Lonely Obama vs. Popular Iran

Read this article in The Huffington Post

A common perception is that under President Barack Obama, America's image has improved, and perhaps its friends have increased. But such claims are unfounded, as the opposite proves to be true.

One would expect the charismatic Obama, with his hand extended to America's friends and foes, to fare better than the confrontational George Bush, with his simplistic views on "either with us, or against us" and his lumping of nations -- wholesale -- in this or that axis of evil.

International relations, however, are about interests, not sweet talk. As Bush went out recruiting allies, and making enemies, Obama lost America's friends while failing to win over enemies.

Apparently, the benevolent Obama failed to impress America's number one enemy, Al-Qaeda.

Between September and December, the group sent two suicide bombers into New York and Michigan. The first was foiled, the second luckily failed.

In Iraq, after losing more than 4,300 troops in battle and spending $700 trillion since 2003, America today cannot find a single politician or group that would express gratitude to Americans for ridding Iraq of its ruthless tyrant Saddam Hussein, and allowing these politicians to speak out freely.

On the contrary, shy of making their excellent backdoor ties with Washington known since they fear Obama will depart Iraq and never look back, Iraqi politicians started expressing dissatisfaction with the United States in public.

In Lebanon, more than one third of its population of four million took to the streets in March 2005, demanding the disarmament of Iran's proxy militia, Hezbollah, and an end to Syrian occupation of their country. The majority of these people were Muslims under the leadership of moderate politician Saad Hariri.

Also in Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt, a tribal chieftain of an esoteric Islamic sect who had been an ally of Iran and Syria for a long time, turned coat, and went live on Al-Jazeera satellite station to say that he was proud to be part of America's plan to spread democracy in the Middle East.

By the time Obama had made it to the White House, support of America's allies in Lebanon waned since Obama was determined to appease their foes in Syria and Iran. Hariri and Jumblatt were forced to abandon their fight for Lebanon's democracy and freedom as Hariri rushed to Damascus to ask his former enemies for forgiveness, while Jumblatt is still begging for audience with Syria's dictator Bashar Assad.

In Iran, for the first time since 1979, the people revolted against their autocratic regime and took to the streets shouting death to the nation's Supreme Leader Ali Khaminei in what came to be known as the Green Revolution.

But Obama's Washington was busy sending one letter of appeasement after another to Iran's tyrants, and accordingly failed to take the side of the Green Revolution for democracy and freedom. When Obama did show support for the Green Movement, it was too little and too late.

Now compare America's friends around the Middle East to Iran's cronies, and you can immediately understand why Washington is in trouble, both diplomatically and on a popular level, while Iran is confident as it marches toward producing a nuclear weapon and expanding its influence across the Middle East.

Since 1981, Iran has been funding its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, never defaulting on any of its pledged payments. Hezbollah went from an embryonic group into a state within a state, boasting a membership of several thousands and maintaining a private army, schools, hospitals, orphanages, satellite TV and a number of other facilities that have won it the hearts of Lebanon's Shiites, and have given Hezbollah an absolute command over them.

Iran has maintained a flow of cash and political support toward Syria for a similar amount of time. Obama has been begging Syria to switch sides and abandon Iran. Judging by the mishaps that always seem to befall America's friends with time, Syria does not seem likely to change, but is rather playing an Obama administration desperate for whatever it can claim as success in its foreign policy.

In Iraq, Iran does not only fund and train militias and violent groups, but they also fund electoral campaigns of Iraqi politicians, loyal media groups and political parties, thus expanding their influence over Iraq exponentially. Spending billions more than Iran in Iraq, America has seen its money spent to no or little effect.

The comparison between Iran and Obama's America is simple.

While Tehran never let down an ally, offering them consistent financial and political support, Washington's support of its allies around the world has always been intermittent, due to changes with administrations and an ever swinging mood among American voters, pundits and analysts.

So while Iran has created a mini-Islamic republic in Lebanon, and is on its way to doing the same in Iraq, America has failed in keeping friends or maintaining influence both in Lebanon and in Iraq.

And while Tehran brutally suppressed a growing peaceful revolution for change inside Iran, Washington's pacifism did not win any favors with the Iranian regime, or with its opponents in the Green Revolution.

While Iran knows how to make friends, Obama's America has become an expert in losing them.

Iraq election forecast

Polls indicate Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki will win big in his country’s upcoming elections. (AFP photo/Jim Watson)

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, February 16, 2010

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will win the biggest parliamentary bloc during his country’s elections on March 7. This is according to pre-election polls conducted by a group of Iraqi and American experts.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, leading a Sunni coalition, will come in second, the Shia Iraqi National Coalition (INA) will take third place, and the Kurdish alliance will finish last among the major blocs.

The surveys were funded by several US organizations, and later coupled with Iraqi polls. Experts shared these findings with NOW on condition of anonymity.

According to the Iraqi constitution, the leader of the biggest bloc will be asked to form the cabinet, a coalition of at least 163 out of parliament’s 325 seats.

So far, numbers show Maliki in the lead with close to 80 seats. The incumbent prime minister’s strategy has been focused on Baghdad and Basra, the first and third biggest of Iraq’s 18 governorates, which have a total of 68 and 24 seats respectively. Maliki also looks strong in the southern Shia governorates of Babel (16 seats), Najaf (12 seats) and Diwaniyah (11 seats).

In Baghdad, where 25% of Iraq’s 30 million people live, the Maliki coalition – the State of Law – has been focused on the predominantly Shia districts of Karkh, Kazimiyyah and Sadr City, a shantytown that is home to 1.5 million.

The Maliki campaign relies heavily on a network of loyal governors elected in January 2009 who owe their jobs to the prime minister. They include Salah Abdul-Razzaq in Baghdad, Shaltagh Shrad in Basra, Adnan Zurfi in Najaf and Salem Alwan in Diwaniyah. They are expected to deliver the State of Law Coalition a total of 60 seats.

In the remaining five southern Iraqi governorates with Shia majorities –Dhi Qar (18 seats), Wasit (11 seats), Karbala (10 seats), Maysan (10 seats) and Muthanna (7 seats) – the Maliki coalition is expected to finish second to the INA and collect a total of 15 seats.

In the predominantly Sunni district of Diyala, Maliki is expected to only pick up one or two of the 13 seats.

Of the seven compensation seats allocated to diaspora votes and the eight seats reserved for minorities – namely Christians Ezidis, Shabak and Sabeans – Maliki is expected to collect up to five.

So far the polls show the Iran-leaning INA collecting around 60 seats overall with Allawi and his coalition – comprised of the two main Sunni groups under Vice President Tarek Hashimi and lawmaker Saleh Motlaq – looking to take all or most of the seats in the two Sunni governorates of Anbar (14 seats) and Salahiddine (12 seats).

Polls show Allawi’s Iraqi Ticket Coalition leading in the second biggest of Iraq’s governorates, Nineveh, with its 31 seats, and Dyala, with its 13 seats. Though not purely Sunni, a fierce battle is expected in these two electoral districts between Allawi’s Sunni coalition, and the alliance of the two main Kurdish groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) under Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, respectively.

So far polls show the Allawi coalition will collect 25 seats from these two governorates, double the number of seats expected to go to the Kurdish coalition.

Allawi’s tally is expected to reach 70 seats. The Kurds, not as solid as before the emergence of an opposition front under Kurdistan’s Regional parliament member Nashirwan Mustafa and his 25-seat bloc, are still expected to dominate Iraq’s four Kurdish governorates of Assulaymaniyah, Arbil, Kirkuk and Dhuk with 17, 14, 12 and 10 seats respectively. The Kurds will win between 50 and 60 seats in parliament. And even though they will be the smallest of the four major blocs, they will still play kingmaker.

Polls also show that, other than the four main blocs, several other smaller blocs are expected to emerge, complicating the formation of a 163-seat coalition (it is generally easier to negotiate with the three major blocs than put together an alliance of parties with two or three seats each), which is expected to take up to a few months after the elections to form.

The month in the run up to the elections is a long time, and most pollsters and pundits expect fluctuations and some surprises on election day.

* Read the article in NOW Lebanon

Op-Ed - NOW Lebanon: The troubled Alhurra TV

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

Troubled satellite TV station Alhurra may be facing an overhaul, pending Senate confirmation of its newly appointed supervisory Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Almost all US reports have indicated that the station, which was created in February 2004, and has cost the US Treasury $650 million to date, has “numerous problems” and “garnered considerable criticism.”

According to a recent Congressional Research Service report: “Observers have characterized the management and oversight of the broadcasters (BBG) as poor.” The report added: “Critics have characterized the overall performance of Alhurra as deficient, as it attempts to gain market share of audiences in competition from Arab broadcast powerhouses such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya.”

Even the more successful Radio Sawa, Alhurra’s sister company, has been “questioned given that its ratio of broadcast content is heavily skewed toward popular music instead of substantive news and informational programming.”

Alhurra’s viewership numbers confirm the criticism. Over the past few years, the BBG has hired for Alhurra’s surveys Intermedia, who designed polls that were conducted by AC Nielsen. But until last year, the BBG had refused to publish these tax-funded surveys, until – under pressure from the media – it caved and published a 2009 Intermedia survey of Alhurra’s viewership in Egypt, Jordan, Oman and the UAE.

In Egypt, the biggest Arab country in terms of population, Alhurra ranked 18, while in Jordan, it ranked 14. Things were better for Alhurra in Oman, where it ranked 11, only to drop to 19 in the UAE, where only two adults said they had watched the channel the day before, compared to 61 who tuned into Al Jazeera.

Now that Alhurra’s poor performance is out there, a number of US pundits have volunteered tips for the new BBG. But their suggestions might prove partisan-driven or misinformed, risking further disappointment if Alhurra were to get a stay of execution.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), wrote that he believed Alhurra was a bad idea. Also being a pollster, Zogby argued that his numbers show Alhurra receiving two percent of Arab viewership, trashing the BBG numbers in the process.

However, independent pollsters believe that Zogby’s surveys have a narrower base than those of Intermedia, and as such, Zogby’s numbers are less “nationally representative.” In its 2009 poll, Intermedia’s sample sizes in Egypt, Jordan and the UAE were 2,006, 1,500 and 1,201 respectively. In his 2009 Annual Arab Public Opinion Survey, Zogby’s numbers in these same countries were 853, 600 and 500.

Zogby then suggested that the US use the Alhurra money for media training for staff from various Arab networks. Coming from an Arab-American activist who does not speak Arabic, who has not lived in any Arab country or has barely worked in any Arab media network; the tip seems baseless.

From Provo, Utah, former director of Voice of America (VOA) in the Reagan administration, John Hughes, penned an article on the “unenviable challenges” facing the new BBG. “[The BBG] must determine whether, with the rapid growth of private Arab TV networks like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the government’s troubled Alhurra is an effective competitor,” he writes.

Hughes fails to notice that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are all but private. The first is funded by the Qatari government and the second by Saudi businessmen – related to the royal family – to the extent that the station’s editorial line always conforms to Saudi foreign policy.

With an abysmal performance record, and with misinformed suggestions, the BBG’s effort to revamp Alhurra might follow in the footsteps of previous failed reform attempts, when a director is fired or a producer is blamed. After years of incompetence, Alhurra needs a complete overhaul that must include structural and personnel changes.

The talent, journalism experience and bilingual skills of the station’s leaders and staff should be tested. The incompetent should be replaced. The grid should be revisited, and Alhurra’s offices should be brought from a Springfield suburb to downtown DC, closer to the news and to offices of its competitors such as Al Jazeera, the BBC and Al Arabiya.

In addition to the overhaul, Alhurra must spearhead freedom of expression, raise the bar for satellite TV standards, and address issues deemed sensitive or taboo in Arab countries.

For instance, even though the US has recently kissed and made up with Libya, Alhurra will never win credibility without airing programs showcasing the lack of freedom in Moammar Kaddafi’s autocracy. The Libya example applies to almost every Arab country, where debates needed for progress are muted, either brutally or by cutting funds to insubordinate media or academic institutions.

Highlighting Arab failures needs enlightened and skilled journalists and academics who can identify the nature of problems, and who are professional, creative and courageous enough to present them on the air, while maintaining professional standards and objectivity, even in the face of pressure from American policies in the Middle East or their allies in the countries where most Alhurra journalists come from.

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya have won vast popularity for their daring and sometimes populist broadcasts. Yet both channels have remained silent on a wide array of issues. Alhurra still has a major role to play. The key is to hire qualified Arab journalists with liberal thought, and listen to consultants and pundits who know what they are talking about.

Read the story on NOW Lebanon

Op-Ed: Kurds don’t need a country to build a successful state

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

Success stories of state-building in the Middle East have been few. The United Arab Emirates has certainly been one. Qatar, and to an extent Bahrain and Jordan, are now featuring high on good governance indexes. Yet the most impressive of all has been Iraqi Kurdistan.

Less than 25 years ago, Iraqi Kurds suffered one of the Middle East’s worst genocides of modern history. In 1986, Iraq’s former president Saddam Hussein ordered Operation Al Anfal, killing close to 150,000 Kurds over the course of three years. That number exceeds all the deaths resulting from more than 60 years of conflict between the Arabs and Israel, which has seen at least half a dozen wars.

Al Anfal’s commander, Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al Majid, also known as Chemical Ali after he ordered the gassing of the Kurdish village of Halabja, went after the Kurds again in 1991 to crush their revolt against tyranny and unfavourable living conditions.

One chapter was closed when Chemical Ali was executed less than a week ago. But like the Middle East’s Arabs, Iraq’s Kurds were not only the victims of external factors. Starting in 1994, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) under Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) under Massoud Barzani, embarked on a bloody war that lasted until 1998.

Also last week, Mr Barzani – during a speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington – thanked the veteran diplomat Martin Indyk, who was in the audience, for helping to conclude a ceasefire between the two Kurdish parties.

In the aftermath, Iraqi Kurdistan has emerged from civil war to become one of the Middle East’s most promising regions. One can only hope that the way Iraqi Kurds did it might inspire the Arabs.

First, the Kurds befriended America. In the Kurdish collective memory, Malla Mustafa Barzani, Massoud’s father, is frequently remembered as saying that Washington, and its ally the Iranian shah Mohamed Reza Pehlavi, had let him down when his Peshmerga forces were in the middle of a brutal war with Saddam’s army in 1975.

But by 1991, the Kurds acted less dogmatically and more realistically as they let bygones be bygones as America stepped in to protect them from Saddam’s brutality and help them to set up an autonomous Kurdistan. The alliance between America and Iraqi Kurds has served the interests of both.

And since then, the Kurdish leadership has been smart enough to also understand the limits of its alliance with Washington. By 2003, as the marines made their way into Baghdad, the Kurds understood that America depended on their help, which included abandoning their decade-old policy of detachment from Baghdad.

The Kurds understood that the international status quo would force them to reconnect with Baghdad. Thus, they moved to their second best option: they rejoined Iraq but made sure it would be a federal union that would give their northern region enough cultural, economic and political independence.

Since then, the Kurds have not wasted time in crying foul over surrendering their historic quest for independence. Instead, they founded a new formula: Iraqi Kurdistan would remain part of Iraq as long as Baghdad has democratic rulers. The emergence of a dictator would force the Kurds to go their separate way, fair and square. This position won the Kurds further kudos in the capitals of the world.

More importantly, unlike some Arab leaders and their signature policies of double talk about Israel – promising peace in English and talking war in Arabic – Kurdish leaders have preached to their people that the autonomy or rights they had earned, whether in Iraq or Turkey, were the best they could get.

Meanwhile, the Kurd’s quest for an independent state has all but vanished. This means that Kurds would not be blowing themselves up, and that their leaders would not be insisting on independence in a populist manner like several Arab and Iranian leaders often do regarding Palestine.

“Co-operate with the Turkish government, we have a great opportunity to arrive at a deal in everybody’s interests there,” Mr Barzani told a Turkish Kurd at his Brookings Institute lecture who was protesting against the ban on Kurdish parties in Turkey. Mr Barzani, who had met the US president Barack Obama and vice president Joe Biden, had no illusions about his powers or how the world operates. Even though he hails from a family of fighters, Mr Barzani was clearly renouncing the mostly counterproductive violence.

This newfound Kurdish wisdom has penetrated all the way into Kurdistan, as Iraqi Kurds held free and fair elections for their regional parliament last year, when a considerable opposition bloc emerged. Mr Barzani himself was re-elected Kurdistan’s president with 68 per cent of the vote, a percentage that makes many Arab presidential elections, with poll numbers exceeding 90 per cent, look silly.

Democracy, still not ideal, is now taking root in Iraqi Kurdistan.

And with democracy comes good governance and economic prosperity. For that, the Kurds have been tapping their human capital assets from their diaspora. Again, compare that to most Arab countries where brain drain has become an unstoppable trend.

The Kurdistan state-building experiment in northern Iraq, even if only within the limits of autonomy, is far from perfection. Yet it is one of the most impressive in the Middle East. It should certainly serve as a model for several Arab countries to emulate.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a Visiting Fellow with Chatham House, London

* Click here to read the article in The National