,750.000 6,600.000 6,450.000 6,300.000

0 3

01 / 8/ 201 01 0 1 /20 3/ 01 10 1 /20 8/ 01 10 2 /20 3/ 01 10 2 /20 8/ 01 10 0 /20 2/ 02 10 0 /20 7/ 02 10 1 /20 2/ 02 10 1 /20 7/ 02 10 2 /20 2/ 02 10 2 /20 7/ 02 10 0 /20 4/ 03 10 0 /20 9/ 03 10 /2 01 0

/0 1 0 /20 8/ 01 10 1 /20 3/ 01 10 1 /20 8/ 01 10 2 /20 3/ 01 10 2 /20 8/ 01 10 0 /20 2/ 02 10 0 /20 7/ 02 10 1 /20 2/ 02 10 1 /20 7/ 02 10 2 /20 2/ 02 10 2 /20 7/ 02 10 0 /20 4/ 03 10 0 /20 9/ 03 10 /2 01 0

6,150.000

0

3/

0.14 0.66 0.72 0.72 0.67 0.32 2.2 6.82 7.21 7.12 5.66 0.77 9.98 8.65 8.75 3.80 1.88 0.13 0.50

Qatar Exchange

Kuwait Stock Exchange 7,600.000 7,500.000 7,400.000 7,300.000 7,200.000 7,100.000 7,000.000 6,900.000 6,800.000 6,700.000 6,600.000

0

-10.0 -14.2 -8.4 -3.2 -6.9 -7.4 na +3.3 0 +8.8 +7.8 +0.7 -6.9 -3.2 _7.2 -8.0 -3.8 -2.4 -1.1

Tadawul 6,600.000

Dubai Financial Market 1,900.000

6,500.000

1,800.000

6,400.000 6,300.000

1,700.000

6,200.000

1,600.000

6,100.000

1,500.000

6,000.000 5,900.000

15 March, 2010

01 / 8/ 201 01 0 / 3/ 201 01 0 1 /20 8/ 01 10 2 /20 3/ 01 10 2 /20 8/ 01 10 0 /20 2/ 02 10 0 /20 7/ 02 10 1 /20 2/ 02 10 1 /20 7/ 02 10 2 /20 2/ 02 10 2 /20 7/ 02 10 0 /20 4/ 03 10 0 /20 9/ 03 10 /2 01 0 1

3/

0

0

0 2

/0 1 0 /20 7/ 01 10 1 /20 2/ 01 10 1 /20 7/ 01 10 2 /20 2/ 01 10 2 /20 7/ 01 10 0 /20 1/ 02 10 0 /20 6/ 02 10 1 /20 1/ 02 10 1 /20 6/ 02 10 2 /20 1/ 02 10 2 /20 6/ 02 10 0 /20 3/ 03 10 0 /20 8/ 03 10 /2 01 0

1,400.000

48

Issue 1549

15 March, 2010

THE MAJALLA

31

Reviews Books

Issue 1549

Readings

Reports

51

Reviews - Books

Elixirs for the Middle East Brian Whitaker What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East Saqi 2009 Journalist Brian Whitaker’s latest book attempts to explain the causes behind the problems the Middle East faces. Arguing that there is a fundamental similarity between the cultural practices of Arab states and the authoritarian nature of the state, Whitaker argues that society must change in order for regimes better govern their countries.

struggles against F rom corruption, discrimination

and bureaucracy, to the authoritarian nature of the government and the household, Guardian journalist Brian Whitaker takes a look at the obstacles the Middle East faces in his latest book What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East. Written in the form of a statement more so than a question, Whitaker’s analysis of the region is framed around the premise that when looking at the Middle East, the problems of the region are always blamed on someone else. Whitaker on the other hand argues that it is neither the region itself nor the West that is to blame because everyone is at fault.

Whitaker argues that as a result of playing the blame game, both the West and the Middle East have failed to 15 March, 2010

notice that governments “ are products of the societies they govern, and in Arab countries it is often society, as much as the government itself that stands in the way of progress.”

Noting examples of the cultural impediments to progress that are present in the Middle East,

Whitaker argues that as a result of playing the blame game, both the West and the Middle East have failed to notice that governments “ are products of the societies they govern

Whitaker makes a claim that it is the sociological nature of a state that determines its government’s capacity to rule effectively and fairly. While his evidence does provide some foundation to this claim, with numerous interviews paraphrasing his conclusion, the argument he presents overall is found wanting.

His approach of looking beyond regimes and to society as a whole is not new. Political sociologists and anthropologists have long looked at cultural clues for how governments develop.

The difference between their analysis and Whitaker’s constructivist interpretation is that his lacks a theoretical framework around which he can organize the various examples and testimonies that support his claim. It is not enough for him to quote journalist Khaled 52

Reviews - Books

Diab saying that “Egypt has a million Mubaraks” to prove his point. As a result, what might have been informative research turns out to be a disappointing superficial analysis of the ways regimes and societies interact.

This flaw might have been avoided had Whitaker spent more time addressing the way the interaction between government and society plays out. In noting that households in the Arab world have a tendency of being paternalistic and authoritarian, and that this explained the authoritarian and paternalistic nature of the government, Whitaker essentially created an irrefutable argument the likes of which are regularly criticized in the academic circles that employ constructivist analyses.

Despite being framed around a logical fallacy, there is a correlation between the nature of Arab societies and governments.

Highlighting this fact might have been a sufficiently interesting point around which to focus his analysis of the region.

Unfortunately, in turning the cultural dimension of the Arab world into an explanation of its failures allows for the book to develop a subtext of Western condescension.

For example, one excerpt of the book notes that “Jumping the queue may be a fairly trivial matter but the obsession with kinship undermines the principles of meritocracy and equality.” Although nepotism is undoubtedly a true problem Issue 1549

faced not only in the Middle East but in most developing regions, associating corruption in the Middle East to cultural practices implies that only in westernizing their culture could the Middle East (and other regions with a similar cultural code) break free from the

Despite being framed around a logical fallacy, there is a correlation between the nature of Arab societies and governments cycle of nepotism and quasiauthoritarianism that limit its potential.

Whitaker’s intentions of highlighting the problems of the Middle East in his book are however limited to just that.

While he presents a system for understanding the problems of the Middle East, limited as it may be, he does not argue what reforms should be put into place.

This is undoubtedly a result of the nature of his explanation.

After all what reforms could be put into place that would alter the cultural practices of a society? As a result, Whitaker dedicates only a short amount of his attention to the possibility of gradual change dependent

on the impact of globalization.

Specifically, Whitaker argues that “Trade, travel and global communications are weakening the influence of nation states and the power of governments to control what happens within their borders. At the same time, ordinary people are exposed to ideas and ways of doing things that they never know before… the question is not whether change will occur but how long it will take.”

However, there is no evidence that trade, travel and global communication are going to fundamentally change Arab society thus encouraging its government to adopt liberal values. China, a repeatedly cited example, is especially pertinent to this argument. A powerhouse in international trade, China has managed to liberalize economically and remain closed off politically.

Global communications can be limited through governmental control of the internet, a trend present also in the Middle East.

Rather than rendering nationstates weak, globalization has encouraged many of them to revamp their control over society.

Whitaker’s book is interesting for the personal accounts it provides on Arabs’ take on the problems their region faces.

However, the argument around which the book is structured was not well thought out and it substantially weakens the contribution of this book to the literature on the contemporary Middle East.

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Reviews - Readings

Readings Books Getting Our Way Christopher Meyer

Sir Christopher Meyer, former British Ambassador in Washington, has written this volume as a panegyric on the virtues of the old-fashioned diplomat. In it he explores the importance of the diplomat in British history. This figure, he argues, must represent British interests and understand the interests of the country to which he has been sent. Getting Our Way recounts nine stories from Britain's diplomatic annals over the last five hundred years, in which the diplomats themselves are at the centre

of the narrative. The episodes illustrate how the three pillars of the national interest (security, prosperity, and values) have remained at the heart of British foreign policy. Meyer’s principal focus throughout the book is to explain that whilst much has changed, these essentials of diplomacy remain unaltered. This is a convincing reminder that although Britain’s Foreign Service currently appears demoralised and confused, the tasks it faces are much as they have been throughout history.

Where Power Lies: Prime Ministers and the Media Lance Price

Lance Price looks at the sorry state of British politics today, exposing almost a century of battles between the media and Britain’s political leaders in an attempt to determine who is to blame. This is the story of how for generations powerful men and woman have struggled to twist the facts to achieve their own ends. Price, having been both a BBC reporter and Downing Street spin ­doctor, has had experience at both

ends of the battlefield. His book combines this experience with original interviews and historical research to fashion a ­fascinating account of how politicians and the media both desire mastery of ­public opinion. His book is both rich with ­historical detail and—entertaining in its contemporary anecdotes. This is a sharp indictment of the bullies and megalomaniacs in Downing Street and Fleet Street.

Start Up Nation; The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle Dan Senor and Saul Singer

Dan Senor, a senior Fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and Saul Singer, a foreign policy advisor on Capitol Hill have both been on the front of policy and politics in the Middle East for many years. In Start-Up Nations Senor & Singer address the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a young country of 7.1 million people, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of conflict and with no 15 March, 2010

natural resources—produces more start-up companies than larger and more peaceful nations such as Japan, China, and the United Kingdom? Drawing on examples from the country’s foremost inventors and investors, the authors describe how Israel’s adversity-driven culture fosters a combination of innovative and entrepreneurial intensity. Much has been written already about Israel yet very little is understood of its economic growth.

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Reviews - Readings

Reports Son of Hamas

Mosab Hassan Yousef Son of Hamas is a unique insider account of the world’s most notorious terrorist organization.

The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas, Mosab was groomed to assume the mantle of leadership for many years until he turned his

back on the organization. In Son of Hamas, new information is revealed about the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization. The author discusses his own role and the difficult decision he had to make to separate himself from family and homeland.

The Future of NATO

The Council of Foreign Relations.

NATO has now been a cornerstone of security in Europe for six decades yet its ability to continue playing such a central role is unclear. In this Special Report, James M. Goldgeiger looks at how NATO can successfully adapt to contemporary challenges. He writes that the organization must expand its vision of defense in order to remain effective

in the face of new threats. This report is centrally concerned with NATO’s increased involvement in conflicts outside Europe, with new frontiers in Afghanistan and beyond. The resulting work is sober and important. Goldgeiger combines useful analysis and practical recommendations for policy makers across the world.

Hostile Shores; Abuse and Refoulement of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Yemen

Human Rights Watch For several years, tens of thousands of asylum seekers and refugees fleeing to Yemen from the unstable Horn of Africa region have suffered terrible human rights abuses that have gone ignored by the outside world. This report shows that the reception awaiting those who survive the journey to Yemen depends largely on where they come from. More specifically, Issue 1549

the report documents the harsh treatment of African refugees in Yemen, while calling on the Yemeni government to end the systematic arrests of Ethiopian asylum seekers. The 53-page report also urges the UNHCR to increase pressure on the Yemeni government to meet its obligations toward all asylum seekers and refugees.

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Reviews - Reports

Discriminating In the Name of the Law Group Denial Repression of Kurdish Political and Cultural Rights in Syria Human Rights Watch November 2009

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch highlights the oppression Kurds in Syria face regularly.

Despite limits to their investigation because of a lack of compliance on the part of the Syrian government, the report is an informative account on the current human rights situation for Kurds in the country. HRW argues that despite their peaceful intentions, the Syrian government successfully makes claims to legal codes in order to undermine the political and cultural rights of Kurds in the country.

S

‘pas’ means ‘Thank you’ in Kurdish. You would be greeted with exclamations of surprise and joy if you used this word in response to receiving a cup of tea from a Kurdish back alley joint in Damascus. Kurds make up an estimated ten percent of Syria’s total population of 20 million, but you would never know it. In their 63-page report on Kurdish Syrians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) unearths the discrimination they experience under the Syrian government, 15 March, 2010

focusing on their oppression in both political and cultural spheres of life. The fate of Syrian Kurds is largely overshadowed by headlines covering Turkey’s PKK fighters and Iraqi Kurdistan autonomy. However, HRW’s report has given a voice to Syria’s Kurds who may be less showstopping in their fight for minority rights but whose suffering is just as profound.

perspective on Kurdish marginalization by citing the testimonies of Kurdish activists, their family members and local human rights campaigners. Group Denial aims to provide evidence and raise awareness of the victimisation, imprisonment and in some cases torture or even death of Kurdish activists at the hands of the Syrian authorities.

The report provides a personal

The report skims the evolution of 56

Reviews - Reports Kurdish experience in Syria since the mid-twentieth century and is primarily devoted to the events that unfolded post 2004. This was the year that clashes with Syrian security forces at a football match resulted in the death of Kurdish fans. What had been a long history of Kurdish grievances simmering under the surface suddenly erupted into the open. Kurds took to the streets in large scale demonstrations against their oppression under the Syrian regime.

36 people were killed, mostly Kurds, and over 2,000 arrested. Alarmed by the mass rallying of Kurds, Syria’s government responded by clamping down on any activities promoting Kurdish culture or political participation. The report documents the Syrian government’s efforts to ban all Kurdish celebrations and to crush all events and demonstrations promoting Kurdish rights.

Syrian Kurds live mainly in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country along the borders with Turkey and Iraq. Unlike their Turkish and Iraqi counterparts their parties don’t demand autonomy and separation from Syria. Syrian Kurdish activism uses a softer approach. Their demonstrations are largely peaceful, demanding only recognition of the Kurdish population and equal rights to cultural and political expression.

Yet these peaceful protests are met with overwhelming violence from the Syrian authorities. The Kurdish new year ‘Noruz’ celebrations have been disrupted for several years running. Since 2005 HRW found that 14 political and cultural events have been broken up by the Syrian authorities. Yet these celebrations pose no threat to the stability of Syria and are a mere expression of Kurdish heritage.

The key players in Kurdish activism are listed in affiliation with parties advocating Kurdish minority rights.

The report reveals that prominent leaders of various Kurdish parties no longer have immunity from prosecution and detention. Since 2005 over a dozen leading figures Issue 1549

belonging to parties fighting for Kurdish freedoms have been arrested.

‘Group Denial’ exposes the wider scale oppression by the Syrian government on its entire population.

The Syrian political system does not allow any room for criticism against the ruling Ba’ath party. The Emergency Law, in place since 1963, suspends basic freedoms by banning any form of opposition to the government. There are penal provisions that treat ‘any gathering of more than seven people with the aim of protesting a decision or measure taken by the public authorities as a riot that is punishable by jail’.

The report entails a run down of the Syrian security apparatus involved in the detention and torture of activists Just under half of the former detainees interviewed by HRW said they had been tortured by the Syrian security forces. The report entails a run down of the Syrian security apparatus involved in the detention and torture of activists.

Locations and names of various security groups are given, shedding some light on the murky world of Syria’s intelligence agencies. First hand accounts by those imprisoned paint a bleak picture for human rights within Syria’s prison walls.

All 30 former detainees were held incommunicado when first imprisoned. The abuses read as a litany of horrors, trampling over any human rights acts Syria may have

agreed to. Aside from the physical torture are the psychological taunts, derogatory and racist. “All Kurds are traitors. You are a heavy guest in Syria” were the words from the mouth of a Syrian interrogator.

HRW makes a plea to the international community for condemnation of repression of Syria’s Kurds. Syria’s government has signed several international treaties that uphold human rights but it is clearly not playing by the rules. The report finds the UN and other international organisations responsible for keeping the Syrian government in check and holding it accountable for breeches of the guidelines.

The report excels in providing an in-depth, close contact account but is extremely narrow in approach. It would have been enlightening to hear more about the discrimination that every Kurd faces on a daily basis, in the workplace, at the market and not just at public displays of culture or dissension. The channels of study focus only on those Kurds actively fighting for their rights. However it is clear that the author has chosen his fight and did not intend to provide an exhaustive investigation into Kurdish rights in Syria.

This narrow approach is largely unavoidable, going hand in hand with the problem that comes with carrying out research in an ultimately authoritarian nation. The Syrian government denied HRW access to carry out research within the country.

The pool of evidence collected in this study covers mainly personal accounts, the majority of which were collected via telephone interviews.

There is little hard evidence provided through individual case studies.

That said, evidence concerning human rights abuses will never be an exact science for as this report demonstrates human life is more than just a number.

For the full report please refer to: www.hrw.org 57

The Political Essay

Too Big To Fail?

The international efforts to support the Transitional Government of Somalia have been rather limited, only aiming to contain the chaos which is consequence of the collapse of the Somali state. The Government will not succeed on its own, as Sheik Sharif Ahmed recently expressed.

R

ecently, Sheik Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, President of the Transitional Government of Somalia, spoke at an event organized by Chatham House, the London-based think tank.

When asked to highlight specific areas of Somalia’s economy which are suitable for foreign business cooperation, Sheik Sharif Ahmed said that “Somalia has livestock, lots of camels, and fish-stock.”

Jokingly, the President also said “we have many goats and sheep, I don’t know how many exactly but [most importantly] 75% of the land can be cultivated.” The good news about this is that Somalia does have natural resources. The bad news is that the President was not able to name one single sector of the economy where it is suitable to place foreign investment, simply because there isn’t one—at least one that it is not illicit.

The situation in Somalia is much worse than in Iraq or Afghanistan, by any criteria. Its strategic importance, however, is considered less significant.

One of the trends that is possible to identify in a couple of opinion articles published in the last few months by The Majalla is how media coverage plays an important part in setting the agenda of what is politically important. As Dr Jon Alterman, Director and Senior Fellow of the Middle East Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC wrote in October 2009 in The Majalla, “it is hard to win a war no one remembers you are fighting”. Dr Alterman was referring to Iraq, and how a crisis in news agencies’ funds coupled with public fatigue on developments in Iraq led to an absence of media coverage there. One of the negative consequences of the so-called “CNN effect”—a news cycle that demands political attention to issues that would otherwise go unnoticed—is that if a particular issue does not receive coverage, it ceases to be an issue altogether.

15 March, 2010

Manuel Almeida Going back to Sheik Sharif Ahmed’s speech, it is interesting to note that the title of the President’s speech was “Somalia at Crossroads and the Duty of the International Community”. This title expresses how bad the situation is, and how desperately Somalia’s government needs outside assistance, of all sorts. The central message of the speech is that to ask Somalia to deal with the problem of militancy on its own is unfair and unrealistic. It also stressed the urgent need for humanitarian assistance. Another of the questions addressed to Somalia’s President is an excellent example of how deteriorated the security situation in the capital Mogadishu is. A Somali citizen in the audience stood up and asked “Why is your presidential plane targeted by the militants with mortar shells every time you go for a presidential trip abroad?”

It is quite accepted that, apart from AlQaeda, nobody wants a weak Somalia, and nobody benefits from it. Not even its neighbours, such as Ethiopia or Kenya. This has not been reflected by a consistent endeavour to prevent the country’s collapse. The recent efforts— by the US, Ethiopia, the UN, and the African Union—were all limited in scope and in time. Today, not much aid reaches Somalia, and even less reaches the common Somali citizen. As recently reported by The New York Times,

according to a report to be presented in the next few days to the UN Security Council, up to 50% of the food aid is being diverted or sold to illicit sources, including to militants. The scenario is so grim that the report recommends the UN Security Council to suspend the entire relief effort of the UN’s World Food Programme. In addition to the corruption regarding the aid, the report accuses Somali authorities of collaborating with pirates and selling diplomatic visas to pirates and insurgents for trips to Europe.

Initially hired by the UN Security Council to track the violations on UN weapons embargo on Somalia, the investigators’ mandate was expanded and became related with any threats to stability and security in Somalia. A particular case that the NYT journalist who read the report refers to is the disappearance of an entire shipment of food. In this case, the contractor staged the hijacking of his own trucks and sold the food.

With the international community’s attention focused elsewhere, there is only a limited effort to address the chaos resulting from the collapse of the Somali state. The UN might consider suspending the food relief effort. The US—seriously overstretched—only keeps small counterterrorism operations in the region, while the EU’s and NATO’s naval missions fight piracy across a mass of water that is too big to patrol effectively. All these efforts seek only to contain the chaos originated by the Somali state collapse, in what is a minimalist approach that doesn’t actually address the root causes of the problem. Without international support to create minimum conditions of security for the government and for the development of anything resembling normality, things will only get worse— if that is indeed possible. In the words of Sheik Sharif Ahmed, “it is easier to mention the areas where Somalia doesn’t need help, than to mention those that do.

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Issue 1549

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15 March, 2010

THE MAJALLA

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