Arab News Blog

Guerrillas fired mortar shells and used small arms to attack the major US military base in south Afghanistan, Qandahar Airfield, on Saturday. The operation was the third major attack by insurgents during the past week. They had also attacked a NATO convoy in the capital, Kabul, and had attacked Bagram Base north of Kabul. The seven hours long assault on Bagram was a by a company-sized unit of some 30 armed men, who managed to kill a contractor and wound 9 US or NATO troops, while all 16 of them were killed in heavy fighting. The attacks have pushed the death toll for US troops in Afghanistan past the 1000 mark.

The bold attacks come as President Barack Obama addressed West Point cadets, declaring victory in Iraq and predicting a similar positive outcome in Afghanistan. Obama alleged that the US was withdrawing from a now-democratic Iraq that would not be a platform for attacking the US, implying that Afghanistan would be brought to a similar end-state. But Iraq is highly unstable, has not formed a new government more than two months after the March 7 elections, and cannot exactly be called either democratic or secure and stable. If Iraq is Obama’s measure of success in Afghanistan, he has very low expectations.

At the same time, US and NATO troops began a sweep of a Qandahar neighborhood. The 200 US troops and about 200 – 250 Afghanistan National Army troops conducted door to door searches. The operation is seen as a dry run for a huge push on Qandahar by NATO this summer. This province is, along with Helmand, a major center of poppies-grown for opium and ideologically tends to support or at least think well of the old Taliban of Mulla Omar. Karen DeYoung of WaPo reports on the doubts even in the Pentagon that a ‘clearing campaign’ targeting Taliban in Qandahar can succeed.

Meanwhile, a long-running feud between the lower house of parliament and the Karzai government came to a boil on Saturday as the MPs went on strike, according to Pajhwok News Agency. President Karzai had missed the deadline for presenting to parliament his nominations for the 11 remaining cabinet posts in his government. In reaction, the lower house went on strike.

Pajhwok writes, “Chairman Muhammad Younus Qanuni said no session of any commission would be held until the ministers were introduced. An MP from the western Badghis province, Azita Rafat, said the delay in introducing the remaining cabinet members had worsened relations between parliament and the government. “The government neither respects the votes of the nation nor us,” she said.”

Speaker Yunus Qanuni is a Tajik former member of the Northern Alliance and is close to Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s main rival in last summer’s presidential election. Since Abdullah’s supporters generally believe that Karzai stole the election, it is now difficult for him to achieve better relations with parliament. That any resolution of the crisis in Afghanistan will ultimately have to be political in character is widely recognized. But how to get a political settlement when the executive and the legislature are themselves at daggers drawn is not clear.

Aljazeera English reports on the Taliban and US/NATO campaigns this week in Afghanistan:

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Saudi King Abdullah calls for prosecution of unstated number of officials and businessmen for Jeddah flood.
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“…. The fear rained down on us by Military Intelligence research chief Yossi Baidatz, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (“Hezbollah has more missiles than most governments” ), Jordan’s King Abdullah (“A war could break out this summer” ) and many military analysts leaves Israel with the all-too-familiar feeling that it has no choice but to launch a preemptive attack. Suddenly it turns out that it’s not the Iranian nuclear program that poses an existential threat, but rather the various kinds of missiles. And the terrified country is already preparing public opinion and the army for the next confrontation.

Indeed, there is a balance of terror between Israel and its neighbors, whose purpose is deterrence. That’s what every rational country does when it feels threatened and can’t find a nonmilitary alternative. No doubt, Israel is threatened, but so are Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It’s enough to listen to Israel’s threats to “take Syria back to the Stone Age,” “destroy Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure” or smash Hamas to understand that the style of the Israeli threat approaches that of Iran. If anyone should be waking up in the morning in a cold sweat, it’s the Lebanese, Syrians and Gazans, not the Israelis.

Nevertheless, even though Syria has suffered military blows from Israel, it continues to act “impudently,” and Lebanon, which was pounded in war, has stepped up its threats. Operation Cast Lead in Gaza did not stop Hamas from arming itself. And in the West Bank, the occupation forces have not completely neutralized the threat.

But unlike Israel, which sees the threat but forgets the catalyst, each of its neighbors has territory under Israeli occupation, each has a legitimate national claim to get its occupied land back. Anyone looking for a nonviolent alternative can find it well-packaged and waiting to be used, but it’s merely getting wet in the rain.

“[Syrian President Bashar] Assad wants peace but doesn’t believe [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Baidatz told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. But his words were lost in the alarming description of the number of missiles in Hezbollah’s hands. Because even though we understand weapons, and we consider Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah a household name, and we assemble and dismantle centrifuges every day, we lose our way when it comes to the peace process. Baidatz didn’t explain how it’s possible to gain Assad’s confidence, and he wasn’t asked, just as he wasn’t asked whether returning the Golan Heights to Syria under agreed conditions could neutralize the Syrian-Lebanese-Hezbollah threat. These questions are too dangerous to ask to someone from the army – he just might propose a diplomatic solution. But it’s possible to answer for him. Peace with Syria might neutralize the military threat from that country, stop Hezbollah from arming and put Iran in a confusing situation, even if it doesn’t break off its relations with Syria. Peace with Syria and the Palestinians would also change Turkey’s position and neutralize the hostility between Israel and the other Arab countries.

In short, the military threat would lose a great deal of its punch. A rational country, even one not seeking peace – and Israel, after all, is not one – would have done the arithmetic long ago and understood that by continuing to hold on to the Golan Heights, the chances of a confrontation would simply grow. It would have understood that the threat does not lie in the circles that mark the missile range but in those territories it continues to occupy.”

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“The head of the Democratic Gathering MP Walid Jumblatt said on Thursday he took his son Taymour with him to Riyadh to introduce him to King Abdullah given the historic friendship ties that link the Druze family with the Kingdom.“

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UPDATE 1: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas holds talks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on peace process.
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AFP – Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas held talks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday ahead of the expected launch of US-brokered indirect negotiations with Israel, a Palestinian diplomat said.

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If ever there were a moment for an Arab Summit to bring together the major Arab players to formulate a coherent, practical strategy, this would seem to be it. The Obama administration and the Netanyahu government in Israel continue to lock horns, creating an opening for Arab diplomacy — either to reaffirm or to repudiate the long-standing Arab Peace Initiative. The grinding Palestinian division between Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas and Fatah remains unresolved, with Egyptian mediation no closer than ever to success. The question of Iran’s nuclear program poses challenges and opportunities which could offer an opening to creative diplomacy. Unfortunately, this Arab Summit just happens to be scheduled for Libya… which more or less guarantees a higher degree of inter-Arab division, and makes it cruelly unlikely that any productive moves will be taken. 

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Libya’s long-standing dictator Moammar Qaddafi has been a central player in disrupting an impressive number of previous Arab summits. Last year, after his public feud with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah dominated the Arab Summit in Doha (he declared himself "the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims"),  I wondered if we had seen the end of Arab summits. Well, technically no, since they still roll around like clockwork.  But functionally, perhaps so. 

The attendance at the upcoming summit is notably poor. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia doesn’t seem to find it a pressing item of business, after being so rudely interrupted by Qaddafi in Doha. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is very, very not sick and doing wonderfully (according to the Egyptian state media; the rumor mill still thinks he’s dead), but isn’t up to traveling to Libya, so the leader of the supposedly pivotal Arab state will miss his third consecutive Arab summit meeting. Several Gulf leaders, including Sultan Qabus of Oman and Sheikh Khalifa of the UAE have sent their regrets.  Iraq will stay away after Qaddafi invited some Iraqi resistance figures. So will Lebanon. Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to boycott if Hamas is invited; at last report, he will come but plans to arrive fashionably late.  Algeria’s President Bouteflika apparently overcame illness to attend, but Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has threatened to stay home if he does. 

Many of these absences may have happened anyway — but  Qaddafi’s unique legacy only exacerbates the problems and adds an extra layer of absurdist political theater.  With so many leaders missing, few Arabs expect much from the Summit on any of the urgently pressing issues they face. I wouldn’t expect moves towards serious Palestinian reconciliation, the articulation of a new strategy towards Iran, or the adoption of a significant new approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace. It’s something of a tragedy that the Libyan distraction came at this particular historical juncture. It is in many ways more tragic that nobody really expected anything out of the Summit anyway. Perhaps we should just treat this like the opening and closing of the Winter Olympics:  don’t expect much, just sit back and wait for Qaddafi to provide some amusing YouTube moments.  

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Eldar in Haaretz/ here

“The strife between Israel and the United States concerns something far bigger than the proximity talks with the Palestinians. As far as President Barack Obama and his senior advisers are concerned, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame for nothing less than damaging the standing of the U.S.in the Middle East and the Muslim world.

Just as Netanyahu received his standing ovation at the AIPAC conference, Obama and his advisers were ruminating over an altogether different convention – the Arab League begins a meeting Tripoli on Saturday. For the Americans, Netanyahu’s Likudnik speech and the Shpeherd Hotel project matched in embarrassment the scandalous announcement of construction in East Jerusalem during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit here.

This year’s Arab League summit will be the scene of struggle between the allies of Iran and the allies of American, and the violation of the status quo in Al Quds – Jerusalem – has direct implications for the balance of power between the sides. Over the last few weeks, Americans have been giving life support to the Arab Peace Initiative, born at the League’s summit in Beirut 2002 and set to be on the agenda this week.

The absence of Egyptian President Mubarak, who is recovering from an operation in Berlin, doesn’t make it any easier for the U.S. to resist the efforts of Syria and Libya to suspend or possibly even terminate the peace initiative. The al-Mabhouh assassination, insulting as it was to the rulers of the Gulf, doesn’t do much for the other proponents of the initiative, King Abdullah of Saudia and King Abdullah II of Jordan. The Saudi king had asked the Quartet for clarifications about Israel’s latest moves in Jerusalem and specifically about Netanyahu’s statement of intent for the Arab part of the city.

The messages coming to the White House from Riyadh and Amman, then, were starkly clear: If you don’t rein in your Israeli friends, Tehran won’t be the only Middle East capital where American flags will burn.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decisively supported General David Petraeus, the first American military man in years to describe Israel as a strategic burden on the U.S. Gates said America’s rivals in the Middle East are abusing the standstill of the political process between Israel and the Arabs. He stressed that he had no doubt a lack of peace in the region was influencing American interests there.

Netanyahu had been hoping to buy time until November’s Congressional elections, which coincide with the deadline he set for the settlement freeze. But with America’s strategic interest on the line, Bibi’s favorite political game (playing the Jewish community and Congress against the White House and the State Department) isn’t working anymore. Obama decided his moderate Middle East coalition is more important than Netanyahu’s extremist one. This is a point of no return.”

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Iraq’s Independent Higher Election Commission (IHEC) has taken much longer than expected to publish the results of the general election conducted five days ago, on Sunday. Their English-language website is here. I leave it to my esteemed friend Reidar Visser to interpret the details of what the IHEC has been releasing– e.g. here, yesterday evening. I will note only that the “latest news” posted here on the IHEC website tells us that they have (very) preliminary results only from five of Iraq’s 18 provinces– and of those, in the province in which the vote-counting was most complete, Najaf, the proportion of votes counted was still only 34.11%!

So it is still far too early to “call” the election even there. It looks as though the process of counting all the votes throughout the country will be a long one indeed.

Which need not be a problem in itself. There are plenty of countries in which vote-counting takes one or two weeks, due to to poor infrastructure of various kinds. And in this election, it’s true that the ballot sheets are enormous and complex, thus very difficult to handle in bulk and to tally.

However, the slowness of the IHEC in completing its work is bound to raise fears and tensions throughout the country, especially fears and accusations of ballot-rigging– just as happened in Afghanistan after last August’s election.

In Afghanistan, the sharp inter-party tensions that arose after the election were only finally reduced, after a number of weeks, when the main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew his challenge to the announced results. To the huge relief of the U.S. authorities in the country, that meant they, NATO, and the U.N. would not have to go through the enormous bother of organizing a run-off election. And Hamid Karzai was rapidly reinaugurated as president.

I’ve seen no reports on what inducements Abdullah was offered to withdraw, but I’m assuming there must have been some big ones, supplied by someone.

In Iraq, the post-election controversies could, but may not, become equally polarizing. There, it looks so far (but still with only very preliminary numbers) as if PM Maliki’s State of Law will emerge as the bloc with the largest number of seats, but well short of a simple majority, and even further short of the two-thirds majority required for many significant steps in governing the country. Therefore– as in Israel!– even if there is no controversy over the counting of the votes, there may still be a lengthy period of post-results coalition-forming haggling.

That was kind of what happened in Iraq in 2006. And then, of course, those post-election tensions immediately became tied up with the eruption of brutally intense sectarianism that followed the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

This time around, I am fairly strongly convinced– unlike some others in the antiwar movement here in the U.S.– that the U.S. authorities really do want to try to get the bulk of the military out of Iraq in accordance with the Withdrawal Agreement of November 2008. And to do this without the whole process being a debacle that would certainly destabilize the whole region, they need some form of “legitimate enough” government to emerge and start governing in Baghdad.

Just as, for slightly different reasons, they needed some form of “legitimate enough” government to emerge in Afghanistan last summer…

In the present global-political context, in which the U.S. has tied itself and much of the U.N. bureaucracy to the idea that western-style elections are an essential component (or source) of political legitimacy, having a “legitimate enough” government in a country under direct U.S. sway means that that government must emerge from elections that are also judged to be “legitimate enough”.

I earlier explored a few of the challenges involved in plucking “legitimacy” out of a severely challenged election with regard to the Afghan elections of 2004, here, and 2009, here.

It is not clear whether– or how– this may happen in Iraq. We need to stay attuned to the fall-out that can be expected throughout the whole region if the post-election political challenges there cannot be speedily and satisfactorily resolved.

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It’s hard to avoid the subject of corruption when you talk to people in Jordan. During my last few visits there, no matter how much I tried to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood or the Parliament or constitutional reform, talk would always eventually come around to dark whispers about the rising tide of corruption at the highest levels. When King Abdullah disbanded Parliament, his new Prime Minister Samir Rifa’i had made battling corruption a top priority, though there was skepticism given that he had himself been reportedly forced out as Minister of Court for abusing his position. So most everyone was stunned last week by the arrest of four high-level officials at the heart of the regime over allegations of corruption in the contracting of Jordan’s petroleum refinery. What’s going on?

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Corruption is hardly novel in Jordan, but this kind of major case is pretty rare. When Jordanians get caught up in corruption investigations, it’s usually because they fell out with the Palace or else because they got caught up in the Kingdom’s always-tense Jordanian-Palestinian divide. The current  round is different. At least 24 people are reportedly targets of the investigation, in addition to the prominent figures arrested: former Finance Minister Adel al-Qadah, wealthy businessman Khaled Shaheen, the Prime Minister’s economic adviser Mohammed al-Rawashdeh, and former Petroleum official Ahmed al-Rifa’i. These are well-connected people, many from Transjordanian rather than Palestinian origins.   

The government has banned the publication of any details about the corruption cases in the local media without its prior approval — an unfortunate decision which is depressingly consistent with its increasingly harsh line on media and public freedoms. But the way information travels in Jordan, it hardly needs to be in the media for the message to get out — and Jordanians are buzzing about it (one blogger called it "the Jordanian equivalent of putting Al Capone on trial"). Why the ban on media coverage when the government appears to be doing something genuinely popular and fulfilling a major promise of its platform in the face of extreme skepticism?  

The answer to that depends on the real reasons for the arrests.  One theory is that the Palace finally realized that the growing public whispers about corruption were becoming too damaging to regime legitimacy, and that this was a move to restore public confidence. But then why ban coverage in the local media?  A second theory making the rounds is that in fact it was a signal not so much to the general public as to the elite, that certain lines should not be crossed — for which the mass media would not be needed. Adherents of this view ask why there was a major corruption investigation in this case and not in a wide range of other well-known, or at least widely rumored, cases.   

A third  possibility is that it may also be a signal to the international community by the cash-strapped and aid-dependent Kingdom. Only weeks ago, Jordan had been embarrassed by its showing in the 2009 report by Global Integrity, which gave its anti-corruption efforts a rating of 55/100 (Very Weak):

A number of key agencies contributing to Jordan’s national anti-corruption framework have been redesigned during the past few years with mixed results. For example, an ombudsman’s office was established in 2008; however, it has only taken on low-level cases to date. Fearful of political interference after the head of the Audit Bureau was recently removed from office, the newly created anti-corruption commission has been slow to act or issue reports. Meanwhile, the Jordanian Foundation for Investment, the agency responsible for oversight of state-owned enterprises, was abolished in favor of ministerial-level monitoring with less transparent oversight practices.

King Abdullah cares about Jordan’s international image, and may have felt the need to reassure international investors and the international community that anti-corruption efforts will be taken more seriously.  And again, having it in the local media would accomplish little for this goal. 

Whatever the case — and there’s plenty we don’t know yet — it’s somewhat heartening to see a rare serious anti-corruption move in Jordan. But I would be more heartened if the move was not accompanied by a state security ban on local media coverage, if it extended to a wider range of cases and not just one seemingly isolated incident, if it were accompanied by a rapid move towards passing the progressive legislation which Parliament was supposedly dissolved in order to push through, and if there were clear signs of a rapid move towards elections for a new Parliament under a reformed electoral law.  

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