Middle East

And so Israel looks like it is moving closer and closer to a full-scale retaliation in the Gaza Strip, in response to the escalating assault of Katyusha rockets launched by Hamas at souther Israeli towns.   The IDF has already launched deadly raids into the Strip, killing close to twenty Palestinians. 

 The Israeli reaction here is inevitable, and, in the view of this author, justifiable.  No one going through constant rocket attacks should be expected to just sit there and take it.  War is never a decent or good thing, and it should never be rushed into or taken lightly, but eventually Israel has to defend itself.  It moved out of the Gaza Strip, the Gazans had an election, and the rockets still rain.  Regardless of what one thinks about the morality of a response, Israel has the legal right to defend itself (enough of my opinion; dissent is welcomed in the comments). 

(Side note: For a good discussion of this, both rational and inflamed {and thus an accurate picture}, check out the comments on Marty Peretz’ New Republicblog.  Marty himself is a little over-the-top, but some of the comments are excellent). 

Now to the meat of this post: why, knowing exactly how Israel would respond, did Hamas step up their assault?  After all, there is zero way Hamas could defeat a full-scale military invasion.  If Israel dropped all morality, it could roll over Gaza in a matter of hours (that Israel will not do that, of course, plays into Hamas’ considerations). 

It is because of the cruel realities of governance.   Ayatollah Khomeini famously said something along the lines of “the revolution is about Islam, not determining the price of melons!”  (I found several different versions of this quote, but they were all just variations on a theme.)   Meaning, of course, that he wasn’t interested in the nitty-gritty of a functioning society, but on his grand dream.   Luckily for him, Iran had a long history and a free marketplace.

 Not so in Gaza: years of occupation and Arafat’s incompetence left the Strip a miserable place to be, without any of the basics of governance.  Fatah proved that it couldn’t handle it, and the only other group there was Hamas.  Hamas won the elction, focusing much of its campaign rhetoric not on who was going to drive whom into which sea, but on erasing corruption and cleaning up the trash. 

Sounds good, right?  Hezbollah did much the same thing in Lebanon- limiting the militant talk while discussing civil society.   There discussion of how, in the absence of Israeli occupation, Hezbollah could evolve from a revolutionary militia to a normal political party (normal for the region, of course).  

This didn’t happen.  Hezbollah refused to give up its guns, and, when its Syrian backers were forced to scale back following the Hariri murder (for which they still might be held responsible), Hezbollah was losing support as well as its rasion d’etre.  So they launched raids into Israel’s north, and Israel retaliated.  It is worth noting that many Lebanese approved of this, before Israel disastrously went to Beirut.    Hezbollah found its voice again, and regained popularity.

Hamas realizes this.  Like Hezbollah, they were born for one reason only- to fight against Israel.   They can do no other.   So, as the reality of political power sets in, and people want more than rallies and fire, rhetoric and blood, a group can do one of two things: actually try to give people what they want (peace, jobs, stability, food) or, paradoxically, bring more blood and fire in, to rally around a common enemy.

Hamas is constitutionally unable to do the former.  They can only make trouble.  They are making a desperate gamble here- bring the wrath of Israel down upon them to try to rally support (picture of dead children always do this) and reestablish their mojo.  It will probably work; it almost always does.   It is tragic and foolhardy and immoral, but it is their only political knowledge.

It is a myth for fools that Hamas or Hezbollah can moderate themselves.  There might be people in the groups who can, but as soon as they modify themselves they cease to exist.  Power affects everyone the same way. For Hamas,  adaptation means extinction.   Fighting just means more bodies.   That is hardly a choice at all.

The New York Times today has a harrowing and brutal portrait of Yemen’s own version of the Untouchable class, the Akhdam- servants- a dark-skinned, shunned class who barely scrape by a slum-dwelling non-existence sweeping streets and begging.

 Quoting Robert Worth (who has done some interesting work of late on this vital but n
neglected country):

SANA, Yemen — By day, they sweep the streets of the Old City, ragged, dark-skinned men in orange jump suits. By night, they retreat to fetid slums on the edge of town.

They are known as “Al Akhdam” — the servants. Set apart by their African features, they form a kind of hereditary caste at the very bottom of Yemen’s social ladder.

Degrading myths pursue them: they eat their own dead, and their women are all prostitutes. Worst of all, they are reviled as outsiders in their own country, descendants of an Ethiopian army that is said to have crossed the Red Sea to oppress Yemen before the arrival of Islam.

“We are ready to work, but people say we are good for nothing but servants; they will not accept us,” said Ali Izzil Muhammad Obaid, a 20-year-old man who lives in a filthy Akhdam shantytown on the edge of this capital. “So we have no hope.”

Now, there is no proof at all that they come from a pre-Islamic invasion, but that difficult myth has continued to plague them.  There indeed is much confusion as to their origin, but the idea that they are remnants of an ancient expeditionary force who stayed behind to muck around in gutters is an absurd and self-perpetuating myth. 

One of the biggest problems the Akhdam have is that, in addition to dealing with spurious legends, the government has a million other problems to deal with.  Yes, they are the poorest in Yemen- but there isn’t much of a mobile upper class among the Arabs of the country, anyway.   There is already a lot of grumbling about daily life, and for President Saleh to wage a campaign to help “outsiders” would be an act of political folly. 

But: perhaps we are looking at this with tear-colored glasses, instead of seeing the brighter side of the picture.  Yemen Times?

IIn Yemen, there is a minority of people with dark complexion called al-Akhdam. Historically speaking, their presence in Yemen has been a result of the Ethiopian pre- Islam invasion in 525 BC. Settling down in Yemen and throughout the years have adapted a life style in which they practice many trades especially folklore dancing, handicrafts, cleaning and some other free trades. Unofficial statistics show that the population of this minority reaches 500,000 inhabitants living in Sana’a, Shabowa, Lahj, Abyan, Aden and al-Hudaida.

Well- that doesn’t sound so bad.  These people have folklore. 

I don’t mean to make light (well, kind of, but only at the Yemen Times).  What that article does show is the ingrained prejudice (see the myth asserted as fact) and the somewhat rosy picture it paints, both institutional obstacles to progress. 

Things are bad for many in Yemen.  Things are horrible for the servants.  I would recommend highly Worth’s piece, and look at the accompanying slide show.  

Side note: The Yemen Timeslater ran this letter, which I hope shows that while the problem of the Akhdam might be institutionalized, it isn’t all-pervasive.

Saturated as we are with news, it is easy to forget that Lebanon is still without a President, suffering under internal strife and external meddling over what the makeup of the next government should look like.  When this started in November it was scary.  It became frustrating as time went on, and now just seems absurd.   Unfortunately, however, absurdity is not the opposite of tragedy; more often that not it is merely a mask. 

 That seems to be the case in Lebanon.   The head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, has left Beirut empty-handed, failing to bring a deal to the table.   All sides agree that Michel Suleiman should be the next President, but all are getting hung up on the make-up of the next cabinet.   The Party of God wants enough cabinet members to maintain veto power over major decisions, a decision that is supported by its main patron, Syria (and a decision undoubtedly supported by the patron of both Syria andHezbollah: Iran).   The other parties don’t want the Shi’ite group to have that kind of power, seeing it as little but a recidivist and violent proxy for Syrian domination and Iranian influence. 

This, of course, is Lebanon’s main problem: it is the constant testing ground for regional rivalries.   The next stop for this is the upcoming Arab Summit in Damascus, which has received boycott threats from the Saudis.  Sana Abdallah discusses this in a sharp Middle East Times article. 

 If there is a boycott, it will both cause and be caused by tension.  It is worth noting that serious boycotts have taken place during major events, such as the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel or the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.  The threat of this shows how seriously Saudi Arabia is concerned with Iran, NIE notwithstanding.

(Of course, the seriousness of a boycott is somewhat leavened by the cold hard fact that nothing ever happens at Arab Summits.   It isn’t as if the Sauds will miss anything important or their absence will change anything, practically.  But that isn’t the point. Again: farce)

It is difficult to see a way out of this labyrinth.  To me, this is largely due to the intransigence of Hezbollah.  There has been talk for years about Hezbollah modifying themselves when they achieve political power, but that hasn’t been the case.  The problem with them is what they do without power- fall back into their old ways, threatening the Lebanese society (actually, this should be its own post, and hopefully will be tomorrow).  

But it isn’t just Hezbollah being difficult.   Read this Marc Sioris article from the Daily Star which quickly and insightfully demonstrates the political system’s internal rot.

In Lebanon, the only check on such families is the presence of other families competing for the same privileges. Take away that internal balance of power, and one of their scions might dominate the whole scene faster than one can say Bob Mugabe. Even those parties not built on inherited authority have adopted the same reverence for cults of personality and other tribal rituals, simultaneously making them greater threats to dilute the power of existing cliques but also diminishing the likelihood that they would bring substantive change.

Vali Nasr, one of the world’s leading experts on Shi’ism, and Ray Takeyh, author of the excellent Hidden Iran, have co-authored a piece in the latest Foreign Affairs about the dangers of Washington’s Iran containment strategy. 

 This is a grand strategy, which basically involves rallying all the Sunni Arab states against the growing Persian threat, and, in doing so, bringing stability to the region.  Nasr and Takeyh do not believe this to be a viable strategy, and think it will only further fissure the Levant.   Here is a long excerpt.

Containing Iran is not a novel idea, of course, but the benefits Washington expects from it are new. Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have devised various policies, doctrines, and schemes to temper the rash theocracy. For the Bush administration, however, containing Iran is the solution to the Middle East’s various problems. In its narrative, Sunni Arab states will rally to assist in the reconstruction of a viable government in Iraq for fear that state collapse in Baghdad would only consolidate Iran’s influence there. The specter of Shiite primacy in the region will persuade Saudi Arabia and Egypt to actively help declaw Hezbollah. And, the theory goes, now that Israel and its longtime Arab nemeses suddenly have a common interest in deflating Tehran’s power and stopping the ascendance of its protégé, Hamas, they will come to terms on an Israeli-Palestinian accord. This, in turn, will (rightly) shift the Middle East’s focus away from the corrosive Palestinian issue to the more pressing Persian menace. Far from worrying that the Middle East is now in flames, Bush administration officials seem to feel that in the midst of disorder and chaos lies an unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region so that it is finally at ease with U.S. dominance and Israeli prowess.

But there is a problem: Washington’s containment strategy is unsound, it cannot be implemented effectively, and it will probably make matters worse. The ingredients needed for a successful containment effort simply do not exist. Under these circumstances, Washington’s insistence that Arab states array against Iran could further destabilize an already volatile region

The summation of the article is basically that rifts that exist within the Sunni Arab states are far too deep and old to be suddenly healed by a new threat, and that the US will make things far worse by establishing what is essentially a Cold War strategy.   The authors think that constructive dialogue with Iran, which is not as messianic or as expansionist as some believe, would be far more fruitful (they also do not downplay the serious problems and threats the US and region face regarding Iran). 

 Where the authors lose me a bit is comparing Iran to Russia or China- merely a country who wants to throw its weight around a little bit.   This is true, but it also masks the trouble in dealing with the theocracy.   Russia and China both have power essentially in one spot- the Party with China and the oligarchy that surrounds Putin, in Russia.   This makes them theoretically far more simple countries with which to deal.  You go right to the source.

 The problem is that in Iran there is no source- or, rather, there are many.  Iran, with its chaotic simulacrum of democracy, is inflicted with constantly-shifting alliances and multiple bases of power.  Yes, Khamaeni sits at the center, and the hard-core mullahs control the army and the judiciary, but Iranian government is not a monolith (interestingly, Takeyh’s book is one of the more useful reads on Iran’s hydra-headed system).  

This is not to say that their basic premise is wrong- it isn’t.  The containment theory, beside the reasons the authors listed, is flawed in that it is enabling other US enemies, much in the same way that the US is arming Sunni insurgents to fight al-Qaeda.  Governments who help us are all doing so in their own interest, which is not guaranteed to redound favorably upon us.   We would be creating the illusion of a combined Sunni front, but one fissuring and boiling with older rivalries. 

But Nasr and Takeyh underestimate the difficulty of letting Iran see it is in their best interest to work with the system.  They are ultimately correct that it is possible, but readers of the article need to be aware that it is far from a magic bullet solution.

So there is going to be a total eclipse of the moon tonight, which is pretty cool, even if you are not into astronomy.    Light bending around the earth coats the moon in an dark red glow; we bathe it with our shadow- just one of the bizarre tricks the universe can play on us.

 I bring this up because the last time I saw one- May 4th, 2004- I was living in Yemen.  I was pretty excited by it then, too, because I guess I am a nerd when it comes to those things.   Greg Johnsen and I, along with our friend Sam, grabbed a few non-alcoholic beers (we were in Yemen, after all), and went into the backyard to watch it. 

It started slow, of course, and we sat with the ancient rhythms of the galaxy.  But then something not-as-ancient, but weirdly anachronistic started.  The call to prayer began to go off, from one direction and then another, crashing all around us, cutting into the stillness of the night, amplified across the reddening moon. 

There had been another call to prayer added for the night.  None of us were really sure why, exactly, and when we asked the next day never received a clear answer.   There were vague jokes about people being scared, and some answers about worshiping the wonders of creation, but nothing concrete.

And I guess it doesn’t matter.  It was a wierd bending of time that might only happen in the Middle East.  Sitting there, looking at the deadening and mysterious moon, hearing the ancient call to prayer, sounding the same as it had throughout dusty and tumultuous centuries, one could feel time stop: regress.   It bent into itself.  We could feel ourselves in the 7th century, looking up at a terrifying sky, with only the comfort of gorgeous Arabic repeating the simple words: there is no god but god.   Modern science couldn’t- can’t?- penetrate that tautological elegance.    There is a consistency there- as beautiful and terrifying and implacable as a shadow moving through the murky cosmos.   

The Egyptian National soccer team has won the Africa Cup of Nations, beating Cameroon 1-0 in the finals in Ghana.   Cameroon captured the continent during its stirring 2004 World Cup run (your humble writer watched the game in a bar in Tanzania, and the crowd was going nuts), but now Egypt has won.  It is Egypt’s 6th African Cup title.    Here’s a quick recap (from Al-Ahram)

The Pharaohs, as they are fondly called, scored the lone goal of the game in the 77th minute when Mohamed Abu-Treika slotted into the net a Mohamed Zidan pass after Lions skipper Rigobert Song clumsily failed to clear his area.

Al-Ahram also has an editorial on the meaning of the game, which starts a little, um, shaky:

They said it could not be done — an off-white country capturing the Africa Cup of Nations (ACN) in darkest West Africa, home to the continent’s mightiest teams. And indeed, despite being defending champions, Egypt was some way down the list of pre-tournament favourites, an afterthought kept in the shadows by the likes of Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.

(I am not sure who said it couldn’t be done, as it is the 6th title for the country- but, I suppose, athletes everywhere get motivated by “shocking the world”. )

The article leaves behind the wierd racial stuff, and becomes a very interesting read.

Underneath the street confetti, the cup will not put LE50 worth of meat on the table. It won’t pay those light bulb bills. It won’t increase a pension already meagre. It won’t send your child to that fancy language school. It won’t fix the apartment cracks. It won’t buy an apartment in the first place. It won’t stave off bird flu.

It won’t open or seal Rafah or usher in a Middle East peace. It won’t stop job-seeking migrants from drowning off the cost of treacherous waters. It won’t stop buildings from collapsing. It won’t find bread or drinking water.

It will not improve civil liberties or a human and civil rights record. It will not lead to change, to reform, to more democracy. It will not stem systemic corruption. It will not persuade people to care about one another. It will not decrease increasing poverty and moral decay. It will not shake off the widespread feeling of discontent.

The cup cannot guarantee a future beyond today.

Imad Mugnieh, mastermind of the 1983 attacks on American soldiers in Beirut, as well as a host of other Hezbollah atrocities, died when his car exploded last week- surely the closest he has ever had the chance to see one of his own hallmarks.    The immediate suspects were, of course, Israel and the US.    I disagreed with this- or at least didn’t like the way it was immediately assumed.

 Both countries, of course, had motives to take him out.  Either one would have probably been morally justified.   But the timing seemed wierd.  Why now?  Was it a message to Iran, which supported Hezbollah?  Syria?   There didn’t seem to be an immediate answer.  I believed that Syria was involved in the killing, or perhaps some kind of internecine Hezbollah skirmish.

 Oliver Guitta, in the Middle East Times, shares this belief (and backs it up with more than gut feelings).    He backs it up with ideas like this:

First, since Mughnieh, as a top Hezbollah operative working for both Syria and Iran, was suspected of having a hand in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, thus the Syrians might have found it convenient to eliminate him and in the process, sever any link to Damascus. Three years after Hariri’s murder, it now seems as though the international tribunal established by the United Nations will finally be hearing the case.

And with rumors like this:

First, according to the well-informed Kuwaiti daily al-Seyassah, Mughnieh was reported to have attended a high-level meeting called by the head of Syrian security services and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Chawkat. The other participants to that meeting included top Syrian leaders, representatives from Hamas (including its top leader Khaled Meshaal), Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. The purpose of that meeting was allegedly to select the potential targets to strike in Arab countries, if the latter refused to participate in the Arab summit set for the end of March in Damascus. It was purportedly during that meeting that Mughnieh’s car was booby-trapped.

Now, after reading it, I am not entirely convinced.  I wanted to be, because it would have confirmed what I felt before.  I think there is a case here, but there is a lot of circumstantial “evidence” and just some vague ideas of what conspiracies could be lurking.    But I don’t discount it, even if it is wrong.   It reminds us that not everything in the world is a US (or Israeli) plot, and that in the Middle East there are always at least three layers of conspiracy theories.  Even if none of them are true, the suspicion they engender plays at least as important a role in dictating events as does the truth.

The revolution which swept away a dynasty and altered political Islam for the rest of our lives turned 29 today, marked by celebrations in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

(Ahmadinejad speaks in front of a giant mural. ABACA via Middle East Times)

During the celebrations, Ahmadinejad struck what will inevitably be called “a defiant note.”

Addressing thousands of his supporters in Tehran, Ahmadinejad considered the nuclear crisis with the West as “closed” and that the “enemies of the Iranian Revolution can only play with pieces of paper, nothing more.”

He warned the Western world against issuing a third set of U.N. sanctions on his country because the “Iranian people will not back down an inch over their right to nuclear energy…. They should not make another mistake by voting a new resolution against Iran.”

This is the kind of statement that can be parsed over and over, Sovietology-style, with endless interpretations of intent, but I think it can also be dismissed as nothing out of the ordinary, and, indeed, very predictable for a national/nationalist ceremony in a tired and wary country.   Ahmadinejad was pumping up the base, if you will. 

It strikes me, on a personal note, that the revolution is just slightly younger than I am, having just turned 29 myself.   As much as a precocious genius as I was, according to my mom, I obviously don’t have any recollection of a world before the mullahs.   As the Cold War ended, and eventually fears of and wars with radical Islam became part of daily life, it was easy to forget how much those grainy videos of packed and sweaty streets, mobbing a man seemingly straight out of an ancient, austere desert, changed the world.

The battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan was hugely important.   But the Iranian revolution, even though it was a Shi’ite movement, showed young radicals that the world didn’t have to be a binary America-or-Soviet place, that their fervor and drive could allow them to create a state they wanted, to overthrow what they saw as corrupt and degenerate regimes.

 Clearly, no two revolutions are alike, and the “success” of Iran hasn’t been replicated in any Sunni state (The Taliban took power in a very uniqu circumstance).   So we tend to discount the impact that Iran had, partly because it has been with us for so long.   But it is an interesting quirk of history, that Iran, the first eruption of political Islam, has carried itself through the Wahabbi irruption, and continues to be the single most important country in the Middle East.

On that note, I will print perhaps the finest picture of all time.

 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits Iran’s new space center. (Photo: Agence France Presse–Getty Images

Seymour Hersh has an in-depth look at the Israeli attack of Syria last year, which some claim was an attack on some kind of nuclear facility.  Hersh is always worth a read.    Here is a teaser.

Sometime after midnight on September 6, 2007, at least four low-flying Israeli Air Force fighters crossed into Syrian airspace and carried out a secret bombing mission on the banks of the Euphrates River, about ninety miles north of the Iraq border. The seemingly unprovoked bombing, which came after months of heightened tension between Israel and Syria over military exercises and troop buildups by both sides along the Golan Heights, was, by almost any definition, an act of war. But in the immediate aftermath nothing was heard from the government of Israel. In contrast, in 1981, when the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, near Baghdad, the Israeli government was triumphant, releasing reconnaissance photographs of the strike and permitting the pilots to be widely interviewed.

Within hours of the attack, Syria denounced Israel for invading its airspace, but its public statements were incomplete and contradictory—thus adding to the mystery.

Jamestown has two new pieces on Yemen out today, one by one of America’s foremost experts on terrorism, and another by the sharpest young Yemeni scholar out there.

The latter, by Gregory Johnsen, analyzes al-Qaeda’s new strategy in their attacks.

Over the past six months, al-Qaeda in Yemen’s strategy has become increasingly clear. It aims to strike at both Yemen and Western countries—particularly the United States—by attacking them at their most vital and vulnerable points: oil and tourism. For Yemen the danger is clear. Oil revenues account for roughly 75 percent of the nation’s budget, while tourism remains one of the few legitimate areas of growth for an economy that is headed for failure. But this strategy is also calculated to hurt the West by targeting Western citizens and striking at oil production in the Arabian Peninsula. No longer is there a clear distinction, at least for al-Qaeda in Yemen, between attacking what is often referred to as the near enemy or the far enemy; instead it has devised an approach to simultaneously attack both. This strategy—which is more overarching than it is detailed—also allows for fighters to remain in Yemen instead of traveling to Iraq or Afghanistan, which is effectively decentralizing the front.

Johnsen’s thesis is dead-on, and his reccomendations are sharp.   I may be baised, as Gregory is a good friend and frequent collaborator, but I wouldn’t be friends with a dummy. 

The other article is by Michael “Anonymous” Scheuer.   Scheuer’s article, while swimming with quotes, is a little off- or, if not off, then somewhat behind the times.  Consider:

Attacks by al-Qaeda in Yemen are likely to continue at a level that does not lead to an all-out confrontation with Salih’s regime. In all likelihood, al-Qaeda intends to cause just enough sporadic damage to persuade Salih’s regime that it is best to curtail its efforts to destroy al-Qaeda and to allow the group to operate relatively freely in and from Yemen as long as no major attacks are staged in the country. Indeed, such a modus vivendi may be in the works as San’a officials have experimented with putting imprisoned Islamists through a reeducation process that shows them the error of their ways and then releases them on the promise of good behavior (al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 21, 2006).

This was the strategy of the government, and the strategy of Al-Qaeda old Yemeni guard.  The new generation is far, far less willing to compromise with the government.  Scheuer’s article is helpful as background, but it needs to be augmented with more recent developments. 
The Yemen Post has an interesting interview with a leader of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Rashad Mohammaed Saeed Ismael.   It is somewhat illuminating at times, as his irritation at the new guard sometimes bubbles to the surface, but it is also chock-full of nonsense like this:

YP: What is the source of strength in Al-Qaeda?

RI: The movement drives much of its force from its deep-rooted principles.

YP: From where does Al-Qaeda’s financial support come?

RI: Al-Qaeda has a complicated web that has no end or beginning. 

Thanks!

While we are here, it is worth reading Robert Worth’s New York Times article on Yemen.  It is old, but I will link to it from the Yemen Post.  I thought it was excellent.