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Issue 1559 • December 2010

The Middle East US Diplomacy Unveiled Published diplomatic cables push transparency limits, but many Americans disagree 12

9 770261 087102 The Majalla

War and Peace

The “War Logs” are the biggest leak in intelligence history and reveal a dark picture about the ground-realities of the Bush administration’s global war on terror

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On Politics

Who belong to the Roma community, frequently associated with petty crime and self-excluded living conditions on the fringes of European societies?

Issue 1559

Candid Coversations

As the war in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, doubts increase in the US and abroad as to whether American military strategy there is on the right path

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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 © Getty Images

Editorial In this issue of The Majalla we take a close look at the recent publishing of US diplomatic cables by Julien Assange on his website WikiLeaks and question whether unveiling these documents contributes to America’s transparency or simply states the obvious, albeit in less diplomatic language.

Death, rape, corruption and the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are just some of the incidents that international lawyer and author Jorge Lasmar discusses in his article about the Wikileaks’ “War Logs”—the biggest leak in intelligence history. Mr. Lasmar asserts that the "war on terror" has actually become a bigger threat than international terrorism ever was.

On a more positive note, Jason Gagnon of the OECD Development Centre in Paris highlights the growing corridor of migrant remittances between the GCC countries and Southeast Asia. The opportunities emerging as a result of increased economic development taking place between Southern countries have not been lost on policymakers from both sides, enhancing possibilities for longer-term cooperation to the benefit of all.

We invite you to read these articles and many more on our website at Majalla.com/en. As always, we welcome and value our readers’ feedback, and we invite you 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 Jorge Lasmar International lawyer and senior lecturer in International Relations at PUC Minas in Brazil. He is the former executive director of the International Law Centre, CEDIN, Brazil, and a former member of the international relations commission of the Brazilian Bar Association. Mr. Lasmar has frequently acted as an international analyst for TV and radio in Brazil on issues related to international security and law. He has published extensively on terrorism and international security, and is the author of the forthcoming book, "The Impact of the Global War on Terror on the Institutions of International Society."

Sabina Dewan Associate Director of International Economic Policy at American Progress. She works on economic issues ranging from the role of globalization to the roles of trade, aid and monetary policies in raising living standards around the world.

Prior to joining American Progress, Ms. Dewan was a research analyst at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland where she worked on various projects promoting the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda within the context of globalization and international development.

Jason Gagnon Economist based in Paris and working for the OECD Development Centre.

His main area of focus is on the links between migration and development in West Africa, Southeast Asia and Central America. Other areas of research interest include rural economies and labor markets in developing countries. Mr. Gagnon is a business and economics graduate from the University of Ottawa and the Stockholm School of Economics. Mr. Gagnon is currently working on a project about immigration in the South and social cohesion.

Roya Wolverson Economics writer at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Previously, she worked as a staff reporter covering finance and investing at The Wall Street Journal’s “Smart Money” magazine, and wrote on foreign policy, domestic politics and culture as a reporter for Newsweek.

Her freelance work has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, the St. Louis PostDispatch and on National Public Radio's “On Point” show.

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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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The Middle East US Diplomacy Unveiled

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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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• The Enemy Within: Defending human values in the age of the “war on terror” • Dealing With the Taliban • Wild, Wild West: American use of military contractors

• Au Revoir Roma, Au Revoir Sarkozy: The politics behind the Roma’s plight in France • Will Justice in Lebanon Turn the Tables?

An impending UN indictment might cause a stir • Between Elections and TV Drama: The new surge of The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

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While WikiLeaks argues that its documents push the government’s limits on transparency, many of America’s champions of open government disagree

• The Rising Case of South-to-South Labor Cooperation • The Fed’s Dangerous Gamble: Major risks, small rewards • News Behind the Graph

• The Promise and Challenge of Youth • Intentions Unmasked: The real strategy for Darfur

• Stephen Walt, Steve Clemons and Matt Hoh • Jeffrey Carr

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• QUOTES OF THE MONTH

Quotes of the Month Images © Getty Images

“If Pakistan fails to control terrorist attacks on its borders like recent years, we will exercise our legitimate rights” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, following an attack at a Shi’a mosque in Chabahar, Iran on 15 December

"National unity agreements are difficult even in the best of circumstances but these are far from the best of circumstances…

This is really an elaborate, high-wire balancing act"

"We are currently working to secure 140 km (88 miles) of the 250 km border and it will include both a physical barrier and electronic early-warning scanners" Udi Shani, an Israeli Defense Ministry official, about the construction of a barrier at the Egyptian border

If South Sudan secedes, “Shari’a and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language” Sudan’s president, Omar AlBashir, in a speech shown on state television.

Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, about the most recent delay in the formation of Iraq’s new government.

“I’m not going to be able to do it alone. One person alone can’t do anything "From my perspective as important as bringing genuine I see Iran continuing democracy to a country” on this path to Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi develop nuclear after being released from more than seven years of house arrest weapons, and I believe that that "If the enemies of Afghanistan have development and achieving that goal would the idea that they can just wait it out until we leave, they have be very destabilizing to the region" Adm Mike Mullen, the top US military commander, the wrong idea" during a visit to Bahrain.

"The vote is null before it started" Hussein Mohamed Ibrahim, a sitting Brotherhood MP blocked from running in the upcoming Egyptian elections

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on NATO’s agreement to hand control of security in Afghanistan to Afghan forces by the end of 2014

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• WAR AND PEACE

The Enemy Within

Defending human values in the age of the “war on terror” Wikileaks recently made public thousands of previously classified US military documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents reveal a dark picture about the ground-realities in both countries. The documents also seem to uncover how the “war on terror” has actually become a bigger threat to the very human values that President Bush’s administration claimed to defend and protect than international terrorism ever was.

Jorge Lasmar

Image © Getty Images

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Yet the world watched in awe and horror as his fight to defend these values against international terrorism first became a war and then a war characterized by an appalling reality: the torture and abuse of prisoners, the indiscriminate death of civilians and a complete disregard for the values and cultures of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Unsurprisingly, as the “war” unfolded, some pertinent questions emerged. Questions about what really were these so-called values of the civilized world, and to what lengths could any country or coalition legitimately go to secure them?

Image © Getty Images

n a speech in Atlanta shortly after 9/11, President Bush stated that through the “war on terror” the US not only protected its own values but also those of the “civilized” world. From 2001 to 2009, President Bush repeatedly spoke about how the US and its allies were defending basic human rights—how they were fighting for the freedom of speech, for equal rights to education, for the freedom to live without fear from abusive regimes that practiced torture. He spoke of integrity, dignity, honor and democracy.

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This debate has raged on for almost a decade now, often revealing unpleasant truths about the war waged by the US and its allies. However, perhaps nothing has been more damning than the recent Wikileaks report, which made public previously secret US military documents about the War in Iraq and Afghanistan. The “War Logs” as they have come to be known, are the biggest leak in intelligence history and reveal a dark picture about the ground-realities of the Bush administration’s global war on terror.

In the case of Iraq, 391,832 reports enumerate 109,032 deaths between January 2004 and December 2009, comprising of 23,984 enemy combatants (those considered as insurgents or terrorists); 15,196 Iraqi government forces; 3,771 coalition forces; and a staggering 66,081 civilians. Not only do these numbers reveal that over 60 percent of the deaths in the global war on terror have been civilian, but also that the coalition forces deliberately failed to report at least 15,000 of those deaths.

These documents also disclose an uncomfortable violation of “civilized values” in both Iraq and Afghanistan, including countless accounts of unarmed civilians being targeted by coalition forces, as well as claims of torture, rape and even murder that have thus far been largely ignored by both coalition troops and their governments.

Specifically in Afghanistan, the leaked documents also unveil stories that suggest that the situation is far worse than various political leaders have let on. There are reports about clashes between the Afghan national police and coalition troops, suggesting that incidents like the November 2009 murder of five British soldiers by “rogue” Afghan policemen are perhaps more common than generally reported by the coalition governments.

The documents paint a picture of rampant corruption and drug dealing within the Afghan government. But perhaps most worryingly, these reports talk of a Taliban that is much more lethal than officially reported. A Taliban that is potentially capable of tapping mobile phones and which not only possesses strong anti-aircraft capabilities but is also heavily supported by Iran and, more uncomfortably, by a key coalition partner in the war against Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and international terrorism: Pakistan.

The gross violations of basic human rights of the Iraqi and Afghan populations revealed by these documents may not come as a shock for many. After all, since the beginning of the war on terror, the media have been publicizing accounts of such violations. Cases of indefinite detention, abductions and renditions, torture and abuse of detainees, targeted assassinations and the disproportional use of force that disregard the safety of civilian populations have been reported almost daily.

But these documents reveal a still more shocking reality. As Professor Jacob Shapiro of Princeton University remarked, these are still official reports from the multi-national forces stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq. This essentially suggests that as “official” records these documents are in all likelihood characterized by under-reporting and/or the simple exclusion of deaths caused by kinetic measures. Even more crucially, according to official reports within the army, these documents reveal that torture, unprovoked killing of (often unarmed) civilians, corruption and several other crimes, even when not committed by coalition troops, were overlooked and tolerated.

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A Taliban that is potentially capable of tapping mobile phones and which not only possesses strong anti-aircraft capabilities but is also heavily supported by Iran and, more uncomfortably, by a key coalition partner in the war against AlQaeda, Osama bin Laden and international terrorism: Pakistan Of course, it is necessary to take into account each individual report and its particular context, but what a preliminary analysis of these documents seems to reveal is that the war on terror has actually become a bigger threat to the very human values that Bush claimed to defend and protect than international terrorism ever was. This is perhaps the harshest truth.

It is beyond doubt that terrorism, whether state or nonstate, cannot be justified under any circumstances. It is also clear that the human security situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is at breakpoint because of the war on terror. However, the key issue now is how the current US administration will react to the facts revealed by the War Logs. In a recent article in The Majalla, Manuel Almeida stated that, “in order to end “the war on terror,” the Obama administration has to do more than remove a word from a document.” Without a doubt, the Obama administration finds itself strait-jacketed as it struggles to defend US national security on the one hand while seeking to promote greater transparency and respect for human rights on the other. The result is an ambiguous policy toward terrorism that is, in practice, a sound continuation of Bush’s war on terror policy along with all the human rights violations that accompanied it. At the same time, as the violations of the previous administration come to light in these leaks, this is a great opportunity for the US to affirm the values it always speaks about and to demonstrate that it is fully committed to them.

So far, the Obama administration has done no more than seek to aggressively prosecute those responsible for the leaks.

Undertaking serious investigations into these facts and accounting for the wrongs committed over the past decade would certainly do more for defending human values than the continuation of war. Until that occurs, the US can hardly claim that the fight against terror is also a fight to defend and protect the “values of the civilized world.”

Jorge Lasmar – International lawyer and senior lecturer in International Relations at PUC Minas, Brazil. Mr. Lasmar is the author of the forthcoming book, "The Impact of the Global War on Terror on the Institutions of International Society."

This article was first published in The Majalla 8 November 2010 11

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• WAR AND PEACE

Dealing With the Taliban All war-war and no jaw-jaw

While the US steps up military pressure over the Taliban in Kandahar and in Pakistan, the informal, occasional talks with the group have been taken a step further. Journalist Iason Athanasiadis was in Afghanistan trying to make sense of these negotiations, which are the crucial element of the USled reconciliation strategy. Several obstacles remain to the success of this process, including the indecipherability of the Taliban puzzle.

Iason Athanasiadis

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The Reconciliation Strategy So what happened to the American funds? Back in January 2010, the Obama administration unveiled part of its reconciliation strategy, which involved separating hardcore ideological fighters from what Defense Secretary Robert Gates referred to at the time as “foot soldiers [who] fight for the Taliban for money or because their families have been intimidated.” The Pentagon strategy envisioned a reintegration stage where fighters would be disarmed and returned to society, and reconciliation where Taliban and Afghan government leaders would mend their differences and find a way of coexisting.

The pace of reconciliation has increased recently. President Hamid Karzai admitted last month on CNN that he had been talking “for quite some time” with Taliban leaders. He had already formed a 60-member official peace council comprised of former power brokers that was instantly denounced by the rebels. In October, a series of exploratory talks were held in

Image © Getty Images

ERAT: Mullah Kareem is an unlikely member of the Taliban. Stridently un-ideological, he shrugged off his Kalashnikov and abandoned jihad against the infidels as soon as he heard that an American budget for reconciliation was in play. His weapons surrendered and an amnesty received, he became one of approximately 2,000 Taliban to head back to the tree-lined boulevards of Afghanistan’s least-shattered city since the reconciliation project began in 2005. In Zirkuh, the mountainous region that his band of 30 men had made a no-go zone for several years, he left behind him his first wife in order to take a more sophisticated second one in Herat. A new life beckoned.

Well, not quite. After six months back in civilian life, Mullah Kareem has seen little of the promised aid materialize. He was not given a house in central Herat, the only location he felt was safe enough to escape the wrath of former comrades outraged by his betrayal. A high-paying civil service job he claims was pledged to him similarly didn’t come about; and nor did a monthly pension. All he got was a one-off $2,000 payment for severing ties with the Taliban. Without his weapons and now hated by his former colleagues, Mullah Kareem was left high and dry, left to wonder through central Herat by day with former colleagues and ruminate on his few options. “We can’t do anything now,” he complained. “They put their hand on the Qur’an and lied to us.”

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downtown Kabul’s top-security Serena Hotel that the EastWest Institute, a Brussels-based think-tank, and the government of Abu Dhabi organized. Similar talks were held in 2009 when Saudi Arabia hosted Ramadan fast-breaking meals with Taliban representatives.

Insiders in the talks spoke to The Majalla about their intense frustration with Pakistan’s spoiler role and revealed that the current formula for negotiations has been dubbed “push and pull” as a method of defusing Islamabad’s influence. The Taliban are offered a mix of incentives and penalties intended to convince them to shrug off Pakistani backing and come off the battlefields. According to the game plan, bad cop NATO will inflict military defeats on the Taliban, pushing them in the direction of the government’s good cop incentives to join the political process. More Special Ops missions inside Pakistani ter-

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ritory in recent months have aimed at forcing Pakistan’s hand and convince it to deny sanctuary to Taliban fighters.

Top US commander in Afghanistan, General Petraeus, stated in October that safe passage had been granted to senior Taliban to head to Kabul for talks, something confirmed by Afghan government officials who facilitated the movements of Taliban from war-wracked Helmand Province to Kabul.

But the Taliban have repeatedly refused to negotiate with anyone other than the Americans, who, despite blessing these talks, are not participating. Taliban leaders take a dim view of the Karzai government, which they consider illegitimate. But they will also not speak to the Americans unless a clear timetable for withdrawal is announced. The Karzai government, for its part, demands that the Taliban surrender their weapons and accept the constitution as a precondition for talks, something that it is unlikely to do as news spreads of the post-surrender experience of commanders such as Mullah Kareem.

Looking for answers to how the government could have been so negligent in setting a good example for future Taliban looking to return to the fold, I headed to Herat’s Reconciliation Commission, a standalone white villa wrapped by high walls and metal bars and surrounded by armed guards. Inside it sat Mohammad Sharif Mojadidi, the commission’s director and a relative of Afghanistan’s first post-Soviet president.

“We support negotiations with the Taliban so we can have peace,” Mojadidi said. “And if this means giving them some ministries or posts in the government, then so be it.” Mojadidi occasionally comes across as more sympathetic towards the Taliban than the government he represents. But he has received numerous threats against his life and has been told to step down from his post. Often, his frustration with the Karzai government and his meager 50,000 Afghani monthly budget (about $1,000) spills over.

“We have nothing to offer them (Taliban), and very weak resources,” he said, explaining why he is incapable of making promises to people such as Mullah Kareem. “Aside from food, clothes, transportation to Kabul and covering their stay in our office there, we can’t offer anything else such as land or salaries.”

Part of the reintegration involves NGOs schooling former Taliban fighters in a trade. But there is little sign of interest on the part of high-ranking Taliban to give up their challenge to the status quo. “The Taliban are obsessed with the revival of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan,” said Syed Saleem Shahzad, author of Al-Qaeda: Ideology, Strategy and Tactics.

“Accepting its revival negates the UN sanctions in the late 90s and the dislodging of the Taliban in 2001, amounting to a complete Western defeat in Afghanistan.”

The Quetta Shura and the Haqqani network are two of the most rejectionist Pakistan-based insurgent groups, but there is little sign they are involved in current talks. One of the only Taliban interlocutors whose identity was made public is Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former Taliban envoy who was incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay for four years after the fall of the Taliban and became the only one of the movement’s officials to write a memoir.

“They’re not the real thing, but they have the ability to convey the message,” Davood Moradian, chief of strategic studies at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said of the Taliban representatives. “The Taliban need to be convinced that they will not prevail and they will not win.”

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The Taliban Puzzle Under virtual house arrest and heavily monitored by Afghan state security, it is unlikely that Zaeef can still communicate with top Taliban leaders. A further question is whether central leadership even exists for such a fragmented and regional movement.

“The Taliban is a very frustrating entity to speak with because they have no structure,” said a NATO official speaking on the condition of anonymity. “To compound this, many Talibs are afraid of breaking cover because they might end up on a targeting list.”

“There is a division between the new generation of the Taliban and the previous generation,” said Soheil Sanjar, the publisher of the Kabul-based Hasht-e Sobh daily newspaper. “Some of the previous leaders, like Zaeef and Motavakel are willing to make peace but the new generation is more rejectionist.” “The problem is that nobody knows exactly who these people are,” he added.

The new generation of Taliban is well connected to the Haqqani network and has direct contact with Al-Qaeda foot soldiers in Pakistan’s Waziristan tribal belt. They often act independently of the Quetta Shura. As new leadership layers

Building the Insurgency While many of the Taliban's most radical leaders and supporters have been killed, taken prisoner, or fled the country after the 2001 US invasion, many still continue to work to achieve the Taliban's goals. Taliban leaders have found a stronghold in the Pakistani city of Quetta, from where they are believed to stir violence in southern Afghanistan. Quetta is also where the Taliban’s leadership council, headed by Mullah Omar, is situated.

A report by former General Stanley McChrystal revealed how Mullah Omar’s insurgency group has appointed shadow governors in most provinces of Afghanistan. The Taliban in Afghanistan run a sophisticated financial network to pay for its operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from drug trading, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations, of which the latter constitute a particularly important source of income for the organization. An (unnamed) American counterterrorism official told The New York Times, that private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are allegedly the largest individual contributors.

A branch of the Taliban has also evolved and spread in 2008 and 2009 along the Afghan border into densely populated areas of Pakistan, like the region of Swat, relatively close to the country's capital. Mullah Omar dispatched a six-member team to Waziristan in late 2008, and in February 2009, they formed a united council, or shura, called the Council of United Mujahideen.

In August 2009, Hakimullah Mehsud was named the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, whereupon he and other Taliban leaders vowed in a printed statement to put aside their disputes and focus on fighting Western forces in Afghanistan. Other powerful commanders are Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulavi Nazir, based in North and South Waziristan.

have accrued, Mullah Omar’s role has receded into that of a respected traditional leader who carries no clout on daily operational matters. Although he still has some influence over the previous leadership and commanders in Kandahar and Helmand, his authority in the East has waned.

“The Taliban will be more powerful after 10 years of political exile but military success has left them with an army of neo-Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas, which will help them suppress any armed opposition in Afghanistan,” said Shahzad, the Pakistani analyst.

Failure to come to a negotiated settlement with the Taliban could open the door for a partitioning of Afghanistan as proposed by former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill.

According to the plan, NATO would accept that defeating the insurgency was a lost cause and retreat behind a steel wall in a Tajik-majority remainder state. South of the new border, a new “Pashtunistan” centered around Kandahar would emerge.

“If you have the partition of Afghanistan, then you open the door to partitioning Iran, Pakistan, some Central Asian countries and perhaps even China, as the Baloch, Uzbeks, Tajiks and ethnic Turks demand independence,” said Sanjar, the publisher. “It would conjure up the very potent specter of Islamic terrorism mixed with nationalism, and threaten the very weak post-Soviet countries of Central Asia with collapse.”

Back in the long weeds and tall pine trees of Herat’s central park, Mullah Kareem stands up to bid me goodbye. His future is uncertain he says, and he feels trapped: monitored by government spies and hated by his former comrades, he is both unable to return to the Taliban fold and lacks the credibility or connections to land a government job in his only specialization, security. He has also realized to what extent American money permeates his country.

“This war is built around foreign money,” he said. “I gave up because I heard there was an American budget. And I was a Talib because I received money from local commanders who got it from Pakistani intelligence, so they too could receive money from the Americans to continue fighting the threat.”

Afghan officials hope that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban can be achieved soon after the Persian New Year on 21 March. “If the Pakistani establishment makes a concerted and sincere effort to complete the talks, this process could be completed in three to six months’ time,” said Moradian, the Afghan foreign ministry official. “The Afghan conflict won’t be over, but we’ll see huge breakthroughs in integrating the Taliban into the government by accepting the Afghan constitution and severing ties to international terrorism.”

For Mullah Kareem, the local picture is that he was the victim of his ethnicity. Buoyed up to power under the Taliban because of his Pashtun heritage, he was punished by the new Tajik conquerors once the Taliban were overthrown.

“These people are not animals,” said Mojadidi, the director of Herat’s Reconciliation Commission about the Taliban. “If you give them the capacity to live their lives and make a living, then they’ll come back into the city and into the fold.”

Iason Athanasiadis – Journalist based in Istanbul. He covers Turkey, the Middle East and Central Asia. Since 1999, he has lived in Cairo, Damascus, Doha, Sana’a and Tehran. Mr. Athanasiadis worked as an electoral observer during September's Afghan parliamentary elections.

This article was first published in The Majalla 29 September 2010

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Wild, Wild West

American use of military contractors The use of military contractors by the United States in combat operations has tarnished the image of the US abroad for its excessive dependence on what many have dubbed trigger-happy greedy bullies. While it is understandable that in the evolution of warfare, unforeseen problems will arise, the US’s ever-growing reliance on these services requires that contractors be better monitored, and better integrated into the military machine already in place.

Paula Mejia

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Blackwater Worldwide, one of the most notorious of these companies, are now more associated with the damage they have wrought than the support they have provided

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ince the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq there have been numerous ethical debates concerning the nature of the US’s involvement in these countries. Questions of justice and sovereignty abound amongst the many mistakes that were made in the preparation and execution of these wars, but one continues to stand out even as the US begins to withdraw from Iraq, particularly because this military disengagement will likely only make matters worse.

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• WAR AND PEACE

The People vs. Blackwater 2005 January Blackwater is sued for “wrongful death” by the families of four contractors slain in Fallujah in March 2004.

In similar case, Blackwater is sued by the families of three soldiers killed in a Blackwater AWS plane crash, which violated “numerous government regulations and contract requirements.” Presidential Airways, the aviation division of Blackwater, questions the validity of the Army’s report.

2006 December Blackwater counter sues the families’ attorney for $10 million on the grounds that the lawsuit was contractually prohibited from ever being filed. The hearing is then blocked from court.

2007 The Center for Constitutional Rights files a lawsuit against Blackwater under the Alien Tort Claims Act on behalf of an injured Iraqi and three of the 17 civilians killed by Blackwater employees during the September 2007 Baghdad shootings in Nisoor square.

Amid questions about its involvement in two separate incidents, the Pentagon awards a $92 million contract to Blackwater’s aviation unit, Presidential Airways, to fly Department of Defense passengers and cargo between locations around central Asia.

2008 The US State Department Inspector General warns that Blackwater might not be granted a license by the government next year.

In spite of their Iraq ban, the State Department issues Blackwater with a task order to provide security for diplomats in Hillah, Najaf and Karbalah until August 2009.

2009 February Blackwater changes its name to Xe. On 1 April. the State Department announces that Triple Canopy, Inc. would replace Xe as the department's security contractor in Iraq.

In the same year, an ex-Blackwater guard is sued by the family of an Iraqi man shot in the head. The incident allegedly happened when the guard was wandering around drunk in Baghdad.

An amended lawsuit is filed in Virginia alleging that Blackwater employees shot and killed three members of an Iraqi family, including a nine-year-old boy. The suit also alleges that Blackwater kidnapped Iraqi citizens, and accuses the company of engaging in weapons smuggling, money laundering, tax evasion as well as child prostitution. The latter charge involves allegations of Iraqi girls being taken to a Baghdad Blackwater compound to provide oral sex for contractors for $1.

2010 January Xe welcomes a court settlement for seven civil lawsuits filed over the Nisoor square killings—a reported $100,000 for each killed and

The use of military contractors by the United States in combat operations has tarnished the image of the US abroad for its excessive dependence on what many have dubbed triggerhappy greedy bullies. Although the nature of the American military and its ambitious engagements predispose it to rely on external contractors, the numerous scandals associated to their vigilante behavior has done very little to help the US build relationships based on trust with the local communities in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the contrary, contractors like Blackwater Worldwide, one of the most notorious of these companies, are now more associated with the damage they have wrought than the support they have provided. From assassinations to bribery to fraud, Blackwater has borne its mistakes like a scarlet letter, prompting its former owner to change Blackwater’s name to Xe Services, LLC. Yet, all of the image re-branding in the world has not undone the damage the organization has caused. Frustratingly, however, Xe’s public unpopularity has not stopped it from continuing its close relationship with the CIA (with contracts adding up to $600 million since 2001), nor has it helped in the prosecution of several cases attempting to bring the company to justice for its innumerable infractions.

Legal obstacles associated to jurisdiction, the difficulty of obtaining evidence in combat zones, and the problems associated to overcoming immunity deals are the reasons given for why investigations and prosecutions against the company have not come to fruition. While it is understandable that in the evolution of warfare, unforeseen problems will arise, the US’s evergrowing reliance on these services requires that contractors be better monitored, better trained, and better integrated into the military machine already in place.

In Machiavelli’s seminal work on political theory, the diplomat of Florence makes one thing very clear about military strategy: Mercenaries are “doubtful, unfaithful, and dangerous.” While his take on mercenaries may be exaggerated, or at least unfeasible considering the amount of manpower necessary to conduct contemporary warfare, the problems that companies like Blackwater have presented parallel those that Machiavelli warned his leaders of.

A recently released Wikileaks document brings to light one particular incident that illustrates contractors’ wild West approach to providing security, and how easily this tendency has undermined US efforts to establish stability in Iraq. In December 2004, an American contractor fired shots into a crowded minibus, and at the tire of another civilian car. The shooting stopped only after the Iraqi police, port security and a British military unit arrived. More surprisingly perhaps was how the contractors reacted following their arrival.

Having found no one hurt, they proceeded to hand out cash to local Iraqi civilians and then left. The scene described is just but one example of numerous testaments to contractors’ habit of shooting indiscriminately at civilians. Such incidents have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both countries have reacted by reducing the number of contractors present as in the case of Afghanistan, and by increasing their accountability as has been attempted in Iraq. Nevertheless, these companies, and Blackwater in particular, remain above the law.

Even after having been condemned for a number of civilian deaths in Iraq, Blackwater created a hub of approximately

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30 subsidiaries to continue to do business with the American government, effectively becoming a high-priced paramilitary organization. Most recently, the State Department awarded Blackwater a $120 million dollar contract to provide security to regional offices in Afghanistan, while the CIA has renewed the firm’s contract for its station in Kabul for $100 million, as reported in The New York Times. Officials have claimed that these contracts depended on Blackwater’s agreement to pay $42 million in fines to justify the US government’s continuing business with this rogue company.

A recently released Wikileaks document brings to light one particular incident that illustrates contractors’ wild West approach to providing security, and how easily this tendency has undermined US efforts to establish stability in Iraq However, even with these new contracts, Blackwater’s legal troubles are far from gone. For one, five former executives of the company have been indicted on weapons and obstructions charges, and there is an ongoing investigation concerning allegations that company members sought to bribe Iraqi authorities, in addition to two more murder charges accounting for the deaths of two Afghans. Although significant, these are just the first steps in fighting against the impunity that organizations like Blackwater have become accustomed to operating under.

Nevertheless, as the presence of security contractors continues to grow—Congress estimates that the number of contractors in Iraq will likely double in the coming years—it is equally important to assess yet another side to their role in war.

Despite the negative impact that contracting firms have had, contractors themselves provide invaluable services to war efforts. However, this contribution is accompanied by yet another injustice. Although they also bare the brunt of war alongside the military, civilian contractors do not have the same benefits, nor do they experience the same public recognition for their work, making them what ProPublica calls “the Vietnam veterans of this generation.”

While it remains indispensible to hold companies like Blackwater accountable for the crimes of its employees, it is equally important to understand the added value that many of their employees provide, and to ensure they are compensated fairly for the sacrifices they make. In a joint investigation entitled “Disposable Army” conducted by ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times, the reporting network describes the way in which the US’s reliance on contractors has allowed the government and the employers to neglect the health of the contractors as well as their contribution to the war effort.

A brief comparison between the number of civilian deaths and military casualties illustrates their point clearly.

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$30,000 for the injured. The judge dismissed all criminal charges against Xe employees.

Also in January, two former bodyguards are charged with two Afghan civilian murders as a result of a shooting at an intersection.

Meanwhile, three current and former US government officials of Xe are investigated for allegedly trying to bribe Iraqi government officials in an effort to protect their positions in Iraq after the Nisoor square shootings.

June The CIA awards Xe with a contract in Afghanistan to provide security at US consulates in the cities of Heart and Mazar e Sharif. They say that the company’s bid was $26 million less than its nearest rival.

August Xe officials are indicted on the felony of weapons charges. They are accused of falsifying documents to hide gifts of weapons to King Abdullah of Jordan. Court documents reveal Xe violated export control laws hundreds of times. Some 288 export control laws were violated, including the violation of weapons control laws, and the provision of military and security training to foreign nationals, as well as failing to adequately vet the backgrounds of trainees.

October Al-Jazeera reports that one of the company’s fronts, International Development Solutions, has been hired on a group contract for the Worldwide Protection Service. same period the Pentagon recorded the deaths of 235 soldiers. Working as translators, or doing basic labor such as cleaning, civilian contractors perform indispensable duties in warfare, but unlike the military, they are not compensated nor honored for their efforts. Moreover, reports ProPublica, “The rising fatalities have received little public attention, concealing the full human cost of the war.” They experience the same lifelong disabilities without the support networks that have been put in place to help soldiers rehabilitate after particularly draining tours in some of the most dangerous war zones in the world. On the contrary, most return to their home country’s to spend enormous legal fees trying to claim benefits that their company’s insurances promised them— insurers who are often all too willing to sacrifice quality of care for cost.

While the role and conduct of private security firms clearly raise important questions about ethics in contemporary warfare, as well as the need for justice and compensation for victims, it is important to note that not everything is black and white. Not all contractors are vigilantes, and most have made indispensible contributions to America’s war effort—they should be treated accordingly. As private security firms continue to support the US in its withdrawal from Iraq, the government must better integrate these institutions into the military system already in place lest more injustices result from such oversights.

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By “singling out” the Roma population in France, as the expression goes, Nicolas Sarkozy is quickly digging his own grave. His newest law-and-order policy was intended to help his cause, but it seems to be having the opposite effect. Some critics call it illegal under EU laws; others see it as a flashback to France’s WWII treatment of Jews. Who are the Roma and why are they suddenly on the French government radar screen?

Jason Xidias

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ost people know that the Roma exist, but few know much about them. Who belong to this mysterious community, which people frequently associate with petty crime and self-excluded living conditions on the fringes of European societies? Often referred to as Romani or Gypsies, the most common theory is that Roma originated from northwestern India and arrived to Europe sometime between the 10th century and the Middle Ages. Since that time, they have been met with persecution, forced assimilation and even extermination. Today, there are an estimated 10-12 million Roma, dispersed throughout the continent, most of which are concentrated in Eastern Europe and Spain.

Sarkozy hopes his current hardliner deportation campaign against the Roma will have a similar electoral effect in 2012. Early indications, however, show the opposite is happening. His approval ratings continue to decline To understand the current plight of the Roma in France, we must ask ourselves the million-dollar question: Why has an ethnic group that has suffered discrimination in Europe for centuries suddenly received so much media attention? Although on the surface the answer may seem complex, in reality, it is very simple: The 2012 presidential election campaign in France has unofficially begun. Plagued by a crisis-ridden economy, unpopular retirement age reform, and the Bettencourt scandal, Sarkozy´s approval rate is currently hovering around 33 percent, thus he is clearly attempting to divert voter attention by once again playing the law-and-order card.

This is by no means the first time Sarkozy has used this approach. He built up this reputation in the early 2000s as minister of the interior by scapegoating post-colonial immigrant youth in response to the rise of the National Front. Then, he took full political advantage of the 2005 autumn riots to jumpstart the 2007 presidential campaign, attributing the disturbances to "thugs and scum" in the French banlieues (outskirts) and vowing to clean up these areas with a “power hose.” This strategy led to a decisive victory in 2007, as he successfully swayed back votes previously lost to the far right.

Sarkozy hopes his current hardliner deportation campaign against the Roma will have a similar electoral effect in 2012.

Early indications, however, show the opposite is happening.

His approval ratings continue to decline. Furthermore, he has been met with a strong backlash from EU officials, the UN, the Vatican and a plethora of NGOs. The recent revelation that the French gendarmerie (national police) was compiling secret profiles of Roma (illegal under French law) has further damaged Sarkozy´s international reputation, at a crucial time when France is about to assume the G20 presidency.

Despite this criticism, however, Sarkozy remains defiant. He has justified his policy by calling it a “crackdown on crime.”

According to recently released government figures, there was a 138 percent increase in the number of Romanians (mostly Roma) who were arrested in Paris last year.

The current campaign against the Roma made international headlines following the events that transpired on 17 and 18 July in the town of Saint Aignan when a 22-year-old Roma drove his automobile through a fence put up by security personnel and hit one of the gendarmes, attempting to block his path.

The driver then tried to escape and was subsequently shot by a police officer. In retaliation, approximately 50 Roma attacked the main police barracks.

If Sarkozy, as he claims, is merely protecting national security, then why has the EU responded so unfavorably? Romania and Bulgaria have been EU members since 2007, and although their citizens do need to apply for a work permit and prove financial sustainability in order to reside in the country for longer than three months, they have free access to the French labor market. As a result, the EU accuses France of failing to meet the minimum supranational safeguards for free movement, a stance that may eventually lead to infringement proceedings against the country.

In the most heated debates between the EU and French governments, Prime Minister François Fillon called for a continent-wide repatriation program for Roma, claiming that selfestablished “shantytown camps” and “child beggars” are the reemergence of a “19th century plague.” On the other hand, EU Commissioner Viviane Reding has likened France´s current deportation measures to its dark history of sending Roma to concentration camps during the Second World War. Although Roma are clearly being targeted as a single ethnic group, the comparison to the WWII Vichy regime lacks depth; one must remember that France was under Nazi occupation at the time. The new repatriation scheme grants 300 Euros to Roma adults and 100 to each child. It also includes biometric finger printing in order to avoid their future return to France.

Critics argue, however, that the majority of these individuals who face dual stigmatization in France and their homeland will inevitably return clandestinely.

France is by no means the only Western European nation that is concerned by Roma presence. Similar deportation measures have been commonplace in other countries in the region. Only two years ago in Italy, Roberto Maroni, the current interior minister, publicly declared that all Roma camps must be dismantled or their inhabitants would be expelled or jailed. When mobs carrying explosives destroyed 60 Roma camps, Maroni said, “That is what happens when gypsies steal babies, or when Roma commit sexual violence.” Stereotyping and discriminating against Roma are widespread phenomena throughout the continent.

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Image © Graphic News Image © Getty Images

Au Revoir Roma, Au Revoir Sarkozy The politics behind the Roma’s plight in France

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Left to Die "The only point on which we agree with the French authorities is that the authorities here in Romania have dealt very poorly, very irresponsibly with the integration of the Roma," said David Mark of the Civic Alliance of Roma in Bucharest to the BBC. Indeed, hatred towards and discrimination against the Roma is a deep-rooted European problem. Nicolae Gheorghe, a Romanian Roma activist, said to The Guardian that getting rid of the gypsies has been part of the Romanian’s psyche since the Second World War deportations, and has been strengthened by EU accession. The economic crisis has further contributed to a “gypsification” of the Romanian countryside, turning the poorest Romanians into Roma. According to the human rights organization, EveryOne Group,the Roma people’s average life span has now fallen to below 40. And the problem is not being dealt with.

The chilling indifference towards this mounting suffering was crystallized when two young Roma girls had washed up on a beach in Italy this July, only to be overlooked by nearby holidaymakers for three hours before being taken away by the police. The incident was widely condemned throughout Europe, and argued by many to be a result of discriminatory policies against the Roma by the Italian government.

However, with the wider picture of Romanian and French approaches to the Roma, it could be seen as a symptom of a much larger problem, and above all a reminder that human empathy should never be taken for granted. It is a quality of any society, which must be nurtured and actively sustained. Europe—a frontrunner on human rights—appears to have forgotten this.

So, what can be done in the future to improve the plight of the estimated 10-12 million Roma currently living in Europe? A long-term, cohesive European strategy is urgently needed. First, the EU must take legal action against France as a precedent.

Second, the EU must oversee funding schemes to make sure that Bulgaria and Romania take the necessary measures to improve the integration of Roma in their own countries; this will reduce

Much can be learned from the Spanish model: Spain has the second largest Roma community in Europe, totaling around 970,000 outflow. Third, Roma themselves must make a genuine effort to integrate by following the rules and regulations of their host societies, rather than engaging in a vicious cycle of self-exclusion; this will help change common perceptions of them. Fourth, more international grassroots activism is needed to foster greater awareness of the Roma cause. Finally, measures must be taken in France and throughout Western Europe, under the auspices of the EU, to aid their insertion into society.

Much can be learned from the Spanish model: Spain has the second largest Roma community in Europe, totaling around 970,000. Thirty-six million Euros is allocated yearly towards integration. As a result, only 5 percent live in makeshift camps, half are homeowners, and 75 percent receive some sort of steady income. More than 85 percent are literate. In addition, the Secretariat Foundation Acceder Program was established to provide technical training for the unemployed and also aids many Roma in earning the equivalent of a high school degree.

Upon completing the program, some are even placed in jobs through agreements with private companies.

Although the situation in Spain is by no means perfect, and discrimination does exist against all walks of Roma, genuine efforts are being made on all sides, and significant strides have been made in recent years. Inclusion, not exclusion, must be the path of the future. Sarkozy´s senseless law-and-order rhetoric and scapegoating of Roma is nothing more than another pathetic example of party politics. Although his gamble paid off in 2007, he will need to prove that he is much more than just the “terminator” if he is to convince the French public that he is the right man for the job in 2012. Otherwise, it will be time to say goodbye to Mr. Sarkozy, instead of the Roma.

Jason Xidias – Politics journalist and frequent contributor to renowned international newspapers and magazines. Currently a PhD candidate in European Migration Studies at King´s College London, Mr. Xidias’ research focuses on the postWWII policy exclusion of immigrants based on race and religion in Britain, France and Spain.

This article was first published in The Majalla 9 November 2010

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Will Justice in Lebanon Turn the Tables?

An impending UN indictment might cause a stir With press reports predicting the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to issue its indictment on the case of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, escalating tension threatens the country’s fragile peace, and pits an alliance, led by Hezbollah and its militia, against the state and a rival coalition.

Andrew Bowen

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of these players are interested in seeing a broken Lebanon that could destabilize the Levant at large.

Of Lebanon’s partners, Syria could potentially play a constructive role in bringing the country back from the brink of potential conflict. As the benefactor of Hezbollah, and given its improved ties with Saudi Arabia, Hariri’s patron, Syria is in a good position to help diffuse the crisis.

Syria stands to benefit the most from rescuing Lebanon.

Immediately, a destabilized Lebanon on its border runs contrary to its long-standing security policy of preventing instability from spilling into Syria. Damascus would also have the opportunity to further leverage its influence in Lebanon, and, as a result, make Hariri’s government more amenable to its interests. Finally, Syria’s relations with the United States and Saudi Arabia would further deepen as a result of this rescue.

Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has accused the STL of being an IsraeliAmerican tool designed to undermine his party

Image © Getty Images

he Lebanese civil war that started in 1975 was concluded with the ratification of the Taif Accord in 1989, engineered by construction tycoon and billionaire Rafik Hariri, who became Lebanon’s prime minister for the greater part of the 1990s until his resignation in 2004. During this time, Lebanon enjoyed civil peace, thanks to the convergence of interests of regional and international powers, namely Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, France and the United States. But also during this time, Syria maintained a military presence inside its smaller neighbor, and thus tightly controlled Lebanon’s political and economic affairs, among other state elements.

The Iraq war of 2003, however, shook up regional political alignments. Hariri, the leader of Lebanon’s sizeable Sunni community, commanding a coalition that included heavyweight Christian and Druze leaders, came close to ejecting Syria from Lebanon in 2004.

His move was coupled with the approval of Security Council Resolution 1559, which stipulated a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarmament of militias, such as Hezbollah.

Hariri was killed in February 2005. His assassination provoked domestic anger and international pressure on Syria, which was forced to withdraw its troops in April, for the first time since they first invaded Lebanon in 1976.

Hariri’s assassination also prompted the formation of a UN investigation commission. In 2007, the Security Council created the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to try the crime of Hariri and 11 other political murders that followed.

Since its inception, the tribunal has been a paradoxical problem for Lebanon, the region and the international community.

On the one hand, it represents over due justice for the brutal murder of Lebanon’s most prominent national leader in the post-Taif era, and an opportunity for closure, healing and reconciliation. On the other hand, this justice may come at the expense of the future stability of Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has accused the STL of being an Israeli-American tool designed to undermine his party, and has suggested that—for the tribunal to be credible—it should not discount the possibility of Israeli involvement in Hariri’s murder. Nasrallah has demanded that Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the son of slain Rafik, preemptively denounce the tribunal, claiming that it has become known that Hezbollah members will be among the indicted.

With tensions rising, Lebanon’s regional interlopers have stepped up to manage the growing crisis within the state. None

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Syria’s Foreign Minister, Walid Muallem said at a news conference that, “Lebanon's stability is part of the security and stability of Syria.” He added: “President Bashar Assad gives Lebanon's stability great importance… anyone who tries to sabotage this effort will not succeed.”

Assad’s highly unusual joint visit with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to Beirut in July of 2010, illustrates how far Syria has come in its relationship with Lebanon since 2005. The visit came in the wake of warming relations between Beirut and Damascus.

Hariri had visited Assad for the first time in December 2009. In March that same year, Syria announced the appointment of its first ambassador to Beirut, Ali Abdul Karim Ali. Despite the improving relations, Damascus is still in no position to call the shots in Beirut. Since its withdrawal in 2005, Syria was left with little leverage inside its smaller neighbor.

Lebanon’s parliamentary elections of 2009 showed that only three out of Syria’s few dozen candidates won outside of districts that are not controlled by Hezbollah. This illustrates that, since 2005, Syria’s influence in Lebanon has been extremely dependent on Hezbollah, a party that—despite its strong ties with Damascus—is an Iranian proxy after all.

Like with Hezbollah, the STL’s impending indictments have caused deep unease in Syria. The tribunal could potentially prosecute Syrian officials. Such accusation would harm the image of Syria’s regime. Damascus is keenly aware that its ally, Hezbollah, might take up arms in the event of an indictment of its members.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon On 14 February 2005, an attack in Beirut killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others.

On 13 December 2005 an international tribunal was requested by the government of Lebanon to the secretary general of the United Nations to investigate the murders and try all those allegedly responsible.

On 1 March 2009, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was officially established as a hybrid international judicial system, marking the first time that an UNbased international criminal court would try charges of terrorism against specific members.

For security and administrative efficiency, the tribunal will be held in the urban area of The Hague, The Netherlands.

The presence of Lebanese and international judges as well as an international prosecutor aims to ensure the impartiality of the trial process.

Although those charged will be subject to national law, the otherwise applicable death penalty and forced labor have been excluded. However, the tribunal still has the power to impose a life sentence.

Following an intervention by Human Rights Watch, jurisdiction could extend beyond the 14 February incident if it is found that 14 other incidents that took place between 1 October and 12 December 2005 were of a similar nature to the attack. Although the budget has initially been set for three years, the trial could continue through 2014 and beyond. The first round of indictments are scheduled for release in March 2011.

Since July, negotiations between Syria and Saudi Arabia have been intensely underway to find a compromise where, in exchange for Saudi Arabia no longer supporting the tribunal’s legitimacy and convincing Hariri to follow suit, Syria would come out fully in support of Hariri’s government Since the tribunal’s inception, Syria has attempted to hamper, weaken and destabilize it. So far, Damascus has been unsuccessful in halting it, but it has worked to discredit the tribunal’s legitimacy. In October, Damascus issued arrest warrants for Hariri’s aides on charges that they stood behind what Syria and Hezbollah claim to be witnesses who gave false testimonies to the UN investigation team.

As the release of STL indictments reaches its zero hour, Syria hopes it can discredit the STL to the point that even Hariri would reject its legitimacy. Such an act would ensure that even if the indictments were unveiled, Lebanon would never act on them.

Since July, negotiations between Syria and Saudi Arabia have been intensely underway to find a compromise where, in exchange for Saudi Arabia no longer supporting the tribunal’s legitimacy and convincing Hariri to follow suit, Syria would come out fully in support of Hariri’s government and would oppose any attempts

by Hezbollah to destabilize the country. Whether Syria can reign in Hezbollah, or even intends to do so, remains questionable.

Lebanon today stands at a crossroads. The absence of justice might encourage revenge, and eventually civil war. If the perpetrators of the Hariri crime remain at large, the lack of punishment might promote further political assassinations in the future. However, for all of its worth, justice on the Hariri case might not come free of charge. Those who fear indictment, namely Syria and Hezbollah, might decide to turn the table by starting domestic violence.

It looks certain that, during the time of this writing, both Syria and Hezbollah are calculating to see whether their interests are served more in starting civil war in Lebanon, or in preventing it. Meanwhile, the international community also looks determined to support justice for Lebanon at all costs. At least the United States and its allies see an interest in keeping the pressure high on Hezbollah and Damascus to encourage them to change their behavior. In the case of Hezbollah, it is expected to disarm and renounce violence. In the case of Syria, it should realign itself away from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

In Lebanon and the Middle East at large, a wait game goes hand in hand with a dance of power. Who gets the last word is far from being determined, with or without an STL indictment in Lebanon.

Andrew Bowen – A PhD candidate at the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. He works and writes on Middle East politics, international relations and American foreign policy.

This article was first published in The Majalla 25 November 2010

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Between Elections and TV Drama The new surge of The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Breaking away from their usual habit of excluding the Muslim Brotherhood from media coverage, the Egyptian government took an alternative route with the production of Al-Gama’a, a television series about the Brotherhood and their founder Hassan Al-Banna. Despite the deliberate negative portrayal of this banned party, the values the Muslim Brotherhood is associated with in the series fall well in line with the values of Egyptian society. Could it be that the government’s efforts at propaganda backfired?

Elizabeth Iskander

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controversial Egyptian television series, Al-Gama’a, was broadcast daily at prime viewing time during Ramadan this year. It depicted the foundation and early development of the Muslim Brotherhood through the life of its founder Hassan Al-Banna. Muslim Brotherhood members labeled the series “blatant propaganda” in the run up to November’s parliamentary elections, and attempted to secure an injunction to prevent the show from broadcasting. The government, in contrast, remained silent—happy to let the Muslim Brotherhood show itself to be the enemy of freedom of speech.

The drama serial portrayed Al-Banna as a fanatic, and tied the Muslim Brotherhood to a series of assassinations and attacks on Cairo’s Jewish quarter in the 1940s—accusations the group denies. The writer of the series, Wahed Hamid, is known as a critic of political Islam but also of the government. However, it seems that Hamid’s Al-Gama’a gained government approval by portraying the government agents, despite their faults, as basically good when compared to Brotherhood members.

While this is the obvious interpretation, the effect of the program was not so straightforward. The government sought to portray religious extremists from all religions as the enemies of Egypt, their people and the values of moderate Islam. In this case, the strategy seems to have backfired as the show depicted an “Islam versus secularism” worldview with the Muslim Brotherhood, and not the state, as the strongest defender of Islam and Egyptian society against Western influences.

In portraying the Muslim Brotherhood as aggressively antiBritish, anti-Jewish and anti-secular, the characters actually spoke to some of the discourses that have widespread popularity in Egyptian society. The state should know this. The Egyptian government avoids using the term secular, preferring to describe Egypt as a civil not a secular state. This is to avoid the connotations that come with the term secularism. For many Egyptians, including Al-Banna, secularism means atheism or kofr, and this is considered by some to be almost an existential threat to Islam.

Another perhaps unintended outcome is a sense of admiration for Al-Banna’s character in standing up for a cause. In a climate of political apathy, social stagnation and a lack of

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real choices, this can be appealing, regardless of whether you agree with the cause or methods. The show did highlight the Muslim Brotherhood’s lack of a coherent political program.

Yet this matters little to a population whose experience shows that a party’s political program makes scant difference in daily life. Expressions of popular piety and providing access to basic services—two areas where the Muslim Brotherhood works to gain grassroots support—are more influential than a party manifesto.

The significance of Al-Gama’a is found not only in its content, which would inevitably cast the Muslim Brotherhood and its founder in a negative light, but also in its very existence. The state took a risk in allowing the series to go ahead, even investing a reported 22 million Egyptian pounds in its production. Normally, government strategy has been to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood from the media in an effort to make the group invisible in the public conscience. In official state media, the Muslim Brotherhood is usually referred to only as “Al-Mahthoora,” meaning the forbidden group.

Yet the effect of this series was to create a space to discuss the Muslim Brotherhood openly. Raouf Ashm, the manager of the Cairo bookstore, Madbouly, noted a significant increase in demand for books on the Muslim Brotherhood, and particularly on Hassan Al-Banna. He claims that after the series started, sales increased by 45 percent. But while the series clearly made an impact at the time it was broadcast, if it was the government’s intention to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood and

their campaign for the parliamentary elections, then the longterm impact should be considered. With electoral campaigns well underway, Al-Gama’a and the discussions it has provoked appear to have been forgotten.

The state has made dramatic moves to restrict the independent media prior to elections, while the Muslim Brotherhood has increased efforts to improve its image through the use of new media—even establishing an alternative to Facebook Although interest in understanding the Muslim Brotherhood may have increased, it is unlikely that the series either gained or cost them any significant support. There is a sense that the government made a wrong move in the war of media and propaganda. Nevertheless, the media will remain a key battleground. Both the NDP and the Muslim Brotherhood recognize the power of the media. The state has made dramatic moves to restrict the independent media prior to elections, while the Muslim Brotherhood has increased efforts to improve its image through the use of new media—even establishing an alternative to Facebook, called Ikhawanbook.com.

A new installment in this drama is expected to unfold next year. Wahed Hamid intends to write a sequel to Al-Gama’a to air during Ramadan 2011. Part II will cover the Muslim Brotherhood’s history under the regime of Gamal Abdul Nasser, surely provoking controversy once more.

Elizabeth Iskander – Dinam Research fellow in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr Iskander holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge, and writes regularly on Middle East politics.

This article was first published in The Majalla 18 November 2010

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• AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNVEILED

The Middle East US Diplomacy Unveiled While WikiLeaks argues that its documents push the government’s limits on transparency, many of America’s champions of open government disagree. Meanwhile, in the Arab world, the cables show that what goes on behind closed doors differs little from what is said in public. With many Arab leaders, what you see is what you get.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

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n 13 June 1971, Alexander Haig, then assistant to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, called President Richard Nixon for the daily brief. Nixon’s initial questions were about the Vietnam casualty figures for the week. Only after the president asked, “Nothing else of interest in the world today?” did “Al” remark on the “Goddamn New York Times expose… devastating uh security breach… greatest magnitude of anything I’ve ever seen.” That day, The New York Times had begun publishing the Pentagon Papers, a documentary history tracing the ultimately doomed involvement of the United States in a grinding war in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam.

The initial Nixon reaction to Al Haig’s words was casual.

Nixon even remarked that he had not read the story. It was not until Kissinger personally called Nixon from California that the president got heated up about the Pentagon Papers. Declassified White House tapes show the two men cranked up each other’s righteous indignation. Kissinger was the first to suggest, “it’s actionable, I’m absolutely certain that this violates all sorts of security laws,” and goes on to volunteer to call Attorney General Mitchell on what the prosecution options are. Nixon replied: “People have gotta be put to the torch for this sort of thing …(.)”

The Nixon administration employed a dual track. On the one hand, it censored The New York Times until the Supreme Court overruled the government on 30 June. On the other hand, Nixon formed his infamous team of “plumbers” that went on to investigate the leak, in effect committing a few break-ins, one of which took place at the Watergate building in Washington. The Watergate scandal eventually spelled the end of Nixon’s career. He was the first and only US president to resign (on 8 August 1974).

For America and the world, the 1971 Pentagon Papers announced the advent of the age of governmental transparency.

An unfortunate Nixon misread the situation. Instead of surrendering to the leaks, he tried to kill them, and eventually lost.

Almost four decades later, Australian-born Julien Assange appointed himself as the new guardian of America’s transparency. On his website, WikiLeaks, he began the greatest leak in the history of governments as he slowly unveiled more than a quarter of a million US Department of State classified diplomatic cables that include all sorts of useful—and useless—details, from describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as an “alpha dog,” to reporting on Libyan leader Muammar Qadhaffi’s escort nurse. The documents cover everything from meetings to weddings and personal impressions.

The diplomatic gossip gave the press something to feast on, and America a red blushing face. World leaders were quoted speaking frankly. They had dropped their guard, knowing they were in an off-the-record environment. The leaks, therefore, made world leaders skeptical. If every undiplomatic thought they utter in front of American diplomats finds its way to the front page of world newspapers, then these leaders

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will stop speaking freely when around US officials. From the world’s perspective, America had better get its house in order and stop these leaks, or officials around the globe will start saying in their private meetings with their American counterparts what they tell the media in public.

WikiLeaks promises to release a total of 251,287 cables, comprising more than 261 million words. The cables cover close to half a century of American diplomacy, from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. They originate from 274 American embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.

Since 29 November the site has been unveiling cables at an average of 60 per day. At the current rate, it will take WikiLeaks 15 years to publish all of them. Whatever scandals these documents promise to uncover, the media hype and public interest in the content of the documents will probably recede in a few weeks. But before attention fades away, the world has been divided between those who support Assange’s efforts to force governmental transparency, and those who feel that his actions are an invasion of government privacy.

In a message on his website, Assange wrote that the goal behind uncovering the cables was to show the “extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in client states; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.”

This, according to WikiLeaks, is a “contradiction between the [US] public persona and what [the US] says behind closed

doors—and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.” Not all Americans agree with Assange’s goal.

Leslie Gelb, one of the authors of the 1971 Pentagon Papers, told The Majalla that while “Assange insists he did this for transparency's sake... when he got to look inside, he didn't see what was plain: that our diplomats were doing a good job.”

Gelb—a former New York Times columnist and author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy—argued that Assange’s concept of government transparency was blurred. “If a US administration is lying, or distorting the facts, or telling one story to the public and another to itself, then by all means, let's have it out in public,” said Gelb. “If the US government is concocting intelligence in order to justify wars, let's hope an enterprising reporter finds it out for the rest of us,” he added.

Gelb, also president emeritus of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, said: “Indeed, when you turn off his nonsense and stop listening to the strange commentary on cable news and even on the front pages of great newspapers, when you actually read the cables, here's what you see: American leaders and American diplomats trying to solve crucial world problems.”

Other American voices downplayed the importance of the WikiLeaks cables. In an editorial, The Washington Post described the documents as “harmless,” and rather “helpful,”

Leaks that Rocked the World September 2008 Release of the contents of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account. The erstwhile running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain had her private email account hacked into, the contents of which were later distributed by WikiLeaks.

June 2009 Publication of Kenya: The Cry of Blood— Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, a report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International’s UK Media Award for the publication in the category new media.

November 2009 Release of controversial documents and email correspondence between climate scientists from the University of East Anglia. The incident later became known as Climategate.

Image © Getty Images

April 2010 Release of the video Collateral Murder, showing footage from a 2007 incident in which twelve people—including two Reuters employees—were killed by US bomb strikes in Iraq.

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October 2010 The Iraq War Logs. The release of over 400, 000 documents pertaining to the Iraq war was called “the largest leak of classified documents in its history" by the Pentagon at the time.

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Image © Getty Images

• AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNVEILED

Man of the Year?

It has been quite a year for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A controversial figure at the best of times, he even split opinion in the run up to Time’s Person of the Year 2010.

The Australian-born whistleblower won the most votes in the magazine’s online poll, though the final decision ultimately was with Time’s editors—a dictatorial policy that may rankle with the ideology of the man himself—and they bestowed the honor upon another champion of information distribution, the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Born in Queenslandº in 1971, Assange had moved around the country 37 times with his parent’s touring theater before the age of 14. He was never enrolled in local schools, which may have contributed to a developing distrust of hierarchy and authority figures.

Known for his intelligence and charisma, he studied physics and mathematics at Melbourne University.

In 2006, as he prepared to launch WikiLeaks, he wrote about the structure of bad government: “We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position of clarity.”

He has been called a non-conformist, a description which fits his response to the Scientology Church’s demand that their internal material be removed from the WikiLeaks website: “WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.”

Assange was up against a range of high profile figures, as Time sought to choose “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.”

Notable individual candidates included the pop artist Lady Gaga, the political figure Sarah Palin and American basketball star LeBron James. The more representative less public candidates on the list were the Unemployed American and the Chilean Miners. Assange missed out on the opportunity to join the illustrious ranks of a number of former US presidents, two popes, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Adolf Hitler. But there is always next year.

Assange does not have a permanent home, and because WikiLeaks operates without paid staff and no office space, the “media insurgency,” as The New Yorker put it, exists wherever he does.

Asked by a Guardian reader about his safety in the face of the powers that be, Assange asserts that documents have been spread to over 100,000 people in encrypted form, which will be released automatically if anything happens to him: “History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you.”

On 7 December 2010, Assange was arrested by British police in London over claims he committed sex offences in Sweden earlier in the year. Amidst a storm of media attention, he was subsequently released on bail, pending further investigation.

even though “foreign leaders everywhere may consider carefully, at least for a while, before speaking frankly to US diplomats.” The American daily called on the administration to employ new restrictions on access to classified government files.

From an American perspective, the WikiLeaks documents caused minor damage and taught Washington a lesson: End easy access to government files.

From an Arab perspective, WikiLeaks confirmed earlier accounts from anonymous sources, and showed that—in Arab capitals—what is discussed behind closed doors differs little from what is printed in newspapers. This means that with some Arab rulers, what you see is what you get.

In the past, a number of pundits wondered whether Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was as brutal as his actions suggested, or was merely encircled by advisors who shut him away from reality. The televised sessions of Saddam’s trials, in addition to later written accounts—such as from his FBI interrogator George Pirro or his lawyer Khalil Dulaimi—showed that the late Iraqi leader had been living in a world of illusion. Obsessed with his personal security and hygiene, Saddam lived in a world of conspiracies where mass brutality was simply in the interest of Iraqis and the Arabs. During his days as Iraq’s leader, everyone suspected that Saddam was mentally unstable. Piro and Dulaimi’s inside information came only to verify Saddam’s instability.

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US delegations have made a series of trips to Damascus, the most recent of which saw William Burns, the second official in charge at the Department of State, visiting Syria to meet with President Bashar Al-Assad, and asking him to stop shipping “new” arms to Hezbollah Similarly, the WikiLeaks documents prove the paranoia of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. American diplomats report on Qadhafi’s fear of traveling over water or living on a first floor, his threat to go back on surrendering his nuclear program should he be banned from erecting a tent in New York City.

The WikiLeaks documents on Qadhafi verify what the public has always suspected, that Libya’s leader has a problem of uncontrollable erratic behavior.

When the Department of State classifies its description of Qadhafi, the world should not chastise US diplomats, but should rather assess the Libyan leader’s mental stability.

Likewise, the WikiLeaks documents unsurprisingly show major flaws in the way the Syrian government conducts its business, especially its foreign policy. In a cable from Amman, a US diplomat wrote: “Syrian Stark Ignorance.” Quoting former Jordanian foreign Minister, Marwan Muasher, the cable read: “[Syrian Vice President Farouq] Sharaa’s behavior in Kuwait simply underscores Syria’s stark ignorance of the US and the rest of the outside world.”

According to the cable, Muashar said: “Sharaa had told the Jordanians a tabloid-like story that showed how out of touch with reality he is.” Muashar added: “Sharaa told [Jordanians] that British Prince Charles would soon be implicated in a Scottish judicial investigation into Princess Diana’s death, and was consequently planning a trip to Iraq and Iran to seek the support of the Muslim world.

They just don’t get it,” Muasher told American diplomats.

The leaked US diplomatic cables proved what is often attributed to anonymous sources in Arab media. The Arab people knew all along that many of their officials were simply ignorant, shallow and not saying in private what is substantially different from what they say in public.

Other WikiLeaks cables on Syria reveal nothing new. Ever since Barack Obama became president, US delegations have made a series of trips to Damascus, the most recent of which saw William Burns, the second official in charge at the Department of State, visiting Syria to meet with President Bashar Al-Assad, and asking him to stop shipping “new” arms to Hezbollah.

In April, news reports had it that—despite the American request—Assad remained defiant and was on the verge of sending Scud missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. When the missiles found their way to the headlines, Assad denied the reports and retracted his shipment, sending it back to Syrian depots. Washington too remained silent, but could not hide its chastising of Assad for his intended plans. The WikiLeaks cables in November merely Issue 1559 • December 2010

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The Public Interest Debate A recent Democracy Now! debate highlights the precarious balance between means and ends in the WikiLeaks case, and the reasons why many transparency advocates have criticized Assange and his followers.

Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy and Secrecy News argues that while WikiLeaks’ cause is honorable, the site has invaded personal privacy, published libelous material and violated intellectual property rights. Above all, it has launched an attack on secrecy itself, which is a constituent part of any diplomatic process.

The danger, according to Aftergood, is that the fierce response to the leaks from the US and other governments, may very well lead to tighter regulation and thus diminished transparency.

Opposing Aftergood is Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and blogger at Salon. com. Greenwald is a strong proponent of WikiLeaks, arguing that the organization has single handedly uncovered systematic wrongdoings, “subverting the secrecy regime that is used to spawn all sorts of evils.” From this WikiLeaks supporter’s point of view, the magnitude of injustice requires strong responses, and Assange’s organization is the only one willing to take on that responsibility.

While the US government has generally sought to downplay the significance WikiLeaks’ actions, activists such as Daniel Ellsberg, known for releasing the Pentagon Papers, argue that we are seeing a major shift in the government’s hold on information.

History may turn out to be the only judge. verified, rather than unveiled, media reports about the Syrian intention to ship Scud missiles to Hezbollah in April.

In a second cable from Damascus, dated December 2008 with the subject line “Co-del Gregg’s December 30 Meeting with President Assad,” the document reported: “In a frank one-hour meeting with [Assad], Senators [Judd] Gregg, [Evan] Bayh, [Arlen] Specter, [Michael] Enzi, [John] Cornyn, and [Amy] Klobuchar… Gregg affirmed Washington's interest in better US-Syrian relations, and pushed Assad to take positive steps as well.”

The classified memo added: “Assad [said] Syria's relations with Iran should not be linked to Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations. Syria's ties to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups could be satisfactorily resolved only after the achievement of a comprehensive regional peace.” The memo also quoted Assad as saying that the US “should use the next several months to improve bilateral relations so that both sides could overcome mutual distrust that would hinder US credibility as an honest broker.” Later in the discussion, according to the cable from Damascus, Foreign Minister Walid Muallim argued that, “the onus for taking the next positive step lay with the US.” Since 2008, Washington and Riyadh have tried to make nice with Assad in an attempt to lure him away from his alliance with Tehran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. On almost every public occasion, Assad and his lieutenants repeatedly said that 29

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• AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNVEILED

Diplomatic Cable Leaks 2 June 2009 US Embassy Tel Aviv: Israeli Defense Minster Ehud Barak and visiting US Congressional delegation “Barak asked rhetorically how a lack of firm response to North Korea would be interpreted by Iran's leadership, speculating the USG would be viewed as a ‘paper tiger.’ 8. (C) In both meetings, Barak said ‘no option should be removed from the table’ when confronting Iran and North Korea; engagement will only work in conjunction with a credible military option, he said.”

29 September 2009 US Embassy Tripoli “Qadhafi's state visits and appearances at various conferences and summits, both at home and abroad, have revealed greater details about his personality and character. While it is tempting to dismiss his many eccentricities as signs of instability, Qadhafi is a complicated individual who has managed to stay in power for forty years through a skillful balancing of interests and realpolitik methods.”

3 October 2009 US Embassy Kabul: Meeting with Ahmed Wali Karzai, Kandahar Provincial Council Chief and Hamid Karzai’s half brother “In answer to a question from the RoCK and the SCR about the credibility of the elections, AWK [Ahmed Wali Karzai, Hamid Karzai’s half brother] said democracy was new for Afghanistan, and that people in the region did not understand the point of having one election, let alone two. ‘The people do not like change,’ he said. ‘They think, the President is alive, and everything is fine. Why have an election?’ (…)The meeting with AWK highlights one of our major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.”

4 November 2009 US Embassy Manama: General David H. Petraeus and King Hamad of Bahrain “King Hamad [of Bahrain] pointed to Iran as the source of much of the trouble in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their nuclear program, by whatever means necessary. ‘That program must be stopped,’ he said.

‘The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.’”

The WikiLeaks documents verified, rather than uncloaked, Syria’s known position on its ties with Iran

they saw no link between improving Syria’s relations with the US and Saudi Arabia, and Damascus distancing itself from Tehran.

Those skeptical of the benefits of engaging Syria have always cited Assad’s public statements. The WikiLeaks documents verified, rather than uncloaked, Syria’s known position on its ties with Iran: Damascus will not break with Tehran, with or without American and Saudi incentives, at least not while Syria believes that Iran is a rising regional power.

Another indication that the WikiLeaks documents merely stated the obvious, albeit with unprecedentedly frank language, comes from the United Arab Emirates, where a leaked diplomatic cable reported that Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan had referred to Iran as an “existential threat,” and had been worried about getting “caught in the crossfire” if Israel or the US provoked Tehran. The prince warned against the dangers of “appeasing Iran” because “Ahmadinejad is Hitler." Bin Zayed also reportedly urged Washington to consider sending ground forces into Iran if air strikes alone could not "take out" Iranian nuclear targets.

Was the November leak about the UAE stance on Iran any surprise? Hardly. In June, the UAE Ambassador in Washington, Yousef Al-Otaiba, said: "I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion… there will be consequences (for a strike on Iran), there will be a backlash and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country; that is going to happen no matter what."

Al-Otaiba added in his statement that was later retracted by the embassy: "If you are asking me, I am willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran… I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the UAE." For a few years now, the UAE position on Iran, like that of most other Gulf countries, has been implicitly supportive of military action against Tehran.

A copy of a cable dated 20 April 2008 showed that Saudi Arabia fears Iran's rising influence in the region, particularly in neighboring Iraq. In another cable, His Royal Highness King Abdullah was quoted as calling Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari “the greatest obstacle to Pakistan's progress.” So what is new in Saudi Arabia encouraging the world to stand up to the Iranian threat? Is the Saudi fear of Iranian influence inside Iraq a secret? Or does King Abdullah’s disapproval of the way Pakistan is run come as a surprise to anyone? The answers to these three questions are nothing, no and no. These reports from the Saudi royal court have been in the news for a while.

While Assange claims that his leaks contribute to enforcing transparency and strengthening America’s democracy, people should keep in mind that long before WikiLeaks started spewing US classified memoranda, America enjoyed a robust civil society and media that has kept the checks on the administration. Whether it is the Pentagon Papers of 1971, accounts of torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 or later reports on water boarding in Guantanamo, the US government has often found it hard to keep its back dealings in the dark. Thus Washington has been forced to behave, or risk public relations disasters and image-damaging scandals.

Assange’s claimed contribution to America’s transparency is more of an intrusion into privacy, even if it is the privacy of federal employees at the State Department gossiping across oceans.

Until now, the WikiLeaks unveiled information account for little more than stating the obvious, albeit in less diplomatic language.

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• THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

The Rising Case of South-to-South Labor Cooperation Migration, remittances, and a shifting hemispheric paradigm Despite the economic downturn, remittance flows between the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Southeast Asian migration corridor have remained relatively strong and resilient—and, in some cases, have continued to grow. Part of the reason is attributable to the rebound in oil prices, which sustained economic growth, and hence employment, in the GCC region. But it has also been due to the active policies in both regions to harness the potential for migration to fuel development, and current efforts to expand them are seemingly headed on the right path.

Jason Gagnon

T

The biggest player, however, has been India, where a whopping $50 billion in migrant remittances arrive each year

Image © Getty Images

hat many countries have gradually turned to migrant remittances as a form of development finance is no secret. Migrant remittances make up an important component of development finance, often surpassing flows of foreign direct investment and official development assistance, growing rapidly from $167 billion in 2005 to $336 billion in 2008, without counting the in-kind cash, food, cell phones and computers that migrants bring back with them upon their return. Moreover, through their role in householdto-household flows, they are typically more resilient to negative economic shocks than other flows. They help families in poor countries afford much needed food, medicine and education— a combination of goods, which determine the difference between extreme poverty and decent living.

It should come as no surprise then that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have also gradually become important players in the global fight for poverty reduction. The migrant population in the region has grown substantially in the last decade. From 8.5 million in 1995, today there are an estimated 15 million migrants among the 39 million residents of the six member countries of the GCC—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait each have a number of immigrants as a proportion of their population of 70 percent or more. Because most immigrants to the region come to work, this number swells when immigrant numbers are compared to the labor force in these countries. About 77 percent of Bahrain's 594,000 workers, for instance, come from other countries. Without a doubt, the Arabian Peninsula is one of the most important migrant destinations in the world.

These developments coincide with the rise of an emigration culture in South-East Asia. In that same 1995-2010 period, remittances increased substantially to countries in South-East Asia. Remittances to Bangladesh, for instance, rose to $10.7 billion in 2009, equivalent to 12 percent of GDP. That total is 20 percent in Nepal. Sri Lanka and the Philippines saw similar increases, all notably due to the rising demand for labor in the GCC countries. The biggest player, however, has been India, where a whopping $50 billion in migrant remittances arrive each year. In Bahrain, the number of Indians is estimated at 300,000; it is 1.5 million in Saudi Arabia.

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Prior to the financial crisis many countries around the world, notably those of high income, had engaged in a political balancing act between importing their need in human resources while fighting general xenophobia in their home countries.

Many in fact had turned to “temporary migration” and “assisted return” schemes.

The financial crisis changed the trend, at least temporarily. While fewer people left their home countries to find work abroad during the economic crisis, migrant workers mainly stayed put in their host countries despite weaker job markets; most tried to continue sending money home by cutting living costs. Unsurprisingly, migrant source countries generally did not fare well due to the lack of remittances, which conceivably reinforced the economic downturn already at play. Remittances dropped remarkably, for instance, in Latin America, the Caribbean countries and North Africa. Remittance flows to Mexico declined by 13.4 percent in the first nine months of 2009 and by 20 percent in Egypt. Morocco experienced a similar rate of decline.

Despite the fact that total world remittances continued to fall during the crisis, the corridor between the GCC countries and Southeast Asia showed resilience. Remittances continued to grow, albeit slower than in previous years, despite a decrease in migrant departures. Remittances to Pakistan increased by 24 percent in the first eight months of 2009, while flows to Bangladesh and Nepal increased by 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively. The Philippines also recorded record numbers of departures and remittance flows in 2009.

The World Bank’s latest figures in July 2010 show that yearto-date remittance growth rates remained higher in South-East Asian countries than in Latin America. Nepal (19.9 percent), Bangladesh (7 percent) the Philippines (6.6 percent) and Pakistan (4.9 percent) for instance grew quicker than Colombia (-12.8 percent), Mexico (-4.6 percent), Honduras (1.9 percent) and El Salvador (2.5 percent). Because migration is corridor-specific, these trends were suggestively buoyed by the fact that the Middle East was able to thwart some of the negative effects of the recession.

The continued growth of the economies in the Middle East, and the reliance on South-East Asian labor partially accounts for the resiliency in remittance flows in that region.

The chance to seize the opportunity has not been missed by the countries’ policy–makers. Bangladesh announced earlier this year the creation of an Expatriate Welfare Bank to facilitate the transaction of remittances, and pledged to better train migrants for jobs overseas. In Nepal, the Ministry of Finance announced plans to issue infrastructure development bonds, only available to labor migrants abroad, which would be channeled towards local investment. In India, reform was announced through the Emigration Management Bill, including the creation of the Indian Community Welfare Fund, which will facilitate the financial engagement of the diaspora community in times of difficulty. Not surprisingly, the fund has been made available in all the Gulf countries.

The Southeast Asia-to-Middle East migrant corridor is a typical example of the emerging economic development phenomenon taking place between Southern countries. South-South migration is not new, but rarely has it been viewed as an avenue for economic and social development. Notably, this corridor already features some of the lowest remittance-sending costs in the world. The rise of influential and powerful economies in Issue 1559 • December 2010

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Immigrants as a percentage of population in 2010 (projected)

(Source: UN (http://esa.un.org/migration/) Brazil, China, India and South Africa ensures that this trend will form the backbone of a future development paradigm.

Critics are quick to point to weaknesses in this argument. Human rights advocates have argued for years that the current global governance of migration ignores the human cost of migration.

Not a single high-income country has signed the 1990 UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers & Members of their Families, and although the situation is changing on some fronts, human rights violations in the GCC countries have not received a good standing. Reports regularly surface on abusive bosses. Resentment is growing based on the sentiment that foreigners are being selected over nationals for local jobs. The Kafala system, the sponsorship system in the GCC countries upon which migration policies are based, has traditionally not allowed debate on notions of citizenship, integration and participation.

But there is reason to believe things are changing. Bahrain signed a memorandum of understanding with India in which the protection of Indian migrants was central, and recently changed its sponsorship program to make the government responsible for migrants rather than employers. In Abu Dhabi, efforts to improve housing for migrants and enforce regular salary payments are underway. The moving and shaking is mutual; many countries in South-East Asia have moved to negotiate Memoranda of Understanding with the GCC countries and taken steps that may yet ensure a win-win situation involving migration. India and Saudi Arabia have even talked about expanding their current understanding when it expires later this year. Many of those decisions are taken during the Colombo Process meetings, which have been postponed until next spring in Dhaka.

Bahrain and the UAE might be two of the more progressive countries in the region, but neighboring countries have often followed suit in the past. In which case, perhaps a new powerful center of South-South development is in the making.

Jason Gagnon – Policy analyst on migration and development at the OECD Development Centre in Paris. He is also affiliated to the Paris School of Economics. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations.

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• THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

The Fed’s Dangerous Gamble

Major risks, small rewards The Federal Reserve's recently announced quantitative easing plan has been met with skepticism from emerging economies, which suspect that the US may be intentionally trying to devalue the dollar. Although some policymakers insist that the move is geared exclusively toward diminishing unemployment and boosting investment, such a result remains unlikely.

Roya Wolverson

Image © Getty Images

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f one thing is clear about the outcome of the G20 meeting in Seoul, South Korea, it is that the United States left the summit worse off than it began. China and Germany’s staunch rejection of the US proposal to target countries’ current account balances revealed these nations’ relative willingness to endure a competitive currency devaluation game. Emerging economies’ protests about the Federal Reserve’s latest quantitative easing plans, meanwhile, underscored these nations’ newfound confidence in asserting their economic interests vis-à-vis the United States. The Fed, meanwhile, argued its plan was not intended to devalue the dollar, which emerging economies worry will lead to currency spikes and asset bubbles abroad.

But the Fed decision dealt a sharp blow the US’s economic rebalancing strategy. China’s complaints about the Fed’s plans were not diminished by the announcement on the eve of the meeting that its trade surplus in October leapt to $27.1 billion from $16.9 billion the previous month, despite the slew of protests by US officials and threats by Congress to erect retaliatory tariffs to combat China’s currency peg. The meeting’s communiqué failed to even mention China’s currency policy, even though other Asian economies are equally perturbed about China’s undercutting of regional exports through a weak yuan.

US President Barack Obama, meanwhile, squandered more precious political capital by failing to square away a pending free-trade deal with his South Korean counterpart, Lee Myung Bak, on the summit’s eve.

All this for a quantitative easing plan whose risk is decidedly greater than its uncertain reward. US economists, including the Fed’s own board members, don’t even agree on whether the plan will work. Many US economists back the Fed’s argument that—despite emerging market suspicions—quantitative easing is not a deliberate devaluing of the dollar. While that may be true, the notion that the policy will boost aggregate demand through a two-pronged effect is dubious. The first ef-

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• THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

fect, the argument goes, will boost consumer demand through lower mortgage rates (largely driven by long-term Treasury rates), which allow people to increase equity on their homes by refinancing. As the yields on long-term bonds sink, investors will also begin piling into equities with higher returns, an indirect lift for household incomes and, by extension, consumer confidence and spending. The second effect relies on US businesses, which in theory will respond to lower borrowing costs with increased investment and hiring.

But this argument assumes that the main driver of high US unemployment—which the Fed plan is attempting to target—is cyclical, rather than structural. That means domestic firms are not hiring mainly due to a lack of demand for their products and services. In a 15 October speech, Fed Chairman Benjamin Bernanke said the Fed sees “little evidence that the reallocation of workers across industries and regions is particularly pronounced relative to other periods of recession, suggesting that the pace of structural change is not greater than normal.” Economists who support this view have pointed to a recent survey of small businesses by the National Federation of Independent Business, which found that far more businesses cited poor sales—rather than the quality of labor—as their most pressing problem. But Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis president, Narayana Kocherlakota, argues just the opposite. He says the unemployment problem has more to do with factors such as under-skilled workers not matching businesses’ higher-skilled job openings. Recent changes in the so-called Beveridge curve—a correlation used to measure structural changes in employment—support this theory. Typically, the curve shows job vacancies rising as the unemployment rate falls. But data from June 2009 to August 2010 indicated the curve has shifted, with unemployment rates rising even as job openings expanded. And the jobless rate may be worse than official numbers suggest, since temporary jobs in sectors like construction will likely fall off as US fiscal stimulus fades.

Nor is it clear that lowering borrowing costs would boost business investment, since interest rates are already near zero, and large corporations can already easily borrow from the private markets. Smaller businesses, which supply the brunt of US jobs and rely more on bank lending, may not be helped by lower interest rates since they rely more on loans from midsized banks, whose lending is still constrained by the toxic mortgagerelated debt sitting on their balance sheets.

President Obama responded to emerging market concerns about the Fed’s plan by arguing that expansionary US monetary would benefit these countries long-term, eventually stoking US demand for emerging market exports. But he failed to acknowledge the short-term hardships these countries would face because of the resulting cheaper dollar. In doing so, the United States overestimated the quantitative easing’s economic potential, while underestimating the political fallout of its growing isolationism, even as it attempts to rally international support against China’s undervalued currency Roya Wolverson – Staff writer on economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Previously she worked as a financial reporter for the “Wall Street Journal's” “SmartMoney” magazine.

This article was first published in The Majalla 24 November 2010

Financial data Graph 1. China Trade Surplus

Graph 2. USD/Yuan Exchange Rate

Graph 3. US Interest Rates

China’s complaints about the Fed’s plans were not diminished by the announcement on the eve of the meeting that its trade surplus in October leapt to $27.1 billion from $16.9 billion the previous month

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News Behind the Graph Graph 1. Loans to Households, Euro Area

B

Source: ECB, November 2010 (annual growth rates, not seasonally adjusted)

etween 1999 and 2003, growth in consumer credit across the Euro Area gradually diminished, before rising once more until 2006. Since then, however, the growth in consumer credit has noticeably dropped— most obviously in 2009, when the rate dropped to nearly 2 percent in the face of the global financial crisis.

Between 2009 and 2010, growth in consumer credit has lurched forward ever so slightly, but remains below the 0 percent threshold. Home loans, on the other hand, have actually grown at substantially higher rates, reaching nearly 4 percent growth in 2010. Other loans, meanwhile, have similarly managed to grow at a rate above zero and, in general, have exhibited less growth volatility than either housing loans or consumer credit.

Until the eve of the financial crisis, the euro enjoyed a prolonged period of strengthening against the US dollar, at one point increasing in relative value by over 40 percent, compared with its value in 1999. Between 2008 and 2010, however, the common currency has undergone a noticeably tumultuous period against the British pound, the dollar and the Japanese yen.

As the US Federal Reserve injected more money into the economy and lowered interest rates, the euro rose steadily for the first half of 2009. When the Greek debt crisis struck, however, investor confidence in the currency was rattled, and subsequently fell against the dollar. The euro eventually rebounded, thanks, in large part, to the dollar’s devaluation (spurred, intentionally or otherwise, by the Fed’s more recent capital injection). Yet with euro area uncertainty rekindled by Ireland’s looming debt crisis, the currency may once again find itself under the microscope of economists and policymakers.

Perhaps the most “real” economic indicator, to casual observers and consumers, is the state of an economy’s labor market. In the euro area, unemployment had been healthily declining until the beginning of 2008, when it recently bottomed out at just over 7 percent. Once the financial crisis struck, of course, credit tightened, employers cut corners and, as a result, unemployment skyrocketed.

Logically, the job vacancy rate dropped, though its decline, as Graph 3 proves, was not nearly as precipitous as the sud-

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Graph 2. Bilateral Exchange Rates

Source: ECB Note: 1999 Q1=100 Graph 3. Euro Area Unemployment, Job Vacancy Rates

Source: ECB/Eurostat Note: Rates include industry, construction and services employment (excluding households as employers and extra-territorial organizations and bodies); non-seasonally adjusted den rise in unemployed laborers. As 2010 now draws to a close, the labor outlook doesn’t seem particularly rosy, but optimists will observe that the unemployment rate appears to have reached a plateau. Job vacancies, meanwhile, are actually increasing across the euro area, which could bode well for the immediate future.

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• THE HUMAN CONDITION

The Promise and Challenge of Youth

Youth unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa The Middle East and North Africa have a demographic advantage and an opportunity to harness the potential of their large and growing youth population. However, in order to exploit this resource of both productivity and consumption, policymakers in the region must address the challenge of unemployment in this demographic and harness the great potential of their youthful populations.

Images © Getty Images

P

eople around the world pine to preserve their youthfulness—a period in life that most of us associate with potential, drive and vitality. A country’s youth, defined by the United Nations as those individuals between the ages of 15–24, is one of its biggest assets, representing the promise of productivity, a lifetime of consumption, supporting pension schemes, creativity and social dynamism. Seemingly then, a region with a large youth population like Middle East and North Africa, where youth constitute approximately one fifth of the population, would be a significant advantage.

But a large youth population also comes with challenges for policymakers. There is a need to invest in the education, vocational training and skills development, entrepreneurship opportunities, job creation and job search support for youth. And this also means working for the inclusion of those from underprivileged backgrounds, and to harness the productive potential

Sabina Dewan

of young women alongside young men. These are essential to ensure that youth have what they need to become active and contributing members of their household, community and the economy at large. This is a challenge confronting all countries that have high youth unemployment, but it is also a critical challenge for the Middle East and North Africa, both of which have a rapidly growing youth population. And it is a challenge that governments in the region must address with some urgency.

According to the International Labor Organization, the economic crisis has exacerbated the youth employment challenge. There were 81 million youth unemployed at the end of 2009; this is 7.8 million higher than in 2007. The Middle East and North Africa have some of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world.

One in five of the young people in the region’s labor force were unable to find a job 2008. And while youth unemployment will begin to decline in all other regions of the world starting in 2011, it is expected to continue to rise through 2011 in the Middle East and North Africa.

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The recovery from the economic crisis is sure to be longer for youth than for adults. As young people try to make the transition from school to work, especially in developing countries, many are subject to poor working conditions and precarious contracts with low pay. When there is a lack of opportunity, the growing number of disaffected youth is associated with an escalation of crime, outbursts of violence, and political instability. As the youth population in the Middle East and North Africa continues to grow, it is imperative to ensure that the new entrants into the labor market have appropriate opportunities for good quality work.

Discrimination against young women—often a result of cultural, social or economic norms, is a major contributor to the high youth unemployment rates in the Middle East and North African region. Despite significant gains in female education, the gap between young women and young men entering the labor force is large. Fewer young women enter the labor force than young men.

These challenges must be addressed at the regional and national levels. Regional organizations, such as the League of Arab States, should make the problem of youth unemployment by facilitating the necessary investments in this demographic a priority. There is a need to gather more and better labor market data, disaggregated by gender, on the youth population in order to better inform policies.

At the country level, nations should design specific action plans to generate youth employment and to facilitate the tran-

sition of young people from school to work. This includes implementing programs focused on education, vocational and skills training, as well as apprenticeships for youth with special attention to the inclusion of youth from underprivileged backgrounds and young women. Technology can also be a powerful resource in this effort. With a little bit of creativity and drive, cell phones for example can be used as tools to promote matching between unemployed youth and available employment opportunities. And technology can aid data collection and help to expand the knowledge base on youth populations in the Middle East and North Africa.

While countries such as the United States, Germany, China and Japan are struggling with ageing populations, the Middle East and North Africa have a demographic advantage and an opportunity to harness the potential of their large and growing youth population. Youth represent the potential promise of propelling an economy forward, or the challenge of lost potential. But the key to transforming the youth unemployment challenge into promise is crafting policies and making the necessary investments in young people.

Sabina Dewan – Associate Director of International Economic Policy at American Progress This article was first published in The Majalla 16 November 2010

Youth unemployment in selected countries, ages 15-29 Youth

Overall

Youth/Overall

Algeria

22.3

21.70

1.03

Bahrain

20.1

5.50

3.65

Egypt

24.8

10.16

2.44

Iran

23.0

11.27

2.04

Iraq

--

10.53

--

Jordan

22.2

14.95

1.48

Kuwait

5.3

1.12

4.73

Lebanon

17.4

8.08

2.15

Morocco

18.3

11.07

1.65

Palestine

35.7

23.61

1.51

Qatar

5.4

3.90

1.38

Saudi Arabia

16.3

5.25

3.10

Syria

16.5

8.96

1.84

Tunisia

27.3

14.84

1.84

Turkey

19.6

9.51

2.06

UAE

7.6

2.71

2.80

MENA

25.9

11.14

2.32

Low income

9.9

4.88

2.03

Middle Income

19.6

6.58

2.98

High income

13.6

6.68

2.04

Notes: Country classification is based on GDP per capita in 2005 PPP US dollars: Low income: less than $3000; middle income: $3,000-$1,5000; high income: greater than $15,000.

Source: Country groups are from WDI (ages 15-24), average 2000-07; MENA countries from Brookings, MEYI website.

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• THE HUMAN CONDITION

Intentions Unmasked

paying compensation, and contributing to development and returns. Most importantly, it calls on the international community to engage more “constructively” in Darfur by halting the spread of “false information” and by abandoning the International Criminal Court case against President Omar Al-Bashir.

Although there are some elements of the strategy that sound encouraging, such as the government’s recognition of the need for development in the region, the strategy is inherently flawed due to its failure to reflect the reality of the situation on the ground. Many of the people of Darfur have once been or continue to be victims of crimes perpetrated by the government itself. Given their history, it is difficult to imagine that the NCP, as one of the key perpetrators, would work to produce a deal that truly represents the interests of all parties to the conflict.

Even if the government were planning to negotiate in earnest, which is unlikely, the mistrust that exists among the parties would prevent a deal from ever holding.

Even more troubling, however, is the notion that returns are possible in the current environment and that they should be encouraged. There is no land to which the displaced can return, since much of it is now being occupied by pastoralists who took part in the counterinsurgency. The impossibility of safe returns signals that the humanitarian crisis is far from over, and that implementing development initiatives at this stage would be highly impracti-

The real strategy for Darfur The government of Sudan is moving forward with a new strategy for Darfur that prioritizes nationalization, returns, development and reduced international involvement. While the strategy has some elements that are noteworthy, there is little chance that it will bring peace and stability to Darfur for two reasons: one, because it is not built on a realistic vision of the current state of Darfur; and two, because its core function is to mask the government’s true intentions for the region.

Laura Jones

A

s the world turns its attention to the January referendum that will likely split Sudan into two separate states, recent developments in Darfur have gone virtually unnoticed. Perhaps of greatest concern is the government’s new strategy for the region, which, while seemingly innocuous on the surface, appears to have at its core more nefarious plans for the continuation of massive human rights violations in the region. Diplomats currently engaged in Sudan would therefore be wise to turn a more critical eye to the plan, and ensure that, in their desire to see a peaceful referendum, they do not abandon the people of Darfur.

On 16 September of this year, the government of Sudan officially ratified its “New Strategy for Darfur,” whose objective is supposedly, “to achieve [a] comprehensive and peaceful settlement that restores[s] life in Darfur and enable[s] efforts for development in the area.” The strategy focuses on four key themes.

First, it de-emphasizes the internationally-guided peace process in Doha, calling instead for a “nationalized” process with the National Congress Party (NCP) at the helm. Second, it places a tremendous amount of emphasis on the “safe, voluntary, and sustainable” return of the displaced to their places of origin, and calls on the international community to assist in this process.

Third, the strategy calls for a shift in focus from relief to development, which it ties to returns in suggesting that the provision of services would be centered around villages of origin. Finally, the strategy outlines a diminished role for the international community, with intervention areas being limited to promoting security,

Images © Getty Images

Many of the people of Darfur have once been or continue to be victims of crimes perpetrated by the government itself

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cal. Furthermore, insecurity still reigns in many parts of Darfur— for a variety of reasons including inter-tribal violence and clashes between the government and rebels—and this makes return not only unsafe but also undesirable to many of the displaced.

Beyond the problems that are inherent in the strategy, there is also the sense that, despite the use of the human rights and humanitarian lexicon, the NCP’s intention may be to implement a plan that is a significant departure from that which is written.

Sources in the field suggest that the strategy is in fact a means by which the government can hoodwink the international community into believing it is sincere in its attempt to resolve the Darfur crisis peacefully, while simultaneously pursuing its own “solution” to the crisis, which some scholars have called “genocide by attrition.” Many claim that the strategy is more likely to include some combination of camp closures, forced relocations, land forfeiture, and indentured servitude for the displaced. The emphasis on nationalization and development in the written strategy are in fact principles behind which the NCP can hide its real desire to either control or expel humanitarian organizations that it feels are threatening. And what better time to put this plan into action than while the international community is focused on the South?

While some of this may sound overly cautious, there is a tremendous amount of precedent for this in Sudan, and recent developments on the ground lend some truth to these claims. Over

the course of the past few months, for example, the government has expelled a slew of humanitarian workers, many of whom were responsible for monitoring and verifying voluntary returns, even while it was announcing its intention to close one of the largest camps in Darfur. More recently, reports of violence in various areas, including the village of Tabarat in North Darfur and Jebel Marra in the west have been met with refusals to grant access to aid workers wanting to provide assistance. These are but a few of the incidents that run contrary to the government’s purported objective of restoring life and peace in the region.

Given the history of Darfur, and the likelihood for continued abuses, the international community should look upon this new strategy with a healthy amount of skepticism. Furthermore, it should ensure that it indicates to the NCP its intention to keep focused on the region, even while North-South negotiations take a front seat. If the international community fails to show its commitment to seeing human rights respected in Darfur, more suffering will surely be on the horizon.

Laura Jones – Policy analyst at the Enough Project, focusing on Sudan.

She has worked in various capacities in human rights and development, including as a reports and field officer for UNHCR in Darfur.

This article was first published in The Majalla 3 November 2010

From Racism to Genocide: Sudan’s Darfur Conflict Darfur has long faced tension over land rights between the mostly nomadic Arabs and farmer communities across the region. The conflict started in early 2003, when the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) took up arms, accusing the Sudanese government of oppressing black Africans in favor of Arabs. According to the United Nations, more than 2.7 million people have been displaced and 300,000 have died from war, hunger and disease.

President Omar Al-Bashir denies supporting the Arab Janjaweed militia, but refugees maintain that his government has assisted the Janjaweed with financial support and weapons, as well as organized joint attacks against black Africans. On these grounds, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in 2008 against the president for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Bashir’s government and the SLA signed a peace accord in May 2006, but other rebel groups rejected the deal. There was no evidence that the government disarmed the Janjaweed as promised, and the agreement was followed by unprecedented levels of violence.

In February 2010, JEM signed a framework agreement, including a cease-fire, with the government. As the agreement does not address specifics, and the SLA refuses to enter negotiations, the deal is endangered. However, minimizing the threat from Darfur will be hugely beneficial for Bashir in the upcoming April elections.

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• A THOUSAND WORDS

Cut by Cut, Britain Chips Away its Future

Images © Getty Images

Thousands of students marched throughout the city of London during recent protests against the government’s budget cuts and proposed rise in student tuition fees. By 2012 tuition fees will increase from £3,290 to a maximum of £9,000. With a long history of providing higher education to financially disadvantaged students, the British government has been harshly criticized for the decision which has sparked a nation-wide debate about the value placed on higher education in Britain. Likely to plummet students into greater debt, and deny many the chance to obtain university degrees, students and parents alike feel betrayed and are outraged at those who supported the decision.

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• CANDID CONVERSATIONS

The Counter Narrative An alternative strategy for Afghanistan

Despite the recent increase in troops on the ground, the US’s war in Afghanistan has not progressed.

In a recent report entitled, A New Way Forward, by the Afghanistan Study Group, an alternative approach is proposed. Arguing that the national interests of the US have been misinterpreted, Stephen Walt, Steve Clemons and Matt Hoh address the report’s foremost claims.

Paula Mejia

A

Your report convincingly demonstrates that America’s security interests are linked to the dangers AlQaeda poses. Why do you believe that the focus of the current strategy in Afghanistan has deviated from this priority?

Clemons: There are several contributing factors. During the political campaign, Obama had to deal with this question of American military engagement, and he framed Afghanistan as the legitimate war, whereas Iraq was always the bad war. This overwhelmed the kind of national interest calculation that we try to make in this report. There is a tension that continues between more sober calculations of national interest versus the notion that America has to be very worried about the human rights conditions of others. And when we have found ourselves injected into what are very often civil wars, the mission that we’re trying to accomplish changes from beating bad guys to sometimes reforming and reshaping the societies that we find ourselves in. Human rights concerns often become the drivers of policies. You also have a Pentagon that has a very hard time stepping back, and has become very powerful and very committed to winning, so to some degree certain parts of the Pentagon have exploited this mission and this ambiguity to try to maintain the rationale for the kinds of wars we are engaged in.

Hoh: I think it’s because politics dominate. Political Science 101 teaches us that foreign policy is a reflection of domestic politics. So I think what happened was we had a narrative here in the US of Afghanistan being the place where the 9/11 attacks were launched and that Al-Qaeda attacked us from Afghanistan, and that’s very dubious. Yes, Al-Qaeda was based there; they had a relation with the Taliban. We’re not really sure what that was—if you ask 10 different experts you will get 10 different answers. But the attackers were nearly all Saudis and the attacks were planned in Germany and Pakistan, and the training took place here in the US, but the narrative was that we went into Afghanistan and defeated Al-Qaeda and the Taliban who were the ones who attacked us. And that narrative states that we have to be in Afghanistan in order to keep us safe; that if we left Afghanistan or didn’t finish the job, Al-Qaeda would go back into Afghanistan and there would be another 9/11.

Image © Getty Images

s the war in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, doubts increase in the US and abroad as to whether American military strategy there is on the right path. The Afghanistan Study Group has gone a step further by proposing an alternative strategy in their recent report, A New Way Forward.

Arguing that American national interests are being misinterpreted, and as a result, current efforts stand to do more harm than good, the alternative they propose draws from both realist and humanitarian concerns. By emphasizing power-sharing and reconciliation; reducing the US’s military footprint; keeping the focus on Al-Qaeda and domestic security; and promoting economic development and engaging global stakeholders, the report creates conditions for an important debate to take place with regards to what should be done next in Afghanistan.

Stephen Walt, professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, alongside Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and Matt Hoh, former American Marine Corp captain and State Department appointee in Afghanistan, took the time to speak with The Majalla about the issues raised in the report.

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But Al-Qaeda isn’t present in Afghanistan; it is not present in any location where conventional military occupation is going to have an effect on it. Its leadership is in Pakistan, but that leadership serves primarily in a guidance-only-type capacity. It is not a typical command and control structure.

Al-Qaeda is a network of small cells that are loosely organized around the world. So if Al-Qaeda is a vital national security issue to the US, the way we are going about occupying Afghanistan is not having any effect on Al-Qaeda.

That’s where we come from and why we say that we have to review our presence in Afghanistan, because it is not having an effect. We say let’s take a step back and look at what our vital national security interest are for the US and come up with strategies and policies from there. Because we can’t control Kandahar, we send 30,000 more troops to that area.

Well, is it necessary for the US to actually control Kandahar? We did the big operation in Marja last February with about 20,000 marine soldiers and Afghan soldiers. But for the US and our interests, if we control Marja, how does that actually make the US safer; what effect does that have on Al-Qaeda; how does that stabilize Pakistan with its nuclear weapons? So we want to take a step back, look at what our national security interests actually are and then promulgate policies and strategies that go from the top down rather than practical developments on the ground.

What has been the response of the military to this report?

Walt: The report has received some criticism from people who are proponents of the counter-insurgency approach, which is to be expected, because we’re suggesting a strategic alternative. But one of the main purposes of the report was to try and

get that discussion going, and have people start thinking about alternatives, so that if our current approach doesn’t work, we’ll have alternatives already in place.

Clemons: We’ve been shocked by how receptive—we’ve had interest and inquiry by various folks in the White House, within the Pentagon command structure, particularly within the joint chiefs of staff, people preparing now for what they know is going to be a December strategic review process. We already know that General Petraeus is beginning to feed into a system of discussion among the joint chiefs of staff before they prepare their position documents and discussions with the White House, and so these parts of the Pentagon have already told us unofficially that our report is part of their package. We have also had a constructive exchange of ideas with the State Department, with various members of Rich Holbrooke’s interagency team and with people within the embassy in Afghanistan. We can’t say that any one of these parties have officially come out and endorsed our report, but the door has been incredibly open to discussing the findings.

Informally we have been told by certain individuals that the report is being read at the highest levels and it is considered consequential. That doesn’t mean it will define policy, but it does mean that one of our objectives of getting higher quality debate has worked.

Al-Qaeda is a network of small cells that are loosely organized around the world. So if Al-Qaeda is a vital national security issue to the US, the way we are going about occupying Afghanistan is not having any effect on Al-Qaeda A Washington Post article by Bob Woodward explains that the military deliberately portrayed the war in Afghanistan as something other than what it is to President Obama while he was making the decision to increase troops on the ground. Would you agree with that portrayal?

Hoh: I read that article and if that’s true, that’s an incredible disservice to the US and its interests. It appears as if the Pentagon went in there with a plan and only gave the president variations of that plan. “Here’s the plan Mr. President, and you can have it small, medium or large, and there are no other options,” and clearly the president was frustrated by it; it appears other members of his staff was frustrated by it. What particularly confirmed this to me was the reference to General Lute being reprimanded

by Admiral Mullen for speaking his mind and providing honest advice to the president. I think it is very dangerous if we get into a situation where the president’s advisers are being intimidated by more senior officers into toeing the Pentagon line or the party line. I think that’s a very, very dangerous situation. If this is true, it was a very flawed and irresponsible decision making process last year, because the president wasn’t given the full range of options he should have been given.

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• CANDID CONVERSATIONS

The US’s relationship with Pakistan is crucial to defeating Al-Qaeda. What else could be done so that Pakistan stops being a problematic variable?

Walt: Well, I think if there is a piece of good news, it is the fact that the Pakistani government appears to have been taking its own internal problems with jihadi groups somewhat more seriously in the last year or two, and therefore trying to crack down on some of the groups that operate on Pakistani soil. For various reasons, that has not included Afghan Taliban located in Pakistan. In particular, some parts of the Pakistani government have always seen them as a strategic asset. I think the American approach there needs to be continued tough love. The government has been allowing us to conduct counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan because they sense a shared interest there, and we need to keep pushing them to help us on that front. Also, we should encourage them to take the appropriate steps to maintain the legitimacy and popularity of their own government.

Hoh: It’s very difficult, and certainly Pakistan has its own interests in mind. It’s going through its own very grave concerns with multiple insurgencies and extremist groups, and its relationship with India, which has led to war multiple times over the last 5060 years. I think the US needs to prioritize diplomacy. I look back to the Balkan campaigns in the mid-90s. Holbrooke back then was firmly in charge. I don’t think anyone had any doubt that the president had looked at ambassador Holbrooke and everyone in the room and said, “He’s in charge and everyone supports him, including the military.” We don’t have that right now. We don’t have either our ambassador in Afghanistan or Ambassador Holbrooke, who is the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. I don’t think the president has clearly […] expressed that they are in charge, and that everybody is subordinate to them. Until that happens, our diplomacy is going to be under-resourced. The Pakistanis are not going to be sure who is speaking or who is the right person to talk to on the US side or whose authority is properly resourced.

This is why the study group suggests we move in a very different direction, starting with the recognition that it is not within our capacity to re-make the central nature of Afghan society What kind of collaboration can you expect from Afghanistan to implement your proposed strategy?

Clemons: That’s very hard to know. I’m not one that thinks that you’re going to end up with a corruption-free government very easily, nor do I think that you’re going to end up with a government that is a renaissance administration based on enlightenment values. I think that it is possible to play a role with other stakeholders, particularly the Pakistanis, the Saudis, the Chinese and other regional stakeholders, particularly Iran, in re-forging a bond-like process that is more inclusive of the Pashtun than previously occurred. Something like Lakhdar Brahimi did, an approach that is more inclusive and that finds a different equilibrium between the points of power today. That is go-

ing to have to involve some decentralization of the centralization process that’s been begun by Karzai, and I don’t think our partners in this process are going to be completely dependable, and it’s going to have to take some fancy footwork. As Brahimi told me, there’s not going to be one set of negotiations with the Taliban or between the Taliban and Karzai which is going to settle everything. There’s probably going to be seven sets of negotiations with different players, and they need to be flexible and need to evolve, and it’s going to be complicated. Even in the reconciliation and negotiation process, to try to bring in the so-called Taliban into some kind of political equilibrium with whatever the current Afghanistan government represents.

But I think embracing Karzai and embracing the Afghan government too closely is also a mistake. We need to realize that there is going to be a different outcome down the road and it’s going to be a melting and merging of different players. One of our key participants in this report had a great concept where he said, “America has this problem where it sees problems as ones that only it can solve, but there are lots of other players that have stakes in this,” so we need to take a Tom Sawyer approach like the old fictional novel by Mark Twain where Tom Sawyer got other people to paint his fence. The US would be smarter to begin giving other nations and stakeholders some spotlight, some space and some time in this process. We just don’t do it very well.

Walt: We’ve seen now abundant evidence to suggest we can’t expect very much at all from Afghanistan. One of the key principles of counter-insurgency warfare is that you need a local partner to help you succeed; you need to be able to build effective institutions in the country where you’re trying to defeat an insurgency. The Karzai government has now been in power for seven or eight years. There have been a number of fraudulent elections, there is endemic corruption, and no amount of desk pounding seems able to correct that. And that makes it less and less likely that the United States can succeed in its stated goal of building a stable, centralized, Western-style government there.

This is why the study group suggests we move in a very different direction, starting with the recognition that it is not within our capacity to re-make the central nature of Afghan society.

What dynamic do the interests of other stake-holding countries have in Afghanistan, and how can those issues be resolved?

Walt: Well I think we have to recognize that there are a number of other countries that care more about what happens in Afghanistan than the US does. Countries that are in its immediate vicinity, including Pakistan obviously, but also India, Iran, places like Uzbekistan as well and even some other countries like Saudi Arabia, who’ve been actively involved there in the past, and in my view, not always in a good way.

We have to understand that a long-term solution here will involve having some buy-in from most of the other countries in the region, leading to a situation where they’re not treating Afghanistan as another arena in which to engage in their own rivalries or to pursue their own agendas. I think what that ultimately means is re-establishing what was previously a well-established norm—that Afghanistan would essentially be a neutral country, would not be closely aligned to any other power, would have a relatively weak central state, and that other countries in the region therefore don’t have to worry

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Image © Getty Images

A New Way Forward co-author Steve Clemons

Policy Brief Since US military efforts in Afghanistan began in October 2001, the overarching strategy has shifted several times. During President George W. Bush’s administration, swift military action ousted the Taliban regime in 2002 and propped up a Western-style government under the leadership of Hamid Karzai. In the subsequent years, US policy focused on counterterror tactics, as Bush famously said the government would make no distinction between terrorists and governments that supported them.

By 2006, the Taliban started to regain its strength, and allied troop presence was increased to counter the insurgency. General Stanley McChrystal, who led Afghan forces from 2009-2010, helped move the strategy from one of conventional warfare to a more asymmetrical approach. His ideas were tantamount to the policy adopted by President Barack Obama, who, in December 2009, sent an additional 30 thousand troops to Afghanistan, hoping to dramatically increase Afghan forces before beginning a US troop draw down in 2001, to be followed by a complete withdrawal in 2014. The current commanding general, David Petraeus, admits the strategy is a short-term one and may have to be fine-tuned to emphasize civil efforts as the troop withdrawal deadline draws near. Obama says the overall strategy will be reviewed this month.

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about threats arising from that particular country. So we recommend that the United States, in collaboration with the United Nations, spearhead a much more energetic diplomatic effort to try to get other interested parties to cooperate in both neutralizing, but also stabilizing Afghanistan, and removing it as a sort of potential threat to any of its neighbors.

Your report highlights three conditions that would have to be met for Al-Qaeda’s ability to attack the US from Afghanistan to increase: 1) Taliban must seize control of the country 2) Al-Qaeda must relocate there in strength 3) It must build facilities to allow it to plan more effectively. To what extent is this scenario likely?

Clemons: I am doubtful that the Taliban would bring back AlQaeda. Until the attacks in 2001, the Afghan Taliban classically has not shown an interest in broad deployments of international terrorism. That may be different given the situation now. We just don’t know if the Taliban has morphed into something different.

What we do know, and what I fear, is that the current situation has created banding. That is what we have achieved: the consolidation of those who are fighting. It’s a remarkably bad thing and we all need to be humble about what comes out of this.

In my view, the Taliban now represents a lot of the nation but not the entire nation, and not all Pashtun are the Taliban.

The Taliban that I have talked to may very well be unable to control the country—we suspect that ultimately Kabul will not be run by the Taliban, but there are other governance prospects in which the country is organized as a loose federation, some of which will be under Taliban control and some of it won’t. Under those circumstances it is not likely but it is always possible that Al-Qaeda could return, but if it did I think that the US and its allies maintain the capacity to exert very bad damage on any reestablished camps. You have to remember that these camps were enormously large.

The notion today that we have removed the threat Al-Qaeda poses the US because of the amount of force deployed is a faulty one. And we are squandering resources there. Although I think the scenarios for complete Taliban takeover are not likely, I think the Al-Qaeda return is questionable and something that can be dealt with without the large deployment of military forces, which have helped drive the recruitment of Taliban forces against us.

What are the prospects of a negotiated resolution to the conflict? What could be done to promote that sort of arrangement?

Walt: We ought to encourage power sharing and inclusion within Afghanistan. One of the problems is that the creation of a more centralized government has disenfranchised certain segments of the Afghan population, primarily the Pashtuns, and the Taliban is an insurgency rooted primarily in the Pashtun areas. By encouraging the decentralization of power, by allowing greater autonomy to different regions, some of the people who are currently fighting us, and fighting the central government, can be won over since their grievances will have been settled. The new strategy we’re suggesting tries to reduce the American military role, which is one of the reasons we have seen a Taliban resurgence. And it also tries to encourage political reconciliation and decentralization within Afghanistan as a way of splitting the more moderate folks away from the more radical Taliban leaders.

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Hoh: There are leadership elements of the Taliban that these multiple local groups swear allegiance to, so you have groups like the Afghan Taliban, which is led by Mullah Omar, but you also have groups like the Haqqani network. So you have different leadership elements that should be negotiated with directly, because they exert a tremendous amount of influence over the other elements of the Taliban, whether it be philosophical, financial, military, etc. But for those local groups, you have to address their grievances directly, because a lot of the reasons people support the Taliban or are supported by the Taliban are because of local political grievances, grievances which may not go beyond the borders of the community they live in. So very similar to what we did in Anbar province in Iraq in 2006-2007, we have to reach out to those who are making up the insurgency, the vast majority of which are reconcilable, and address the legitimate political grievances they have.

Whilst women in urban areas and in the north and west have seen gains because of US presence in Afghanistan, the women in the east and the south where the fighting is taking place have seen their lives become much, much worse Is there a concern that if the administration were to adopt this strategy that it would be interpreted as a “defeat?”

Walt: We are not particularly concerned about that. First of all, we’re not confident that the current strategy could succeed. So we’re going to be looking at an unsuccessful campaign regardless, in our view. Our main point is that, if you’re pursuing a set of unrealistic objectives that are unlikely to succeed, but are very costly, then you ought to be asking more fundamental questions about what our real interests are and what is the best strategy for achieving them at an acceptable cost. Putting this all in terms of words like victory, or defeat or whatever, tends to evoke the wrong sort of emotional response. What we ought to be doing is being very realistic and asking ruthless cost-benefit questions, “What are we trying to achieve?” “What’s the best way to do that at an acceptable cost to the United States?” And in our view, that leads us in a very different direction.

I think it becomes increasingly easy to get people to talk about alternatives when they see the current approach failing. And again, President Obama has been president for 20 months, and most of the news we’ve gotten out of Afghanistan has not been good. The study group would be delighted, it seems to me, if the administration’s approach were wildly successful, if the Taliban were routed, if the central government in Afghanistan was popular and legitimate and not corrupt, and if the United States could succeed quickly and come home. So we wouldn’t mind being proven wrong. But because we don’t think we’ve diagnosed this incorrectly, it’s important that we start thinking about alternatives so that we have a way to proceed if and when the current strategy fails.

The claim has been made that if the US leaves Afghanistan women’s rights will be grossly endangered.

How does the report deal with this issue?

Clemons: I think we do better than most. It is a very vexing problem but our report does not walk away from women’s rights and human rights in Afghanistan. We spend considerable time in the report looking at the other elements of statecraft pressure, basically benchmarking the horrific state of women there. We didn’t find the Karzai regime to be particularly enlightened on this front either. What we do is we try to decouple the notion that military deployment and the application of military force is going to yield the enhancement of women’s rights and human rights. The report does not call for disengagement from Afghanistan. It simply argues that a very large footprint of troops is neither succeeding in stabilizing the country in terms of military and security, nor is it achieving a protection of basic and civil rights, and while we also say that one has to be careful of guaranteeing those rights, it doesn’t walk away from that responsibility.

Walt: I think the status of women in Afghanistan is obviously a concern, and I don’t have much to add to the points made in the report. I mean, obviously, trying to end the fighting there is the single best thing we could do to improve the situation that women face there. I think we also have to recognize that our capacity to do large-scale social engineering in societies that are very different from our own is inherently somewhat limited. I believe the role and place of women in Afghanistan is going to change over time, it’s going to move in a direction we would regard as positive, but it’s not the kind of thing that people in the United States can wave a magic wand and cause it to happen overnight, particularly in the midst of the civil war there.

Hoh: There have been gains made for women in Afghanistan, mainly in the Northern, Western and the urban parts of the country, and those gains need to be kept. This is why it’s important to have a negotiated settlement. That’s why our first recommendation is for a political process, a negotiated settlement in order to make sure those gains are kept. Now, whilst women in urban areas and in the north and west have seen gains because of US presence in Afghanistan, the women in the east and the south where the fighting is taking place have seen their lives become much, much worse. If you’re a women in south or east Afghanistan, you are more concerned about a bomb getting dropped on your house or the fact that you can’t travel on the roads because of all the IEDs [improvised explosive device], or that your children may be caught in a gun fight than you are about your ability to leave your house without wearing a burqa. So, in south and east Afghanistan the priority needs to be to end the violence, to end the conflict. The priority is a negotiated settlement; maintain the gains made for women in the northwest and central part of the country and end the violence in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan because that’s the most pressing concern for women right now. And then, through information supplied by international organizations and NGOs, expand rights for women within the Pashtun belt. But again, that Pashtun culture is only going to change over time and it can’t be changed through the barrel of a rifle.

This article was first published in The Majalla 11 November 2010

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The Invisible Threat

An interview with Jeffrey Carr, cyber intelligence expert Cyber attacks have crippled the countries of Estonia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and currently cost governments worldwide more than $1 trillion annually in defense attempts. However, despite this astonishing sum of investment, little progress has been made in an overall bid to tackle destructive cyber activity. In an interview with The Majalla, cyber intelligence expert Jeffrey Carr elucidates on the specifics of cyber warfare, its implications for critical infrastructure, and discusses where he believes the focus needs to lie in determining procedures to tighten internet security.

Jacqueline Shoen

T

He regularly consults with American and foreign government intelligence on acts of espionage at venues such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence conference on cyber conflict.

Carr is a frequent writer for Forbes Firewall blog. He is also the author of the Intel Fusion blog, and founded the widely read Project Grey Goose—an Open Source investigation into the 2008 Russian cyber attacks on Georgia. His book, Inside Cyber Warfare, has been certified by General Kevin Chilton, commander US Strategic Command.

In an interview with The Majalla, Carr elucidates on the specifics of cyber warfare, its implications for critical infrastructure, and discusses where he believes the focus needs to lie in determining procedures to tighten internet security.

Could you please define cyber warfare?

Nobody has really had a good definition of cyber warfare, but in my view, cyber warfare occurs anytime one actor attempts to achieve a political or strategic goal through means of networked operation, or an electronic or internet-based operation.

Image © iStockphoto

he birth of the internet in 1989 transformed the underpinning of our world. The capabilities of the global network in communication as well as governance revolutionized and altered cultural development. It is a disconcerting fact, then, that the cyber arena now so entrenched in daily life has also come to be formally recognized as a new domain in warfare.

Attacks have crippled the countries Estonia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and currently cost governments worldwide more than $1 trillion annually in defense attempts. However, despite this astonishing sum of investment, little progress has been made in an overall bid to tackle destructive cyber activity.

While the security of the US cyber network has remained under private sector supervision, alternatively, non-democratic regimes are eager to promote the idea of a tight government-controlled internet. It now falls upon liberal nations to locate security measures that will also preserve the integrity of a free cyber environment.

Jeffrey Carr is a cyber intelligence expert who specializes in the investigation of cyber attacks against governments and network structures by hackers from authorized and underground sources.

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Have countries officially defined cyber warfare?

I think everyone has attempted to define it, it’s a little difficult; you would have to define cyber space and no one has yet come to a complete agreement on that. We think we all know what it is intuitively but it’s hard to really put into words.

How are the challenges to security that we face now different from those we faced during warfare pre-internet.

I would say this is much larger in scope. Also, many more people are now able to play at this game. Before, you were limited to radio signals, your telephone lines, much different in terms of interception and how many people who might be out there with those capabilities. Now, because of the internet and the way that this is becoming a completely networked world, the amount of actors that might be involved in this, whether they are criminal or employed by the state or part of a militia and you name it, it’s exponentially larger that its hard to even give a number to it, but it makes everyone much more vulnerable.

Would you say there are links between cyber warfare and real warfare?

In my view they are intricately connected. I don’t believe we’ve ever seen pure cyber warfare. The way that I define it, I think that cyber is a component of regular warfare. Short of that I think you’re seeing something else, you’re seeing cyber espionage or you’re seeing the oppression of visiting groups. These are not acts of war as we traditionally think of them. Or I could say even “acts of war” is not really an accurate term.

These are not things that would allow a defense of action by another state that would result in physical warfare.

Cyber Attacks ‘Round the World A Malaysian native is being tried for hacking into the computer network of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and stealing crucial financial information.

Thirty-two- year-old Lin Mun Poo pleaded not guilty to a New York court in November 2010, despite admitting to federal agents that he previously tapped the networks of international entities.

In January 2010, a Nebraska man pleaded guilty to using a software program to bombard a California church’s website and prevent its political messages from being distributed to the public. Prosecutors say it was part of a planned nation-wide cyber attack against the Church of Scientology.

In July 2009, more than 25 US and South Korean government and private websites were targeted in denial-of-service cyber attacks, which slowed or completely halted web-based activities for several days. The attacks were believed to have originated in North Korea, though no data was stolen.

The US Department of Defense blames a 2008 cyber attack on a foreign spying agency. The attack occurred after an infected flash drive was inserted into a military computer in the Middle East, quickly disseminating classified and unclassified documents to a foreign entity. The final destination of the stolen data is being investigated.

Could a serious cyber attack result in the threat of war? Say the US sustains a cyber attack by Russia, could that potentially snowball into ground attacks?

Well it depends. First of all you wouldn’t know that it was from Russia; the way it stands today there would be no way of knowing that. It would not be sufficiently strong enough to justify an invasion of another country or escalate it to a physical level.

Without being able to tell who launched what attack and without being able to confirm that it was an attack that might have caused the damage, versus a faulty switch or a bug in the code or whatever, I think it would be very hard to imagine something escalating to real conflict. On the other hand if it were a terrorist group, because they are interested not necessarily in war but to cause disruption, they may very well announce that they were responsible. In which case you might have a repeat of what you had after 9/11, which is the US—just another country going after the terrorist group that’s responsible even if they are geographically inside the borders of another state.

against dissidence, Zimbabwe same thing; tiny African nations that are taking advantage or leveraging technology in order to hang on to political power. Russia does the same thing—China, against Chinese dissidents; Russia, against other political parties that oppose the president’s parties. Even here in the US we have domestic groups that are using cyber space in an attempt to attack the government or politicians or other leaders through cyber space, so it’s pretty predacious.

It is interesting that everyone is currently in the process of dealing with this issue because of the advancement of technology. It is also interesting to think about the evolution of national and international law designed to protect states from cyber attacks. Where are cyber threats coming from and what are the targets?

Almost every developing and developed country is cyber capable. Many have announced that they are building out this component for their military; others are simply using it. Even little countries like Burma…the government has used it in the past

Do you find that there is a particular demographic that actually launches cyber attacks?

No, but there are plenty of very well educated people involved in these attacks. Some of the things that we’ve investigated we found in Pakistan, for example, some Pakistani hackers that were attacking Indian websites are engineers, software engineers. In places not limited to cyber space but certainly terrorist groups have been associated… have had their membership include doctors, so these are not just kids or uneducated people; they seem to involve quite the opposite, highly skilled, motivated individuals.

Top US defense businesses, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, fell victim to cyber attacks in 2007, suspected to have originated in China.

In March 2010, NATO and European Union workers were told to increase safeguards on their computers, also due to increased Chinese cyber espionage efforts.

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What kinds of policies are governments forming in order to minimize cyber threats, and how are cyber attackers punished if they are caught?

Internally, countries already have these laws in place, like China prosecutes hackers, so does Russia, so does the US, so does Great Britain. A number of countries already have laws that would punish hackers. I think what is being done that is going to be helpful is when you have countries collaborate under those laws. You’ve seen that, too, like in Spain, when a group of individuals were engaging in international criminal activities.

They were caught because of a combined law enforcement effort involving I think maybe three different countries. That to me is a successful strategy against these types of cyber attacks.

However, some countries don’t want to sign on to that, like for example Russia. They don’t want to give permission for other countries or for an international effort that would cross borders in pursuit of internet criminals. I think the way that Russia prefers it is that you come to them, show them what you have and they’ll do the best to arrest them.

This brings up another point—this idea of prosecuting hackers across borders.

Personally I’m in favor. I think that’s a good policy I would like to see more of that.

How effective is the US-CERT (US Computer Emergency Readiness Team)?

I think every nation’s computer emergency response team are all overwhelmed by trying to keep up with this. There are a lot of problems with this—lack of manpower lack of budget, lack of training in some cases, awareness of what the latest threats are, staying on top of brand new or what are known as zero-day threats, there is just so much. I think the bottom line here is that it would be hard for anyone to do a top-notch job in that role currently.

What needs to happen? Is it a problem of resources?

I think there has to be a change in strategy, a change in thinking completely, so right now the approach seems to be to try to defend everything, to be a response to all attacks, to try to defend against all attacks, in my opinion, and that’s just a no win situation. You can never do that; it will always fail. A different strategy should be to focus only on the most critical data, the most valuable information, leverage that you can’t afford to lose. Those are the questions that every company and government needs to ask themselves and then segregate those out.

Then employ real time monitoring. Use humans to engage in observing packet behavior and packet flow, how often data has been accessed by whom from where, and have built in red flags to trigger an immediate response. That today is the only really successful way to combat this threat. You have to make sacrifices in terms of what you can’t protect.

Do US companies operating internationally expose the US to security threats?

Yes, so in other words one of the dangers that I often speak about is when you have let’s say in China, you have a multinational company with a lab inside China; there are definite threats for those companies in terms of acquiring their data.

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cause of espionage or interception of communications. So there are all kinds of possibilities. Even more difficult though is to convince that company that it’s a problem, because from a financial point of view, these companies, now because of globalization, have to be in other countries in their opinion in order to sustain themselves. So it becomes very difficult for them to make that kind of decision.

Can the US government do anything to minimize these threats?

Unless a US law is broken, it’s up to the company to make those decisions. However having said that, what the government should do and I think in some instances is doing, is make buying decisions because of it. These are security concerns for other countries like in the US and Britain, so those countries can decide whether or not they actually want to allow their equipment to be sold inside their borders. In a similar fashion, if say a US company, ABC, had all of its widgets made in… you name it, some foreign country, it doesn’t matter who it is, and the US government felt like ABC did not have sufficient security in place, government could also choose not to be a customer of the ABC company for that reason. So the officer would have this voluntary check system, which checks and balances.

What does cyber warfare and the issue of cyber threats mean for the future of international relations?

That’s a good question. I think its one more negotiating point that countries can use in terms of the relations and how they leverage power in attribution. If, for example, Russia was interested in the US signing a non-cooperation treaty similar to what is in place for nuclear weapons to have one for cyber weapons and the US declined, that would give Russia some type of leverage in the world political environment, negotiating, we’ll do this or we’ll do that. So I think that’s what we’ll probably see, and probably further attempts to try to control or set rules of engagement that are globally accepted. I think that all of those are difficult to enforce, because even though a country may sign an agreement specifying rules of engagement, if you can’t prove attribution then how do you enforce it?

One last question, I know that you’ve just published a book, what are you working on right now?

I actually just started a new company that focuses protection on… well that does what I told you about earlier which is help companies, US and foreign companies, identify and protect their so called “crown jewels,” their most critical data, and at the same time help their executives be safe when they travel. So it’s an executive cyber security protection company. And I’m working on a video workshop for executives, for CIOs, CEOs and how they should be… the strategies they can use to protect themselves when they are conducting business around the world.

How far along are you with your company?

About two months, I think it’s about two months old, and it’s a baby so it’s still occupying a lot of my time, and I’m actually trying to find someone to come on board and help with the actual running of… I’m not a corporate guy so I need someone who has those skills and surprisingly it’s hard to find the right person.

This article was first published in The Majalla 26 November 2010 51

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• COUNTRY BRIEF

Egypt Timeline 1859 Work on the Suez Canal project, an artificial waterway connecting the Mediterranean and Red Sea, begins, opening 10 years later.

1914 Egypt becomes a British protectorate.

1922 Egypt gains independence from Britain.

Image © iStockphoto

1928 Hasan Al-Banna founds the Muslim Brotherhood, by now the largest and oldest political Islamist group.

1952 During the “July 23rd Revolution” the nation is declared a republic.

1956 President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, prompting the Suez Crisis.

1967 Israel surprise attacks Egypt, prompting the Six Day War. Egypt is defeated; Israel takes control of the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula.

1973 Egypt and Syria attack Israel to reclaim lands lost in the Six Day War. 1978 The Camp David Accords are signed, preserving peace between Egypt and Israel. Egypt is excluded from the Arab League.

1999 Egypt asks former Allied and Axis countries to provide financial and technological support to demine Egypt’s 23 million landmines.

2005 A May referendum paves the way for the country’s first direct multi-party presidential election. Incumbent Hosni Mubarak wins a fifth consecutive six-year term.

The election is highly contested.

2010 Parliamentary elections are set for late November.

Amidst allegations of government corruption and election fraud, the US calls on Egypt to allow foreign election monitors. Egypt officials refuse the suggestion.

Image © Getty Images

1981 President Anwar Al-Sadat is assassinated along with six other diplomats. The murders are attributed to a jihadist group.

1989 Egypt is permitted to join the Arab League.

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Two Booming Problems: Population and Poverty Geological evidence suggests that the Sahara desert has expanded over time and Egypt once had much more arable soil.

Around 2150 BC, climate change brought cooler, drier weather to the region, resulting in erratic river flooding and trauma to the settled civilization. Periods of high floods drowned hundreds of thousands at a time; subsequent low flooding prompted famine and starvation. One such famine occurred in 1202 AD, the horrifying circumstances of which were recorded by scholar Abdel-Latif Al-Baghdadi. Among the scenes he described were families cannibalizing loved ones to survive and noblewomen selling themselves as slaves in hopes of escaping.

Still, Egypt’s dense population is packed around Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile River, where the only arable land exists today. Egypt’s growing population of more than 80 million makes it the Arab world’s most populous country. Egypt’s inability to grow substantial food supplies has contributed to its past economic struggles and over-reliance on imports, thus creating a sizable trade deficit. However, since the 1980s the government has taken measurable steps to liberalize and diversify its economy. Its tourism, and media and service sectors have improved, though the country remains dependent on oil exports.

Even with the recent reforms, Egypt has failed to spur its economy in a way that would increase living standards for its citizens. Cairo is believed to have one of the largest urban slum populations in the world. The Centre for Development Policy and Research estimates that poverty rates in rural areas are actually twice as high as in the urban centers. The United NaIssue 1559 • December 2010

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Key Facts

Image © iStockphoto

O

ne of the earliest known civilizations of the ancient world—opulent in culture and advanced in learning—once dwelled among the desert lands of Egypt. Indeed, the Pharaonic period in Egyptian history propelled the country into international leadership for hundreds of years. The iconic architecture of the Great Pyramid and Great Sphinx are testaments to this era, but political and economic pressures have prevented the country from sustaining its historic grandeur.

A unified Egyptian nation has existed for at least five thousand years. The end of the ancient dynasties of the Old Kingdom (around 2150 BC) led to a period of social upheaval, followed by ancient Egypt’s ascent to global prestige. Some scholars argue that the foundations of democracy were established during the New Kingdom when citizens expected benevolence, mercy and judiciousness from their rulers. The New Kingdom’s culture inspired myths like “The Eloquent Peasant,” which outlined basic human rights and adequate treatment of lower classes.

The famous suicide of Queen Cleopatra in 30 BC ended this legendary era, as Romans took control of the territory.

From this point, Egypt was dominated by several external powers including the Persians. By 639 AD, Egypt was absorbed into the Muslim Empire. The Ottoman Turks seized the lands in the 1500s, and in the late 18th century Napoleon Bonaparte attempted to exert French influence so as to thwart British trade interests in the East. Napoleon advocated his campaign as an attempt to free the oppressed Muslims from the Ottoman Empire, but by 1802, a treaty relinquished Egypt back to the Ottomans. Researcher and author Robert Pateman argues that Egypt has remained remarkably homogenous despite these varied influences on its culture.

Capital: Cairo Government: Republic President: Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak Prime Minister: Ahmed Nazif Language: Arabic Geography Area: 1,001,450 km sq.

Border countries: Libya, Sudan, Israel, Gaza Strip Waters: Nile River, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea Climate: Hot and dry Terrain: Desert plateau, river valley PEOPLE Population: 80,471,869 (CIA 2010 estimate) Ethnic Groups: predominantly Egyptian, Bedouin Arabs and Nubian Religions: 90% Muslim (Sunni), 9% Coptic Christian, 1% other ECONOMY GDP: $188 billion (US Dept of State 2009) GDP per capita: $52,800 Main export: Oil exports at 155,200 barrels/day; metal, cotton, textiles and chemicals Unemployment rate: 9.4% tions says that 30 percent of Egyptians live below international poverty standards, and there are more than 28 million children without adequate housing, water, sanitation or enough food.

This situation will take a heavy toll on Egypt’s future workforce as impoverished students are less likely to attend or finish school, thereby making them unskilled laborers once they reach adulthood.

The 23 million landmines lying under the country’s soil provide additional caveats to Egypt’s economic growth. Most of the mines were laid by Axis and Allied powers during World War II. Egypt has sought international cooperation in their demining efforts, a task which the government alone cannot afford. Removing the 17.5 million landmines in the El-Alamain fields would cost approximately $20 billion. In the meantime, the landmines harm and kill hundreds of people every year, only adding to the country’s health costs and deterring investors, who are limited in where they can safely build businesses.

Invasions, Interventions, Infighting Government authorities claim the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway connecting the Mediterranean and Red Sea, is a crucial revenue source that services 7.5 percent of world trade. The canal, finished in 1869, brought in nearly $19 million profits in 2010, reminding Egyptians of the channel’s strategic significance. Though it offers the primary shipping route to the East, pirate attacks off the Somali coast have prompted many businessmen to opt for the longer route around southern Africa, which has harmed Egypt’s revenue.

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On the Political Horizon Partly responsible for the grievances of Egyptian extremist groups is the government’s law that bans any political party with an overtly religious agenda. Simply put, jihadist groups and others religious

sects such as the Muslim Brotherhood cannot gain political legitimacy in Egypt; they covertly run as independent candidates in elections.

President Mubarak, the longest tenured president since Egypt gained independence, has been criticized harshly for not taking stronger action to mitigate the violence. Rather, his authoritarian-like policies have further inflamed dissatisfied groups. After Mubarak won his fifth term during the country’s first multiparty elections in 2005, he bared down harshly on opposition parties, prompting condemnation from human rights agencies like Amnesty International.

In the run up to the November 2010 legislative elections, five thousand candidates registered for parliamentary spots. During the 2010 campaigns, watchdog agencies reported that Egyptian officials unjustly jailed, beat and exiled dozens of intellectuals and journalists, despite freedom of expression being explicitly guaranteed in the 1971 constitution. The bubbling anxieties even prompted the US to call for international elections monitors to ensure the proceedings were carried out democratically and free of corruption.

This political climate does not bode well for the upcoming 2011 presidential elections. The IMF applauds the economic reforms enacted under Mubarak’s leadership and lists Egypt as one of the fastest reforming nations in the world. But the country has yet to effectively solve its poverty and unemployment issues. This feeds into the growing malcontent felt by citizens who want new leadership. As it stands, it is unclear if Mubarak will seek re-election, and if no clear presidential favorite emerges during the campaign, it could aggravate political tensions and possibly fuel another spike in violence within Egypt.

Image © iStockphoto

This profitable waterway has caused serious disputes in the past. President Nasser’s decision to nationalize the canal led to the Suez Crisis 1956. Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt to protect their trade interests, causing an international uproar. The UN deployed its first peacekeeping force during the event to help reopen the blocked canal, which was impeding international transport. After economic sanctions, Britain and France withdrew. Israeli forces eventually pulled out, but tensions between Israel and Egypt festered, resulting in subsequent conflicts until the Camp David Accords were signed in 1978. Egypt was condemned by other Arab states for legitimizing the existence of Israel, but it has maintained the peace alliance.

Since the Camp David Accords, Egypt has not directly been involved in any major wars. However, in the winter of 20082009, the Israeli-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip occurred at the intersecting border with Egypt. Egypt’s public stance on the war caused a diplomatic headache for officials: Though poised to be a mediator between the two nations, Egypt could not pander too much to Israel and risk losing Arab allies, nor could it offer support to the extremist group Hamas, lest that bolster Egyptian extremist groups.

Even now, with the Gaza War over, there are still frequent attacks around the Gaza border and problems with weapons smuggling, thus contributing to the recent upsurge in violence within Egypt. Israel and Egypt have been working to capture militants and extremists, but this only addresses one facet of the multilayered, multi-sectarian problem of violent attacks in Egypt.

The assassination of President Anwar Al-Sadat in 1981, claimed by the jihadist group, Tanzin Al-Jihad, is considered a commencing point for the expansion of violent groups and increases in violent attacks during the last two decades. Other extremist factions gained prowess during the following years, including Gama’a Islamiya, which seized control of an area of Cairo in 1992, invoking Shari’a law.

Members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged with AlQaeda before the 9/11 attacks, began targeting tourists in the late 1990s as part of the movement’s focus on the “far enemy,” or Westerners.

Coptic Christians and other Christian sects are also targets of brutality.

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• THE ARTS

Wide Field of Vision Independent video documentary in Syria Following the advent a of a new visual culture that emerged with the increased use of the internet and other forms of transnational media, the genre of experimental video documentary has made great strides in the Arab world. This is especially true of Syrian artists whose recent accomplishments have maintained them within the tradition of Syrian auteur cinema and its strong aspect of social critique.

Charlotte Bank Within the major artistic developments in the Arab world during the past decade, the genre of experimental video documentary stands out as one of the most important, and one that has received much international attention. Among the reasons for this development are improved accessibility of digital technology as well as the surfacing of new transnational media, such as satellite TV stations and the internet, with their stress on investigative journalism. As a result, a new visual culture has developed.

The early years of the new millennium saw the rise of artists and video makers who, in their works, investigated historical, socio-cultural and socio-political issues, such as the consequences of colonialism, experiences of war and occupation, as well as questions of gender, identity and memory.

Characteristic of this artistic practice is a constant search for new forms of expression and representation, the prominence of the video maker in his/her work, very much in the tradition of “auteur” cinema and a high degree of innovative spirit. It includes a wide range of aesthetic forms, often incorporating historical texts and narratives, found footage and photography.

In Syria, pioneers of this genre were Ammar Al-Beik and Meyar Al-Roumi. A prominent feature of their early works was a deep concern with the relationship between society and the individual. Al-Roumi’s autobiographical video, Un cinéma muet (2001), is a piece about the difficulties of filmmaking and cultural production in Syria. Upon his return to Syria to carry out his graduation project for the film school in Paris, Al-Roumi was not granted the necessary permission to shoot. Frustrated by this experience, he decided to abandon his original project and produce a film about filmmaking in Syria and the obstacles filmmakers face. He talked to a number of well-known Syrian film makers, such as Oussama Mohammad and Omar Amiralay, as well as other intellectuals about their frustrations of working in a country where “a filmmaker spends his time doing anything but his work as a filmmaker,” as one interviewee remarked.

Ammar Al-Beik’s, They Were Here (2000), is a reflective homage in visually powerful images to the old steam engine plant in Damascus and its former workers. In a succession of black and white shots, the piece documents this space of former industrial optimism, while the people who used to work there talk about their simple, everyday concerns. In its concern with industrial archaeology and labor, this short piece harks back to an earlier cinema of social realism as represented by the early documentaries of Omar Amiralay, the “father of

Syrian documentary filmmaking.” In another work, Clapper (2003), Al-Beik explores the religious diversity of the country and its potential to influence cross-religious dialogue. Al-Beik followed the daily work of the secluded community of monks at Deir Mar Musa Monastery, who, under the leadership of the Italian Brother Paolo, have dedicated their lives to promoting a Christian-Muslim dialogue. Filmed with a subtle distance to the protagonists, the film questions the manipulative character of any authoritarian community, while balancing the idealism of the monks with the realities of contemporary life.

Since these early years, the Syrian video movement has grown considerably, and every year it has seen new works by an increasing number of artists and filmmakers. The critical investigation of gender roles is the predominant subject of Diana El-Jeiroudi’s work. Her short documentary, The Pot (2005), questions the concept of motherhood as the ultimate fulfilment of female existence. El-Jeiroudi lets young women from different backgrounds recount how they view the traditional role of women as mothers and how pregnancy affected society’s perception of them as human beings. Kept in a raw style reminiscent of home videos—a style that refrains from using elaborate effects and is often used in an effort to surmount the barriers between film and audience—The Pot surprises by the frankness of its statements, and succeeds in showing a much more diverse picture of Syrian and Arab womanhood than normally represented by mainstream media, both Western and Arab.

Stone Bird (2006) by Hazem Alhamwi tells the story of a man who has become insane due to an unsolvable emotional and moral conflict. After having discovered the affair between his wife and his father, Abu Hajar seems to have chosen madness rather than the more common reaction of rage to cope with the situation. This well-researched work succeeds in addressing a number of serious issues of traditional Syrian society in a personal and unobtrusive way. The spectator cannot help feeling that Abu Hajar is far more human than those rigid rules that have forced him into madness, a condition that appears more like a deliberate choice and a way to escape from the unbearable obligation to respond violently. The withdrawal of an individual from society is also central in Reem Ghazzi’s Crack (2007). In just four minutes, the film tells the tragic story of a man whose bitter feelings of injustice lead him to “close the door” on society. Carefully filmed with well-chosen angles, Ghazzi’s piece is a fine example of an “auteur” aspect in documentary filmmaking, as practiced by Syrian filmmakers of the older generation.

All of the mentioned works bear witness to the potential of young Syrian video documentarians, who combine social commitment with a solid theoretical basis. While following contemporary trends in experimental documentary filmmaking, these young filmmakers and artists also inscribe themselves within the tradition of Syrian auteur cinema and its strong aspect of social critique.

Charlotte Bank – Independent curator, researcher and writer living and working between Berlin and Damascus. Her work focuses on contemporary cultural and artistic practices in the Arab world and diasporic communities. Ms. Bank publishes regularly in international media, both on- and off-line.

This article was first published in The Majalla 16 November 2010

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A Living Homage to Modern Arab Art

Jacqueline Shoen

ly bad circumstances, Sheikh Hassan also established an artist residency program in the same villa. Desperate for a place of refuge, Iraqi artists have benefitted most from this program.

Spanning a time period that stretches from the 1840s to the present, the ever-growing collection of Arab art has found a plush new home in Doha at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art—Sheikh Hassan’s greatest achievement to date.

As the museum with the largest collection of Arab art, Mathaf is sure to attract visitors from far and wide. However, a fundamental disagreement between the political and religious values of most Arab states and those of many contemporary Arab artists may preclude Mathaf from becoming the most sought after venue for contemporary Arab and North African artists.

Only time will tell whether these bold new artists will find a way to negotiate these boundaries, thereby reaping the benefits of Qatar’s grand push to become a regional hub for culture and commerce with Doha at its heart.

In this interview with The Majalla, Sheikh Hassan talks about how the idea of creating Mathaf originally started, the initial responses he has had and his continuing role in the development of the new museum, set to launch in December 2010.

After purchasing his first painting, Sheikh Hassan was hooked.

Gradually, he purchased one artwork after another until his collection swelled to more than 6,000.

The sheikh began building his collection in the 1980s, primarily through the acquisition of works by Qatari artists. He later began to acquire works from all over the Middle East, North Africa and from within the Arab diaspora.

In 1994, these works were included as part of a collection located in a villa that served as a private museum. In his desire to encourage creativity and expression among those in particular-

Where did you get the idea for Mathaf, and how long has it been brewing in your mind?

Specifically when it comes to the idea of the museum, it started not as an idea but as a collection. And it wasn’t until I realized that nowhere in the world did there exist a large collection of Arab art that I made the decision to open Mathaf. I remember asking, “Where is Arab art?” and they would reply, “What is Arab art?”

I have always had an interest and a love for art, and I discovered this when looking for material to educate myself about it.

An interview with H.E. Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali Al-Thani, vice-chairman of the Qatar Museums Authority and founder of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Sheikh Hassan of Qatar speaks to The Majalla about the opening of Mathaf, the first museum dedicated to modern Arab art. As a longtime art enthusiast and collector, Sheikh Hassan has directed al of his efforts in this area to the creation of Mathaf, envisioned as a space for people around the globe to explore the Arab world’s rich and unique history, people and culture through artistic expression. Though many of the techniques, trends and subjects are employed much less in Arab art today, one finds no difficulty in appreciating the creative processes that came before.

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• THE ARTS

I found that there wasn’t anything around at all. This is one of the main missions of Mathaf—to create that material for other people to be able to research and find out more about it.

What has the response been so far?

Since 1994 when people became aware of the collection they have wanted to know when we were going to do something with it. Due to the amount of pressure we have been under from the art community and from art lovers we decided to speed up the process. This is why the opening will be in a temporary location. The permanent location, however, will not be ready for another four to five years.

One of the aims of Mathaf is to celebrate Qatari identity. Could you elaborate on this?

The Qatari art movement is part of the Arab arts movement, which is part of the larger regional arts movement. The museum is involved in and interested and interactive with art from the whole region so it’s not just the immediate Arab world. It’s also Iran, Turkey, India and Africa as well. And although Europe is part of that larger region we are not involved in Europe because there are already organizations and institutions which take care of European arts.

Qatari art is included just as any other Arab artist would be in the museum. It is not a given preference, which is also due to the fact there is a Qatar national museum specifically for Qatari art.

Why is the focus on modern as opposed to contemporary art?

Modern art in the Arab world is still growing because it has a long history and we continue to discover more and more. Now there is a renaissance movement that began even before the opening of the museum. We are rereading and rediscovering the history that goes further and further back when it comes to Arab and regional art.

A research center has also been created within the museum.

There is the educational part to the museum, which is a very important part of it. It allows them to explore this art because they really have no idea what Arab art is, where it comes from and what it looks like. That is one of the main missions of Mathaf, to make our art accessible to the world at large, whether you’re talking about Europe, North America or Asia.

Red Sky with Birds Dia Azzawi Perseverance and Hope Sliman Mansour

Other components of this research center are the provision of online programs. Can you elaborate on what sorts of online programs you plan to provide?

There will be a database where you can essentially find information about the artists from the region. You can even add any further information you have on a particular artist and it will be interactive throughout the whole world. That will then become part of this museum and part of this encyclopedia.

To what extent does Mathaf plan on collaborating with Western art institutions?

We are at the moment in the process of working with all the modern museums in the world, and our relationships are very strong with these institutions. We are hoping that these relationships will grow but we cannot go any further at the moment because we haven’t even got off the ground yet.

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How do you strike a balance between encouraging creativity and expression while not offending the powers that be, whether they are the religious establishment, non-state actors or the government?

There exists a Qatari law that anyone from exhibiting anything which may hurt other people’s feelings or sensibilities. So that makes it easy for us.

What does Arab art have in common and can it act as a unifying force?

Art in the region is different. It is these differences that make it rich. The Gulf is different from Egypt, for example, and each has had its own experiences within the art movement. In Iraq, for example, they have their own national history and pride, whilst in Lebanon they consider themselves more European. This mixture is good. They were searching for their identity, but they don’t think about that anymore. You can sense these changes.

How involved do you plan to be with Mathaf in the future?

I started this with nothing but one painting; now we have around 6,000. The project has grown and now I feel like I’m part of the people again. Until the museum is completed I will be involved in its development, but not through my input in the pieces that we have. For that we have consultants and people who advise on all of those things.

I will make sure that the museum will be able to satisfy its main mission, and this is what I want to focus on. This is my involvement with the museum.

This article was first published in The Majalla 26 November 2010

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• THE CRITICS

Asking the Right Questions Getting to Pluralism: Political Actors in the Arab World

by Marina Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2009 In explaining the lack of democratization in the Arab world, many analysts point to a kind of exceptionalism of the region, be it with a focus on culture, economics, or the ArabIsraeli conflict. This volume from the Carnegie Endowment fundamentally challenges existing assumptions, thus calling for a radical re-evaluation of current foreign democracy assistance and strategies used by oppositional Arab players.

Many regimes in the Arab world have carried out reforms in recent years, but the reforms have been directed at modernizing the economy and addressing social issues rather than structural problems of power distribution. Despite a generally higher number of parties, the conduction of elections, and relatively good access to information, power remains firmly in the hands of established leaders. In many cases, reform has been a way of warding off criticism without giving away control. For example, in Morocco, which is often touted as a successful reforming country, King Muhammad VI controls parliament, appoints the prime minister, and is not bound by election results—evident in the 2007 legislative elections when less than 37 percent of the population voted.

In explaining this anomaly, many arguments note Arab exceptionalism in one shape or another, be it with a focus on culture, civil society, economics or regional conflicts. Marina Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy, on the other hand, point to a different realm of analysis—that of power distribution within the countries themselves. The key argument of Getting to Pluralism is that the most important players in Arab politics are ruling establishments, liberal or leftist secular political parties, and moderate Islamist groups that have renounced violence in favor of political participation. Incumbent regimes are disproportionately more powerful than the other players, and the opposition is weak and divided. Political stagnation is thus mainly caused by this imbalance of power, which none of the players are strong enough or motivated enough to break.

This diagnosis has profound implications for policymaking, particularly because it places the issue of civil society in the background, thus going against conventional wisdom concerning its role in the development of a viable democracy. However, the authors make a strong case in arguing that civil society organizations faced with strong government repression can only be effective as a mass movement. That leaves out the generally small, professional NGOs preferred by democracy advocates.

While NGOs in some countries, such as Morocco and Jordan, have multiplied recently with assistance from the West, they have facilitated little concrete change on the ground. Additionally, “mass movements tend to lead to the formation of regimes that are hardly moderate.” Hence, Ottaway and Hamzawy encourage a re-evaluation of foreign democracy assistance, which they argue is unlikely to be effective.

The incentive to introduce viable reforms is further narrowed by the so-called “King’s Dilemma;” namely, that reform from the top tends to increase bottom-up demand for radical change. Consequently, cautious change may soon lead to a wiping out of the ruling elite—the shah of Iran is a good example. While it is plausible that some reformers may prefer a more open political environment in exchange for uncertainty, it remains doubtful.

Meanwhile, secular parties hardly pressure governments in any way that might pose a challenge to current regimes. Indeed, while these parties are usually quick to define what they are not, they are typically vague about what they are. Hence, they “can neither attract the more thoughtful or self-interested voters who seek a party that will represent their interests, nor do they have a simple slogan to which people respond emotionally.” This is a problem, which must be solved from within the parties through careful reflections of their vision for society, how to get their political message across, and how to organize themselves.

Islamist movements are generally stronger in organizational terms, as they have devoted much systematic effort to building up their political structures and networks of social welfare organizations. Meanwhile, the reconciliation between Islamic beliefs and a commitment to democracy is a contentious issue, creating divisions within the leadership as well as fear of losing supporters to more conservative religious factions. However, this point should not be exaggerated or over-simplified. As indicated by Ottaway and Hamzawy, the large-scale commitment to the nation-state by participating Islamists is generally ignored, contrary to the alarm created by radical statements about reviving the caliphate—“although the chances of this happening are about as good as those of the revival of the Holy Roman Empire.”

While the authors admit that Islamic factions pose challenges, they convincingly conclude that a true process of democratization can never be brought about through top-down management, which on the whole serves to perpetuate authoritarianism. The experiences of Hamas and Hezbollah demonstrate that exclusion is not a realistic option, given their tremendous popular support. Thus, countries must develop strong institutional frameworks, which can prevent political actors from gaining too much power. While a decentralized inclusive process is more unpredictable, it may be the most viable solution to achieve long-term change.

Getting to Pluralism portrays reform as an essentially political process. This is an immensely important conclusion in terms of deconstructing deterministic narratives, which dictate that the Arab world cannot reform politically without shedding its culture or religion. The bad news is that the ruling establishments remain strong, and thus, with weak opposition forces, the status quo will be difficult to challenge. In this sense, Ottaway and Hamzawy do not provide many answers. But they do encourage us to ask the right questions to begin with.

This article was first published in The Majalla 25 November 2010

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Long Road to Recovery Pakistan After the Floods by S. Akbar Zaidi Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 29 September 2010 In a Q&A for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, S. Akbar Zaidi, a political economist specializing on South Asia, analyzes the situation in Pakistan after the devastating floods. Zaidi considers what lies ahead for the newly recovering country and its relations with the West. The real solutions to the country’s problems, Zaidi argues, lie in the hands of a government too reliant on Western aid to make the necessary political changes.

S

. Akbar Zaidi discusses the impact of the recent floods in Pakistan for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, summarizing the country’s most devastating crisis since it gained independence in 1947. Without delving too deeply into the emotional and physical toll endured by the Pakistani people, Zaidi focuses instead on the economic, security and political implications that the crisis has had on the future trajectory of the country.

A surprising aspect of the ordeal: the Pakistani military emerged as the local hero during the disaster, as citizens witnessed military personnel delivering aid and supplies while their own political leaders appeared asleep at the wheel. Zaidi describes government response to the floods as “slow, limited, and incomplete;” meanwhile, during the same time period, the country’s president spent time on official visits to Europe.

Yet, Zaidi’s analysis didn’t flesh out the extent of government inefficiencies. The state’s disorganization was highlighted by its slow response in restoring services like the provision of clean water and sanitation, as well as its lack of attention to public health—thousands of Pakistanis are suffering from terrible skin and stomach infections due to the lack of adequate healthcare. To complicate matters further, Zaidi argues that the aggressive manner in which Pakistan’s media documented government failures during the crisis increased popular opposition to the current administration. This added fuel to the public’s general sense of mistrust, which began in 2005 when government officials were accused of dipping their hands into aid money sent to help earthquake victims.

These corruption allegations are part of why Zaidi argues that international aid response to the recent floods has been slower, prompting caution and hesitation among would-be donors both internally and abroad. This is in stark contrast to the immediate outpouring of international support Pakistan experienced in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake. Additionally, the impact of the floods developed over a longer period of time and therefore did not capture the same instant media attention as the 2005 crisis. Zaidi notes an interesting point, stating that the current Pakistani government failed to hold local elections, and hypothesizes that this might be why the flood response lacked a coordinated, localized front, though he does not offer much supporting evidence for this claim.

Important contrasts between the stated economic impact and the actual economic damage caused by the floods are closely examined. Government officials have embellished the facts, stating that the country will endure nearly a quarter loss in GDP. In ac-

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The state’s disorganization was highlighted by its slow response in restoring services like the provision of clean water and sanitation, as well as its lack of attention to public health—thousands of Pakistanis are suffering from terrible skin and stomach infections due to the lack of adequate healthcare tuality, Zaidi says that the agrarian sector, which suffered the most during the floods, only accounts for just over 20 percent of GDP. The disaster left Pakistan’s economic hub, the port-city of Karachi, relatively unscathed, and the other economic sectors remained intact. Zaidi concludes that the government’s exaggerations are an emotional appeal to gain more international funding.

The West, particularly the US, has expressed concerns over the Pakistani government’s ability to continue counter-militant operations, while also recovering from the flood. A primary concern is that Islamist aid groups will step in where the government has failed, garnering support, but Zaidi is quick to argue that this in no way means direct support for extremist groups. In fact, recent efforts to oust the Taliban from Swat and Malakand have been successful. Additionally, the deluge itself is thought to have wiped out some militant training camps in Waziristan, as reported by the Eurasia Review, though the change of landscape and forced movement of people have brought new dimensions for security planners to consider.

What is harmful to the West, Zaidi argues, is that in spite of the US’s quick on-the-ground response during the initial flooding, their military’s continued drone attacks in the northwest have caused anti-American sentiments to resurface in Pakistan.

But another result of the Pakistani government’s ineptitude is left unmentioned. With the Pakistani people giving little trust to the current administration and offering no strong support for any alternative political party, democracy within the country could be facing a future crisis.

Zaidi says the real road to recovery lies with wide-scale political changes, beyond the scope of the flooding. He says Pakistani leaders must implement measures for accountability, raise taxes, and minimize elitist interests so that the country can build its own resources and internal political strength. This, however, is highly unlikely because of the over reliance on support and aid money from the West, which impedes current leaders from stepping up to the challenge. While Zaidi offers this prescription for future Pakistani success, his “tough love” stance does little to help the millions of flood victims at present, and the question of how to achieve future success within the current political climate remains unaddressed.

For the full report follow this link http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=41635#devastating This article was first published in The Majalla 5 November 2010 61

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• THE FINAL WORD

Republics of Fear

Rule by religious intimidation and conservative codes During the past few years, there have been incidents of murder, assassination and bombings in every location. Iraq has turned into a republic of fear, perhaps more so than during the Saddam era.

Adel Al Toraifi

I

n the late 1980s, an Iraqi author, writing under a pseudonym, published a book entitled, Republic of Fear, which focused on the reign of the Ba’ath regime in Iraq. The author used an alias for fear of reprisals from Sadam Hussein’s intelligence forces. The Iraqi leader had just ended an eight-year war with Iran, and was boasting of victory in a delusional manner.

A few months after the book was published, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and his radical regime encountered opposition from international troops. Yet, instead of ousting the dictator leader by force, international efforts were limited to accepting his withdrawal and imposing international sanctions.

Author Kanan Makiya republished his significant book in 1998, but this time under his real name, at a time when the US and British governments were considering a military strike in response to the violations of Saddam Hussein’s regime. At the time, war did not materialize, yet five years later, the George W. Bush administration decided to carry out military operations, thus invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam. As time passed, the invasion transformed into one of the bloodiest phases in the history of Iraq, with unprecedented violence based on sect, race and secret intelligence, in a country that was ruled with an iron fist for over four decades.

The old spectrum of politicians has been replaced by a new one During the past few years, there have been incidents of murder, assassination and bombings in every location. Iraq has turned into a republic of fear, perhaps more so than during the Saddam era. In the 1980s, the regime could sentence any of its opponents to exile, along with his family and even his entire neighborhood, if he escaped from the security apparatus. Yet today, innocent civilians disappear, or die in mass bombings on a scale that has not been witnessed throughout history. It is true that suicide bombings take place in Western, Arab and Muslim countries, yet this is nothing compared to what happens in an endless cycle in Iraq.

From the 1960s until the late 1980s, Arab and Western intellectuals and writers used to believe that the region's problem with terrorism and violence was down to leadership and certain ruling regimes. They believed that if Arab regimes were fairer, more peaceful and ultimately more democratic, then their states would not have transformed into republics of fear. This interpretation is somewhat correct, but it is incomplete. The Iraqi model serves as proof that the problem does not lie in a lack of democracy, but rather in a deeper illness within these societies, causing them to turn towards uncontrolled violence. There are crises of identity,

religion and values, which are deeply rooted within these societies. Without confronting such crises, it will be impossible to break this vicious circle of mindless violence.

In an article entitled, "Iran: the Fear Republic," published by The Guardian newspaper on 21 January 2010, Iranian scholar Mehdi Khalaji says: "Iran's clerical regime governs by a simple formula: he who is the most frightening, wins. ‘Victory by terrifying’ is a trope that is present in many of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speeches. Indeed, it is a reliable guide to his political philosophy." Khalaji is correct, as some countries in the region govern in accordance with the principle of fear.

However, it is crucially important to recognize the fact that the crisis does not lie in ruling regimes only, but first and foremost within society. In his distinguished analysis of the Iranian Revolution, Said Arjomand indicates that the Iranian Revolution was never a revolution of ideas, but rather a public protest incited for a variety of reasons, some contradictory. He argues that the Iranian Revolution could have been suppressed had the Shah not been ill and weak, and refused to confront it by force.

Following a struggle between different groups, causing demonstrations and violence, the mullahs achieved victory by force and through the use of religious intimidation. According to Arjomand, with a new revolutionary government, and the dissolution of state and army institutions, the nation entered into a state of confusion and dispersion, and did not know what it wanted (The Turban for the Crown, 1988).

Such a state of dispersion and loss was observed by author Kanan Makiya, who has recently commented on the current Iraqi situation. In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat on 18 March 2010, Makiya said, "We have not solved this problem. I am not talking about our generation, your generation, or my father's.

Rather we are talking about the current generation which operates in the Iraqi political arena, namely the entire political layer that has emerged since 2003. This is a new layer in Iraqi politics, where the old spectrum of politicians has been replaced by a new one, with new faces and characteristics as a result. There are exceptions, but what they share in common is that they do not know what they want; they are not self-confident."

Societies in the Middle East are experiencing the same problem, for they do not know what they want, and are experiencing a state of dispersion and loss. It is natural that a conflict of identities, religions and values would eventually lead to a fierce clash. There are regimes of fear, and societies of fear. Inside each there are those who intimidate, and those who are intimidated. Even history and culture, to which one may resort, are also based on fear and intimidation. As we witness all of this happening, some people wonder: Where did all this devastating fear come from?

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