Majalla 1556

Issue 1556 • September 2010

Al Bana's Dream Amr Hamzawy offers an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood's role in modern Egyptian politics 09

9 771319 087105 The Majalla

War and Peace

The greater Middle East represents a big challenge for the Atlantic Alliance.

Does NATO have the right approach to deal with all these different scenarios?

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On Politics

The presence of the Tea Party has grown, yet there is an evident dissonance between their objectives and the policies they are pushing

Issue 1556

Candid Coversations

The BBC’s Security correspondent, Frank Gardner, speaks about the changing nature of journalism with a focus on the Middle East, post 9/11

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• EDITORIAL

Established in 1987 by Prince Ahmad Bin Salman Bin Abdel Aziz Al-Majalla Established by Hisham and Ali Hafez Chief Executive Officer Dr Azzam Al-Dakhil Editor-in-Chief Adel Al Toraifi Editors Paula Mejia Jacqueline Shoen Editorial Secretary Jan Singfield New Media Development Officer Markus Milligan Submissions To submit articles or opinion, please email: editorial@majalla.com Note: all articles should not exceed 800 words Subscriptions To subscribe to the digital edition, please contact: subscriptions@majalla.com To subscribe for kindle edition: kindle@majalla.com Disclaimer The views expressed in this magazine are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of The Majalla and its editorial team.

Al Majalla © 2010 HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Limited.

All rights reserved. Niether this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Limited. For digital subscription inquiries please visit www.majalla.com/subscriptions

London Office Address 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 E-Mail: editorial@majalla.com Advertising For advertisement, sponsorship and digital edition, please contact: Mr. Wael Al Fayez w.alfayez@alkhaleejiah.com Tel.: 0096614411444 F.: 0096614400996 P.O.BOX 22304 Riyadh 11495, Saudi Arabia Cover image © Laura Clamp

Editorial In this month’s edition, The Majalla brings to you a look inside the Muslim Brotherhood’s political position in Egypt.

Amr Hamzawy, research director and senior associate at the Middle East Center for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explains that despite the Muslim Brotherhood's original reluctance to embrace political participation, the organization’s parliamentary representation has grown exponentially in recent assemblies, and its participation in politics has grown in tandem.

Ambassador John Campbell of the Council on Foreign Relations brings to the magazine an important essay on the future of Nigeria’s political stability. Nigeria's national elections scheduled for the upcoming year, argues Campbell, have the potential to undermine the country's current precarious political environment, potentially exacerbating ethnic, regional and religious tensions.

We also offer an insightful look into the state of the right in American politics, with the Tea Party and its contradictions.

Claiming to be against large government and in favor of free markets, Noam Schimmel explains, Tea Partiers have defined themselves as members of a “social welfare organization.” Yet there is an evident dissonance between the objectives they want to achieve and the policies they are pushing.

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.

Adel Al Toraifi, Editor-in-Chief

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Contributors Ambassador John Campbell A Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). From 1975 to 2007, Ambassador Campbell served as a US Department of State Foreign Service officer. He served twice in Nigeria, as political counselor from 1988 to 1990, and as ambassador from 2004 to 2007. Ambassador Campbell’s additional overseas postings include Lyon, Paris, Geneva, and Pretoria during South Africa’s transition to nonracial democracy from 1993 to 1996.

Alper Bahadir A native of Turkey, Alper studied Economics and Political Science at Columbia University, where he was also a Senior Editor for the Columbia Political Review. After graduating, he worked at McKinsey & Company as a management consultant, partly focusing on the public sector. He is currently pursing an MA in Public Administration in International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and an MBA at the Harvard Business School.

Amr Hamzawy A distinguished Egyptian political scientist who previously taught at Cairo University and the Free University of Berlin. Hamzawy has a deep knowledge of Middle East politics and specific expertise on the reform process in the region. His research interests include the changing dynamics of political participation in the Arab world and the role of Islamist movements in Arab politics. He is co-editor, with Marina Ottaway, of Getting to Pluralism: Political Actors in the Arab World, published in 2009. Hamzawy regularly contributes articles in Arabic to various academic journals. He also writes a bi-monthly op-ed for the leading Arab daily Al-Hayat and several other regional and international newspapers.

Bernardo Pires di Lima A research associate at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and analyst for the Portuguese TV channel TVI24, the daily newspaper Diário de Notícias, and radio Renascença. A lecturer in Portuguese universities, his research focuses on European security and transatlantic relations since the end of the Cold War. He was also a research associate for the National Defense Institute from 2005 to 2009, columnist for the newspaper i and contributor to the BBC and RFI (Portuguese versions).

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• CONTENTS

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Contents Quotes of the Month

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War and Peace

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On Politics

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Al Bana's Dream

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The Wealth of Nations

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The Human Condition

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A Thousand Words

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Candid Conversations

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Country Brief

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The Arts

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The Critics

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The Final Word

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• Out of Area: NATO and the greater Middle East • Afghanistan’s Greatest Enemy: The cancer of corruption • Extreme Pop Culture: Al-Qaeda’s magazine and Hezbollah’s theme park

• Tea Time: The rise of the Tea Party • Good Luck Nigeria: The risks of the 2011 elections • Tehran’s Mystery Man: Shahram Amiri

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Despite the Muslim Brotherhood's original reluctance to embrace political participation, the organization’s parliamentary representation has grown exponentially in recent assemblies, and its participation in politics has grown in tandem

• The Good German: Germany and the economics of austerity • The Engine Behind the Flotilla: Turkey’s struggle to prominence

• The Deadly Cost of Honor: Honor Killings • Not Enough Cooks?: Obama Team’s QDDR Wars Need to Change the Game

• Frank Gardner OBE • Jalal Talibani

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• QUOTES OF THE MONTH

Quotes of the Month Images © Getty Images

“I think the process is going forward, and as I get ready to leave here I see, really, frankly, the prospects that we’re going to see a new government as early as a few weeks from now” Christopher R. Hill, US ambassador to Iraq

“This has to be followed up in terms of a real dialogue with the syndicates so they open their ranks to Palestinians. I think there has to be a real labor policy to encourage hiring Palestinians" Nadim Houry, Beirut director of Human Rights Watch, on Lebanon’s new employment law for Palestinians

"The Iraqi security forces are functioning, at least as well, if not "I am not naive. I see better, than any of us had anticipated" all the difficulties and President Obama hurdles and despite this, I believe “But it is embarrassing that a final peace for them to withdraw agreement is a and still we don't reachable objective” have a government Benjamin Netanyahu while flying in place, because all to Washington for peace talks the achievements, "A question was raised of what all the sacrifices should be done in case of serious that have been made, violence and shooting of RPG could be in jeopardy” Hoshiyar Zebari, foreign minister of Iraq [rocket-propelled grenades] and machine guns and firing “Not a single professional in the on our forces world has any questions about the in the sea. chance that the Bushehr nuclear We didn't power plant could be used for non reach that peaceful purposes” discussion” Sergei Kiriyenko, chief of Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear power company, after the opening of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, 36 years after construction began under the Shah

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on his own response to the flotilla raid

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• WAR AND PEACE

Out of Area NATO and the greater Middle East

The greater Middle East represents a big challenge for the Atlantic Alliance. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are all issues of great concern for the allies. The question is: Does NATO have the right approach to deal with all these different scenarios?

Bernardo Pires de Lima

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ecently, American diplomats and military men invoked the constant tensions in the Middle East, namely the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire, as a source of radicalization feeding, at least morally, the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and consequently creating more problems for US and NATO troops on the ground. The logic behind this linkage is the following: It is impossible to look at the Afghan theater without highlighting the importance of stabilization across the Middle East. Apparently, from promoting

defense reform and sound civil-military relations to preventing nuclear proliferation, NATO members have more interest in this region than in any other. Is this really the case?

There are two main narratives about NATO’s vision of the Middle East. One sees the region from Rumsfeld’s point of view, as a wider territory from Morocco to Pakistan, commonly known as the “greater Middle East,” viewed by the West as an area of concern on issues such as WMD proliferation, extremism, interstate conflict, failed states and civil war. The other is more focused on the hot spots, reducing all the problems to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and enabling NATO to redefine a wider strategic vision to the region, linking issues like poverty, development, human rights, security and nuclear proliferation.

The growing interest on the greater Middle East The first direct link to the region was 9/11. Al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan not only motivated the North Atlantic Council to invoke its article 5 for the first time in its history, but it also gave a crucial input to the first “out of area” operation in the history of the Atlantic Alliance.

NATO deployed a peacekeeping force of thousands of troops to northern Afghanistan and committed to expanding that mission to the south, adding more troops progressively. The Al-

Image © iStockphoto

liance’s involvement in this operation has been a work in progress since then, and Afghanistan remains the Alliance's key priority today.

All 28 NATO allies are joined in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) by as many as 16 non-NATO countries from all over the world, including Jordan.

In June 2004, the allies agreed to help train Iraqi military forces. They set up the NATO Training Mission and Joint Staff College at Ar-Rustamiyah near Baghdad, whose mission is to train and mentor mid-and senior-level Iraqi officers, and to implant values appropriate to democratically- controlled armed forces. In the aftermath of the greatest transatlantic crisis (2002-‘03), the Alliance agreed to commit its will, money and human resources to assist in the task of rebuilding a devastated country in the heart of the Middle East.

Also in 2004, NATO launched the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative to develop its political and military relations with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. More than 600 multilateral activities have been launched since then, ranging from counter-terrorism, through military education and training, to energy security and maritime cooperation.

In 2005, following an earthquake in Pakistan estimated to have killed more than 80,000 people and which left up to three 10

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million without food or shelter, Islamabad authorities requested international assistance. The Alliance deployed the NATO Response Force—a group of military forces that can be called at short notice and deployed anywhere around the world—in what represents a new type of operation for the alliance.

NATO also expanded its Mediterranean Dialogue, founded in 1994, to facilitate political dialogue with Middle Eastern countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.

Finally, since 2008, NATO has been leading an international counter piracy operation in the Horn of Africa to protect merchant traffic in the Gulf of Aden under Operation “Allied Protector,” and as part of Operation “Ocean Shield” (until December 2012), to offer countries in the region the help to develop their own capacity to combat piracy.

One could ask if this approach will give the Alliance an extra responsibility to act on every security issue in the region. The answer is no. NATO will not become a security alliance for the Middle East as it was for Western Europe—with US and European bases scattered throughout the region. Nonetheless, despite all the differences among NATO members and the obstacles to a NATO role in the Middle East region, the fact remains that the United States and Europe will continue to have significant

by the UN Security Council. In other words, the report suggests an intense and central role for NATO in the peace process in order to assist its implementation. The problem is that it doesn’t say how. Notwithstanding Alliance voluntarism on this issue, the questions remain the same: If NATO undertook a role in enforcing a peace between Israelis and Palestinians, would the parties on the ground consider NATO an honest broker, particularly after the Afghan campaign? Should this kind of role be the core business of the Alliance in the next decade? The report tries to be clear about that. First of all, it shows the will to be in the peace process; secondly, it defends an approach to NATO that defines its territorial framework—the Euro-Atlantic area—but emphasizes its strategic interests: the international arena where member states’ security is at stake. It remains to be seen if NATO member states will also be so clear about these issues during the Lisbon summit.

common security interests there. And NATO remains the best mechanism for coordinating their policies and operations.

A weakness of the report lies in the topic of energy security. If there is a subject that deeply concerns NATO members it is the energy dependence of member states on the Middle East. Sixtyfive percent of Europe’s oil and natural gas imports pass through the Mediterranean. In the view of NATO members, it is not only a question of dependence from an unstable region, but also a matter of security transportation in the sea, and the need to improve coordination between the navies. Also in this context, it is important to assume the centrality of Turkey—a NATO member—as a key energy transit state and major energy hub for European supplies.

Furthermore, safeguarding shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Gulf of Aden is vital to the Euro-Atlantic zone: Up to 95 percent of the trade by EU states, and 20 percent of world trade passes through the Gulf of Aden, and approximately 15 tankers a day pass through the Straits of Hormuz, carrying about 17 million barrels of crude oil. This represents almost 40 percent of the world seaborne oil shipments—but most significantly from a Gulf States’ perspective, it represents 90 percent of the oil exported from the region.

While all these figures and issues will likely be on the table during the Lisbon summit, one thing seems certain: The problems of the greater Middle East are directly connected to EuroAtlantic security interests.

The Albright Report NATO will adopt a new strategic concept—the third after the Cold War—during the Lisbon summit to be held in November. The document, which was circulated for discussion to all member states, was developed by a group of experts led by the former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

According to the report, there are in the Middle East three main trends that affect the security of the Alliance: extremist violence, Arab-Israeli tensions, and the unwillingness of Iran to comply with the international community. This last point is suggested to be, in the foreseeable future, a threat to be included in the article 5 umbrella, which means that NATO may be forced to use force against Iran if the regime pursues a nuclear program for a military purpose. As Robert Gates recently put it, “Iran could launch hundreds of missiles at Europe”— maybe the reason to support a military attack on Iran among Europeans (Pew Research poll, 17 June 2010).

At the same time, the Albright report stresses improvements in NATO’s current partnerships in the region, and gives particular attention to a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement under Alliance supervision, requested by the parties and authorized Issue 1556 • September 2010

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NATO also expanded its Mediterranean Dialogue, founded in 1994, to facilitate political dialogue with Middle Eastern countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia

Bernardo Pires de Lima – Researcher, Portuguese Institute of International Relations. He is currently writing a book about the reasons why NATO has survived the end of the Cold War. This article was first published in The Majalla 17 May 2010 11

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• WAR AND PEACE

Afghanistan’s Greatest Enemy The cancer of corruption

The fact that Afghanistan has big reserves of various mineral resources says little about the future prospects of the country’s economy. As things stand, corruption is very likely to undermine the potential benefits to the generality of the Afghan population that could arise from exploration of these resources.

Corruption in Afghanistan has become a way of life.

Manuel Almeida

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he Afghan Ministry of Mines recently announced the discovery of an oilfield with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels in the north of Afghanistan. This announcement follows several other discoveries of untapped mineral resources, not only oil but of iron, ore, copper, lithium, gas and gems. These developments are raising hope among Afghan officials of greater autonomy for their government from the West, both in terms of security and economy.

The potential revenue generated by the exploration of these resources could in fact be a decisive turn for the faith of Afghanistan. And yet, this news is not necessarily good news for the majority of the Afghan people.

To make good use of these natural resources several things are necessary. First of all, basic infrastructure like roads, as well as know-how, which, although the Afghans do not have it, will certainly not lack it as foreign companies “battle” for invaluable contracts. Security of course is a big concern, but the instability and constant fighting has not stopped, for example, the state owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation from doing business in Afghanistan over the last three years. The biggest obstacle to transforming the potentially big revenue from the

exploration of these resources into jobs, schools and hospitals for the Afghans is corruption. Tackling it in Afghanistan seems to be mission impossible.

According to “Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as reported by the victims,” a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Organized Crime (UNODC), 59 percent of Afghanistan citizens place corruption as the number one problem facing the country, above insecurity and unemployment. One of the most striking figures presented in the report is the $2.5 billion in bribes that Afghans paid in a 12-month period. The payment of bribes thus accounts for almost 25 percent of the country’s GDP. This has created an economy of bribery, and even those who do not incur in illegal activities are forced to pay bribes for having access to basic public services.

Although corruption does affect all countries, local cultural and social practices play a central role in determining how serious the issue is in each country. As Mohammed Aloko, Afghan’s general attorney often says to foreigners—as quoted in Der Spiegel newspaper—“The country was lawless for decades, which is why one can’t expect a law-based society to appear out of nowhere.”

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An interesting study by two US-based researchers titled “Cultures of Corruption” does show that cultural and social norms become quite embedded and play an important role in peoples’ behavior. To assess the levels of corruption as influenced by social norms, the study focused on the parking tickets accumulated by international diplomats living in New York City from 1997 to 2005. All diplomats from 146 countries were on the same ground, given that, by benefiting from diplomatic immunity, they can avoid paying parking fines. The study found that, on the one hand, and contrary to the assumption that all diplomats would have high parking violations, those from low corruption countries like Norway behaved remarkably well.

On the other hand, diplomats from Chad, Sudan or Angola, all countries that make it to the top of the world’s most corrupt, made it to the top 10 of the list of parking violations, with more than 100 violations per diplomat in that nine year period.

In a panel held this year chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi (former UN special representative for Afghanistan) about the future of Afghanistan, corruption was indicated by the several experts present as a crucial element in driving people away from what they see as the alien democracy in Kabul. The issue of the cultural factor influencing the high levels of corruption was also addressed. As one of the discussants put it, “If corruption is not a concept understood in Pashtun codes, how do you educate people for them to understand this?” This idea that corruption is not a concept understood in Pashtun codes can seem like an apologetic way of framing the issue, but it is still a plausible claim. According to the UNODC report, the south of Afghanistan (mainly Pashtun) is one of the two areas most affected by corruption. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the word Pashtuns use for “corruption” is not a word that comes from Pashto, but it’s actually a word imported from Dari (Persian): fesaad.

In Afghanistan, nowhere is corruption more visible than in the drug trade, which currently provides about 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding. The third episode of the documentary,

Our Drugs War, by Angus Macqueen, starts with an account of General Aminullah’s war on drugs. Trained by the British and based in Kabul’s international airport, General Aminullah was making some serious apprehensions. A lady about to embark on a plane was caught on camera with several kilos of heroin.

It is striking how calm the lady is, with a clear feeling of being untouchable, while she mentions repeatedly to General Aminnullah that she knows people higher up than him, and that she will be released and he will be sacked. When General Aminullah comes to the office the following day, he learns with dismay but little surprise that the lady had been freed that morning.

When General Aminullah accused several government officials of being involved in the drug trade, he was sacked from his position following an investigation called by Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai.

One of the most striking figures presented in the report is the $2.5 billion in bribes that Afghans paid in a 12-month period.

The payment of bribes thus accounts for almost 25 percent of the country’s GDP. This has created an economy of bribery, and even those who do not incur in illegal activities are forced to pay bribes for having access to basic public services Fighting Corruption In his inaugural speech in November 2009, President Karzai addressed the issue of corruption as follows: "The Government of Afghanistan is committed to end the culture of impunity and violation of law, and bring to justice those involved in spreading corruption and abuse of public property. Doing so will require effective and strong measures. Therefore, alongside an intensified judicial reform, all government anti-corruption efforts and agencies have to be strengthened and supported. Particular attention will be given to building the capacity and upgrading the High Office of Oversight for the Implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy. Measures for supporting the anti-corruption agencies include: increasing the scope of their authority, improving their capacity and resources for detection and investigation, expanding their organizational structure, as well as reforming the relevant anti-corruption laws and regulations."

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• WAR AND PEACE

General Aminullah’s account is not the only story in the documentary involving Karzai himself. A group of policemen were caught while transporting in their cars several hundred kilos of heroin with the purpose of doing business. Sentenced by an Afghan judge to the country’s maximum penalty for trafficking, the policemen were all released under a pre-election deal made with Karzai.

A recent article by journalist Iason Athanasiadis published in The Majalla reveals quite well the impossible task international forces face in tackling the drug trade. As a frustrated US soldier told Athanasiadis, “This isn’t America where the DEA wants to do a drug bust, they call the local precinct and get two officers in 15 minutes.” “When we call for the Afghan police, they’re usually hashed out of their brains so we have to go pick them up and escort them to the scene. It’s like nannying children,” he added.

In the heart of the problem seems to be also the lack of allegiance and support to the ideal of the Afghan state. Many other allegiances, including tribe, family, as well as one’s personal gains, supersede the state Poverty does play a big role of course. It becomes harder to blame the average Afghan citizen, most of whom earn less than $2 a day, of incurring in illegal activities in the face of a starving family. As an Afghan said with despair to Our Drugs War, “if poverty drives us into the drug trade, we are called drug smugglers.” The main problem is that, as the UNODC report puts it, corruption in Afghanistan is a cancer that is metastatic, reaching the highest government ranks as extensively as it reaches low pay border guards. Corruption is, or has become, a way of life in Afghanistan.

In the heart of the problem seems to be also the lack of allegiance and support to the ideal of the Afghan state. Many other allegiances, including tribe, family, as well as one’s personal gains, supersede the state. To this it is not alien the fact that Afghanistan has never had a central government that effectively controlled its territory.

In this scenario, what seems most likely to happen to the revenue of Afghanistan’s natural resources is similar to what happened in Russia under Boris Yeltsin. A range of badly planned privatization programs benefited only a handful of oligarchs who became immensely rich while the country headed to economic collapse.

As Our Drugs War puts it, the “war on drugs” (and on corruption) is undermined by the priority being given to the “war on terror,” which prevents NATO allies from supporting the right people and from sanctioning wrong behavior from top Afghan officials. This stance misses the point that fighting corruption and creating an economy in Afghanistan would be crucial to stabilize the country and change public support from the insurgency to the government in Kabul.

Living Corruption During the survey fieldwork for the UNODC report on Corruption in Afghanistan, many respondents referred to actual cases of bribery they had directly or indirectly experienced. This selection of quotes from interviewed citizens provides a vivid portrait of the many forms of corruption common in Afghanistan.

“We sell different goods on the streets here. The head of the police for this area has appointed a person who is responsible for collecting money from us and give it to him.” “[The] permit office for the municipality is another corrupt department. Officials want about 18,000 dollars from traders when they want to start a new business.”

“Police heads are taking a percentage from each payroll of their subordinates.”

“The mayor has distributed plots to his family members and he has taken a number of shops in the commercial markets for approving the construction of the building.”

“There are people known as Employed on Commission in front of each government building… They approach people saying that they can solve any kind of issue in a short time and then they quote the price. For example, if you need a passport or the driving licence or paying taxes and customs duties they can give you the final receipt, which has been processed through all official channels in matter of days which takes usually weeks.

Then he takes money and of course he will distribute it with those who are sitting inside offices.”

“Officials from the Education Department are looting money for books and stationary that are supposed to be given to schools on provincial and districts levels.”

“My cousin runs a medical practice. Some expired and low quality drugs were found in his medical and a procedure was started by the Health Department.

Later he bribed the head doctor and his file was clean within a day. My cousin is still selling the expired and poor quality drugs made in Pakistan, under the label of Germany and US Made.”

“People are a bit scared with the recent announcement of Karzai that his new government will fight all kinds of corruption. This news should turn into reality soon otherwise people will start again with large scale corruption.”

(Source: “Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as reported by the victims,” January 2010, by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)

This article was first published in The Majalla 26 August 2010 14

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Extreme Pop Culture

Al-Qaeda’s magazine and Hezbollah’s theme park Organizations will inevitably try to recruit members and increase their influence, so what makes Inspire, Al-Qaeda’s new magazine, and Mleeta, Hezbollah’s theme park resort a cause of concern? The shock that both the magazine and the theme park have inspired originate from the fact that as extremist organizations their ideologies don’t have an obvious “mass appeal.” What if that changes as a result of these initiatives?

Paula Mejia

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Organizations will inevitably try to recruit members and increase their influence, so what makes Inspire magazine and Mleeta resort a cause of concern? After all, there is no reason why extremist organizations won’t follow earlier examples of propaganda use. The shock that both the magazine and the theme park have inspired, no pun intended, seems to originate from the fact that as extremist organizations their ideology doesn’t have an obvious “mass appeal.” What if that changes as a result of these initiatives? The prospect of their success in creating a cultural hegemony can be overwhelming.

Take Inspire for example. The magazine which features articles like "How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom" and "What to Expect in Jihad," exemplify a significantly different approach to recruitment than that which Al-Qaeda has relied on in the past.

Inspire, which is run by the Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda, is edited by Anwar Al-Awlaki, the cleric who recruited the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Nidal

Image © Getty Images

ow do extremist organizations recruit their members? Relying on disenchanted youth is never as easy as when unemployment is high, population growth is up, and inter-cultural tension is on the rise. But beyond the right conditions, organizations like AlQaeda and Hezbollah seem to have come to the same conclusion. It’s not enough to wait for recruits to come to them—like missionaries, they seek out individuals who might be groomed to sympathize with their violent cause.

Although previously the two organizations have relied on traditional tactics, both seemed to have embraced a newfound appreciation for the possibilities of employing pop culture as a means of publicizing their propaganda. With Al-Qaeda recently producing its first English language magazine, Inspire, and Hezbollah constructing what has been dubbed, a “terrorist theme park,” both organizations seem to exhibit an awareness that indoctrination can be facilitated through some kind of pop-cultural appeal.

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Malik Hassan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shootings. AlAwlaki, who asks readers to contribute their own articles and suggestions, has been at the forefront of recruiting the US’s “home grown terrorist” problem. Analyses of the content of Inspire correlate to Al-Awlaki’s past involvement in terror attacks, as they suggest that the magazine’s main objective is to continue recruiting English speaking Muslims from inside the United States and Europe—perhaps as a response to the military defeats and the consequent complications it creates for recruitment in the Middle East and Asia.

The release of the magazine has caused a degree of outrage and shock in Western media. FP asks, “Is the magazine even any good?” To which it responds that it is not, and instead appears as an ill-fated art project on a Microsoft Publisher for a few hours. Regardless of its sub-par quality, Bruce Reidel, former CIA officer and Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, notes, “From the standpoint of al Qaeda, it’s not intended to be a bestseller. They’re just looking for one guy who will be inspired by this to bomb Times Square, and this time maybe he will put together the bomb correctly.”

Mleeta, Hezbollah’s theme park, has produced an equally visceral reaction, although its efforts at indoctrination appear to target an entirely different demographic. The park which is located in the Lebanese mountain town by the same name, is an indoor/outdoor museum devoted to the guerilla group’s many wars with Israel.

Analyses of the content of Inspire correlate to Al-Awlaki’s past involvement in terror attacks, as they suggest that the magazine’s main objective is to continue recruiting English speaking Muslims from inside the United States and Europe A military museum is nothing new, however. London is home to the Imperial War Museum; the US has various museums in place to commemorate past wars as well. Perhaps why Mleeta is shocking is because it isn’t just a museum meant to commemorate a war, or even present a specific narrative about Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel. Apart from housing a former Israeli military bunker, the guide to HezbollahLand aims to “build motels, playgrounds, camping areas, even spas or swimming pools so that all the visitors—especially our people—can come here and spend their vacations.”

In other words, more than creating a narrative about war or propaganda against Israel, Mleeta aims to militarize the community’s way of life. To incorporate leisure activities from playgrounds to spas in the narrative of Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel is a clear attempt to sever any distinction that Lebanese might have from their way of life with their relationship with Israel.

A dangerous combination, both Inspire and Mleeta suggest that extreme violence and the ideologies that justify it can be presented in the most light-hearted way.

Leading to Inspire: Anwar Al-Awlaki In various terrorism cases in the US, Britain and Canada, suspects have claimed a devotion to Anwar Al-Awlaki—an eloquent Muslim cleric based in Yemen, and now editor of Al-Qaeda’s magazine Inspire. Mr. Awlaki has gained much attention for his involvement with terrorists like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian responsible for the attempted bombing of an airplane headed to Detroit, and three of the 9/11 hijackers. However, Mr. Awlaki has also gained much attention for the way in which he indoctrinated these individuals—relying primarily on the web as a tool for radicalization.

Adding another, although not uncommon, twist to the story, Anwar Al-Awlaki is an American citizen. AlAwlaki represents a growing trend in terrorist actions affecting the US where the majority of threats are originating internally.

Anwar Al-Awlaki’s links to terrorist organizations have grown alongside his popularity amongst Englishspeaking Muslims. But his growing influence over terrorists like Major Nidal Malik Hassan, and most recently Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has made it clear that he understands his responsibility of jihad as that of a recruiter and supporter.

In line with this belief, last year Mr. Awlaki exchanged public letters on the web with Al-Shabaab, a Somali Islamist terrorist organization, which has attracted recruits among young Somali-Americans. He told his audience, “their success depends on your support. It is the responsibility of the ummah to help them with men and money.”

Al-Shabaab, however, is not his only link with an organized terrorist group. Al-Qaeda’s increasing influence in Yemen has also brought these two together. It has been reported that Mr. Awlaki has provided Al-Qaeda members in Yemen with the protection of his powerful tribe, the Awlakis, against the government.

Yet, despite his significant involvement with terrorist organizations, the major concern that he seems to be instilling is with regards to his powers of persuasion.

According to The New York Times, experts believe that his persuasive endorsement of violence as a religious duty, “in colloquial, American-accented English has helped push a series of Western Muslims into terrorism.”

“Al-Awlaki condenses the Al-Qaeda philosophy into digestible, well-written treatises,” said Evan Kohlamnn, a counterterrorism researcher. “His fluency in English, his unabashed advocacy of jihad and mujahideen organizations, and his Web-savvy approach are a powerful combination.”

This article was first published in The Majalla 11 August 2010 Issue 1556 • September 2010

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Tea Time

Tea Party movement contains elements of each of these. For now, its hatred is relatively muted, more an antipathy towards government than outright hatred. But within the leadership and lay sectors of the movement prejudice against minority groups including the economically disadvantaged and African-Americans exists and has been revealed in recent social attitudes surveys.

The University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality conducted a survey of Tea Party members that Professor Christopher Parker, the lead investigator, said confirmed that “people who are Tea Party supporters have a higher probability” —25 percent— “of being racially resentful than those who are not Tea Party supporters.”

Giving voice to class resentment within the Tea Party movement, which sometimes overlaps with race resentment, Richard Gilbert, a 72-year-old retired Air Force officer and teacher, expressed this antipathy in an interview quoted in The New York Times, “I do believe we are responsible for the widow and the orphan, but I think there is a welfare class that lives for having children and receiving payment from the government for having those children.”

The Tea Party movement allies itself with corporations and fails to see the logical inconsistency and hypocrisy in its selective moral indignation about alleged welfare abuses. Tea Party activists rarely critique the massive amounts of corporate welfare that the federal government provides corporations in the form of tax breaks and privileged access to natural resources in the oil sector, for example, draining far more funds from the government than the total amount of funds which undeserving welfare recipients claim. Yet they criticize the bank bailouts, even though these were necessary, unlike the aforementioned

The rise of the Tea Party The presence of the Tea Party in American media and politics has grown since its inception in 2009, following Obama's healthcare reform proposal.

Claiming to be against large government and in favor of free markets, Tea Partiers have defined themselves as members of a “social welfare organization.”

Yet, there is an evident dissonance between their objectives and the policies they are pushing. Despite their internal contradictions, they will be a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming primaries. For this reason, their policies and the candidates they endorse need to be understood, as well as the political environment that brought them to the fore.

Noam Schimmel

Image © Getty Images

T

he Tea Party began to grow and spread across the nation with protest rallies in various states and in Washington, DC in 2009, largely in response to President Barack Obama’s universal health insurance plan, and against the principle that all Americans should have health insurance provision guaranteed by the government regardless of their financial resources. It was also born out of anger with the fiscal stimulus package and the mounting debt it created, as well as frustration with Republican support for the bank bailout. Tea Party members considered the bailout to be wasteful and beyond the prerogative of government to interfere with the markets on such a grand scale.

The Tea Party’s purpose is, according to their mission statement, “to attract, educate, organize and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.” It defines itself as a “social welfare organization… dedicated to furthering the common good and general welfare of the people of the United States.” It perceives itself as a guardian of American democracy, not merely a benign force, but an ethical and protective one to benefit all Americans.

Its use of the terms “welfare” and “common good,” however, is an anomaly, as the policies it advocates systematically undermine the welfare of Americans, particularly the economically disadvantaged and racial minorities, who form a large portion of America’s most impoverished citizens.

The movement is antagonistic to government regulation of greenhouse gasses and government efforts to limit global warming. Oddly, this makes its policy stance encourage American dependence on foreign oil, which contradicts the Tea Party’s vigorous patriotic championing of American independence and self-sufficiency. Indeed, there is a wide gap between the Tea Party’s gratifying self-perception and the policies it advocates.

Anger is the best mobilizer. Fear of an enemy plus anger is a potent cocktail for potential social and political power results. The 18

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corporate welfare schemes, to prevent a larger economic collapse that would have had a devastating impact on the American economy and on all Americans.

Assuming that the government is the enemy and corporations are reliably benign forces, Rand Paul, the Tea Party candidate who won the Republican nomination for the Senate in Kentucky recently called President Obama’s criticism of the BP company for the massive and catastrophic oil spill in the gulf “un-American,” saying that “sometimes accidents happen.” For a high-ranking member of the Tea Party movement, which claims to promote the public welfare and the common good, Paul is radically out of touch with the tens of thousands of Americans suffering directly as a result of the spill, and from all Americans, who will suffer from the environmental degradation that the spill causes.

In the context of current economic events, most notably, the massive banking crisis and resulting recession, much of the Tea Party’s mission seems achingly dissonant. A lack of government regulation enabled reckless loans to be made to individuals that could not reasonably be expected to pay them back. There was a profound lack of transparency in the trading of debt and inflated and inaccurate credit ratings; under such circumstances the demand for less government regulation and oversight and the lionizing of radically free markets, idealization of corporations and demonization of government seems misguided and reckless, utterly divorced from contemporary realities.

A Tea Party activist recently interviewed in The New York Times illustrated the contradiction at the heart of the Tea Party movement—it advances emotions of indignation without linking them to reality. In the same breath, she attacks the

Issue 1556 • September 2010

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“No taxation without representation!”

This is the slogan that the American colonists used during the 1773 Boston Tea Party protest against taxes imposed on them by the British government—a government that refused to grant its subjects direct representation. Duties on tea, the last in a series of taxes meant to help Britain recoup its losses from the French and Indian War, was the final provocation. Tea shipments destined for New York and Philadelphia were prevented from docking, while tea arriving to Boston prompted a group of about 200 men to dump three shipments of tea into the harbor. Once the British Parliament passed a law that resulted in the closure of the Boston port, talk of revolution became louder than ever.

The modern-day Tea Party movement took its name from this particular time in the nation’s history, and, as many have done before them, has tried to link, somewhat successfully, the events of 1773 to the political and social situation today. government and its tendency for wasteful spending, while acknowledging how it protects her, and the inconsistency in her approach. The New York Times reported that while almost 75 percent of Tea Party members who favor smaller government in a recent New York Times/CBS poll said they would prefer that even if it meant cutting domestic programs, in follow-up interviews they clarified saying that preserving Medicare and Social Security was important, focusing instead on “waste.” Jodine Rhite of Rocklin, California said, “That’s a conundrum, isn’t it? I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security… I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

Many Tea Party members misunderstand Democratic public policies. Ninety-two percent of Tea Party members said in a recent survey that they believed that Obama was moving the country towards socialism. Obama’s policies do nothing of the sort—his healthcare plan keeps in place private insurance companies and actually expands their potential markets. Nor has he ever advocated the principle that the government should own the means of production and that major industries should be nationalized. In fairness, over 50 percent of Americans believe that Obama is moving America towards socialism. So clearly Tea Partiers manifest a tendency towards misunderstanding the definition of socialism and Obama’s policies that is already prevalent among Americans in general.

If one considers the last 30 years of American political history, and the dominance of Ronald Reagan’s philosophy of “limited government” during those years, the ideology of the Tea Party is not exceptional, although it is extreme. It has simply appropriated mainstream Republican rhetoric and ideology and increased its rigidity and severity. Given that the American media and public have largely accepted the arguments of Reagan, and that both Bill Clinton in the past and Barack Obama today have 19

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taken largely deferential approaches in both policy and rhetoric to the Republican ideology of limited government, there’s little that is surprising about the Tea Party’s rhetoric and policy stances. It grew in the rich soil of dominant Republican ideology.

If the Tea Party is the hyper younger sibling of the Republican Party—more pugnacious and at times outright hysterical—it may yet explode in the faces of the Republican Party, as it already has in Kentucky with the election of Rand Paul. The Tea Party operates independently of the Republican Party and at times threatens it. John McCain has been desperately clinging on to power in Arizona, shifting ever rightward in his quest to hold his Senate seat as Tea Party activists attack him for not being sufficiently conservative and support his opponent. Republican Governor Charlie Christ of Florida has chosen to run for the Senate as an independent because Tea Party activists within the Republican Party have been campaigning vigorously against his perceived political moderation. Even in one of the most conservative states, Utah, the Tea Party has demonstrated its power, helping to push a conservative Republican veteran, Bob Bennett, out of office because his conservatism did not reflect the aggressive conservatism of the Tea Party and because he supported Obama’s bank bailout as well as a compromise on healthcare reform.

Will the Tea Party movement collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions? This is unlikely in the immediate future as the emotional and psychological satisfaction derived from finding a simple and clear enemy in the federal government, however spurious and imagined, outweighs the force of reality and truth. Moreover, the social bonds created by the Tea Party movement affirm at a time of economic losses and instability that a community of Americans can find mutual support in each other. Given the strength of the “limited government” philosophy in American public culture, Tea Party activists will find much sympathy amongst a broad swath of Americans and consequently, will not feel marginalized.

However, it’s also possible that the Tea Party movement will be an ephemeral phenomenon, something that began with a howling rage and ends in a whimper. It is disorganized and offers no practical solutions to economic problems aside from dogmatic and extreme commitments that are either blandly general, i.e. “less government” or too extreme, i.e. ending mildly progressive taxation in favor of a flat tax and closing down key government agencies such as the Department of Education. As Gary Younge has argued in the Guardian, “The Tea Party is an unruly, inchoate, and incoherent force with neither a leader nor a clear programme.” It is made up of conflicted divisions across the country with different priorities and a lack of clearly defined common purpose with specific and achievable policy aims that would be financially viable and socially sustainable.

But tea is not the only drink being served in the United States these days. Even less organized and receiving less media attention—yet addressing concerns about government efficacy and the welfare of American citizens from a liberal perspective—the Coffee Party has emerged. The Coffee Party Facebook page states:

Although the Coffee Party movement does not have nearly the same media attention nor name recognition as the Tea Party it clearly demonstrates that there is grassroots energy amongst liberals to challenge the Tea Party’s values, claims and political activity even as it shares some of their concerns about lack of government efficacy.

Until now the Tea Party has had minimal practical political gains outside of a few key states. Where it has succeeded most is in generating vast media attention, activating a passionate if ill-organized and disparate grassroots network, and pressuring a select few Republicans to push conservatism ever rightwards.

As a movement it does not seem to have much staying power, but at a pivotal time, now and probably at least until the midterm elections, Tea Partiers have their moment in the sun.

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

This article was first published in The Majalla 7 July 2010 Top 10 Conservative States Total "Conservative" % Alabama

49

Mississippi

48

Utah

47

Louisiana

47

Oklahoma

47

South Carolina

46

North Dakota

45

South Dakota

44

Idaho

44

Wyoming

44

Top 10 Liberal States Total "Liberal" % District of Columbia

37

Massachusetts

29

Vermont

28

Oregon

27

Washington

26

New York

26

New Jersey

26

California

26

Hawaii

24

Connecticut

24

“Anyone who wants our government to function in the interest of ordinary Americans, not corporations, is welcome to join this movement… We believe that the majority of Americans are regular folks like us, and some of us have been misled into thinking that the federal government is the cause of our struggles, our anxiety, and our fear. In short, our government has been presented to us as our enemy.”

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Good Luck Nigeria The risks of the 2011 elections

Nigeria's national elections scheduled for the upcoming year have the potential to undermine the country's current precarious stability, potentially exacerbating ethnic, regional and religious tensions.

These elections may also be the ones to abandon the power-sharing agreement that has been in place for a decade. This potential crisis is germinating within the context of ongoing ethnic and religious violence in the Middle Belt and in the Delta regions.

Ambassador John Campbell

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these harsh realities, a principle of Nigerian governance has been to minimize electoral confrontation among the country’s regions, religions and ethnic groups.

However, control of the federal government is the prize for electoral victory because it means access to Nigeria’s oil reserve so immense that if fully developed it could serve as a partial alternative to Middle Eastern petroleum for the American market. Beyond a certain threshold, more than 90 percent of oil profits go to the state and whoever controls the state controls the oil revenue. While this access encourages the elites to hang together, it also breeds among them competition that sometimes

Nigeria: A Recipe for Tension?

Population 152, 217, 341 (making it Africa's most populous country) Ethnic groups Nigeria is composed of more than 250 ethnic groups with Hausa and Fulani at 29 percent, Yoruba at 21 percent, and Igbo at 18 percent as the most populous and politically influential.

Religious groups Musilm 50% Christian 40% Indigenous beliefs 10% (Source: CIA World Fact Book)

Image © iStockphoto

igeria is in trouble. National elections scheduled for 2011 have the potential to undermine the country’s current precarious stability by exacerbating its serious internal ethnic, regional and religious divisions.

Since 1999, national presidential elections have adhered to an informal power sharing arrangement between the Muslim North and the Christian South, thereby avoiding regional and religious conflict. But, in 2011, there is the risk that power sharing will be abandoned, with the presidential incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, a Southern Christian, contesting against a Northern Muslim candidate. The fact that credible elections are unlikely may tilt the balance of power in favor of the incumbent president and open the door to protests— perhaps violent—from the losing candidates and ethnic groups. This potential crisis is germinating within the context of ongoing ethnic and religious violence in the Middle Belt and a simmering insurrection in the Delta.

Even in the best of times, governance faces challenges in Nigeria. The country is home to approximately 250 different ethnic groups, each with its own language. The three largest, the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and Igbo, together are less than two-thirds of all Nigerians. Estimated at 150 million, about the size of the Russian Federation’s, the population is growing and urbanizing rapidly. Lagos, with a population of perhaps 17 million, is already one of the largest cities in the world. In terms of income, most Nigerians are very poor, with wealth from oil concentrated among a small number of elites. With the exception of civil aviation and cellular communication, the country’s physical infrastructure is decaying.

The country is also evenly divided between Christianity and Islam. As in other African states bordering the Sahel, the South is the former, the North the latter. The South is more developed than the North, which is among the poorest predominately-Muslim regions in the world. However, Christianity is expanding in the North, probably the result of people moving from other parts of the country and conversions from formerly animist minority ethnic groups hostile to the historically dominant Muslim Hausa-Fulani. In the Middle Belt, an area in the North where Islam and Christianity meet, there has been an upsurge of communal violence between Christian farmers and Muslim herdsmen and between the Muslim Hausa-Fulani and the newly arrived smaller Christian ethnic groups. Local conflicts that long were seen as predominately ethnic or economic in character are acquiring a more overt religious cast. Given

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turns violent and plays off long-standing ethnic, religious and regional divisions. This contributes to the inability of any single Nigerian elite or coalition of elites thus far to impose a direction on governance. That, in turn, results in the chronic inability of the political system to address Nigeria’s problems or promote sustainable development as well as the progressive alienation of non-elite Nigerians from the current political system.

At present, there are two flash points threatening Nigeria’s stability. In the oil-rich Niger Delta, there is a deep sense of grievance against the Nigerian elites and the government they control. The local population has benefited little from the billions of dollars produced by the region’s oil. The environment is degraded, with some nongovernmental organizations claiming that oil spills are the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez per year.

Delta residents resent the federal government’s insensitivity to its traditions of local governance and its failure to take into account the differences among its myriad ethnic groups. The result is a low-level insurrection that can paralyze oil production for short periods of time. And politicians are not above facilitating and exploiting Delta grievances for their own, narrow interests.

In the other flash point, the North, there is growing impoverishment, the result of population pressures, de-industrialization and underinvestment in agriculture. The North appears increasingly alienated from the government in Abuja, and popular respect for traditional Islamic institutions may be eroding.

Some of the Muslim population has become receptive to more radical influences, mostly of indigenous origin, as evidenced

by the bloody Boko Haram insurrection in Kano in July 2009, which the Nigerian military only suppressed with difficulty.

There is, however, little evidence of successful activity by organizations such as Al-Qaeda that are based outside of Nigeria.

Given Nigeria’s divisions and its current challenges, an unwritten principle for most of the elites and embraced by the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is regional power sharing, which should translate into the alternation every eight years of the party’s presidential candidate between the Christian South and the Muslim North. A corollary is that if the presidential candidate is Christian, then the vice presidential candidate is Muslim, and vice versa. Nigerian conventional wisdom, since the restoration of civilian governance in 1999, is that this rotation, often called “zoning,” helps keep the country together. Furthermore, by law, no political party may have a confessional dimension, and a successful presidential candidate must win a certain minimum percentage of votes in all of the country’s regions.

This form of elite power sharing has maintained, by and large, political stability at the national level. After the 1998 death of the last dictator, Sani Abacha, there was an elite consensus that after years of military rule in which successive heads of state had been Muslims from the North; it was the Christian South’s turn.

In the 1999 elections, the first under the new civilian regime, the two principal candidates, Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae, were Yoruba Christians. In 2003, the principal presidential candidates were the incumbent Obasanjo and the Northern Muslim Muhammadu Buhari. However, following prolonged horseThe president of Nigeria is elected by popular vote for a four-year term (and is eligible for a second term); elections were last held on 21 April 2007 and the next are set for 2011. The general elections of April 2007 marked the first civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in the country's history. Yet, Nigeria remains fractious, divided along ethnic and religious lines.

The predominantly Muslim region of northern Nigeria has experienced sectarian unrest for years, and the imposition of Islamic law or Sharia in several states has increased divisions, causing thousands of Christians to flee. Inter-faith violence is said to be rooted in poverty, unemployment and the competition for land.

In early March 2010, up to 500 (mainly Christian) Nigerians were killed near the city of Jos, long a center of tensions between Christians and Muslims.

The attack followed the killing of more than 150 Muslims in and around Jos in January 2010.

In the mainly Christian, oil-producing South, a period of relative calm fell apart when former President Yar'Adua was hospitalized in November 2009. At his successor Goodluck Jonathan’s inauguration in early May 2010, the new president named the peace process in the Niger Delta as one of his top priorities.

Hopes were initially high in light of his background as Nigeria’s first president from the troubled Delta region.

However, Mr. Jonathan is now thought to lack a political base of his own, and doubts have been cast on his ability to fulfill those promises.

Issue 1556 • September 2010

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trading, the largely united elites from all regions rallied around Obasanjo, who the Independent National Electoral Commission declared re-elected. In 2007, after Obasanjo’s eight years in office, the elites agreed that the presidency should revert to the North. Accordingly, all three major presidential candidates— Umaru Yar’adua, Muhammadu Buhari, and Atiku Abubakar— were Northern Muslims. The elite consensus, strong-armed by the still powerful Obasanjo, ensured that Yar’adua was declared the winner by a fictitious margin. In all three elections most of the elites, both Christian and Muslim, were united in support of a single PDP candidate whom the electoral commission accordingly declared to be the victor. Cooperating elites made powersharing work. But elite cohesion and the power sharing that it mandated may be coming to an end, raising the specter of increased regional, ethnic and religious competition.

President Yar’Adua’s 2009 illness and hospitalization in Jeddah and his subsequent death after his 2010 return to Nigeria interrupted the power sharing rhythm by making the vice president, the Christian Southerner Goodluck Jonathan, the president for the remainder of the four-year term. Jonathan’s presidency appeared acceptable to the Northern political powerbrokers so long as it was understood that the presidency would revert to the North in 2011 when the current presidential term ends. That arrangement would preserve power sharing. During Yar’Adua’s last days, the widespread supposition had been that the country’s elites would reach a consensus on a Northern Muslim as Jonathan’s vice president who would then become president through the 2011 elections when the incumbent president would decline to run.

But, no such Northern consensus in favor of a vice presidential candidate formed. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jonathan successfully nominated a relative unknown, Kaduna Governor Namadi Sambo, as vice president apparently without the acquiescence or support of at least some of the North’s most powerful political figures. The Northern elites still appear divided, leaving the presidential candidacy field wide open, as of now. A former military dictator, Ibahim Babangida, a Northern Muslim, has already said that he will run for president, and the Nigerian press is reporting that Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, at present Jonathan’s national security advisor and the head of the security services, will resign soon so that he, too, can run. Other potential Northern candidates may be waiting in the wings.

Though he remains coy about the possibility, Jonathan is likely to run for the presidency in 2011 in violation of the PDP principle of “zoning.” If he runs, he will be a strong candidate. Jonathan would benefit from the tremendous power of the presidential incumbency, including nearly unlimited access to state funds. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) remains under the control of the president, and it plays a crucial role in rigged elections. There is legislation before the National Assembly that would establish INEC’s independence from the presidency, but it is moving slowly. Jonathan has replaced the INEC chairman with an academic of sterling reputation for non-partisanship, but it remains to be seen whether he wants to make INEC truly independent of the presidency, which still provides its funding. If he runs, he is unlikely to want an independent INEC. Furthermore, Jonathan may have little personal choice about whether to run because of pressure from his Southern constituencies to retain the presidency in 2011 at any cost. He is the first from the Ijaw ethnic group that dominates the oil-rich

Delta and the first person from his specific region to become chief of the Nigerian state. Though they claim to be the country’s fourth largest ethnic group, the Ijaws have long believed themselves to be marginalized in Nigeria. From their perspective, “it’s our turn to eat,” that Ijaw accumulated grievances trump the North’s right to the presidency through “zoning.”

A member of his inner circle has already said to the press that Jonathan will run. A number of commentators are floating trial balloons to the effect that Nigeria no longer requires presidential zoning. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, still powerful, appears to support Jonathan. Yet, many of the Northern elites, recalling Obasanjo’s eight years in office, continue to see their region as entitled to the presidency for two, four-year terms, with Jonathan’s year in office merely an interruption.

They want a Northern presidency until 2016.

In principle, the PDP should nominate its 2011 presidential and vice presidential candidates at its party convention, likely to be held in October, but with a date subject to change. At present, the most likely outcome is that the elites in Nigeria will not coalesce around a single PDP presidential candidate in 2011. Instead, the contest could be between a Muslim Northern candidate and Jonathan who would likely enjoy Christian elite support from around the country. In effect, the PDP would split, reflecting divisions within the Nigerian ruling elites no longer managed through power sharing. The elections themselves then risk becoming an arena for regional and religious rivalries and conflict, thereby engaging the public to a much greater extent than in 2007, 2003 or 1999.

Jonathan has said that credible elections are a priority of his government. Yet, at present, there is no credible voters roll and little movement toward the creation of one. And the constitution requires that the constituency boundaries be redrawn to reflect the census of 2006. These are formidable tasks, particularly in a huge, developing country with poor infrastructure and generally weak institutions of government that do not command popular confidence. Given these challenges, the likelihood of free, fair and credible elections is not high Nigeria’s previous elections ratified elite decisions already made. They lacked credibility as a reflection of popular will, and public interest in them waned. By contrast, if the currently fragmented elites do not control the 2011 elections, regional, ethnic and religious questions are likely to become salient. If the elections lack credibility, the losers— as individuals or as an ethnic group— could turn to public protest and violence, as happened in Kenya in 2007. Especially if turmoil associated with the elections intensifies in the Middle Belt and the Delta, Nigeria could itself become unstable. 2011 and 2012 will be difficult years in Africa. Elections in Zimbabwe are likely in 2011, in Kenya in 2012. There is the referendum in the Southern Sudan on independence in 2011. All three involve serious, unresolved political issues related to regional, ethnic or religious differences with a serious potential for violence. Africa’s friends must hope that Nigeria does not join them.

Ambassador John Campbell — Senior fellow for Africa Policy Studies at Council on Foreign Relations. Former US Ambassador to Nigeria (19981990 and 2004-2007). His book, “Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink,” will be published by Roman & Littlefield in the fall.

This article was first published in The Majalla 16 August 2010

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Tehran’s Mystery Man Shahram Amiri

Shahram Amiri is in his own words a “normal man.” His story however, is anything but. The defected/kidnapped Iranian scientist recently returned to Iran after a 13-month sojourn in the US. What happened during those 13 months is the subject of a hot debate between Washington and Tehran; a debate which could have important implications when the two sides return to the negotiating table next month.

Kate Knight

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n recent weeks the media have been overrun with bizarre tales of secret agents and Russian moles reminiscent of Cold War intrigues. But for all the media frenzy surrounding Anna Chapman and the nine other newly initiated Muskovites, Shahram Amiri’s story is easily the most baffling.

The Iranian researcher who disappeared in Saudi Arabia in June 2009 only to reappear in the United States 13 months later has found himself at the center of a propaganda war between Washington and Tehran. But oddly, in these heady days of WikiLeaks revelations and Rolling Stone exposes, nobody, it seems, can get to the bottom of Shahram Amiri’s story.

There are a few points on which everybody seems to agree.

Namely, that Shahram Amiri is an Iranian scientist who worked at the Malek Ashtar University in Tehran, that in June 2009 he went missing whilst on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, and that in July 2010 he reappeared in Washington DC having gained a few pounds. However, beyond this, too many unanswered questions remain. Indeed, as Arash Aramesh, a researcher for the Washington based Century Foundation told The Majalla: “No one except those within the US and the Iranian intelligence circles knows what happened.” For the time being, all we can do is to make assumptions based on a handful of facts and a heavy dose of speculation.

For its part, the US has remained relatively mute on the whole affair.

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Pre-Revolution Nuclear Program 1957 The US and Iran sign a civil nuclear cooperation agreement as part of the US Atoms for Peace program. The US agrees to provide technical assistance and the lease of several kilos of enriched uranium.

The Institute of Nuclear Science, under the auspices of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), moves from Baghdad to Tehran, and the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, takes a personal interest in nuclear energy.

1959 The Shah orders the establishment of a nuclear research center at Tehran University.

1967 Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) is established at Tehran University. TNRC has a safeguarded 5-megawatt nuclear research reactor, which is supplied by the US company, GA Technologies. The US supplies 5.545kg of enriched uranium, of which 5.165kg contain fissile isotopes.

The US also supplies 112g of plutonium, of which 104g are fissile isotopes. The reactor goes critical in November.

1968 Iran signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran ratifies the NPT on 2 February 1970.

1974 March The Shah makes plans to construct up to 20 nuclear power stations across the country with US support and backing. Numerous contracts are signed with various Western firms, and the German firm Kraftwerk Union begins construction on the Bushehr power plant in 1974; it is nearly completed by 1978.

1974 June The Shah says that Iran will have nuclear weapons, "without a doubt and sooner than one would think." ("The Shah Meets the Press," Kayhan International) 1974 October A State Department document says the US and Iran are preparing to negotiate an agreement that would permit the sale of nuclear reactors as well as enriched fuel "at levels desired by the Shah."

1979 February The Islamic revolution. The government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan puts an end to Iran’s nuclear energy. The US stops its supply of highly enriched uranium to Iran. Litigation between Iran and France, and Iran and Germany over nuclear contracts will continue throughout the 1980s.

(Source: Oxford Research Group)

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Image © Getty Images

A Mysterious Death On 21 January 2007, Radio Farda, quoting Iran’s central news agency, announced that 44-year-old Iranian scientist Ardeshir Hassanpour (sometimes spelled Hosseinpour) had died of “gas poisoning.” Radio Farda is a US-sponsored radio station broadcasting to Iran in Persian.

The broadcast stated that, according to “some news agencies,” Hassanpour worked at Iran’s Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, Iran’s only known facility where uranium is converted to gaseous uranium hexafluoride for use in the uranium enrichment process.

Based on published reports, it was not possible at this juncture to determine the exact circumstances surrounding Hassanpour’s death, or the role he may have played in Iran’s nuclear affairs. Nor is it possible to resolve why the Western media, beginning with Radio Farda’s 21 January broadcast, so consistently linked the young scientist’s passing with Iran’s nuclear program.

If, notwithstanding Iranian claims to the contrary, Hassanpour was, in fact, a key player in that program, his death could represent a significant setback for the Iranian nuclear enterprise. In addition, if he died suspiciously, Iranian officials could well see the episode as one in a series of intensifying external efforts to influence the country’s nuclear trajectory.

According to a story published in the Telegraph in February 2009, the Israeli Mossad was rumored to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran's Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported "gas poisoning" in 2007.

In a more recent incident, Iranian nuclear physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed in Tehran in January 2010 by what Iran state media report to be a remote-detonated bomb attached to a motorbike. He worked at Tehran University, where his field of study was said to be quantum physics, an area unrelated to Iran's nuclear program. Iran has been embroiled in internal political tension, but bombings like this are basically unheard of.

Iranian state-run media initially blamed the US and Israel, both frequent targets of vilification, but the US dismissed charges as "absurd." Iranian media later said that royalist groups, which support the Shah overthrown in 1979, had claimed responsibility.

"Green movement" opponents of the Iranian government claim that royalists have denied the attacks. Facts are scarce and commentators are filling in the gaps with big helpings of imagination and speculation. Many questions swirl around the mysterious attack, but the two most urgent are hotly debated: Who did this and why?

For its part, the US has remained relatively mute on the whole affair. In a statement to the press on 13 July, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton remarked that Amiri had been in the US of his own free will, and that he was free to go.

The implication being that Amiri had defected in 2009 and subsequently changed his mind. Not surprisingly, it is this line that seems to have gained most traction in the Western media. Comparisons have been made between the Russian intelligence officer Vitaly Yurchenko who fled to the US in 1985 only to get cold feet and return to Moscow. In the West, the story boils down to a few key points: America welcomes defectors, treats them well, but does not hold them hostage.

Defecting to the US is an attractive and potentially lucrative option, but you can always take a round trip.

Tehran, however, offered a very different version of events.

They quickly refuted US suggestions that Amiri had defected, stating that the scientist had been abroad on a number of occasions, and if he had wanted to defect he would have done so already. Tehran instead accused American agents of kidnapping Amiri. These claims have been supported by Amiri. The researcher, who describes himself as a “normal man” with no knowledge of the Iranian nuclear program, has told press that he was abducted, held captive and at times tortured.

Meanwhile, the Tehran-based Fars News Agency is spinning the whole affair as a victory for Iranian intelligence. They have stated that Amiri was a double agent, who sold the US false infor-

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mation whilst collecting vital intel on the CIA for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This assertion has been met with skepticism; Arash Aramesh stated, “I don't think it is likely that he was an Iranian spy, although not impossible. Iran is trying to say that Amiri brought back important info about the CIA. This is their way of saying they beat the mighty CIA/US Intel.”

Whether Amiri is a double agent, defector or “normal man” is impossible to know. However, what is for certain is that his disappearance has run parallel to increased pressure from Washington on Tehran to come clean about its nuclear ambitions, and increasing indications from Washington’s intelligence community that they have evidence Iran is edging closer to acquiring a bomb. In the last 12 months, fears over Iran’s intentions to construct a bomb have reached fever pitch. There have been revelations of a covert nuclear enrichment facility in Qom, reports from the IAEA that Iran has the expertise to build a bomb, and indications that Iran is enriching uranium in far greater quantities than is necessary. Iran’s nuclear agenda has been described by the IAEA as “a matter of concern.” And even Moscow, a close ally of Tehran, supported a fourth round of sanctions against Iran in May this year.

Tehran, however, has denied these allegations. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stressed the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, as well as Iran’s right to enrich uranium. Beyond pure rhetoric, there are other indications that Iran has peaceful intentions. Not least the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), released in 2007, which stated that Iran had halted efforts to develop a nuclear war-head as of 2003.

ity, then his allies may think twice about endorsing military action against Iran—analogies are already being drawn between Amiri and Curveball's intelligence preceding Iraq.

However, it is unlikely that the US would use the new report to enable a military strike against Iran, since the same core of intelligence analysts who produced the 2007 NIE (essentially removing the military option) are those who are now suggesting that they have new evidence, which reverses NIE’s claims in 2007. It is most likely that these analysts have faith that Obama will avoid using the military option, but know that having all options on the table will strengthen Obama's hand. Whether or not Iran is seeking to acquire WMD is hard to say. If they are a screwdrivers turn away from doing so, then the increasing toll of sanctions could incentivize Iran to finish the job. However, the noise from Tehran would suggest otherwise. The foreign ministry is increasingly eager to return to the negotiation table in August. What kind of hand Washington and Tehran have, may well depend on the findings/credibility of the NIE. And what about Shahram Amiri? Well, he may have received a hero’s welcome in Tehran, but as the crowds part it is likely that he will face months of interrogation. As Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki remarked: "Iran will hold fire on whether to consider Amiri 'a hero' until it receives his account of claims that he was abducted." Perhaps this is the strongest hint that Amiri did in fact defect. In which case, his future may now depend on how useful he can be to Iranian intelligence agencies.

There have been revelations of a covert nuclear enrichment facility in Qom, reports from the IAEA that Iran has the expertise to build a bomb, and indications that Iran is enriching uranium in far greater quantities than is necessary

Shortly after the Hassanpour incident, the CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former US intelligence officials familiar with the operation say.

According to Gulf News, the previously undisclosed program, which CIA officials dubbed "the Brain Drain," is part of a major intelligence push against Iran ordered by the White House. Although the CIA effort on defections has been aimed in part at gaining information about Tehran's nuclear capabilities, its goal has been to undermine Iran's emerging capabilities by plucking key scientists, military officers and other personnel from its nuclear roster.

Initially, the program had had limited success.

The first few defectors had not been in a position to provide comprehensive information on Tehran's nuclear program. However, an article in the New York Post published in July 2010 reported that a dozen or so figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have already defected and are living in the United States.

As the international community continues to harry Iran, attention will shift next month to the findings of the revised NIE. There have been hints from intelligence analysts that the report contains new information to support claims that Iran is in the process of designing a bomb. It is here that we may see the most direct implications of the Amiri affair. As Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reporter, Manal Lutfi speaking to The Majalla, suggested: “If the US asserts that they have evidence that Iran is pursuing a military nuclear program, then Tehran can say that this evidence was leaked to US intelligence through Iranian double agents.” The chances are that the international community would scoff at such an assertion, but if Obama doesn't make public key NIE findings, which he has said is a possibilIssue 1556 • September 2010

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This article was first published in The Majalla 15 July 2010

Degrading Iran’s Nuclear Program

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• AL BANA'S DREAM

Al Bana's Dream The Muslim Brotherhood, 80 years after its establishment

Hassan Al-Bana, an Egyptian Islamic political activist, is remembered for having realized his dream of reviving Islamic values through his creation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Through institution building, grassroots level activism and preaching, he built a mass movement that continues to interact with the politics of the Middle East some 78 years after he moved the organization’s headquarters to Cairo. Yet in spite of the Muslim brotherhood’s political growth in Egypt, including its significant representation in the country’s parliamentary assemblies, its impact on Egyptian politics remains limited due to the organizations ongoing emphasis on religion, morality and the family.

Amr Hamzawy

F

or decades since its establishment, the Muslim Brotherhood has had an ambivalent position on political participation. While it largely ignored formal politics from the 1920s to the 1970s, it has been increasingly involved in Egyptian politics and has a growing number of representatives in the Egyptian parliament. Yet debates within the organization have centered on how and if political efforts can advance the Brotherhood’s broader agenda in Egypt’s shifting political environment.

Calls for total withdrawal from politics are heard only in the margins of the movement, as well as among some of the movement's critics. But if there is an internal consensus that the Brotherhood should remain partially engaged in politics, leaders have nevertheless debated how extensive political participation should be, what forms it should take, and how political activity can be connected to the Brotherhood’s long-term reform goals.

Despite their increased size and practical focus, it is important not to overstate what the Brotherhood’s parliamentary deputies can achieve The debate over political participation has been complicated by the movement’s difficult relations with other political actors, from the ruling regime to opposition parties and protest movements. Fearing regime repression, the Brotherhood has been conscious to avoid signaling a determination to challenge the regime’s grip on power. The movement has consequently remained reluctant to commit to formal and electoral alliances with other opposition actors. This understanding was evident in the Brotherhood’s self-limited participation in 2005 parliamentary elections when it fielded candidates in less than onethird of the electoral districts, sending the message that they did not seek to challenge the ruling National Democratic Party’s two-thirds majority in the People’s Assembly.

Relations between the Brotherhood and other opposition parties have been less hostile but have nonetheless been characterized by a long-standing tradition of mutual mistrust, limiting their attempts to harmonize political positions and coordinate activities. Liberal and leftist parties as well as protest movements have remained deeply concerned by the Brotherhood’s ambiguous positions on equal citizenship rights for Muslims and Copts, as well as their position on women’s rights. Possible partners fretted about the negative impacts of Shari'a provisions on the freedom of expression and pluralism. Ultimately, they were equally disturbed by the contradictions between the Brotherhood’s Islamic frame of reference and the constitutional pillars of Egyptian politics.

The Brotherhood too has had legitimate reasons to mistrust the attitudes of other opposition actors. Some legal parties— such as the leftist Al-Tajammu' (Unionist) party—have rejected Islamist participation in politics, and thus allied with the regime to limit the Brotherhood’s political space. In several incidents, the leadership of Al-Tajammu' has even endorsed repressive government measures against the Brotherhood, justifying them on the grounds that they were targeting an undemocratic organization. Other parties have been less openly hostile but have still distanced themselves from the Brotherhood during times of severe regime repression.

But if alliance achievements have been limited, they have left some real effects on the Brotherhood’s positions. Since 2002, the Muslim Brotherhood’s partial search for common ground with other opposition actors has resulted in the strengthening of the movement’s platform on social, economic and political reform. In different official public statements—for example, the 2004 Reform Initiative and the 2005 electoral program— the Brotherhood’s platform has echoed that of liberal and leftist parties, calling for constitutional amendments, democratic reforms, government accountability and safeguards on personal freedoms.

The Brotherhood in Parliament The Brotherhood’s recent parliamentary activity must be seen against the backdrop of its growing parliamentary presence.

Moving up from only one representative out of 444 in the 1995-

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• AL BANA'S DREAM

2000 parliament, to 17 in the 2000-2005 session, the Muslim Brotherhood now has 88 members in the 2005-2010 Egyptian parliament, second only to the ruling-NDP. This growing parliamentary presence is one important reason for its increased parliamentary activity.

The nature of the movement’s parliamentary platform has also shifted throughout the last three decades: Calls for the application of Shari'a and the promotion of religious and moral values that the bloc prioritized until the 1990s have given way to issues of legal and political reform, socio-economic policies and human rights violations in the 2000-2005 and 2005-2010 assemblies. Although religious and Shari'a-based priorities remain key elements in the Brotherhood’s parliamentary activities, their significance in shaping the movement’s platform has gradually diminished. Other elements have remained unchanged, such as the preoccupation with government accountability, anti-corruption measures.

But, despite their increased size and practical focus, it is important not to overstate what the Brotherhood’s parliamentary deputies can achieve. Although the group’s nearly continuous presence in parliament since the late 1970s has enabled its MPs to acquire extensive oversight tools as well as a collective ability to challenge the government, its impact on the legislative process has been minimal. The Brotherhood’s failure to pass platform legislation is ultimately linked to the ruling National Democratic Party’s firm grip on the legislative process, as it has persistently secured a comfortable two-thirds majority in all assemblies since 1976. Even in the current assembly, despite the significant growth of the Muslim Brotherhood’s representation to almost onefifth of the entire body, the NDP holds three-quarters of the seats and is virtually unchallenged in forming the cabinet and passing its draft legislation.

In this context of strong oversight performance and weak legislative impact, the Brotherhood’s parliamentary activities in recent years have centered on five pillars: constitutional and legal amendments, political reform, social and economic legislation, religious and moral legislation and women’s rights.

In general, the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc has developed its own set of proposals for reforming Egypt’s constitutional order while simultaneously advancing a critique of the constitutional amendments proposed by the regime. Indeed, the issue of constitutional amendments has occupied a prominent position in the debates and platforms of various political actors in Egypt since 2002.

In the run-up to the 2005 presidential and parliamentary elections, President Mubarak proposed an amendment to Article 76 of the constitution allowing multi-candidate presidential elections. In so doing, he appeared to give in to opposition demands to abandon the decades-old system of popular referenda designed merely to confirm the regime’s candidate for the presidency. But the Brotherhood rejected the proposed

amendment as insufficient. They later called for a boycott of the referendum to confirm the amendment in May 2005 because it restricted the ability of independents and opposition parties to field presidential candidates. Specifically, political parties—and only those founded five years before the enactment of the amendment—that wish to put forth a presidential candidate must have at least five percent of the assembly’s seats. Independents in particular were required to have the support of 250 elected members of the People’s Assembly, Shura Council (the upper house of the Egyptian parliament), and local councils.

The Muslim Brotherhood continued its opposition to constitutional amendments proposed by the president and the NDP throughout the 2005-2010 People’s Assembly. The largest battle took place over a large set of presidentially-proposed amendments in 2006 and 2007. On the 26th of December 2006 President Hosni Mubarak called for the amendment of 34 constitutional articles to prohibit the establishment of religious parties and introduce more changes to presidential and legislative election laws, without setting a term limit for the presidency. Of the 34 amendments introduced and eventually approved, the Brotherhood bloc focused its critique on a number of elements, which it interpreted as limiting political freedoms and impeding its political activism.

The Brotherhood, for example, blocked amendments banning religious-based political parties and activities, which clearly limit the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in politics and obstruct its transformation into a legal party.

The Brotherhood viewed the ban as completely inconsistent with the existing stipulation that states that Islam is the religion of the state in Egypt and Islamic Shari'a is its major source of legislation.

The organization also criticized an amendment laying the groundwork for a proportional system of legislative elections, which suggested that Egyptians would no longer vote for individuals but instead for party lists. This amendment, they argued, cemented the Brotherhood's exclusion from regular electoral politics. Further, an amendment to Article 88 that reduced judicial oversight of elections by forming special oversight committees comprised of both judges and former government officials was also blocked. The Brotherhood charged that the new system would increase opportunities for election rigging and manipulation. Finally, they also blocked amendments that would allow the enactment of a terrorism law. The Brotherhood joined other opposition critics, arguing that the effect of the amendment would be to allow the regime to replace the longstanding state of emergency with a new set of permanent legal tools designed to restrict political life. The constitutional amendments asserted the right of the Ministry of Interior to curb political and civic rights by restricting the press, subjecting journalists to potential imprisonment, and allowing governmental bodies to observe and control the activities of political parties.

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Dilemmas of Participation While the Brotherhood has worked hard to pursue this comprehensive agenda on constitutional amendments, it has attempted to do so without abandoning its longstanding emphasis on religion, morality and the family. The Brotherhood has tried to portray its religious agenda as compatible with, and even a full expression of, its comprehensive reform program. Some of the religious issues it has raised, for instance, —such as the right of veiled women to be hired for government-funded television channels—have been linked to freedom of expression and religious belief. On other issues, such as torture and the rights of the press, the Brotherhood has used its religious and moral priorities to defend political freedoms and human rights.

Yet while the remarkably active Muslim Brotherhood bloc has dealt with these moral and religious issues since 2000, social, economic and political legislation have been at the core of its platform and activities, both in terms of oversight and legislative attempts. The prioritization of these issues has often come at the cost of the Brotherhood’s moral and religious platform, which enjoyed a formative role in the movement’s parliamentary participation before 2000. Indeed, the Brotherhood’s moral and religious platform has been reduced to illiberal stances on women’s issues and scattered calls for the application of Shari'a provisions. The relative marginalization of the Brotherhood’s moral and religious platform in parliament has posed a serious challenge for the movement: How can it pursue social, economic and political reform in parliament while still sustaining its “Islamic” credentials geared toward its religious constituencies? While the Brotherhood has been blocked from forming a political party, one strategy for dealing with the tension between its broad political and specific religious agenda has been to formalize political operations under a functionally separate institutional structure. And indeed, in recent years, it is possible to detect a functional separation between the parliamentary bloc, which addresses reform issues, and the leadership of the movement—the General Guide and the Guidance Office—which prioritizes moral and religious concerns in official pronouncements, media statements and other activities.

A second and equally serious challenge has emerged from the limited outcome of the Brotherhood’s participation in parliament. In the eyes of many Brotherhood constituents and activists, the movement’s pursuit of reform issues in parliament has simply not paid off; the de-emphasis of moral and religious issues has proven vain and unfruitful. And the Brotherhood’s participation in parliament, they argue, has not opened Egypt’s political sphere. Increasingly, the Brotherhood’s leadership has felt the need to account for this negative balance and offer explanations for its priorities to the rank and file. Discussion and debate surrounding this issue in recent years has thrown the value of political participation as a strategic objective into question, especially in comparison to the success of wider social and religious activities. One of the outcomes of this growing tension has been a changing balance of power within the movement’s leadership between advocates of political participation and those concerned with the Brotherhood’s social and religious role.

Amr Hamzawy - Research director and Senior Associate at the Middle East Center for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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In the Name of the Father and the Son Opposition voices in Egypt have increasingly gotten louder and more emboldened in recent years. Several weeks ago a new movement launched a nationwide poster campaign advocating the nomination of a young liberal-minded candidate for next year’s presidential elections—a candidate who will bring change to Egypt. It so happens though that this candidate is Gamal Mubarak—the president’s son.

The Popular Coalition for the Support of Gamal Mubarak (PCSGM), which is coordinated by Magdi El-Kordi, an ex member of the leftist Tagammu party, denies any connection to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

El-Kordi insists that the 7,000 workers who had joined the campaign so far are all volunteers and that none of them had ever even been in touch with Gamal Mubarak himself or anyone in his camp. El-Kordi explained that he was inspired to launch the campaign because of his admiration for Gamal Mubarak’s liberal policies and the conviction that he will be the only candidate to offer Egypt the change it needs. He vowed that the campaign would continue until the young Mubarak is “convinced” that he must run in the elections.

The NDP meanwhile has sought to publicly distance itself from this campaign insisting that the party’s only possible candidate will be President Hosni Mubarak himself. Some NDP members explained the PCSGM as an independent grassroots endeavor and an example of the healthy democratic discourse in the country.

The PCSGM generated much sharper reactions from opposition figures, whom, for years now, have feared and opposed hereditary succession. Last week the Al-Ghad opposition party, led by the 2005 presidential candidate Ayman Nour, launched a counter campaign plastering thousands of posters around Cairo and other Egyptian cities featuring Gamal Mubarak’s face covered by an X and the words “Egypt is too big for you.”

In sharp contrast to the laissez-faire attitude towards the PCSGM, security forces tore down these posters and chased down and arrested Al-Ghad activists seen putting them up.

Opposition figures have vowed to continue their fight against Gamal Mubarak’s nomination. Despite their best efforts though it is clear that the process to secure the transition of power from father to son has begun, and that enough elements of the regime are in place to see it through.

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• THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

The Good German

Germany and the economics of austerity The last G8 Summit revealed latent disagreement between the economic policies wished by Washington and those wished by Berlin. Two aspects of this rivalry are noteworthy. First, there seems to be a clear misunderstanding of the policy embraced by Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. Second, it seems that opponents of expansionary policies have a clearer understanding of economics than White House economists.

Fredrik Erixon

Image © Graphic News

W

inston Churchill once said of Russia that it was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” The White House probably has the same feeling of Germany today. There is no love lost between President Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel. The division between their views of current economic strategy only grew bigger at the last G20 Summit in Toronto. Two years ago, while campaigning to become the new American president, Obama was cheered by a few hundred thousands of people on Brandenburger Tor in Berlin. Today, Berlin is the main opposition to the White House’s view of the grand engineering of global economic recovery. In fact, Chancellor Merkel is more of a political threat to Obama than the disunited Republican Party or the noisy Tea Party movement.

Blame for recent economic chaos in the Eurozone could certainly be laid at the door of the German Chancellery. Angela Merkel flipflopped on the bailout of Greece and how it should be organized, causing unnecessary angst in financial markets over Europe’s capability to handle problems in its own backyard. The German government’s recent decision to ban short selling of some financial papers was silly. Such moves have little effect when papers can be traded on many exchanges outside Germany, and if anything, this rash action triggered worries about the economic instability of firms, mainly banks, covered by the ban. Moreover, it threw several other countries and firms into acute economic problems—especially commodities and securities heavy currencies. Hence, it worked as a classic beggar-thyneighbor policy.

Yet it is difficult not to support the underlying rational of the German-led trend of fiscal stabilization that has recently started in Europe.

And it is this old “Bundesbank obsession” with fiscal balance and keeping politicians away from printing money that is annoying White House economists who want to see other big economies fuel the recovery by expanding fiscal deficits.

Some economists, like the notorious New York

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General government debt for the EU (27 countries)

General government debt for the Eurozone (16 countries)

Year

General government consolidated gross debt as a percentage of GDP

Year

General government consolidated gross debt as a percentage of GDP

1997

68.3

1997

73.3

1998

66.4

1998

72.9

1999

65.8

1999

71.7

2000

61.9

2000

69.2

2001

61.0

2001

68.2

2002

60.4

2002

68.0

2003

61.9

2003

69.1

2004

62.2

2004

69.5

2005

62.8

2005

70.1

2006

61.4

2006

68.3

2007

58.8

2007

66.0

2008

61.6

2008

69.4

2009

73.6

2009

78.7

Times scribbler Paul Krugman, go even further and opine that the new drive towards austerity will kill recovery and throw the world into a an economic depression. They are wrong—and also falsely portray current policy.

First, neither Germany nor any other significant EU economy with big deficits plan to balance their books anytime soon.

Under current “austerity” plans, countries like Germany and the United Kingdom will run fiscal deficits for years to come.

Fiscal tightening will mainly start in 2012, and in the next few years the reduction in deficits is largely planned to come by economic growth.

Second, many EU countries need to make credible plans for deficit reductions because their high levels of debt are causing problems. Current distrust in European economies is not only about the cyclical deficit. Overall, high levels of debt and worries about how future entitlements will be paid when the population grows older were concerns already before the start of the crisis and have grown toxic since then (mind you, this future is only a few years away). The average level of public debt in the European Union in less than a decade is expected to be above 120 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That amounts to a big debt crisis.

True, it is theoretically possible, as argued by some, that governments could devise strategies now to deal with the longterm debt problems without starting fiscal tightening soon.

This would allow for a stimulus-fuelled recovery in the next few years, and then the actions against unsustainable levels of debt could kick in. But this strategy only works in theory. No government could make credible proposals for addressing debt levels in the future—say, three or four years from now—as no one knows who will be in power by then. Furthermore, if a program for future debt consolidation (and reduction), which involves spending cuts and tax increases, would be launched now, people would start to adjust now for future austerity by saving more and spending less. This would undermine, and possibly radically so, the effect of current stimulus programs.

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interest rates, European governments simply do not have that luxury. Bond rates have already gone up, and especially so for governments with significant deficits. Furthermore, there are looming inflation threats by current macroeconomic policies.

Enormous amounts of money have been pumped into the economy, but money is being hoarded rather than spread out. At some point, this money will find its way into the larger economy.

Finally, while the automatic stabilizers are good anti-cyclical policy, the effect of discretionary fiscal stimulus is smaller than expected. This is true also for the United States. In an open world economy, stimulus money leaks to other countries in the world.

Fredrik Erixon - Director and co-founder of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE).

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• THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

The Engine Behind the Flotilla Turkey’s struggle to prominence

Beneath the seemingly reactionary nature of Turkey’s foreign policy lies a well thought-out, comprehensive awakening—one that makes Turkey’s leaders dream of turning their country into a regional leader and a prominent global player. The real engine behind Turkey’s show of independence is not that of the Mavi Marmara, the ship raided by Israel on her way to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, but that of conscious economic policies aimed at achieving global relevance through regional leadership: sustained monetary and fiscal prudence, diversification of trade partners and energy sources, a feverish campaign to attract FDI and a muted effort to create an alternative area of economic integration with Turkey at its center.

M. Alper Bahadir

“No one should attempt to play around with this nation, to test the patience of Turkey. As precious as Turkey’s friendship is, so harsh will be her hostility.”

S

uch was the outburst of an emotional Tayyip Erdogan on 1 June as he responded to the deadly Israeli attack on a Turkish-led flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. Erdogan’s speech to the Turkish parliament was intense, blunt and at times even threatening. It felt as if he was giving a subtle answer to that lingering question about his country: The West, it seemed, had finally lost Turkey.

When Erdogan’s newly-founded AKP (Justice and Development Party) took power in an unusually decisive election in 2002, it was not evident that a debate over the country’s “reorientation” would soon ensue. Despite the Islamist roots of its main founders, the AKP had managed to appeal to a broad base. It had campaigned—and won—on a platform that put progress towards EU membership on top of the agenda.

The first sign of trouble came in 2003 when the Turkish parliament stunned the US by refusing to allow US bases in Turkey for

the invasion of Iraq. Although a major milestone in the EU membership process—official candidate status—was reached in 2004, the process lost its initial momentum soon thereafter. While full membership remains their stated goal, Turkey’s leaders have been increasingly less hesitant to express their frustration with the EU’s stalling. In 2008, the seeds of the current crisis with Israel—a long time ally—were sown with Israel’s surprise attack on Gaza, which humiliated Turkey by undermining the country’s efforts to broker a backroom peace agreement between Israel and Syria. Mr. Erdogan stormed off a panel in Davos after telling Shimon Peres that Israelis “know very well how to kill.” Only two weeks before the Gaza incident, Turkey and Brazil voted against a UN Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on Iran and instead pushed for a nuclear swap agreement with the isolated country.

It is hard to deny that Turkey today is a very different country than it was 10 years ago. For several reasons, however, many Western observers have misinterpreted this transformation. To begin with, excessive attention is being paid to Mr. Erdogan and the excitement that his populist rhetoric over Gaza has created in the Turkish and Arab street.

Foreign direct investment, net inflows

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Image © Getty Images

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• THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

Second, perhaps as a legacy of the Manichaeism that George W. Bush attempted to impose on our imagination, Turkey’s role is seen in a strictly binary context. The vision, we are told, is neo-Ottomanism and the goal is to re-establish Turkey as a rival power to the West. Finally, since her allies have failed to create a platform where Turkey can play a new role (other than “eternal applicant to the EU”), the country’s actions are seen to be happening in isolation from her allies.

At this critical juncture, a correct reading of Turkey’s intentions is essential. Turkey’s new stance in foreign policy should be understood by a principle much simpler than a reorientation away from the West: the goal of becoming a regional leader and a prominent global player. While this ambition comes with the demand for a renewed role for Turkey on the international stage, it does not necessitate a reorientation, least of all one that has to happen at the expense of the West.

The real engine behind Turkey’s show of independence, therefore, is not that of the Mavi Marmara, the ship raided by Israel on its way to Gaza, but that of consistent economic and foreign policies aimed at achieving global relevance through regional leadership: sustained monetary and fiscal prudence, diversification of trade partners and energy sources, a feverish campaign to attract FDI and an effort to create an alternative area of increased economic integration with Turkey at its center.

These policies make up the more subtle indicators of Turkey’s transformation. Over the last eight years, Turkey has pursued economic policies that brought about robust growth, nearly tripling the gross domestic product. In the same period, the country’s trade volume more than quadrupled. While the share of the EU in Turkey’s exports decreased from around 60 percent to 45 percent, the share of the Middle East doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent. More importantly, whereas in 2000, only eight countries made up 80 percent of Turkey’s exports, today that number is 16. The AKP government also made massive investments in infrastructure, increased the share of education in the fiscal budget and kept inflation under control.

At the same time, Turkey has pursued an ambitious policy of “zero problems” with her neighbors (with Armenia and Greece, as much as with Syria and Iraq). Despite the mixed success of these efforts effort, the intention to rid its borders of conflict highlights Turkey’s ambition of establishing the right conditions to grow as a regional power. The country also deepened ties with Russia, recently signing landmark cooperation agreements on issues ranging form energy to tourism. Prior to the fallout with Israel, Turkey worked hard to take on a mediator role to Israel’s conflict with Palestine and Syria.

It is only natural for a Turkey that is finally beginning to put her house in order is becoming more confident and demanding a bigger role in international politics. Ironically, this had been the kind of transformation that the EU had been waiting for to accept the viability of Turkey’s candidacy for membership.

Now that the moment has arrived, the West should not get distracted and celebrate the arrival of a more powerful ally.

Turkey’s Major Trade Partners (2009)

Alper Bahadir – A former management consultant at McKinsey & Company, he is currently pursing an MA in Public Administration in International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and an MBA at the Harvard Business School.

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News Behind the Graph

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ast year, at the height of the global financial crisis, remittances (money sent from foreign workers to their families in their native countries) fell steeply within the Gulf region. On 19 August, however, one of the world’s largest money transfer companies, Western Union, announced its expectations for Middle East remittances to rebound in 2011, following a continuing decline during the second quarter of 2010.

An often overlooked aspect of any national balance of payments summary, remittances play a critical role in global economic development, and are generally considered to be robust indicators of the strength of a country’s migrant labor force.

“Remittances constitute the single largest source of income for those left behind,” said Azar Khan, senior migrant researcher for the Arab States at the International Labor Organization. “They are really big. They play a major role in the households.”

Given the comparatively uncertain state of today’s world economy, accurately predicting where remittances levels may stand in even a few months can be difficult. A quick glance at the recent history of Middle Eastern remittances flows, however, can offer some valuable insight into its changing labor market.

Remittances Outflows Figure 1 displays total remittances outflows from Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, from 2002 to 2008. As you can see, remittances sent from the region to families in foreign lands remained relatively stable through 2008 (just before the financial crisis took full effect), after experiencing a slight jump in 2003. Although data on the destination of capital outflows isn’t yet available, recent estimates indicate that the vast majority of remittances sent from the MENA region are directed toward India and other southern Asian countries.

Although the MENA region’s outflows have generally exhibited a consistently steady trend, they haven’t followed the same pattern that global remittances outflows have in recent years.

While remittances dipped noticeably in 2007, for example, remittances sent from other countries continued to climb.

Figure 2, on the other hand, exhibits a much more noticeable trend in remittances inflows to the MENA region, with families receiving more money from relatives working abroad in each year from 2002 to 2008. In 2009, as expected, the total dips slightly, in an apparent reaction to the liquidity crunch that the international financial crisis begat.

Unlike the trends displayed in Figure 1, however, remittances inflows to the Middle East seem to follow global trends rather closely. While the growth rate of inflows may have lagged behind the rest of the world from 2002 to 2006, since then, they’ve followed global trends in almost identical fashion.

In comparing the two graphs, then, one clearly notices a divergent trend in remittances flow evolution. Whereas outflows have, for the most part, remained relatively stable over the past few years, inflows have demonstrated a clearly increasing pattern. This would suggest, therefore, that even as more migrants are drawn to burgeoning labor markets such as those in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the vast majority of remittances are flowing into the region, and not away from it.

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Whereas outflows have, for the most part, remained relatively stable over the past few years, inflows have demonstrated a clearly increasing pattern. This would suggest, therefore, that even as more migrants are drawn to burgeoning labor markets such as those in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the vast majority of remittances are flowing into the region, and not away from it Figure 1. Remittances Outflows from MENA countries, 2002-2008

Source: World Bank Figure 1. Remittances Inflows from MENA countries, 2002-2009

Source: World Bank 37

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• THE HUMAN CONDITION

The Deadly Cost of Honor Honor Killings

The recent example of Sakina Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman who has been sentenced to death by stoning for having allegedly cheated on her husband, is just but one example of a rampant global problem: gender-based violence in the forms of honor killings. These attacks on women are not limited to particular cultures or religions, but can be found throughout the globe. Reforms need to be put in place to pursue those responsible for the insecurity women face regularly.

Paula Mejia

Image © Getty Images

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n July, Iran caught the world’s attention for offensive governmental policies, not related as it often is to the potential development of a nuclear weapons program, but rather for representing a global problem: the pervasive nature of violence against women.

The case of Sakina Mohammadi Ashtiani has caused outrage in the international community. This 43-year-old woman and mother of two had been convicted in 2006 of adultery and sentenced to 99 lashes. However, due to a loophole in the Iranian judicial system her case was recently reviewed and she faces the possibility of death by stoning for her alleged affair.

While the media has covered her case extensively, and appeals have been made to curtail Iran’s decision to execute her, it should be acknowledged that the punishment Ashtiani may face is hardly a phenomenon particular to Iran.

Another highly publicized example of an honor killing occurred in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2007, when 17-year-old Dua Khalil of the Yazidi faith was stoned to death for having stayed out one night with her Sunni boyfriend. Community members of her village stormed into the home of a tribal leader where she was seeking asylum, and dragged her out to the street. Despite the presence of security forces and the fact that honor killings are illegal in Iraqi Kurdistan, nothing was done to stop the estimated 1,000 men who stoned her. So public was her attack that numerous video clips taken by cell phones can still be found on the Internet.

Honor killings are just but one prominent example of the violence that women and girls face regularly. These attacks— which are meant to preserve the honor of a family—can take the form of acid attacks, burning the victims alive or even pursuing a judicial trial that prosecutes women for their “dishonorable” acts as has been the case for Ashtiani.

The behavior that warrants this punishment can range from serving meals late, talking back to authority figures, or having extra-marital relations. To make matters worse, because the concept of honor depends on outside perception of what is honorable and what isn’t, mere heresy can be reason enough to execute a female family member. Whether she committed the “crime” is irrelevant, what matters is what others believe and what men can do to restore their honor.

Although there is no official figure, because cases of honor killings are often unreported or passed off as suicide or natural deaths, the United Nations Population Fund estimated that there are 5,000 honor killings every year. A more accurate estimate, taking into account unreported cases is at least 6,000 a year, ac-

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cording to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu-Dunn, authors of Half the Sky. However, Kristof and Wu-Dunn argue that even this estimate is an insufficient indicator of the problem that honor killings represent since they don’t account for “honor rape— those rapes intended to disgrace the victim or her clan.”

While many of these honor killings take place in the Muslim world, honor killings are a global problem not intrinsic to any particular religion or culture. In fact, as a 2002 National Geographic report on the issue demonstrated, honor killings are present in every part of the world, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey and Uganda.

Their report further explained that dowry deaths in India, a similar phenomenon meant to punish women whose dowries

are considered insufficient, are the cause of about 5,000 bride deaths a year. Likewise, crimes of passion, which are treated “extremely leniently” in Latin America, are the same problem as honor killings, but just have a different name. When looked at together, honor killings, dowry deaths and crimes of passion represent the global existence of violence against women and the impunity that such crimes are characterized by.

Yet why is it important to have a serious debate about what can be done to stop violence against women, including honor killings?

Last week, TIME magazine published on its front cover a controversial but insightful image of a beautiful Afghan girl who had lost her nose and ears for trying to escape an abusive husband—a punishment inflicted on her by the Taliban. The cover reads, “What happens when we leave Afghanistan.”

Honor Killings

Images © Graphic News

In many societies, rape victims, women suspected of engaging in premarital sex, and women accused of adultery have been murdered by their relatives because the violation of a woman’s chastity is viewed as an affront to the family’s honor. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that the annual worldwide number of “honor killing” victims may be as high as 5,000 women.

According to a 2002 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, honor killings take place in Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Morocco and other Mediterranean and Gulf countries. It is not only in Islamic countries or communities that this act of violence is prevalent. Brazil is cited as a case in point, where killing is justified to defend the honor of the husband in the case of a wife’s adultery.

According to a government report, 4,000 women and men were killed in Pakistan in the name of honor between 1998 and 2003, the number of women killed being more than double the number of men. In a study of female deaths in Alexandria, Egypt, 47 percent of the women were killed by a relative after the woman had been raped. In Jordan and Lebanon, 70 to 75 percent of the perpetrators of these so-called “honor killings” are the women’s brothers.

In Sudan, the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women supported a project to combat honor killings in the Nuba Mountains region. The project trained local and religious leaders, women’s leaders and teachers to become advocates in their communities against honor killings and other forms of violence against women. They organized trainings and group discussions, and as a result the issue of honor killings were for the first time discussed in public. The project led to positive changes in knowledge, attitudes and practices among community members who increasingly began to regard honor killings as a crime, rather than a legitimate means to defend a tribe’s honor.

(Source: UNIFEM’s Facts on Violence Against Women)

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• THE HUMAN CONDITION

While the image does its part in emoting how important the fate of women in Afghanistan is, there is a significant problem with the cover’s message. The most obvious is that the crime that Aisha experienced occurred while forces were still in Afghanistan, and the image almost implies that the problem that women there face is unique to Afghanistan and would not happen if American forces and its allies remained until a victory over the Taliban was secured.

There could be nothing further from the truth. Violence against women is a global problem, and unfortunately as Aisha’s case demonstrates, the presence of American and NATO troops is hardly the solution to ending violence against women. Instead, as the research of leading human rights organizations demonstrates, the problem of violence against women in Afghanistan and elsewhere needs to be tackled at the local level. Even if the Taliban are a major source of oppression to women in Afghanistan, they are not to women in most of the countries that experience honor killings regularly.

Violence against women, and honor killings in particular, occur because women are not perceived as equal to men and because their chastity is understood as a marker of the honor of a family Violence against women, and honor killings in particular, occur because women are not perceived as equal to men and because their chastity is understood as a marker of the honor of a family. The international community may not be able to alter definitions of chastity over night, but it can pursue significant policy initiatives that would do much to end this type of violence against women. For one, in countries where honor killings are legal, such policies should be criminalized. Judges and police forces should be trained to deal with gender-based violence objectively, and thoroughly investigate these crimes.

While these initiatives would do their part in creating disincentives for those considering killing a woman in the name of honor, community sensitization to the equality of men and women would also make important steps towards reducing gendered violence. Policies that empower women, be they education or microfinance initiatives that give women greater control over the financial resources of their households, have the potential to alter the gender dynamics within families that allow the killing of women to take place.

Again, the research of Nicholas Kristof is a positive note to leave the debate of gender violence on. In his column for The New York Times, Kristof chronicles the rise of a Pakistani woman who, after having been beaten by her husband and mother-in-law regularly for not giving birth to a son, successfully turned a $65 loan into a thriving business, turning her not only into the main bread-winner of her family, but into the tycoon of the neighborhood. These days she has the respect of the men in her entire community.

This article was first published in The Majalla 19 August 2010

Not Enough Cooks?

Obama Team’s QDDR Wars Need to Change the Game The Obama administration will release its much-anticipated Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, a new report instituted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to benchmark and frame a new approach to managing international development budgets and objectives Steve Clemons

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n the coming week or so, the Obama administration will release its much-anticipated Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, a new report instituted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to benchmark and frame a new approach to managing international development budgets and objectives. Behind the scenes, a serious battle has raged between the administration’s development czars -and interestingly, while Hillary Clinton ended up prevailing in most of the key contests, she has yet to put her stamp on a more effective approach to 21st century international development and hasn’t yet upgraded her own department_s growing but mostly ignored nation-stabilizing, smart power team.

While details of the QDDR are not yet public, we know that Hillary Clinton has stymied efforts to make the US Agency for International Development Administrator cabinet rank, pre-empted an effort for the Agency to fully break away from State Department guidance, and squashed the creation of a high-ranking Development Council in the National Security Council that would have authority to run various bureaus across government on key development, stabilization, and relief missions.

But what Hillary Clinton hasn’t done is elevate the team and personnel committed to international stabilization and development within her own Department.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others have been out calling for an increase in the State Department’s resources and personnel because too much of the international civil society, humanitarian, and stabilization functions of the US government were increasingly flowing into Pentagon budgets and responsibilities.

In making her final decisions on the QDDR, Clinton should focus on taking the various parts of the international development universe inside the State Department and created an “Under Secretary for Development.” Furthermore, she should be making her own Department’s Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization as well as her Civilian Response Corps the crown jewels of this new position.

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Former government official and Foreign Policy blogger David Rothkopf has suggested that creating such an Under Secretary level position would focus the State Department’s own thinking and deployment of teams and budgets in a way that would have changed the status quo in the administration’s paralyzed, mostly ineffectual development bureaucracies. Rothkopf shared with me that a move like this by Hillary Clinton would change the game and restore confidence that the State Department is a viable player rather than conceding this challenge to Pentagon primacy.

During these policy skirmishes, Clinton has yet to embrace her own existing capacity as strongly as she should have rather than treat as an unwanted stepchild her own Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization office (SCRS) and Civilian Response Corps (CRC) that despite getting little attention from the highest levels of the State Department have been the largest growing budget item at the State Department and created the largest team of trained, non-military, cohesive, US government (vs. privately contracted) civilian experts that can be quickly deployed as the front wave of US smart power where there is political or natural disaster upheaval. However, because she herself gave SCRS and CRC little attention and because these teams were ignored in assembling the core of the privately contracted teams sent to Afghanistan, Congress is planning to slash these budgets by about 50% in 2011.

Secretary Clinton did prevail during the “development wars” inside the Obama administration against efforts to have SCRS – which now has more than a thousand deployable civilian experts buttressed by a global initiative of 20 major partners to perform immediate response relief, reconstruction and stabilization missions – placed within the Agency for International Development. But all she did was preserve what the Department had; she has yet to upgrade the operation or figure out a way for her Department to become the clear mother ship for US smart power deployed in messy international situations.

What Hillary Clinton hasn’t done is elevate the team and personnel committed to international stabilization and development within her own Department Creating an Under Secretary of State for Development and building out the State Department’s own army of trained, civilians could have been “the big idea” delivered by the QDDR. Instead, Clinton along with US AID Administration Rajiv Shah, and National Security Council staff Michael Froman and Gayle Smith among others have largely settled on a plan that gives US AID broader mandates over budget coordination in the administration’s diversely situated international development capacities. In a well-meaning but probably ineffective effort, US AID advocates have been trying to restore the status and capacity of US AID that was gutted from it during a siege led in the 1990s by former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms. But the fact is that US AID has very few of its own people anymore. US-led AID initiatives are mostly privately contracted, and US AID has become more of a Cisco Systems or Issue 1556 • September 2010

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Dell Computer of international development, essentially a bundler of subcontracted componentry rather than a government enterprise that can easily hire, fire, quickly deploy or withdraw its own forces on quick, time-urgent missions.

Last year, retired General Anthony Zinni, who acknowledged he had helped member or co-chair nearly every commission or study group on “Smart Power” that has mattered, declared that he had lost confidence in the “development community” and the ability of any administration -given the structure of the development bureaucracy to succeed at smart power responses to failed or failing states. He argued that the international development community was paralyzed and collectively incompetent, stating that only the Pentagon had the capacity to deploy credible teams with well-thought out and simulationtested plans to try and hold up or build governments abroad that were collapsing or virtually non-existent.

Zinni continued that the only hope to turn this around was for personnel from the State Department, US AID and other branches of government tasked with nation-building or postconflict or natural disaster stabilization to co-habit in offices with Pentagon staff tasked with delivering results. Specifically, Zinni proposed that all of the civil affairs functions in each of the Pentagon’s major Commands be taken out and collectively organized as a brand new Command in the Defense Department. Then when America decided to save failing states or clean up after conflict or deal with earthquake, flood, and tsunami relief - the State Department and US AID personnel could watch how the Pentagon did their thing and learn.

Zinni’s idea mostly affirms something the Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post author Dana Priest wrote in her important book, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military. Priest argued that the Pentagon was aggrandizing by design and by default most of the key powers of America’s international engagement – from diplomacy to development and that the trend would be tough to stop.

Hillary Clinton and others on President Obama’s team had an opportunity to prove General Zinni wrong - that there was indeed an appetite and capacity for a strategic leap in the way America’s non-defense agencies and departments deploy smart power. SCRS is the US’s only non-military entity that can do military-like planning and execution, but with expertise that the military doesn’t have and frankly – according to Gates and his deputies -doesn’t want to have.

While creating a new Under Secretary slot for Development can be scoffed at - understandably - for just adding another chef to an already crowded, chaotic kitchen, this would be missing the point. By not moving beyond slight adjustments in the administration’s approach to development other than coordinated budget activity for the most part, Clinton would structurally assure that the Pentagon more than US AID or State will continue by default to be the heavyweight political player in overseas development, stabilization, and relief. Hopefully as the final QDDR decisions are made, the Secretary of State will do more to change the game and secure its own place in the global development equation.

Steve Clemons – directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the political blog, The Washington Note.

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• A THOUSAND WORDS

A Country Underwater

Images Š Getty Images

As the floodwaters recede in Pakistan, families return home to Bassera village in Punjab province. Over 21 million people have been affected by the worst ever floods that began in July following heavy monsoon rains..

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• CANDID CONVERSATIONS

Reporting From the Middle East Frank Gardner OBE, BBC Security Correspondent

The BBC’s Security correspondent, Frank Gardner, speaks with The Majalla about the changing nature of journalism with a special focus on the Middle East, post 9/11. He talks of the conflicts that have plagued the region during the past 20 years with a deep understanding and noticeable warmth for the people and their traditions.

Grace Nicholls

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nspired by a chance meeting with the Arabian explorer Wilfred Thesinger, Gardner went on to study Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. Always the intrepid traveller, he took every opportunity to discover the Middle East and indulge his newfound passion, travelling extensively across the region in his twenties. Gardner graduated in 1984 and then worked for Gulf Exports before joining Saudi International Bank in London in 1986.

Investment banking took him to the Gulf where he spent nine years working for Saudi International Bank and Robert Fleming. Never fully satisfied with his job in banking Gardner quit the world of finance and joined the BBC in 1995.

At first he worked for BBC World as a producer and reporter.

He later became the corporation's first full-time Gulf correspondent. Based in Dubai, he reported across the region.

After being appointed to the position of Middle East correspondent in 2000, based in Cairo, Gardner was well placed to cover the stories that hit our screens in the wake of 9/11.

In 2004, his life changed dramatically when filming for the BBC in a suburb of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. A group of Al-Qaeda gunmen attacked his crew. His cameraman, Simon Cumbers was killed, Gardner was left for dead at the roadside after being shot six times at close range. After months of hospitalization, surgery and rehabilitation, Frank Gardner has had to adapt to life in a wheelchair, his legs partly paralysed by the bullets.

Not one for indulging in self-pity, Gardner has been determined to continue living life as he had done before the attack.

He continues to work for the BBC as their security correspondent. When he’s not busy filming in Afghanistan he’s off travelling with his wife and two young daughters.

Gardner’s reporting has been praised for its objectivity and nuanced understanding of the complexities that characterize the region. His fluency in Arabic has allowed him to get under the skin of this often misunderstood and poorly represented part of the world.

You witnessed the before and after of 9/11. In your personal experience how do you feel journalism has changed since then, especially in respect to reporting in the Middle East?

At the time I was Middle East correspondent for the BBC, based in Cairo. Obviously the immediate reaction that everyone wanted was; go out into the streets of Cairo and ask ordinary Egyptians what they think of 9/11. It was fascinating. There was the whole spectrum of responses, with some people saying

“the Israelis did it,” “the CIA did it,” some people saying “Arabs couldn’t possibly have done this,” other people saying “we feel very sorry for those people but America deserved it,” some people were quietly pleased, some people were appalled.

It definitely sent Middle East journalism amongst Western reporters off on a different tangent, one which has probably skewed a lot of our reporting, certainly in the years immediately after 9/11, because, as I say to people time and time again, yes the Middle East has been plagued by a lot of conflict, but everyday life in the Middle East is not violent, it’s ordinary. People want the same things as we do, they want to put a roof over their heads, have a reasonable standard of living, send their kids to a nice school, have a family and live in peace. There is no difference with what most people want here.

The trouble is, that 9/11 was such a shock to the system both in the Middle East and the rest of the world, that inevitably it sent people digging in areas they perhaps hadn’t dug before. In my case I went up to Buraydah in Al-Qasim province in Saudi Arabia and interviewed people there and tried to understand the phenomenon of Takfeerism, and what would motivate people to go off and join Al-Qaeda. I needed to understand it, to understand their grievances.

Obviously the immediate reaction that everyone wanted was; go out into the streets of Cairo and ask ordinary Egyptians what they think of 9/11. It was fascinating How has journalism changed since then?

Well, I think for a start, from 9/11 onwards, I think a lot of Western journalism has focused too much on the negative, but that in a way is inevitable after a catastrophic thing like 9/11. And then of course after the Iraq invasion in 2003, most Western, certainly American reporters were really mostly interested in what US troops were doing in Iraq. There wasn’t much room in the news bulletins for somebody doing a nice soft feature about the Marsh Arabs.

It is most definitely doing news reporting in Iraq that changed not after 9/11 but after March 2003. I used to go to Iraq when it was under Saddam. Let’s make no mistake, it was not a nice place; it was a brutal, repressive, terrible regime, but for most

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• CANDID CONVERSATIONS

people there was security, of a slightly East German way—as long as you didn’t cross the regime, you were okay. But that changed after 2003 of course, because catastrophic mistakes were made. I’m not going to take a stance either way on this, but obviously plenty of people in history will say that the invasion was a catastrophic mistake. What I would say is that the occupying forces made catastrophic mistakes that made Iraq’s situation far worse than it needed to be. Dismantling the entire backbone of central government in Iraq, allowing the ministries to be gutted and looted, banning any members of the Ba’ath party from any job in government, disbanding the military; it was a no brainer that there was going to be an insurrection after this. That said, Saddam was a monster. Many Arabs say to me, “yes he was a monster, but he was our monster.”

So to come back to journalism, I could travel quite safely, admittedly with a government minder, from Baghdad to Babylon to attend the Babylon festival in 2000, which was a lovely big cultural festival. Well, for years since 2003 it’s been too dangerous, certainly for Western journalists, and also for many Iraqi journalists to travel outside Baghdad without having to take a lot of precautions and that’s terribly sad. Some of the biggest victims in Iraq have been Iraqi journalists; they have paid a very heavy price. They have been fantastically brave, some of them are working for the Iraqi media, some of them have given their lives working for the international media and they have suffered terrible losses. I would pay tribute to them. Iraqi journalists are bold, brave, innovative and they are a beacon of light in what has been a dark world.

Have there ever been times in your journalistic career that you have felt you don’t want to be part of an industry that thrives on sensationalism, especially anti-Islamic sentiment?

At the risk of sounding a little bit of a snob, I’ve always seen myself in a different box from the sort of sensationalist, tabloid journalism that would put a picture of Abu Hamza Al-Masri on the cover and say “Stop this bigot.” That is not what the BBC does. I hope we are as objective as we possibly can be, even to the extent of giving a platform to sometimes some very unsavoury views as long as we challenge them; we should always challenge views, whether they are good or bad. I never saw myself as a part of that, that kind of sensationalist thing. I recognized that there was a problem, but being sensationalist about it is not the way to resolve it. I think it’s terribly sad that when people throw the baby out of the bathwater, I mean I had to deal with this myself, Saudis wrote to me and said, “We would understand if you hated our whole country after what happened to you.” I said, “Well, no of course not.” I’m able to separate extremists from the mainstream.

You said that you see yourself in a separate box. Is that partly because you’re fluent in Arabic and you have a deeper understanding of the culture in the Middle East?

I think it does set me apart; it’s not just the Arabic, although that helps, it’s having lived and spent so much time amongst Arabs in the Arab world that helped. Most of my experiences in the Arab world are not because somebody has sent me there to go and do a job; I was there because I liked being there. It’s an entirely selfish thing. I wasn’t doing it for the greater good of

mankind, I was doing it purely self indulgently because I’d had a really good time in the Middle East. I loved living with the Jordanian Bedu in the South of the country, I had a wonderful time with them. I loved living in Cairo as a student. It was very different going back when I was head of our Cairo bureau because I had the responsibilities of managing an office, the Egyptian staff endlessly queuing up with complaints, my family was ill a lot of the time. I was always being sent away to Gaza, to Tripoli, to Kuwait, so there wasn’t a lot of the time. It wasn’t a very happy time then, but when I lived there as a student I had a great time. I made such good friends in Bahrain, living there in the early 90s, but when I go back now, I still see them, we email each other almost every week. These are friends I made 20 years ago, and they’re Bahrainis. A Kuwaiti friend of mine who I also met 20 years ago, we drove up together in 1991 to the blazing oil wells, we actually crossed over into Iraq, he emailed me this morning.

Oman is an absurdly peaceful, happy country. Yemen for me journalistically is fascinating and I’ve never felt in danger there but the situation I’m afraid has changed Where the Arab world absolutely excels is in the warmth of human contact and that is why I have enjoyed spending so much time in the Middle East. I don’t see it as a job, I don’t see it as a reporting assignment, it is a part of the world that is interesting in its own right, whether or not you’re a reporter, and I suppose I’m being slightly hypocritical because I’ve written a book about it, but when I was having all those experiences, living with the Bedu, living with an Egyptian family, living in Bahrain, living in Dubai, I didn’t think at the time I was going to write a book. I only did a book because I got shot.

If you were to go back to the Gulf tomorrow and ask people how they felt towards the West, how do you think attitudes would have changed compared to seven years ago after the Iraq invasion?

I think the combined effect of the second Palestinian intifada which started in September 2000 followed by the operation to expel the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in late 2001 followed by the Iraq invasion of 2003, the combined effect of those three long term events have definitely cooled attitudes of many Gulf people and in the wider Arab world towards the West. My experience is, prior to 9/11, that the default behavior of people in the Arab world towards a young Western visitor is one of friendliness and hospitality. If you talk to people who have gone as tourists to Egypt or Syria they’ll say that that still is the case. I’ve never met someone who has been to Syria and not had a good time. I’ve had some tricky times there just because a taxi driver has taken the wrong route or something like that! But the cumulative effect of those three events has definitely put a frost on the normal friendship that people would want to feel towards the West.

Some people will go back further and think of the Arab Revolt, the so-called betrayal of Lawrence, or even further to the

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Crusades. For extremists, the Takfeeris, the Crusades were yesterday. They see everything that the West does politically in the Middle East as an extension of the Crusades. Al-Qaeda’s word for all Westerners in the Arabian Peninsula is “Crusaders,” which is quite absurd. Mrs. Miggins in retirement goes for a nice little cultural tour of Oman and the idea that she is a Crusader is just completely absurd. But that is how some people see it.

Again focusing on the Gulf, how invested do you think the locals feel in the wider region, for example the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Iraq war. Are they a bit bored of it, do they want to set themselves apart?

I think most definitely the Arab world is absolutely bored of violence. Let me explain that: They have had more than their fair share of conflict, there have been all the Arab-Israeli wars, the Lebanon war of 2006, the Iran-Iraq war which dragged on for eight long years and killed nearly a million people. We forget this, but for an entire decade in the 1980s, the Gulf was dominated by that conflict which was becoming increasingly dangerous with the two countries starting to pass scud missiles at each other and doing air raids on oil terminals way down in the south in the Gulf. At the time Saddam’s regime had a nuclear weapons program; he was working towards getting a nuclear bomb. Can you imagine how devastating that would have been? Almost the only saving grace from the 2003 Iraq invasion is that there was no longer any possibility of Saddam Hussein’s murderous and evasive regime ever getting their hands on the weapons. But, my goodness, they have had to pay a tough price for it.

I think most people in the Gulf feel that this is all an extension of a very unjust US policy, which is to the detriment of Muslims, Palestinians and Arabs, most of them do resent it.

How do you think the Sultanate of Oman can be used as an example to improve the situation in neighboring Yemen, as both are traditionally tribal societies?

They are chalk and cheese those two countries, they are very different. Oman is an absurdly peaceful, happy country. Yemen for me journalistically is fascinating and I’ve never felt in danger there but the situation I’m afraid has changed. It is the new base for Al-Qaeda in the Middle East. It has all sorts of problems, not all of which are to do with terrorism. They have problems with oil running out, water running out and the population exploding.

I’m not sure that the Omani model would work in Yemen. A lot of Yemeni society is still quite isolated, there are too many guns in hands. Outside the cities everybody has got a Kalashnikov and it’s part of the culture to go and blaze this thing off.

In the 1980s I went up to Sa’ada with Yemenis and they would just get out of the car and say, “let’s have some fun,” and shot at a load of rocks. Of course, the bullet has to come down and then a farmer runs out complaining that two of his sheep were shot. It’s a gun culture. Even in the cities people carry the jambiya, I would say it’s a ceremonial dagger, but they do stab each other with them in fights.

Also qat is an enormous problem there. It’s part of the culture and traditions of Yemeni society and it’s partly a way that they solve problems, by having qat chewing sessions in the afternoon if a tribe is in conflict with the government. They will Issue 1556 • September 2010

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sit down and chew over the qat together and come to some kind of resolution. As a national problem qat is pretty big; it’s expensive and wasteful. Yemen is a poor country and it can’t afford this, but take the qat away and a lot of Yemenis would say, “what else is there to live for?”

When you visit dangerous places how do you draw the very fine line between a calculated risk and one that could potentially put your life in danger?

I’m all for being slightly adventurous but not taking crazy risks.

I do know reporters who do take crazy risks. Somebody, for example, was embedded with US marines when they retook Fallujah, which was an incredibly violent, horrific and bloody battle a few years ago in Iraq. I would never want to do that, even before I was in a wheelchair.

The way you might calculate it may be, do I want to get on this helicopter to get from A to B in Afghanistan? What I need to know is: Has anyone ever shot at this helicopter on this route, is it known whether the insurgents have surface to air missiles in this area? What’s been the pattern of activity in this area? In exactly the same way as when you’re crossing a road, is this a dangerous crossing? It’s never going to be one hundred percent safe because someone could be coming 100 miles per hour, drunk on the wrong side of the road! But you take a calculated risk every time you get into a car, a plane or a train.

Would you feel happy getting onto a mainstream airline like British Airways or Lufthansa to fly somewhere, yes. Would you be happy getting onto some really dodgy, Chinese provincial airline that is poorly maintained in the middle of a typhoon, no. It’s all about probabilities. Of course it’s down to chance in the end but you can to some extent shape your own destiny, I don’t believe you can shape it completely. I’m not particularly religious but ultimately that’s up to God. You can improve your chances or worsen them.

A lot of people say, “you’re insane going to Afghanistan, it’s so dangerous!” No, not really. When I report from Afghanistan I report from a big base that’s the size of Heathrow airport. Yes, there are rockets coming in pretty much every other day but they are small rockets, and the chances of getting hit by one of them is very, very small. That is an acceptable risk to take. What would be crazy for me to do would be to helicopter into some tiny fire base that’s being attacked the whole time in somewhere like Sangin, in Afghanistan. It would be stupid for me, in a wheelchair to do something like that. I don’t want to take that kind of risk. I’ve got a wife and family, why would I do that?

I’ve got to push the envelope a little bit to do my job. I’ve never wanted to be an armchair reporter, let alone a wheelchair reporter, but I am what I am and I’ve got to make the most of what I’ve got.

Do you ever want to swap this life for a more quiet one back in the financial sector where you started out?

No, I’m not even going to let you finish that sentence! The people that I worked with in finance, I think they all believed that I’d come back to it very quickly and they were surprised when I didn’t, when they saw that I really, really enjoy what I do. I love journalism. I still get a real kick out of broadcast journalism, the thrill of being on air, broadcasting live, to millions of people on a moving story is unbeatable. It’s such a buzz.

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• CANDID CONVERSATIONS

Talks, Talks and More Talks

Jalal Talibani, president of Iraq Seven months after the Iraqi parliamentary elections, which produced no clear victor, the formation of an Iraqi government remains at a standstill.

Image © Getty Images

Hamza Mustafa

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s violence continues to erupt in the streets, Iyad Allawi’s Al-Iraqiyya alliance and outgoing Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s State of Law bloc battle it out for political power. Both blocs claim their constitutional right to form a coalition government. Allawi insists that Al-Iraqiyya is given the first chance due to its initial twoseat victory over Al-Iraqiyya, and Al-Maliki’s bloc, after having merged with the third-placed Iraqi National Alliance (INA) and other Shi’a groups (post-opening of the new parliament in June) to form the National Alliance (NA), has claimed his coalition’s right to form the new government.

Though the constitution is ambiguous as to which bloc has the legal mandate to form a coalition government, the parliamentary majority now held by the National Alliance, which has a total of 159 seats in the 325-seat parliament, presents what may be the most expedient option, especially considering the rise in violence due to a continuing power vacuum. However, the recent decision by the INA to halt talks with State of Law members aimed at selecting a prime minister represents another serious setback. Until the State of Law nominates a prime minister other than Nouri Al-Maliki, INA members will not resume talks, thus providing more time for Allawi to form his own majority coalition.

In this interview, President Jalal Talibani speaks to The Majalla about the complexities of the ongoing political stalemate, his lack of constitutional power to force a resolution, and the prospects of remaining president for another term.

The controversy over what constitutes a majority in parliamentary elections has been the reason behind the five-month delay of government formation after the elections. How do you see this?

Parliament should decide what constitutes a majority bloc. This would come after a Supreme Court decision, defined by Article 76 of the constitution as the list that gains the highest number of votes, or the parliamentary bloc that holds the majority in the opening session of parliament. President Massoud Barzani and I had earlier tasked Al-Iraqiyya led by Dr. Iyad Allawi with forming the government when it was the majority bloc. However, neither the Supreme Court nor parliament have made Al-Iraqiyya the majority bloc.

But the dispute between Al-Iraqiyya and the newly formed National Alliance is the reason behind the continuing crisis?

An agreement on a government agenda should have been reached first, because this is the most difficult part of the process. Then come other things, including the issue of the three presidencies, which was submitted by the Kurdistan Alliance in the negotiation paper to the different political blocs. Nevertheless, we are still faced with the challenge of choosing the prime minister. Both Al-Iraqiyya and the National Alliance consider themselves to be the majority bloc tasked with choosing a prime minister. If they do not reach an agreement, they must refer the case to the Supreme Court.

What is your role in resolving the crisis, especially that, in addition to your position as president of Iraq, you enjoy a well-respected status among all political blocs?

In practical terms, now I do not have the constitutional power

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to select anyone to form the government. The newly elected president has the constitutional authority to select the candidate from the majority bloc in parliament.

Of course, I am proud of my good relations with everyone, as I have stood by them all, including Al-Iraqiyya when I said that there were no restrictions preventing Dr. Iyad Allawi from becoming prime minister. I see that it is not right to restrict any of the candidates—Allawi, Al-Maliki, Al-Ja’afari or Adel Abdul-Mahdi. I would like to point out here that I do not interfere, but will continue to do all that I can to resolve the crisis as soon as possible.

It is noteworthy that there is near-consensus on you remaining president for another term. The Kurdish Change List is the only one to oppose such a decision.

How do you explain this?

They do not take this stance any more. I consider this natural, as the Change List has dissented from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which I lead; consequently, it is natural to stand in an opposing position.

Parliament should decide what constitutes a majority bloc. This would come after a Supreme Court decision, defined by Article 76 of the constitution as the list that gains the highest number of votes Are you concerned about the US withdrawal from Iraq since Iraqi troops are not yet prepared in terms of armament?

No, I'm not concerned about the US withdrawal from Iraq.

This withdrawal has been agreed upon in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the US. Also, it does not mean that the US is abandoning its commitments to Iraq.

There were differences between you and Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. How is the situation now?

I'm not speaking about an outgoing government. However, it is necessary to explain the constitution. There is a problem in specifying authorities. So far it is not constitutionally clear as to the powers of the prime minister or the cabinet. The relationship between the president and the prime minister is also unclear. These issues will remain after the formation of the government and need either a constitutional amendment or regulation bylaws.

You have good relations with Iran and much has been said about Iran’s role in Iraqi affairs. How do you see this?

Let me tell you something, the Iranians have asked me to interfere in resolving the Shi’ite-Shi’ite dispute. They preferred not to interfere in the dispute between both coalitions, and asked me to interfere. Yes, I have good relations with Iran and also have good relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Syria; all these are neighboring countries to Iraq and have differences with the government.

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• COUNTRY BRIEF

Turkey Timeline 1922 The Treaty of Lausanne settles the boundaries for modern day Turkey and leads to international recognition of the sovereignty of the Republic of Turkey as the successor state to the Ottoman Empire. Not long after, the Ottoman Sultanate is abolished.

Image © iStockphoto

1923 Turkey is declared a republic by the Grand National Assembly. Kemal Mustapha Atatürk is Turkey’s first president.

1924 1928 Atatürk seeks to codify his vision for a contemporary Turkish civilization. The Caliphate is abolished, the Latin alphabet replaces the Arabic one, the Fez hat is prohibited, and the Turkish constitution is amended with the clause stating that Islam is the state religion removed.

1938 President Atatürk dies.

1950 Turkey holds its first open multi-party elections.

Atatürk’s People’s Republican Party cedes power to the Democratic Party after 27 years in power.

1952 Turkey joins NATO, abandoning Atatürk’s neutralist stance.

1963 Turkey signs an association agreement with the European Economic Community (ECC), marking the start of closer ties with Europe.

1984 The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) launches an insurrection in the southeast of the country, which lasts 17 years.

1987 Turkey applies for full ECC membership.

1996 Necmettin Erbakan’s Welfare Party forms the first proIslamic government since 1923 but comes under pressure from the secular military and collapses after just a year.

Image © Getty Images

1999 The PKK insurgency in the southeast is dealt a crippling blow with the incarceration of its leader Abdallah Ocalan.

2002 Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) wins a landslide election victory. They promise that their policies will not compromise Turkey’s secular identity.

2008 Parliament approves a constitutional amendment to allow women to wear headscarves on university campuses. There are calls for the AKP to be banned, and a petition to the Constitutional Court only narrowly fails.

2010 Istanbul court indicts 196 people of plotting to overthrow the AKP government. Hundreds of people are already on trial over separate alleged coup attempts, but three years after the first official investigation no convictions have been made.

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Key Facts

Image © iStockphoto

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urkey’s history is as complex as it is remarkable.

Formed from the remnants of a cosmopolitan Muslim empire, Turkey emerged during the inter-war years as a modern secular nation state. However, this extraordinary transformation was not achieved overnight, nor was it achieved without conflict. Two movements in particular have attempted to alter Turkey’s nationalist and secular agenda.

Turkish Islamists have repeatedly opposed the state’s pro-Western and pro-secular proclivities. Meanwhile, Kurdish nationalists have lobbied for minority status with improved rights and at times have called for total independence. Since the early 90s the tensions between the pro-secular elite, and the Kurdish and Islamist movements have become especially pronounced.

The Ottomans Once the temporal and spiritual rulers of Islam, the Ottoman Sultans governed a vast and cosmopolitan empire for over six centuries. At its height, their empire boasted 29 provinces and spanned three continents, with modern day Turkey the heart of the empire. The role accorded to Islam during the empire’s heyday was to maintain moral order. In this respect, the ulema were responsible for most forms of education and justice. Religious notables also played a role in governing, since up until the 1800s, the Ottoman government was very small and did not have the manpower to deal directly with its citizens. Instead, the Sultan had to rely on religious leaders within individual communities to act as intermediaries. But Islam was also an important aspect of Ottoman identity. The Ottomans defined themselves as the protectors of Orthodox Islam in the world; and for 600 years Ottoman Sultans held the position of Caliph.

However, during the 1800s, European forces began encroaching into the Middle East and North Africa. This marked the start of Ottoman decline. It also prompted a cultural shift within the Ottoman elite with decreasing importance accorded to religion.

The superior military and economic strength of European powers quickly reduced the Ottoman Empire to the status of a semicolony. In order to maintain even a semblance of autonomy Ottoman elites were forced to modernize the military, and to reform their economic and legal systems along Western lines.

Between 1826 and 1906 the reforms or tanzimat were essentially geared towards strengthening the army. However, there was also at this time a movement to secularize institutions and reduce the influence of the ulema. European influence in the region also prompted a movement to improve the status of Ottoman Christians. The decline of the Islamic establishment coupled with the increasing wealth and influence of the Christian community provoked a series of backlashes from the Muslim population, including an attempted coup d’etat in 1859 and communal violence in Syria in 1860. Traditionalists argued that the best way to combat the European threat was a return to the pristine Islam of the Prophet Muhammad, not the adaptation of European institutions and technology. However, by the end of the century most people were convinced of the need to modernize, and the religious class found itself with little support.

Although in decline for much of the 19th century, the Ottomans sealed their fate at the outbreak of the First World War when they made the fatal decision of supporting Nazi Germany. As a result, the Ottomans lost vast swathes of their territory when the allies prevailed. In the bargaining that followed, the allies began partitioning Ottoman territory, provoking a back-

Capital: Ankara President: President Abdullah Gül (since 28 August 2007) Head of Government: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (since 14 March 2003) Geography Area: 779, 452 sq km Border countries: Armenia 268 km, Azerbaijan 9 km, Bulgaria 240 km, Georgia 252 km, Greece 206 km, Iran 499 km, Iraq 352 km, Syria 822 km PEOPLE Population: 74.8 million (UN, 2009) Ethnic Groups: Turkish 70-75%, Kurdish 18%, other minorities 7-12% (2008 est.)

Religions: Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews) Languages: Turkish (official), Kurdish, other minority languages ECONOMY GDP: $874.5 billion (2009 est.)

GDP – composition by sector: agriculture: 9.3%, industry: 25.6%, services: 65.1% Inflation rate (consumer prices): 6.3% (2009 est.)

Unemployment rate: 14.1% (2009 est.)

Population below poverty line: 17.11% (2008) lash amongst Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal. The nationalists succeeded in negotiating a new treaty with the allies, the Treaty of Lausanne, which led to international recognition of the sovereignty of the Republic of Turkey as the successor state to the Ottoman Empire. In 1922, just after the treaty was signed, the Grand National Assembly in Ankara proclaimed the abolition of the Sultanate. Turkey, however, was shaken. Having nearly become European spoils the nationalists were eager to forge a strong state with a powerful sense of nationalism.

Atatürk – Father of Modern Turkey Since the Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923 it has been most profoundly defined by one man’s ideology, Mustapha Kemal, known as Atatürk—father of the Turks. Atatürk’s vision for Turkey was to convert the remnants of the multicultural Ottoman Empire into a powerful secular nation state. And it was based on his twin principles of nationalism and secularism that the Turkish Republic was established. As president of Turkey, Atatürk instituted a series of economic, political and social reforms designed to mould Turkey into a European style republic.

Eager to do away with institutions associated with the ancient regime, Atatürk abolished the Caliphate in 1924, and encouraged a form of secularism based on the French notion of laicite.

This meant the abolition of the Sunni religious establishment as well as banning religious sects and brotherhoods. Atatürk also promoted a French-inspired nationalism where minorities were 51

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It was not until 1950 that the Republican People’s Party lost its monopoly on power when Turkey’s Democratic Party rose to power in the country’s first flirtation with multi-party politics Although Atatürk established Turkey as a parliamentary republic, it was in practice an autocracy. Atatürk’s Republican People’s Party dominated the Turkish political scene for a quarter of a century, and when opposition parties became too much of a threat they closed them down. In implementing his ideals Atatürk relied heavily on the military. During the Ottoman period, the military with its secular schools had been the most Westernized of Ottoman institutions. In this respect, officers were seen as reformists par excellence. The army not only helped initiate modernizing reforms, they were also expected to protect them, acting as the ultimate guardians of the republic. This military support for the integrity of Kemalist ideals remains a key political dynamic even today.

From Cult of Personality to Political Plurality It was not until 1950 that the Republican People’s Party lost its monopoly on power when Turkey’s Democratic Party rose to power in the country’s first flirtation with multi-party politics.

This marked the dawn of a new era in Turkish politics, which would see a proliferation of political parties and open elections.

However, the transition from autocracy to multi-party state would not be plain sailing and between 1950 and 1980 political inertia prompted three military coups. But in each instance, the Turkish military would quickly restore a civilian government.

This was in keeping with Kemalist ideals, which stressed military detachment from politics in order to preserve professionalism and maintain its status as the ultimate guardian of the republic.

During these turbulent years, the key political division reflected the cold war dynamics elsewhere in the world. Although Islamists and Kurds were still dissatisfied by the secular and nationalist identity of Turkey, these currents were subsumed by Cold War politics. The Islamist movement supporting the anticommunist right, whilst the Kurdish dissent became part of the socialist left.

Increasing Challenges to Kemalism In spite of Atatürk’s efforts to create a unified nation, he failed to create a society. Turkey is still struggling to reconcile the

diversity inherited from its Ottoman past. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union this has become increasingly evident. In the case of Turkey’s Kurds this has seen a protracted insurgency in the southeast of the country, lasting from 1984 to 1999. The insurgency has borne a human and economic cost. It also led to the derailment of Turkey’s European agenda. The mid 90s saw the Kemalist republic threatened by perhaps an even more potent force: political Islam. And in 1996 the sweeping success of the Islamic Welfare Party in the parliamentary elections caused shockwaves amongst secular civil and military elites.

Fearing for the integrity of Kemalist ideals, the military issued a set of demands to the Welfare Party. By 1997 they had caused the downfall of the Welfare Party in what many have called a post-modern coup. Subsequently, Turkey’s Constitutional Court banned the party and its leader, Necmettin Erbakan, from politics. From 1997 until 2002 a series of secular militarysupported coalitions governed Turkey. However, Islamic-based parties rose to prominence once more in 2002 when the governing coalition was accused of corruption.

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) The rise of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has not provoked quite the same backlash from secular elites. More moderate than previous Islamic-based parties, the AKP has a strong EU vocation. This stance has found favor with the Kemalist establishment as well as amongst the business community, middle class and liberal intellectuals. Since their victory in 2002 the AKP have radically reformed the judicial system, abolishing the death penalty and overhauling the penal code; they have also targeted civil-military relations for an overhaul. These reforms have been designed to improve Turkey’s EU candidacy, and so far they have certainly enhanced the country’s bid. The latest efforts towards EU integration has seen the proposed reform of Turkey’s constitution. But the reforms, which will give the state more power over judicial and top military appointments, have provoked a backlash from the secular elite. There have also been repeated clashes between AKP and the Constitutional Court over the issue, and in 2008 the AKP only narrowly escaped a ban for “anti-secular activities.” There is a fear amongst secularists that the reforms will strengthen the AKP’s power over the judiciary, allowing them greater scope to Islamize. The AKP, however, insists that the reforms are necessary to advance democracy in Turkey. As Turkey inches towards a referendum on these reforms, the debate surrounding the constitutional reforms reflects the country’s long-standing identity struggle, between Kemal’s secular Turkish citizen and Turkey’s rich cultural and religious traditions.

Image © iStockphoto

afforded no recognition in an attempt to homogenize the nation.

In foreign policy too, Atatürk sought to distance Turkey from its recent past. He turned away from the Middle East and began establishing alliances with the West. In his bid to create the Turkish citizen Atatürk wanted to forge a new identity, which meant passing over the region’s cultural richness.

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Expressionism, Neo-Realism, and Iran Marjane Satrapi

Image © Getty Images

• THE ARTS

Marjane Satrapi's stunning art has always been firmly rooted in her own experience growing up in a politically tumultuous Iran, and in the unique story arc that has defined her life. As intensely personal as her artistic narrative may be, her visual representation of that narrative actually draws upon the aesthetic of both German Expressionist and Italian Neo-Realist cinematic movements. As disparate as those two movements may seem, when Marjani cuts and pastes them together, an entirely organic and compelling form emerges before the viewer.

Amar Toor Marjane Satrapi has been publishing graphic novels since the beginning of the new millennium. But it wasn’t until the 2007 Cannes Film Festival that the Paris-based Iranian launched herself on to the global stage with the premiere of her animated film Persepolis.

The film, based on her hugely popular series of graphic novels, tells Satrapi’s own story of growing up as a young, rebellious girl during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and of returning years later to a drastically different homeland. The film quickly garnered widespread critical acclaim, and, with an Oscar nomination to her name, Marjane Satrapi suddenly found herself at the forefront of independent cinema.

On 19 July, Satrapi and co-director Vincent Paronnaud will once again return to the studio to begin work on their next big-screen production—a live-action adaptation of her graphic novel Chicken With Plums.

And, as she so masterfully did with her on-screen version of Persepolis, Satrapi seems determined to explore new boundaries in a contemporary cinematic landscape she considers stifled by skewed, corporate ideas of what’s “new.”

“Where is the room for innovation?” the artist rhetorically asked in May, when formally announcing her upcoming film.

“There is less and less space for projects that are not like anything else. For instance, there is this theory that the cinema of tomorrow will only be in 3D. I am in 3D: that doesn't make it interesting.

“Whenever cinema goes through a period of change, people talk about 3D,” she argues. “It happened in the 1950s and the 1980s.

But 3D was invented in the time of the Lumière brothers.”

Yet in cinema, as in every other art form, the real or perceived originality of any one idea is always restricted by the works, thoughts and aesthetic iterations that precede it. And Marjane Satrapi, by her own admission, is certainly no exception. As she stated in a 2008 interview—and as famed film critic Andrew Sarris noted in his review for the New York Observer—Persepolis boasts indelible influences from both Italian Neo-Realist and German Expressionist cinematic movements.

Ostensibly, the combination seems somewhat incongruous.

Post-World War II Neo-Realist directors like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini took to the streets to shoot films—often with amateur actors—in an effort to render their works as quasi-fictional documentaries. By shooting films in recognizable settings, and with everyday actors, Neo-Realist directors emphasized the very hard reality of the social, political and economic ills they sought to expose to wider audiences.

German Expressionists, on the other hand, almost exclusively limited themselves to the studio, where they could create wildly

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After having traversed such a non-linear personal trajectory, it’s no surprise that Satrapi would be artistically drawn to Expressionist films. One need only glance at a few frames of Persepolis to see fossilized remnants of the exaggerated, stylized set designs in the classic 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Satrapi’s narrative may be more tempered, her characters less tortured, but she still manages to inject a healthy undercurrent of oblique uncertainty into her two-dimensional renderings.

In person, however, the director is decidedly straightforward.

As with Italian Neo-Realist mise-en-scene, there’s something endearingly candid and genuine about Satrapi’s public demeanor. She’s notoriously hesitant to give interviews, but when she does, she doesn’t waste a single breath. Her lunar eyes wax and wane throughout the course of carving out an idea, while her demonstrative gestures act almost like waves, cyclically pushing her thoughts ashore.

I’m not the voice of a generation, I’m not a political representative, I’m a human being that was born in a certain place and time, and I wrote an extremely subjective point of view that was my memory of that period

fantastical and slightly unsettling dreamscapes. (Satrapi and Paronnaud, it should be noted, will reportedly shoot Chicken with Plums in Berlin’s famed Babelsberg Studio, where Fritz Lang produced his masterpiece, Metropolis).

Expressionist directors, like their younger, Neo-Realist brethren, also derived much of their filmic aesthetic from their socially and politically tumultuous environs. At the turn of the century, directors like Lang and F.W. Murnau found themselves at the cusp of a cultural revolution, fueled by an impending global conflict of unprecedented scale. As sociologist and art critic Wolfgang Rothke writes, “Young people were angered and repelled by the all too contradictory aspects of feudal aristocracy, economic expansionism and unquestioning belief in scientific progress.”

Much like Lang and Murnau, Satrapi’s life has been marked by similar social and political upheaval. She fled Iran twice, as she so heartbreakingly depicts in Persepolis, only to return as an adult, disillusioned with the acidic fruits that the 1979 Revolution bore.

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Much of what she says, meanwhile, is often imbued with a sometimes shocking tinge of frankness. As an unabashed public critic of George W. Bush, an outspoken advocate for Iranian opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in 2009, and an almost comically enthusiastic smoker, Satrapi clearly isn’t one to cloak her principles behind veils of diplomacy.

Listening to her espouse her stance on politics or gender equality, one even gets the impression that the world of Marjane Satrapi, like her Persepolis landscape, is limited to blackand-white.

"In Iran, if a man touches you, you have to hit him. If someone touches me up, I punch him in the mouth,” she told the Independent in 2006. “It's that simple.”

As forthright and “simple” as her philosophy may seem, the most striking aspect of Satrapi’s worldview is actually her unmitigated rejection of absolutism. However assertively she may declare an opinion, whether in film or in person, it’s usually tinged with an aura of humor, a reassuring disclaimer of selfawareness that precludes anyone from taking her too seriously.

Much like her Expressionist forefathers, Satrapi’s judiciously implemented dry humor keeps the audience perpetually offguard, never allowing the viewer to get lulled into digesting her images as political Gospel.

“I’m not the voice of a generation, I’m not a political representative,” she told Time Out Dubai in March. “I’m a human being that was born in a certain place and time, and I wrote an extremely subjective point of view that was my memory of that period.”

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• THE ARTS

makes Satrapi’s work so artistically compelling. She may show us the world through a black-and-white lens, and every character, word, or political circumstance that passes through that lens may be based in her own “Neo-Realist” existence. But there’s always an Expressionist counterweight, an open-ended question of disjointed causality that paradoxically brings Satrapi’s images into greater, three-dimensional relief, while simultaneously blurring her binary hues into myriad shades of grey.

Satrapi certainly doesn’t use her art to reinvent the cinematic wheel. But she does make it gyrate in new and viscerally puissant ways. At a time when mainstream cinema appears caught in an artistic quagmire of corporate interest, it will likely be people like Marjane Satrapi who shift the medium’s gears out of neutral, and push it ever closer to new visual precipices.

As every great auteur before her, Satrapi seems to possess a preternatural understanding of what it means to be “new” in a field where the concept of originality takes on a connotation entirely divergent from every other arena. Marjane Satrapi can’t reinvent her own history, and she can’t recount it with new artistic devices.

What she can do, though, is pick up the bits and pieces of her forerunners, mix them together with her own personal narrative, and carve out a new corner in the constantly shifting mosaic of contemporary cinema. For, as Jean-Luc Godard famously said, “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

This article was first published in The Majalla 19 August 2010

Chicken With Plums Marjane Satrapi has carved something of a niche for herself, with her starkly expressive block prints, emotively portraying her own experiences as a woman growing up in Iran. In Chicken with Plums, taking place in Tehran, 1958, Satrapi paints a complex picture of her great-uncle Nasser Ali Khan, who finds out that his beloved tar, an instrument for which he has given up love, is irreparably damaged.

The story follows Khan during the last eight days of his life, as he lies with his arms wrapped around his broken instrument despairingly waiting to die.

As the pieces of his life fall together through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, the reader slowly comes to understand his decision to die, while also being forced to pose the question of what makes life worth living.

Satrapi’s vivid graphic novel is now being made into a film at the Babelsberg studios in Berlin. It will star the Iranian expatriate Golshifteh Farahani, who left her home country in 2008 following her appearance in Ridley Scott’s “Body of Lies.” The announcement of Farahani’s participation in the project comes after the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance recently warned Iranian cineastes about unauthorized cooperation in foreign productions. It remains to be seen if Chicken with Plums will be granted the necessary licenses to premiere in Iran.

Foreign Affairs, Familiar Preoccupations Certified Copy, a film by Abbas Kiarostami After years of working exclusively in Iran, prolific filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami premiered his first “foreign” film at Cannes last month. Certified Copy was shot in Italy and features Juliette Binoche and William Shimmel exchanging thoughts on the value of imitation in both art and life. But despite the obvious discrepancies in setting and style, Kiarostami conveys a continuity with his past work by evoking themes, philosophies, and preoccupations that he has contemplated throughout his long and successful career.

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian For over 40 years, Abbas Kiarostami has been known for his prolific contribution to Iranian cinema. According to historian Hamid Dabashi, Kiarostami and his fellow filmmakers of the Iranian New Wave played a crucial role in the development of Iranian society in the 1970s because their arty, political films created a national cinema that gave people “access to modernity.”

Kiarostami’s characters stood out especially: human, too human, but strikingly relatable, they navigated a distinctly Iranian backdrop of rural earthquakes, urban traffic jams, and poetic Persian landscapes that his audience recognized as their own.

Because of this decidedly Iran-centric career, commentators were quick to make an issue of the fact that Certified Copy, which premiered at Cannes last month, was the cineaste’s first picture to be filmed outside his native country. Kiarostami’s decision to shoot French actress Juliette Binoche and the British baritone William Shimmel in Italy was seen as a turning point; paired with his outspoken stance against the detention of fellow filmmaker and former student Jafar Panahi, it left many people wondering whether the turmoil back home could finally be driving him away.

Indeed, it is not easy for filmmakers—particularly those in such great demand—to create work that seamlessly fits the Islamic Republic’s definition of an acceptable picture. Fame, success, and international exposure only pose further challenges. When Taste of Cherry won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1997, Kiarostami kissed Catherine Deneuve on the cheek after she presented him with his award. The devout Iranian government was shocked by this gesture—he had no business touching a woman who was not his wife!—and the incident prevented Taste of Cherry, which is largely considered his best film to date, from being released in his home country. Though there was no such scandal this year, Certified Copy has met a similar fate (the official line is that Binoche’s dresses leave too little to the imagination.) But Kiarostami insists that he has no interest in leaving Iran for good. “And at my age,” he told the press shortly after last summer’s contested presidential election, “I’m not going to change my mind,” insisting that his best work is completed where his roots are.

Nevertheless, Certified Copy demonstrates that Kiarostami’s attachment to his homeland has no bearing on his abilities to direct abroad and appeal to foreign—though, admittedly not mainstream—sensitivities. Filmed in Tuscany, with dialogues in

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English, French and Italian, it could pass for a homegrown French film in a heartbeat.

Those who mock French cinema for depicting little more than a bunch of people sitting around a table and arguing will be disappointed with Certified Copy; there isn’t much of a plot, the dialogue can be tedious, and most of the action takes place in a small village. But with its philosophical undertones, its characters’ ambiguous marital relations, and some compellingly convoluted exchanges between the leading characters, Certified Copy makes for a sustained intellectual and aesthetic treat.

The film opens at a book reading in Florence. Elle (Binoche) struggles to keep her son quiet as she listens to author James Miller (Shimmel) read from his latest book, a tract on the value of artistic reproductions, or copies. “A copy leads us to the original” declares the author, turning Walter Benjamin’s idea, that reproductions harm the original, on its head. Elle coquettishly passes him a note through a friend, feigning interest, perhaps even a crush, and they meet in a Tuscan village the next day. An unsettling awkwardness soon sets into their interactions; to reverse the cliché of star-crossed lovers instantly feeling like they’ve known each other their whole lives, Elle and Miller act like complete strangers who happen to have shared a bed—and, as it turns out, had a child together. There is no lack of drama—their

There isn’t much of a plot, the dialogue can be tedious, and most of the action takes place in a small village. But with its philosophical undertones, its characters’ ambiguous marital relations, and some compellingly convoluted exchanges between the leading characters, Certified Copy makes for a sustained intellectual and aesthetic treat Issue 1556 • September 2010

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conversations regularly deteriorate into emotional breakdowns—or humor, largely due to Binoche’s erratic, almost possessed charm. The couple act out predetermined parts— of strangers, of lovers, of husband and wife, of enemies—in French and English, switching roles and languages with a striking fluency, sharing details about their past which complicate, rather than clarify. They re-experience the history of their relationship in a reversed, disjointed way; we are shown current reproductions of their former selves.

By the end of Certified Copy, Kiarostami has us convinced that the more we learn, the less we know. This situates the film neatly within Kiarostami’s repertoire.

The blurry line between truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, the self and its representations, have been ongoing themes in the director’s work; he is famously quoted for having said that “we can never get close to the truth except through lying.” In Shirin (2008), he filmed young women’s faces as they watched a cinematographic adaptation of the Persian myth Khoshrow and Shirin. The film consists of the narration from the un-pictured film, and its viewer’s expressions, which vary from spellbound to incredulous, from joyful to devastated.

This forces us to take these emotions at (literally) face value, unconcerned with whether they are real or fabricated.

In Close Up (1990)—a true story in which all the actors play themselves—a young cinema fan convinces people that he is a famous filmmaker. He is put on trial for lying, and the film switches to documentary-mode, covering the actual trial in the courtroom, where he explains that he never felt like he was experiencing the world authentically until he pretended to be a filmmaker. The irony is that by lying about his existence, he ends up fulfilling his wish of “truly” living, behind a camera, for an audience. Today, in Certified Copy, Kiarostami has revisited role-play once again through the interactions of a man and a woman whose rapport defies any logical structure that cinema has previously assigned to romantic relationships.

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian – a writer and translator based between Geneva, Paris and New York. Her work has appeared in Harper's, n+1, the Abu Dhabi Review and Times Higher Education. She currently attends Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism with a concentration in Investigative Journalism.

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My Master, My Friend In Jail with Nazim Hikmet by Orhan Kemal Saqi Books, 2010 In a dank bug-infested prison some 50 miles from Istanbul, aspiring writer Orhan Kemal meets one of Turkey’s most famous poets, Nazim Hikmet. For Orhan, this is the meeting of his lifetime. For Nazim, this is an opportunity to shape who was to become one of Turkey’s most “foremost writers.”

Orhan Kemal’s memoir, In Jail with Nazim Hikmet, gives us insight into the lives of ordinary Turkish people during the long and painful period of nation building aggressively imposed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, leader of the new Turkish republic.

At the same time, we are drawn into prison life and the close friendships that make it bearable.

“Your master’s coming.”

“No,” Orhan said, “I don’t have a master or anyone of the kind.”

“Look at this, then. Nazim Hikmet. Isn’t he your master?”

Indeed, Nazim Hikmet, counted among the most acclaimed Turkish poets of his day, would soon become Orhan’s master and his friend, so much so that Nazim wrote in a letter addressed to Orhan dated 1947, “Sometimes I feel the sadness of separation from you very acutely; sometimes I feel the joy of thinking of you all being very happy. Your pictures and your photographs are all there at my bedside.”

Orhan looked at the name printed on the register, confirming the arrival of Nazim to Bursa prison some weeks later. Bursting with the joy of a child, Orhan couldn’t help but spread the word of Nazim’s arrival to his fellow inmates.

Everyone, it seemed, had a story to tell; he was the kind of man whose presence inspired action.

For most of us, the idea that we would have the chance to meet our most revered and respected role model is impossible to imagine. Immediately humbled in the presence of such a person, one would feel it difficult to know just what to do. Orhan was no different. When pressed by a friend about his work on the first day of their meeting, the young writer told Nazim that he had penned nothing more than “scribbles” of poetry, when in fact he had written prolifically (but not necessarily competently) prior to his conviction, and also during his sentence, the first two years of which he had already served.

It was not long before Nazim took it upon himself to instruct Orhan with the goal of enhancing his education and improving his writing, eventually convincing Orhan to give up poetry in favor of prose. With one of the most prominent poets in the country as his mentor, Orhan progressed quickly, becoming, as Nazim had predicted, “… one of the

foremost writers of my country.” By the year of his death in 1970, he had published 28 novels, 18 short story collections, two plays and two volumes of memoirs, as well as a book of essays on the technique of writing film scripts.

Orhan Kemal’s prison memoir, In Jail with Nazim Hikmet, provides us with a valuable insight into the development of Orhan as a writer, as well as the political and social context in which the two men lived. Translated and introduced by Bengisu Rona, Reader in Turkish at the School of Oriental and African Studies, this book is a quick and rewarding read. One need not be familiar with Turkish literature to appreciate Orhan’s story. In addition to the text itself— written chronologically—Rona provides us with a lengthy introduction to the lives and works of Orhan Kemal and Nazim Hikmet, who met as political prisoners of the increasingly harsh Atatürkian state. At the end of the book we have Orhan’s “Prison Notes,” from which Orhan constructs his memoir, and “Letters from Nazim Hikmet to Orhan Kemal,” through which we can witness further the deep bond between the two men.

It is through this close and inspiring friendship, which develops during their three years together in Bursa prison, that we are introduced to the lives and characters that, in a very real yet gradual way, played a role in the building

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of Atatürk’s modern Turkish republic. At the time of their meeting, Nazim, a well-known communist, was serving a 27year sentence for allegedly instigating mutiny in the navy. It was in prison that he gathered much of his material from which to write his poetry. Like Nazim, Orhan was also convicted of inciting mutiny, in addition to allegedly producing propaganda on behalf of a foreign state (Russia), for which he served five years.

The severity of their sentences and others like them can be attributed to the state’s fear of a communist threat coming from Russia, which had begun to develop during the inter- and post-war periods. Lacking in political and military support after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the nationalist leadership in Ankara looked to Russia, allying itself with the Bolsheviks. However, as is characteristic of expedient relationships, when Soviet assistance became less dire, the voices supporting a communist takeover within the country became more problematic. Political assassinations, and massacres in some cases, became the norm, and it was this policy that saw the imprisonment of Nazim Hikmet and Orhan Kemal.

Among the many accomplishments of this book is its ability to sell itself: Read it and you will want to read more.

Nazim and Orhan were not just outstanding writers, they were outstanding people, who played an important part in the birthing of their nation. The insight into the lives of these two writers through Orhan’s own words is priceless.

Full of love and friendship, courage and perseverance, the principles by which these men lived are noteworthy in both a personal and historical context.

As the first writer to introduce the emergence of industrialization into Turkish literature, Orhan’s characters endured starvation, death and misery, however he always remained loyal to Nazim’s assertion that “… a writer who offers no hope has no right to be a writer.” And for that, Orhan always offers us hope.

This article was first published in The Majalla 12 August 2010

Orhan Kemal’s prison memoir, In Jail with Nazim Hikmet, provides us with a valuable insight into the development of Orhan as a writer, as well as the political and social context in which the two men lived.

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The Collapse of a Civilization Eclipse of the Sunnis by Deborah Amos Public Affairs, 2010 Eclipse of the Sunnis by Deborah Amos takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of post-invasion Iraq. She documents the political and cultural consequences of the Sunni community’s marginalization, both for Iraq and for the wider region. In the streets of Mosul and Baghdad we meet the victims of appalling sectarian violence. Further afield, in Damascus, Amman and Beirut, Amos illustrates the struggles and tragedies of the dispossessed Sunni community. In a book that must sound the death knell for any optimism about Iraq, the majority of Sunnis we meet have little intention of returning home. A lone Sunni filmmaker truly believes that Iraq can be rebuilt.

Sectarianism remains the key issue in Iraqi politics. Post invasion efforts to create a national identity have faltered at various points and, more often than not, along sectarian lines. This is no surprise given the levels of sectarian violence that has characterized much of the last decade.

The most recent parliamentary elections, held in March of this year, saw this trend continue. It was hoped that the elections would usher in a parliament with more Sunni representatives. In the 2005 elections, the Sunni community in Iraq shied away from the ballot boxes. And although in 2010 the nonsectarian Shi’ite, Ayad Allawi, succeeded in galvanizing the Sunni vote, his victory was only wafer thin—his slate won just two more seats than the incumbent Nouri Kamal Al-Malaki’s slate. The months that followed witnessed calls for a recount, further Baathist purges and backroom bargaining between the two main Shia blocks. As Iraq sat at a political impasse, with no coalition capable of forming a governing majority, sectarian tensions increased and the specter of sectarian violence was raised from its brief slumber.

In this respect, Deborah Amos’ book, Eclipse of the Sunnis, is key reading for anyone who wishes to understand Iraq’s current predicament. In her book, the NBC journalist charts the shifting sands of sectarianism in a post-invasion Iraq.

She also offers a highly perceptive analysis of the nature of current regional dynamics. Since Amos’ thesis broadly seeks to document the rise of a Shi’a crescent, the scope of the book is impressive and not restricted to Iraq. There are chapters on the political machinations of the shrewd Syrian president, Bashar Al-Assad, and on the impact of Iraq’s troubles on Lebanon. Amos also weaves in criticism of US counter-insurgency efforts and touches on Iran’s role in fuelling sectarian strife.

Amos’ analysis of regional politics is astute, and her account of Bashar Al-Assad’s reaction to a production of Richard III is very entertaining, but she is at her best when describing the impact of the invasion on the Iraqi population. Here, the high politics of diplomacy takes a back seat, and individual artists, filmmakers, dancers and students take center stage in what is a very human tale.

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• THE CRITICS

televised comedy series. Her portrayal is both humorous and tragic. The series, Selling the Country, which aired in 2007 during the month of Ramadan, was the first concerted attempt by the exiled Iraqi community to critique the Maliki government. Over the course of 30 episodes some of Iraq’s best-loved actors depict corrupt government officials in highly satirical scenes that to an outsider may border on farce. Amos describes how the troupe succeeds in airing their production in spite of an Iraqi law that prevents the sarcastic portrayal of government officials. Amidst the despair of an exiled population caught in limbo, there is a sense of a new-found freedom. However, as with most of Amos’ anecdotes, tragedy and indignity are not far away.

The death of the star of Selling the Country, the muchloved comedian Rasim AlJumaily, is seen in its own right as a desperately sad occasion. As the artist community mourns his passing they are stunned to hear the Baghdad administration promise a plane to return Jumaily, "one of Iraq’s best loved actors," home. Jumaily’s body is kept in a freezer for five days, but the promised plane never touches down. His friends are forced to carry his decaying body through the Damascene heat and bury him next to Iraq’s eternally dispossessed.

Elsewhere, Amos discusses the plight of exiled Iraqi women, in what is perhaps the darkest chapter of the book. At the start of the chapter, we meet Um Nour, a "tough" woman with her children’s best interests at heart. She appears to be doing well as an exile in Damascus; she can afford the school fees to send both of her children to school. She even has enough money to buy new furniture. However, as is characteristic of Amos’ writing, the opening scene with its veneer of optimism is quickly juxtaposed with a more gruesome re-

Although her discussion of Iraqi refugees is gripping and skillfully written, it seems that at times Amos is looking back on the Saddam regime through rosetinted glasses

ality. Further into the chapter, Um Nour takes Amos out to a nightclub. Amos describes "an utterly familiar female ritual" as Iraqi women take time out from dancing to reapply makeup in front of the bathroom mirror. But the club itself is an eerie place; scantily clad women dance on a stage whilst men move amongst them "to get a better look at the merchandise on offer." A singer belts out a medley of Iraqi classics, and each time there is a song about mothers, an older woman in a red dress "beat[s] her breast really hard," tears stream down her face. The women in the club sell their bodies to buy their children an education and a shot at a future.

And in a nightclub reverberating with Iraqi favorites the women dream of returning home, but this is an impossibility. As Um Nour tells Amos: "I would be killed if I went back. Immediately killed by my relatives." The chapter concludes with the most gruesome revelation, the prospering Um Nour, is in the business of trafficking young girls.

Although her discussion of Iraqi refugees is gripping and skillfully written, it seems that at times Amos is looking back on the Saddam regime through rose-tinted glasses. She describes how the initial promise for freedom and prosperity is quickly dispelled by sectarian violence. Iraq is transformed, almost overnight, into something unrecognizable and Amos gives the sense through her interviews that the Iraq of yesteryear is lost, and as such Iraq’s best and brightest forge a life for themselves elsewhere. "When I left [Iraq], I realized I don’t feel a sense of ‘place’ anymore," are the words of a 24-year-old Iraqi dancer and recent émigré to Holland. And this is Amos’ broad conclusion, whilst sectarian violence still threatens the Iraqi streets, the doctors, engineers and teachers forced into exile will not return. So long as this is the case, it is unlikely that Iraq will be able to forge a tolerant and multicultural society.

For those uninitiated in Middle East politics, Amos’ book may seem a little unwieldy. In 213 pages she charges deftly through many contemporary regional issues, but says little about the history of conflict in the region and eschews any lengthy analysis of Saddam’s Iraq. However, this should not detract from the book’s numerous insights into the challenges facing the region. Be warned though, Eclipse of the Sunnis offers a sobering snapshot of the current state of Iraq.

This article was first published in The Majalla 17 July 2010

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• THE FINAL WORD

The Nuclear Gulf Three companies linked to the nuclear energy industry have announced their intention to compete for contracts to build and operate nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. This is despite the fact that the Gulf does not yet have the infrastructure, or the physical and human capabilities, to enter the nuclear club.

Adel Al Toraifi

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ast July, three companies—two American, one Japanese—linked to the nuclear energy industry announced their intention to compete for contracts to build and operate nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. This is despite the fact that the Gulf does not yet have the infrastructure, or the physical and human capabilities, to enter the nuclear club. Yet it is clear that there is a genuine movement in some Gulf States towards obtaining nuclear technology. The reasons put forward for this relate to diversifying sources of energy, which is true from an economic angle, particularly since the domestic rates of consumption for crude oil and gas have reached record figures over the past 10 years.

The UAE signed the 123 Agreement with the US in order to benefit from US support; however, it conditioned that it would have the right to review this deal in the event of the US signing a more favorable nuclear agreement with any of its neighboring states However, the nuclear issue in the Gulf—as highlighted by a number of scholars including Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies—cannot be discussed without taking into consideration the potential threat from the Iranian nuclear project. This raises important questions, perhaps the most important being, how serious are these plans? Are they driven by political or economic necessities?

Discussion of nuclear technology amongst politicians in our region, and even amongst European and American politicians, seems attractive as it reflects extremely complex and important affairs. But the truth is that words are easier than actions, and investing in nuclear energy is not an easy matter for the leading states in the region as their current usage of radioactive materials is limited to medical care. This does not mean that states in the region should lower their aspirations towards developing their own nuclear industry, but that there is a need to recognize the difficulties, and the technical and political complications that are inherent in the nuclear energy industry today, as highlighted by Mark Hibbs, analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The problem with nuclear energy is that taking into account the real costs of nuclear production, nuclear fuel is more expensive in comparison to fossil fuels. Nuclear energy also takes a long time to produce, with the construction of nuclear infrastructure requiring no less than two decades. Nuclear waste is also much more dangerous than gas emissions, and finally and perhaps most importantly of all, nuclear energy is more dangerous in terms of security, because this opens the door for the development of lethal nuclear weapons.

What about the Gulf’s nuclear options?

Nuclear energy experts confirm that creating a nuclear power plant to produce electricity is one thing, whilst processing the nuclear fuel cycle is something else entirely. In other words, it is necessary to possess large quantities of uranium, as well as the technological ability to enrich this, in order for it to be financially viable to invest in nuclear energy. Otherwise, the state becomes reliant upon imported energy in the form of industrial quantities of enriched nuclear fuel.

There are currently significant obstacles to nuclear enrichment. In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency passed an amendment to the 1974 “Small Quantities Protocol,” which stated that inspections were not required for states that possessed “small quantities” of nuclear fuel for medical or research purposes. However, the new amendment requires inspection, and as a result of this a number of countries refused to sign. In addition, the US Atomic Energy Act prohibits Washington from providing any state that does not sign the Section 123 Agreement with nuclear technology assistance. The UAE signed the 123 Agreement with the US in order to benefit from US support; however, it conditioned that it would have the right to review this deal in the event of the US signing a more favorable nuclear agreement with any of its neighboring states. Furthermore, the G8 agreed in December last year not to provide any enrichment technology to any Middle Eastern state for security reasons.

In short, Gulf States will face technical and political difficulties before they can realize the economic feasibility in investing in the nuclear energy sector, and they should be careful in negotiating their entitlements with regards to nuclear technology.

Iran has wasted seven years of international institutions’ time in endless negotiations; all the while it was working to increase its rate of uranium enrichment. This doesn’t mean that Iran should serve as an example, but the right to peaceful nuclear energy is one that should be negotiated, and endorsed for political and material gains, rather than something that is recognized as being free and voluntary; because nothing is free in the world of politics.

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