In the absence of a US foreign policy

This article first appeared in NOW Lebanon

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, April 23, 2010

US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman. (AFP photo/Mahmud Turkia)

Those who know Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman know that this skilled diplomat has a personal bias toward Lebanon’s sovereignty, independence and freedom.

Being supportive of Lebanon is one thing, but defending whatever the administration decides is another.

At a hearing before the Congressional Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia yesterday, the former US ambassador to Lebanon faced some tough questioning and was for once on the back foot.

Naturally, Congress focused its attack on Washington’s decision to send Robert Ford as ambassador to Damascus.

Feltman argued that since February 26, the State Department has summoned Syrian diplomats – including Ambassador Imad Mustafa – on four occasions to voice its displeasure over Syria’s alleged policy of arming Hezbollah. Mustafa denies he was ever summoned, which made Feltman conclude that Mustafa was either not listening, or did not communicate the details of the meeting to Damascus. Feltman added that in the Arab world, officials tend to keep bad news from their bosses.

As such, he argued, sending a US ambassador back to Syria was imperative. The US needs to have the ear of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who until now has been making grave errors because he has been listening, Feltman argued, to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Those who have been following the Middle East long enough might remember that during one of his trials, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein asked the judge whether he thought of him as being a beast. “No, but those around you made you one,” the judge told Saddam.

The assumption is therefore that Assad is all sweet and full of good intentions, rendering the three-decade confrontation between Damascus and Washington a mere misunderstanding in communication.

But contrary to what Feltman implied, Mustafa is not dumb. Mustafa the listener in private is different from Mustafa the troublemaker in real life. The real Mustafa, like his boss Assad, is not interested in what America has to tell him.

After receiving Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah in early spring, Assad mocked US demands that he distance himself from them. In response, the State Department’s number two, Jim Steinberg, dismissed Assad’s remarks, saying they were “theatrical” and that what counts was Assad’s behavior. But if Assad can be “theatrical”, what makes Feltman believe that Mustafa cannot be as “theatrical”?

In short, as intelligent as he is, Feltman could not defend the US strategy on Syria, assuming Washington actually has one.

During a recent panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), America’s top columnists, Thomas Friedman of the New York Timesand David Ignatius of the Washington Post, debated foreign policy. While Friedman argued that he was not sure any American was in charge of a Middle East policy, Ignatius said there was someone. “His name is Barack Obama.”

If Ignatius is right, it means that Feltman was reiterating talking points on Syria that he had received from above, perhaps from Obama himself. But what is Barack Obama’s strategy on Syria and the Middle East? He does not have one. The memo by Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying that America has no strategy on Iran affirms this view. Obama has no policy on Iran, Syria, Israel or the rest of the world.

Unlike American presidents since World War II, Obama does not believe the US should run the world. Focused on domestic issues, this president thinks foreign policy is a mere tool to serve domestic interests. As such, the world only matters to Obama as long as there are no more suicide bombers heading for American cities.

This means that American foreign policy today has only two czars: CENTCOM Commander David Petraeus, who is in charge of chasing al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere, and Daniel Benjamin, Director of the unit for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) at the State Department. Benjamin has visited Damascus. Petraeus might be on his way.

Since Obama’s sole interest in Syria is its cooperation over CVE, a term that has replaced “Islamist radicalism”, America is not interested in elaborating a full strategy on Damascus or its behavior.

In the absence of such a strategy, Washington’s parties compete to impose their different agendas. In the case of Syria, hardcore pro-Assad senators John Kerry and Arlen Specter both have Obama’s ear, and, ergo, Damascus gets its way in Washington.

Scuds to Hezbollah or no Scuds. It makes no difference. America has no vision for the Middle East. Until a policy on Syria is drafted, Washington will be improvising on how to deal with Damascus, and Jeff Feltman will sound shaky on the Hill.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a visiting fellow at Chatham House and a correspondent for Al-Rai newspaper.

AUB Alumni DC Chapter - Sunday, April 19, 2010

Rethinking Engaging Syria

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post

Reports that Syria has provided Lebanon's Hezbollah with truckloads of Scud D missiles have not dissuaded America from engaging Syria.

Scuds or no Scuds, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) was fighting for the approval of Robert Ford's nomination as ambassador to Syria, for the first time since Washington recalled Margret Scooby, after the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in February 2005.

US engagement with Syria is based on the premise that luring Syria away from its alliance with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, is important for containing and confronting the soon-to-become nuclear Iran. To reward Damascus for breaking up with Tehran, America offers the Syrians peace with Israel, that is Syria taking back the Golan Heights that it lost to Israel in 1967.

Second, proponents of engagement argue that sending an ambassador back is good for Washington from an intelligence perspective. A US ambassador in Syria will serve as America's eyes and ears there. Also, he would communicate, without distortion, US concerns to Syrian leaders.

Third, entertaining Syria, whether through peace with Israel or through reviving US-Syrian bilateral relations would keep Syria quite, and therefore the region stabile. Improving US-Syrian bilateral ties include sending back an ambassador and allowing US sanctions on Syria to expire.
None of the pro-engagement arguments have proven to be right so far.

The third person at the State Department, Bill Burns, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, on February 17, told him the US intends to send Ford, and conveyed America's demands that Syria choose America over Iran.

Ten days later, Assad not only received Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, he belittled America's demands, saying he had probably misunderstood, in translation, what Burns had told him about breaking away from Tehran.

Washington interpreted Assad's defiance in two ways. The second-in-charge at State Department, Jim Steinberg, described Assad's comments as theatrical and insisted on engagement. On the Hill, Ford said during his hearing that engaging Syria should not be expected to yield quick results, an idea that Senator Kerry shared.

To Ford and Kerry, forget the ticking Iranian nuclear bomb or that engaging Syria was part of luring it away from Iran in the first place.

This past weekend, reports about Syria shipping truckloads of Scud D missiles to Hezbollah made the news in Washington and other world capitals. The news proved false Steinberg's claims that Assad's anti-American statements were only "theatrical."

Meanwhile, arguing that Ford can collect information inside Syria is outdated. In this time and age, information has become free for all. How a US ambassador in his motorcade in Damascus can file accurate reports is mind-boggling.

As for Ford communicating American demands to Syria, Assad will always trust his ambassador in Washington, Imad Mustafa, to put whatever Ford tells him in context. Mustafa has proven to be a high caliber diplomat, shown skill in lobbying Congress people, such as Kerry, and succeeded in pushing Washington - slowly but steadily since 2005 - to re-embrace Damascus.

Finally, Steinberg, Kerry, Ford and like-minded politicians in Washington present America's engagement with Syria as something that should be tried, as if they have just discovered Syria or the Assad regime that has been ruling it since the early 1970s.

Until February 2005, America had constantly had an ambassador in Damascus. Throughout the 1990s, Washington sent an endless number of envoys to broker Syrian-Israeli peace, but to no avail. Prior to 2005, Syria never distanced itself from Iran or stopped arming Hezbollah, Hamas or instigating violence throughout the Middle East, including in Iraq, thus causing loss of American lives.

Steinberg, Kerry, Ford and proponents of engaging Syria should start offering real answers, whenever challenged about their views on engaging Syria.

Assad's anti-American statements and support of Hezbollah is proving all but theatrical. When the Scud reports surfaced, Kerry should have explained how the Scuds fall into his "vision" of Syrian-Israeli peace. Instead Kerry twisted arms on his Senate Foreign Relations Committee and forced through the approval of Ford's nomination as ambassador to Syria.

Diplomacy is the best tool in foreign policy. But there is a fine line between engaging Syria, which we all seek, and Damascus taking Washington for a ride, which is actually happening under the noses of the Barack Obama administration and some Congress people who overestimate their skills in foreign affairs.

A successful vision on engaging Syria would be a roadmap that defines the mechanism of measuring what Syria delivers, within a preset timetable, and the rewards that Damascus should expect in return from the United States.

The way Steinberg, Kerry, Ford and others are conducting US engagement with Syria is identical to how the George Bush administration handled the war in Iraq in its first few years: Improvisation, lack of vision, and the loss of American lives in the process.

Book Review: What's Wrong with the One-State Agenda? by Hussein Ibish

This review also appeared on Amazon.com where you can buy the book

WASHINGTON: This is a rare and sobering book on how a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be reached. Long-time activist, now academic and Senior Fellow at the American Task Force for Palestine (ATFP), Hussein Ibish skillfully debunks justifications by advocates of a bi-national Palestinian-Israeli state.

Ibish argues that supporters of the one-state solution “invariably proceed from two assumptions.” The first is based on the idea that Israel has built enough settlements to make impossible the establishment of one contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and the second on the concept that “a (Palestinian) state is not desirable or sufficient, even if it could be established.”

Ibish writes: “There is something of a dissonance between the two arguments when they are bundled together: if a Palestinian state is not desirable, there is no need to insist upon the impossibility of its creation, whereas if it is impossible then its desirability becomes moot.”

He adds: “There is a lack of logical coherence to the argument that while Israel cannot and will not be compelled or persuaded to relinquish its control of 22 percent of the territory, it can somehow be compelled or persuaded to relinquish or share its control of 100 percent of it.”

Ibish carefully tackles one of the most sensitive issues that has, for long, broken potential peace deals between the Palestinians and Israel: Refugees. According to Ibish, many of those, especially the ones in Lebanon – estimated at around 400,000 – live in dire conditions. Instead of insisting they return to Israel proper, a to-be-created Palestinian state should welcome them.

The author recognizes that while the return of Lebanon’s refugees will not be to their original home villages, yet “an imperfect solution is far preferable to no solution at all.”

Ibish highlights the importance of pragmatism for Palestinians, rather than insisting on dogmatic and unachievable solutions that would only extend Palestinian misery and delay the creation of their state, put off peace, and keep the Palestinians and Israelis in a state of conflict.

Such conflict, as preached by advocates of one-state open-ended war, undermines the human value of a single state solution. Ibish writes: “The one state agenda in fact corresponds to many well-established human values, but with rather striking exception: peace.”

He adds: “Because the majority of Jewish Israelis will not, in the foreseeable future, plausibly agree to such an arrangement, it cannot in practice be realized, and insisting on it means preferring continued conflict to peace.”

Ibish also warns against the Palestinian usage of a one-state scenario as a “diplomatic threat” in their peace negotiations with Israel. “One state should not be used as a threat. ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ is always a tricky diplomatic and political tool, and runs the risk of creating self fulfilling prophecies in the place of are originally intended to be open options, trial balloons and empty threats,” according to the Palestinian-American professor.

He concludes: “Palestinians themselves might find themselves torn between sympathy for maximalist projects that are emotionally satisfying but fundamentally unattainable such as the Islamist and post-national one-state agendas, and more prosaic and painful but fundamentally achievable strategies aimed at ending occupation.”

Lebanon's Samir Geagea: A Maverick

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post

Those who are familiar with the Middle East know that politics in the region are tantamount to mafia wars. Politicians pride themselves for being "realistic" as they frequently turncoat.

In Lebanon, political realism can rarely be differentiated from opportunism. Politicians flip-flop as they talk. Instead of calling out this kind of deception, journalists have become hired guns serving on payrolls. When Lebanese politicians change positions - often drastically - the media praises change deeming it "necessary for national interests."

As a result of the impunity of politicians and their conspiring media outlets, words and principles in Arab countries - especially Lebanon - account for little.

But one politician stands out for always sticking to his principles: Samir Geagea.

Coming from an economically underprivileged family, the exceptionally brilliant Samir Geagea won every available scholarship, and made his way to the medical school at the prestigious American University of Beirut.

In 1975, Lebanon was divided between Christians - who tied their existence to protecting an ailing Lebanese state that they dominated - and Muslims bent on replacing the Christians at the helm of state power. For their plan, Muslims borrowed the muscle of Lebanon-based Palestinian militias that were presumably fighting to liberate neighboring Palestine.

That was how Lebanon looked when Samir Geagea came of political, and for that matter paramilitary, age. Being a Christian, it was natural for Geagea to join the Lebanese Forces, an umbrella organization for Christian militias fighting for state sovereignty against armed Palestinian groups and their Lebanese allies.

Militias fought endlessly, and after Israel ejected the Palestinian leadership from Lebanon in 1982, fighting continued between Lebanese militias, some of which later imploded or split into warring factions.

A dedicated and talented Geagea ascended the ranks of the Lebanese Forces. By the mid 1980s, still 33, he became its undisputed leader. In addition to his paramilitary skills, Geagea displayed organizational abilities as his party launched a television program that still maintains the highest viewership in the region. The Lebanese Forces also created medical care and educational institutions.

Civil wars are never civil, and no matter his community services, Geagea remained a militiaman. In this capacity, he - like every other Lebanese politician - ordered battles and assassinations of rivals. Geagea's militia record tarnished his reputation.

In 1990, Lebanon became under Syrian control with American acquiescence. Damascus was finally allowed, not only to call the shots in Beirut, but also - as a victor - to write the history of the civil war.

Under the American-sponsored Syrian rule in Lebanon, which extended from 1990 to 2005, all militias - except for Hezbollah - were dissolved, as militia leaders repackaged themselves as politicians.

Except for Geagea who insisted on Syrian withdrawal and Lebanese sovereignty, all other Lebanese militia-leaders-turned-politicians were rewarded with senior state positions and lofty subsidies for their supporters.

Geagea never succumbed to Syrian rule and was punished. In 1994, a bombing charge was fabricated against him and he was sentenced to life in prison. The Lebanese Forces party, now a licensed political party, was banned by law. Meanwhile, Lebanese and Syrian media launched a campaign to vilify Geagea for the decade that followed.

A sudden turn of events in 2005 forced a Syrian withdrawal. Syria's former friends-turned-opponents then lobbied for Geagea's release.

Once out of jail, Geagea joined the anti-Syrian March 14 movement. While his allies had to publicly regret decades of behaving as Syria's puppets, at the expense of Lebanese sovereignty, Geagea stood tall. He had served 11 years in prison for refusing Syrian diktats, and in 2005, he resumed preaching his pro-sovereignty principles from the point where he had stopped.

A changing world leadership, however, later dropped the ball in Lebanon and completely halted support for democracy, especially after Barack Obama became president in 2008. As such, the mercurial Lebanese politicians jumped off the democracy and independence ship, which they deemed sinking, and humiliatingly begged Syria - now the focus of American and world attention - to take them back.

A maverick Geagea stayed on that ship. He became the last man standing in support of independence and state sovereignty, insisting that the Hezbollah militia disarm. With his militia history far behind most Lebanese, and with what had remained of it absolved by his decade in solitary confinement, Geagea started winning support from outside of the nation's Christian community, a rare phenomenon in Lebanon's fragmented population.

Samir Geagea today is betting against the political realities of Lebanon, the Middle East and the world. For doing so, he has earned the admiration of frustrated pro independence Lebanese - Christian, Muslim and Druze - and the ire of Syria and its Lebanese protégés.

Samir Geagea is proving to be the only man of principles in Lebanon. For that, he should be applauded as the last freedom fighter in the Middle East, at a time when the world is looking for dictators to entertain.

China, Syria and Censorship

Read this article in The Huffington Post

While Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and Iran's nuclear program won the spotlight at the Arab League Summit, held in Libya over the weekend, Arab leaders endorsed a low profile -- yet dangerous -- document.

Proposed by Syrian President Bashar Assad to presumably "manage Arab differences," the first article of the document stipulated that Arab regimes "should not launch any kind of media campaigns, against each other, for [such campaigns] obstruct the management of differences, efforts aimed at compromise, and reinstatement of normalcy [in bilateral relations]."

The Syrian Assad regime, it seems, perceives media as a tool at the disposal of the state, rather than the "fourth estate" whose job is to participate in the checks and balances inside individual states, or across countries.

Syria's proposal of this gentlemen's agreement to censor free press comes at the time the world witnesses a surge in police state behavior.

China, the planet's most prosperous authoritarian regime, has been trying to bully the giant search engine Google.

However, as the world focuses on Google's freedom fight against China's censorship, the Syrian Initiative wins the unanimous approval of 22 Arab states, and receives minimal media coverage. After all, Damascus has blocked Syrian access to Facebook, YouTube, most search engines, and a dozen other social and political URLs, long before Beijing decided to move against Google.

Police states, like China and Syria, are more sensitive to freedom of the press than many in the West might think. The free world, for its part, should not remain silent against Chinese and Syrian violations of such basic human rights.

A common wisdom has emerged in the West, especially among liberal and left wing circles, that the world should leave regimes and their peoples alone.

Just like many Westerners sympathized with the native Navi tribe living in a tree in the hit sci-fi movie Avatar, against the White Man's military-industrial resource-hungry complex, these same Westerners sometimes argue that the West should stay out of the business of countries like China and Syria.

Such argument is wrong.

There is no nation on earth that enjoys living inside a tree, or prefers state censorship over freedom. All nations seek modern technology and freedom. While communicating with trees, like in Avatar, might be a domestic tradition that should be respected, cultural heritage should never be understood as the antithesis of innovation, human rights, or freedom.

Police states like China and Syria have tried to hide behind cultural sensitivities and label basic human rights as Western innovations unfit for their populations. This is deception.

Meanwhile globalization has been both positive and negative when it comes to police states.
On the one hand, autocratic regimes are finding it extremely harder to control the flow of the news and online social networking into their once tightly iron-curtained countries.

On the other hand, Chinese and Syrian efforts of censorship have expanded. While Beijing is fighting the world famous Google, Syria took its efforts to like-minded regional leaders, at the Arab Summit, and got the nod for it.

The good news is that the more China tries to censor Google, the more its authoritarian behavior is highlighted in world headlines.

The bad news is that, unlike China or even Iran, countries like Syria are tightening their grip and getting away with it, or rather receiving world praise for a presumed effort to achieve peace with Israel, a speculation that has been in the news for the past half century, but has never been realized.

The Syrian censorship document received little to no media attention in the Arab Middle East, where a new satellite channel opens every week, or in the West.

Arab satellite channels, such as Qatari Al-Jazeera that claims to be a champion of human rights and scrutinizes every American behavior to propagandize against it, did not make a big deal out of the Syrian censorship document.

To understand why the always-agitated Al-Jazeera remained silent on the Syrian Arab censorship document, one should always remember the Syrian perception of how regimes "should not launch any kind of media campaigns against each other."

The Syrian understanding of media outlets, whether satellite TVs, radios or newspapers, as regime-owned tools perfectly fits Al-Jazeera, which is owned by Qatar's despot. And since Assad and the Qatari autocrat have been allies for some years, Al-Jazeera found nothing wrong with turning a blind eye toward a Syrian initiative that aims at censoring all Arab media.

Perhaps Al-Jazeera was busy videoing how American troops were presumably killing innocent Muslims in Afghanistan, agitating its millions of viewers against some Danish cartoons, or crying foul against veil laws imposed on French women.

China, Syria and Al-Jazeera understand media as a propaganda tool owned by police states, nothing else. For that, they should be shunned, whether they are good economic partners, like China, potential peace signatories, like Syria, or owners of massive deposits of natural gas, like Qatar.

What now for Iraq?

Ayad Allawi won the biggest bloc in Iraq’s recent election. (AFP photo)

Read this article in NOW Lebanon

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, April 1, 2010

Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya party won the biggest bloc in Iraq’s parliamentary elections early last month with 91 seats. Incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki came in second with 89, while the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) finished third with 70. The Kurdish bloc’s representation shrank to 43 seats.

But what do these numbers mean in Iraq’s 325-seat parliament?

Despite winning the biggest bloc, most indicators show that Allawi will not be asked to form a cabinet. It is true that Article 76 of the Iraqi Constitution stipulates that the president assigns a member of the biggest bloc to form the government. However, the article does not specify what the biggest bloc consists of. It should also be noted that the president will be elected by this same parliament, which means that the selection of the president, speaker and prime minister will be part of a single prearranged political deal.

Aware of this “catch” Allawi’s bloc insisted that the term “biggest bloc” be restricted to the winning bloc and not post-election alliances.

Maliki, for his part, referred the disagreement to the nation’s Federal Court, which ruled that the biggest bloc can include post-election alliances. As such, Maliki can recruit three lawmakers from any of the 13 elected “tickets” to form the biggest bloc with 92 seats.

In the absence of a constitutional mandate forcing his appointment, Allawi is at a disadvantage. Unless he can bring in all the MPs and bar the 159 members of the Maliki and INA blocs, which would be virtually impossible, his electoral victory will account for naught.

Allawi, heading a predominantly Sunni bloc, will find it complicated to sell himself to the pro-Iran Shia INA, and he will certainly stay away from his competitor, Maliki. He will also not find it easy to win over the Kurds, who have been apprehensive about the Sunni platform that opposes federalism and denies Kurdish-sought rights in the disputed city of Kirkuk, where the two groups fought a tough electoral battle.

Other disagreements between Allawi and the Kurds surfaced during the run up to the elections, when Sunni Vice President Tareq Al-Hashimi, a candidate on Allawi’s ticket, fiercely attacked the Kurds, arguing that they should not be allowed to maintain their dominance over the presidency and demanding that Iraq’s president be an Arab by law.

Already in advanced negotiations, Maliki and the INA have indicated that the next prime minister should come from their ranks. Maliki will also find it easier to win over the Kurds since he has no reservations about a Kurdish president, and rather enjoys good ties with President Jalal Talabani, who is believed to be running for re-election, with the support of his 43-seat strong coalition.

NOW Lebanon already predicted that regardless of the winner, the most probable coalition will include Maliki, the INA and the Kurds, which will offer Allawi, a Shia figurehead of a Sunni bloc, a “take-it-or-leave-it” second prize, by inviting his bloc to fill less important political positions, such as the speaker, one of two vice presidents, one of two deputy prime ministers and a handful of lesser jobs.

If he fails to become prime minister, Allawi might come under regional pressure – like Saad Hariri in Lebanon – to make concessions and accept whatever he is offered, under the banner of national reconciliation.

His only chance for a consolation prize would be to take his political rival down with him by demanding the appointment of any premier other than Maliki in return for his “cooperation”.

That said, Maliki’s replacement might not guarantee undercutting Iran’s influence in Iraq and might indeed prove to be a Pandora’s Box, as a new premier might lean more toward Tehran than any of his predecessors.

So far, the only possible tactic that could have reduced Iran’s role in Iraq would have been a regional Arab endorsement of Maliki, allowing him to emerge as a national leader against Iranian pressure to appoint a puppet ruler. Failure to do so looks to have forced Maliki – or anyone else from his bloc – to lean on Iran’s INA as the only fallback plan available.

If Allawi enters the government, Iraq’s future prime minister will owe his job to Iran, which means that Iranian influence will remain on the rise, while Sunni fortunes will have stalled at the doorstep of a frustrated Allawi.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a visiting fellow at Chatham House and a correspondent for Al-Rai newspaper