Arab News Blog

It’s Tom Friedman, at it once again in today’s NYT!

Here we are now, almost exactly fourteen Friedman Units (F.U.’s) after George W. Bush’s (heavily Friedman-supported) invasion of Iraq, and the arrogant and over-rated “Sage of Bethesda” is now telling us that the decidedly mixed, and violence-plagued picture of what happened on Sunday’s election day in Iraq was unequivocally “a very good day for Iraq.”

Friedman completely omits to mention the big role that his own writings (and those of many NYT colleagues) played in 2002, in building up the nationwide constituency for the war. Instead, he just notes archly that,

Some argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs. Historians will sort that out.

That is, of course, also GWB’s own, famously self-exculpating line about the war.

And the Sage of Bethesda (SOB) doesn’t fail to give us one of his frequent little, faux-intimate verbal sparring matches with a world leader… In this case, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, to whom Tom addresses the following:

How are you feeling today? Yes, I am sure you have your proxies in Iraq. But I am also sure you know what some of your people are quietly saying: “How come we Iranian-Persian-Shiites — who always viewed ourselves as superior to Iraqi-Arab-Shiites — can only vote for a handful of pre-chewed, pre-digested, ‘approved’ candidates from the supreme leader, while those lowly Iraqi Shiites, who have been hanging around with America for seven years, get to vote for whomever they want?” Unlike in Tehran, Iraqis actually count the votes. This will subtly fuel the discontent in Iran…

Oh my goodness. Do you think the SOB ever actually reads the news from Iraq where, as we know, Ahmed Chalabi’s extremely anti-democratic “Justice and Accountability Commission” intervened on Saturday to suddenly, on the eve of the election, disqualify 55 candidates– additional to the hundreds it had already disqualified, earlier on during the election campaign?

Chalabi is far from being a neutral figure in the election, since he’s running as a member of the Iraqi National Alliance, the Iran-backed list of mainly Shiite politicians.

So those 55 suddenly banned candidates– all of whom were affiliated with other blocs, mainly the Iraqiyya bloc headed by Ayad Allawi– still had their names on the ballots on Sunday; and thus not only were they subjected to last-minute banning, but in addition everyone who voted for them suddenly had their votes rendered essentially meaningless.

As the WaPo’s Ernesto London and Leila Fadel report from Baghdad today,

If the votes for the newly barred candidates are annulled, it could give the Iraqiya coalition powerful ammunition to allege vote-rigging by rival politicians, including some in the Shiite-led camp of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“It will be a very violent reaction,” Allawi said in an interview Tuesday. “A lot of violence will take place, and God knows how this will end. I will tell you there is already an existing feeling that there was widespread rigging and widespread intimidation.”

And it’s not just those 55 suddenly-banned candidates and those who voted for them who’re at risk of having their political rights suddenly stripped from them. Londono and Fadel report that,

Faraj al-Haidary, chairman of Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission, said Tuesday night that … under Iraqi law, the Justice and Accountability Commission could theoretically bar more candidates in the days ahead if it submits paperwork before the electoral board certifies them as lawmakers.

Ah, but my friend Tom, sitting in Bethesda, can assure us that Iraqis “get to vote for whomever they want”?

The WaPo journos also write about our friend the Iraq specialist Reidar Visser that he,

said the last-minute disqualification of candidates poses significant challenges for the electoral commission. Because Iraqis were able to choose individual candidates in the elections — as opposed to voting for slates that distribute the seats — disqualifying elected candidates could enrage voters.

“This could create a major problem for the whole process,” Visser said. “We have seen that there is no legal framework to deal with these eventualities, so they’re creating the framework as they proceed.”

So the post-election period in Iraq this time might well be– just as it was after the last national election, in December 2005– very messy, long-drawn-out and quite possibly even, as Allawi warned, violent.

So please let’s not sing any paens to the triumph of “democracy” in Iraq yet. (As Newsweek did last week, and as far too many other stalwarts of the US MSM seem to have been doing this week, too.)

George Bush’s hastily cobbled-together, back-up main “justification” for invading Iraq in 2003, remember, was– once he finally realized the “WMD justification” was a crock of nonsense– that the US occupation liberation of Iraq would usher in a new era of democratic, accountable, and successful government that would immediately become a model for the striving peoples of the whole of the rest of the region…

(Kind of like what the SOB was still arguing in his mendacious piece today.)

But in the aftermath of Iraq’s December 2005 election, the country was plunged into deeper sectarianism and social collapse than it had ever before experienced, and for roughly 18 months thereafter the violence and heartbreak continued unabated, sending streams of extremely distressed Iraqis fleeing for their lives.

Electoral “democracy”, it turned out, was not a “model” that anyone anywhere else in the region wanted to emulate, at all. (In the OPTs, interestingly, all the major political forces did continue with their plans to hold an OPTs-wide parliamentary election just six weeks after that Iraqi election, in January 2006. Washington’s ferocious response to the results of that election gave the lie to any lingering idea anyone might have had that George W. Bush really did have any gut sympathy for the norms and principles of democratic self-governance… )

And, contra to what the SOB is now telling us, I certainly don’t think anyone in the Middle East, whether Iranians, Arabs, Turks, Israelis, or anyone else, is sitting on the edge of their chairs thinking that the 2010 election in Iraq is going to usher in a fabulous period of successful, democratic self-governance in Iraq. The most that anyone is able to hope for, really, is that despite the machinations of Ahmed Chalabi and his gang– the ones who got us into the war and occupation in the first place, remember, along with Bush and Cheney– Iraq’s conflict-battered people may somehow find a governance system that works for them and allows them to rebuild a society that has been torn apart by two decades, now, of extremely vindictive, lethal, politicidal, and arrogant western policy toward their country.

How Iraq’s citizenry decide to govern themselves is completely up to them. For Tom Friedman or anyone else to claim they know what should happen is imperialist arrogance of the most outdated and destructive kind.

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Foreign Policy has just launched The Middle East Channel, a one-stop shop for its articles on the Middle East as well as original blog posts. It will be edited by Marc Lynch, Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah. Marc writes:

Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel is something different: a vibrant and decidedly non-partisan new site where real expertise and experience take priority over shouting, where the daily debate is informed by dispassionate analysis and original reporting all too often lacking from the stale and talking-point-laden commentary that sadly dominates most coverage of the region today. Its contributors range from academics to former policymakers, from journalists on the ground to established analysts — with an emphasis on introducing voices from Middle East itself. Most importantly, the Middle East Channel comes to you doctrine-free, open to political viewpoints of all kinds — but demanding honesty, civility, and genuine expertise.

Our scope is broad: Israel and its neighbors, Iran’s nuclear program and domestic politics, Iraq, Islamist movements, the Gulf, Turkey, and North Africa, and the struggle for reform and democracy. The Middle East Channel will highlight links between issues and areas of this diverse region of 400 million — as well as provide a unique perspective on America’s challenges there. We’ll have regular interviews with Middle East and Washington players, sharp commentary on the news of the day, and original analysis of new ideas and trends in the region.

I hope it will grow into a more centrist-liberal version of Harvard’s very right-leaning MESH.

There’s already a few interesting pieces up, including Marc on the Iraqi elections, the great Joost Hiltermann on Kirkuk. I have issues with Bernard Avishai’s piece on the Palestinian economy — he’s been peddling the idea that this is a priority, and while it’s important it’s not more important than ending the occupation. He does have some interesting insights into the Israel/Palestine economy in case a two-state solution happens:

Each side will be a culturally distinct city-state, building upwards, integrated with the other in a business ecosystem extending to Jordan, and sharing everything from water to currency, tourists to bandwidth. Over 80 percent of Palestine’s trade is with Israel. What won’t seem trivial is the capacity of Palestine’s economy–currently one-fortieth of Israel’s–to create employment. The mean age of Palestinians in the territories is about 19 years old. If we assume normal rates of growth, and the return of only half of the refugees to a Palestinian state, Palestine would soon become an Arabic-speaking metropolis of perhaps 6 million to 7 million people, radiating east from Jerusalem, and facing off against the Hebrew-speaking metropolis, anchored by Tel Aviv. Olive groves, picturesque as they are, will seem beside the point. So will military notions like strategic depth.

Each side will be a culturally distinct city-state, building upwards, integrated with the other in a business ecosystem extending to Jordan, and sharing everything from water to currency, tourists to bandwidth. Over 80 percent of Palestine’s trade is with Israel. What won’t seem trivial is the capacity of Palestine’s economy–currently one-fortieth of Israel’s–to create employment. The mean age of Palestinians in the territories is about 19 years old. If we assume normal rates of growth, and the return of only half of the refugees to a Palestinian state, Palestine would soon become an Arabic-speaking metropolis of perhaps 6 million to 7 million people, radiating east from Jerusalem, and facing off against the Hebrew-speaking metropolis, anchored by Tel Aviv. Olive groves, picturesque as they are, will seem beside the point. So will military notions like strategic depth.

And there’s more analysis of problems with the Palestinian economy — poor banking system, the mobility problems the occupation has created, and a call for Netanyahu to do more to lift the Israeli-imposed restrictions on the Palestinian economy. Anyway, read it for yourself.

My own contribution was just posted — it’s a reflection on Algeria’s recent regime intrigues:

Why was Algeria’s chief of police killed? The assassination of Ali Tounsi is sending political shockwaves through Algeria. Tounsi had been having a public tiff with the minister of interior, Yazid Zerhouni.  The killer, Chouaib Oultache – a close friend and colleague of Tounsi’s, and former Air Force colonel who headed the police airborne unit – is reported to have been alone with Tounsi.   Eyewitnesses to the murder have disappeared. Oultache is said to have shot himself, or been shot by others, or to have fallen down stairs as he made his escape. He was hospitalized at a military facility and is recovering from his wounds, or he fell into a coma, or he may have woken up and confessed, or he may be dead. His immediate family has disappeared, and his house is now encircled by police whose main job is dissuading journalists from asking too many questions.

Was the murder purely a personal affair, or is Oultache being set up as part of a shadow war carried out through corruption investigations – not only against Oultache, but also the national oil company Sonatrach and the ministry of public works? Do these investigations mean much whenthey steer clear of the really high-level stuff, such as the long-term oil and gas deals with Spain, France or the United States? Or are they simply warning shots to Bouteflika after he threatened to re-open investigations into the assassination of high-ranking security officials in the 1990s as a way to go after the last remaining generals in positions of influence? Some see it as a harbinger of more trouble to come, particularly as they came as rumors that Bouteflika – who is said to have stomach cancer – is dying. You can take your pick of what actually happened.

Read the rest here. 

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UPDATE 6: U.S. woman hires jihadist fighters online in America, Europe, Asia in bid to carry out terror plots.
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Welcome to the Middle East Channel! 

Some of you may have wondered why I haven’t been posting much lately.  Part of the reason is that I’ve been working hard on putting together the Middle East Channel at ForeignPolicy.com.  Creating this site has been my dream for a long time.  With today’s launch, it’s finally come true, after half a year of hard work, with the enthusiastic support of the leadership at Foreign Policy  and a vibrant partnership with Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah’s Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.  It’s also sponsored by the Project on Middle East Political Science, a new network of political scientists specializing in the Middle East which I have been putting together with the support of a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation — much more on that soon! 

I can’t think of a better way to explain what we’re trying to than to quote in full the "Welcome" post which we’ve put up to announce the Middle East Channel:

The world is hardly lacking for opinions about the
Middle East. But quantity should not be mistaken for quality: Too much of the
public debate about the issues of the Middle East is dominated by partisan
bickering and poorly informed punditry.

Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel is something
different: a vibrant and decidedly non-partisan new site where real expertise
and experience take priority over shouting, where the daily debate is informed
by dispassionate analysis and original reporting all too often lacking from the
stale and talking-point-laden commentary that sadly dominates most coverage of
the region today. Its contributors range from academics to former policymakers,
from journalists on the ground to established analysts — with an emphasis on
introducing voices from Middle East itself. Most importantly, the Middle East
Channel comes to you doctrine-free, open to political viewpoints of all kinds –
but demanding honesty, civility, and genuine expertise.

Our scope is broad: Israel and its neighbors, Iran’s
nuclear program and domestic politics, Iraq, Islamist movements, the Gulf,
Turkey, and North Africa, and the struggle for reform and democracy. The
Middle East Channel will highlight links between issues and areas of this diverse
region of 400 million — as well as provide a unique perspective on America’s
challenges there. We’ll have regular interviews with Middle East and Washington
players, sharp commentary on the news of the day, and original analysis of new
ideas and trends in the region.

The Middle East Channel is edited by Marc Lynch
of George Washington University and the Project on Middle East Political
Science and Amjad
Atallah and Daniel Levy,
co-directors of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.
Lynch, who writes the Abu
Aardvark Middle East blog on ForeignPolicy.com, is an expert
on Arab media and politics and is the author most recently of Voices
of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today.
Atallah is an expert in the law of conflict and post-conflict situations and a
former advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team. Levy was an advisor to
former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and is a leading commentator on
Israeli politics and Middle East peace.

You can follow the site on Twitter,
sign up for our RSS
feed,
and subscribe to our twice-weekly email updates to get the latest on what’s
happening on the Middle East Channel and beyond.

I’ll still be blogging here under my own name, while co-directing and co-editing the Middle East Channel.  Feel free to send me your ideas for stories or feedback.   Here we go!  

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Eurasia/ here

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Announcement:

The National Iranian American Council is pleased to present “Iran at a Crossroads: Assessing a Changing Landscape” on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 9 AM in Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 106, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. The conference will feature experts such as Professor Juan Cole, Dr. Scott Lucas of Enduring America and Amb. Robert Hunter of the RAND Corporation. For more information, please visit the event page for this briefing at the NIAC site.

End/ (Not Continued)

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Last week, there was considerable fuss in much of the U.S. media because, just a couple of days after the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Bill Burns, visited Damascus and announced that after a five-year absence Washington would finally be returning an ambassador to Syria, President Bashar al-Asad turned to hosting some other political figures important to him, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the heads of Hamas and Hizbullah.

Various U.S. commentators (many of whom were anyway just primed to pounce on anything the Obama administration does) became apoplectic in their fury, arguing that Asad’s meetings with his other allies just “proved” that Burns, Secretary Clinton, and Pres. Obama had all been taken royally for a ride.

So I’m glad that we can now read the calm voices of Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on the subject. The Leveretts were actually in Damascus, and had a meeting there with Pres. Asad, shortly before Aasad’s meeting with Ahmadinejad and the rest of the Jabhat al-Mumana’a (though maybe I should find a better name for the Jabha… That one, which means “Blocking Front” is very Bush-era-ish… Anyway, I guess readers will know whom I refer to.)

The Leveretts:

A week before Ahmadinejad’s arrival in Damascus, we had our own conversation with President Assad—a conversation that came one day after… William Burns met with the Syrian leader. In our session with him, Assad expressed satisfaction over his meeting with Undersecretary Burns. However, Assad also made clear that Syria’s relations with Iran, as well as its ties to Hizballah and HAMAS, are not on the table.

They note that, also shortly before Ahmadinejad’s visit to Damascus, Hillary Clinton had told the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee that,

“We have laid out for the Syrians the need for greater cooperation with respect to Iraq, the end to interference in Lebanon and the transport or provision of weapons to Hezbollah, a resumption of the Israeli/Syrian track on the peace process which had been proceeding through the offices of the Turks last years, and generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States.”

So, there goes Hillary, in the fine nanny-ish tradition established by Condi Rice before her, of trying to publicly dictate to other sovereign governments what their policies should be.

Asad’s laconic response was to say,

“We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding… I find it strange that they [Americans] talks about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other.”

I do think that Clinton (like everyone else from both party leaderships here in the U.S.) has a pronounced and very worrying tendency to continue to see every actor in the Middle East as being “either with us or against us” on the question that continues to preoccupy most of official Washington, that of Israel vs. Iran.

But matters aren’t as simple as that in the region, any more. At least two very significant actors in the region can no longer be clearly categorized as being in either the “pro-Iranian” or “pro-Israel/western” camp. They are Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both of which have many close ties to the west as such, but a lot of reservations about Israel; and both of which believe that negotiating in good faith with Iran is greatly preferable to continuing to saber-rattle and escalate the tensions against it.

Significantly, both these governments now have good relations with Syria. In the case of Turkey, these relations are of some years’ standing at this point. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they are more recent, dating from the landmark visit that King Abdullah made to Damascus last year. Prior to that, for several years– and most especially since the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, which has been widely but not categorically blamed on Syria– Riyadh’s relations with Damascus were extremely hostile. (Though prior to that, too, the present Saudi King, Abdullah, also had a long history of friendliness to Syria’s rulers; so go figure that.)

All of this provides some background for the judgment the Leveretts make in their blog post about their meeting with Asad, that,

the perceived value in Damascus of strategic realignment with the United States through a carefully conditioned peace deal with Israel is slowly declining as America’s hegemonic standing and influence erode.

They go on to write,

Certainly, the Syrian leadership was relieved by President George W. Bush’s departure from office and his replacement by President Obama. But, with a right-leaning coalition headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in power in Israel, expectations in Damascus for what Syria would see as major improvements in America’s Middle East policy are not high. And, as President Assad noted to us, poor policy choices in the Middle East by the United States over the last decade have created “vacuums” which “others [Iran and Turkey] filled”. (In this context, Assad argued that Iran’s evolving regional role does not represent “new ambitions” on Tehran’s part.) This has expanded Syria’s strategic optionality. In this context, Assad underscored that the rise of Iran and Turkey to new levels of regional influence has not come at Syria’s expense; rather, all three states have been able to improve their own relations and bolster their regional influence.

This is not to say that Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option of realignment toward the West through a “principled” peace with Israel does not remain deeply attractive to his son and successor. But, the longer that Damascus must wait for the United States to deliver on its end of the peace process, the more time that Bashar and his advisers have to internalize what they see as the reality of America’s slow decline. And that has a palpable effect on the price they are willing to pay for realizing Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option.

I see that the well-informed Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed also focuses a little on King Abullah’s role in this recent article on Syria’s diplomacy.

I’m not quite sure how Moubayed manages the feat of “reading” King Abdullah’s mind… But what he writes here is nonetheless very interesting:

King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia shares this view [that Syrian-Iranian relations are in the best interest of the international community, and should be seen as a blessing in disguise for the United States], believing that Syria can indeed walk the tightrope between the so-called moderate and radical camps in the Middle East, helping influence and moderate the behaviour of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Syria has repeatedly used its influence with these players in meetings like the ones that just took place in Damascus (which perhaps were not as high profile) to get Hamas to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, for example, or to get Hezbollah more involved in the political process in Lebanon. In Iran, Syria used its influence to free 17 British sailors captured in 2007, as well as a French prisoner in the summer of 2009. Syria, after all, doesn’t have a history of anti-Americanism, and has proven since 1990 that it is a credible peace partner, with whom the West can do business.

The Damascus Summit [with Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, and Meshaal] by no means indicates that engagement has come to an end between Syria and the US. Far from it; the meeting is a reminder of how helpful Syria can be in dealing with these non-state players. Nevertheless, it sends another strong message: Think twice before waging another war on Lebanon, because neither Syria nor Iran will allow it. Rather than escalate the conflict, the tripartite meeting in Damascus actually forced Israel to recalculate, thereby minimising the chances of war next summer. The leaders assembled in Damascus are clearly very confident of their abilities, and feel that neither Israel nor the US can deal with them as they have in the past. Much has changed since Obama came to power in 2009, but much remains the same, given that the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah alliance has outlived five US administrations since that of Ronald Reagan, and will likely outlive the Obama administration as well. Persuading the US to pressure Israel into seeking peace is high on Syria’s agenda, and this explains the recent Damascus Summit.

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Roger Cohen in the NYTimes/ here

“… the 31-year gridlock in Iranian-American relations endures. Sarah Palin, no less, is now urging Obama to “declare war on Iran” to save his presidency. She’s not alone. Daniel Pipes, the conservative commentator, called a recent National Review column: “How to save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran.”

There’s nothing new in U.S. hawks reducing Iran to a nuclear abstraction, its 70 million citizens subsumed into a putative warhead, its civilization ignored and its historical grievances against the United States glossed over — all in the name of making Persia a U.S. electoral pawn and a threat that demands bombs.

But the war option remains unthinkable, a potential disaster for the United States and Israel. It’s therefore worth outlining, before the drumbeat intensifies in the run-up to the mid-term U.S. elections, 10 truths about Iran.

1.Iran’s hardliners thrive on isolation. The game-changing pursuit of dialogue with Iran is not incompatible with support of the Green movement; rather it complements that backing…..

2. The Iranian response to Obama has been erratic, not least in the aborted Geneva deal of Oct. 1, 2009, that would have seen Iran’s low enriched uranium (L.E.U.) shipped out the country and the eventual return of uranium enriched to 20 percent (well below weapons grade) for use in a Tehran medical research reactor. The crumbling of this accord, victim of Iran’s political divisions, left Obama and his top Iran aides bitterly frustrated. They are to this day. It would have created breathing space for broader talks.

But Iran says the idea is alive: “We think all parties have shown their political will to fulfill this exchange” (Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Feb. 5). ….This deal is still a door opener. Sanctions are a cul-de-sac.

3. Deterrence is powerful. The United States should, as Hillary Clinton has suggested, be building a “defense umbrella” for friendly gulf states alarmed by Iran’s nuclear program. The cleverest remark of Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Iran was: “The only way you end up not having a nuclear-capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons.”…..

4.Sanctions will not alter Iran’s policy, and will further enrich the Revolutionary Guards who control sanction-circumventing channels from Dubai, but they will buy some time for further probing of engagement.

I’m told that’s how Obama, who remains intellectually committed to the idea of an Iran breakthrough, views them: a necessity in the light of Congressional and Israeli pressure, (any difference?) but not a likely means to get sanctions-inured Iran to change course….

5.Attacking Iran has known consequences. Saddam Hussein did so in 1980 — and thereby cemented Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic revolution by uniting diverse factions (socialist, liberal and others) in national defense.

Because the United States and Europe armed Iraq in that war, and Saddam then gassed the Iranians, resentment runs deep: I’ve often been shown war wounds in Tehran on arms and legs as a single word is uttered, “America.” The generation of young officers in that war, like Ahmadinejad, now runs Iran and constitutes the New Right. (Blowback is not limited to Afghanistan.) But most Iranians are under 35 and drawn to the United States.

The one sure way to defeat the Green movement, frustrate Iranian youth, unite Iranians in patriotic defiance, reinforce the New Right, put Iran on a crash course to a bomb, and buttress the regime — as in 1980 — is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. As Gates has said, “There is no military option that does anything more than buy time” — and not much, at that.

6.Iran’s defiance of U.N. resolutions… Still, I.A.E.A. inspectors are in Iran, …… it is clear that there is still time — at least a couple of years — for a bargain that would persuade Iran to do what Brazil, Argentina and South Africa did before it.

7. The shifts since the June 12 elections are seismic. ….. Iran is far more volatile than a year ago. I doubt that it could manage a peaceful transition were Khamenei, 70, to die…..

8.Israel and Iran are not neighbors. Both are strangers — one Jewish, the other Shiite — in the Sunni Arab sea that is the Middle East. They have never fought a war. They enjoyed everything short of diplomatic relations under the shah and productive relations for a decade after the revolution, when Israel sided with Iran against Iraq. Their enmity is fierce but not inevitable. For Israel, already at war with Arabs, opening a new war front against Persia would be disastrous: Muslim anger would overflow…. U.S. security and the American quest for stability in Iraq and Afghanistan would be compromised. Israel can prevent an Iranian bomb through working with America on measures short of war. Its own large nuclear arsenal and second strike capacity gives it the assurances it needs to pursue that course.

9.A peaceful Iraq, a quieter Afghanistan and any Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement demand Iranian involvement. Outside the tent Iran is a disruptive force. Inside the tent it can help America on multiple fronts and outgrow its violent revolutionary impetuosity. That’s still a game-changing proposition, as radical as the U.S.-China breakthrough of 1972 that changed the world. Obama must shut out the baying crowds and focus on the prize.

10.Iran is the original Heartbreak Hotel. It crushes people with its tragedy. Since at least the 1930s it has veered between forced westernization (“westoxification” to its critics) and theocratic imposition, banning the hijab and then making it compulsory, reaching for pluralism and then crushing it, opening its society and then slamming it shut.

….. It is time for Iran to find the balance between faith and pluralism that has eluded it for a century. It is time for the United States to help Iran’s emergence from isolation — not with Palin’s jingoism, nor empty punishments, nor bombs — but through firmness allied to creative diplomacy and sustained involvement.

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The winner of this year’s International Prize for Arab Fiction (IPAF), also known as the Arab Booker, has been announced: it’s the Saudi writer Abdo Khal, for his novel ???? ???? (She Throws Sparks, somewhat unaccountably translated as Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles). The National recently ran excerpts of the six short-listed authors’ works (seemingly unavailable online or in Cairo) and interviews with each of them. Here’s how Khal’s excerpt–translated by Anthony Calderbank–opened:

People, shadows of themselves, crammed into a shabby quarter since long ago

The name of our quarter is The Pit, or The Salt Mine, or The Bottom of Hell, or Inferno; all are terms that reflect torment, and our lives.

The quarter awakens before the sun’s rays penetrate the windows of the huddled houses to the contented lapping of the satiated sea. It awakens to the racket of boys preparing to set off down twisting lanes on their walk to school and the raucous banter of fisherman returning with fresh catches from trips begun the previous night, and songs on the radio exuberant in the dewy morning air: He said good morning without saying a word, Morning breeze, say hi to the one with radiant cheeks, We are farmers on the land of our country.    

Songs that soothe the soul, refreshing like the drizzle of summer rain, they pierce the breast, and lungs expand to receive life’s refreshing air. The alley awakes to the rattle of padlocks on shop doors as the owners open up, and the cries of street hawkers calling after young school children, tempting them to purchase a sweetie or a poorly manufactured toy or a snack that begins with the mouth and ends up with a runny tummy for whoever’s bowels have not been previously fortified.

All things pass with quiet deliberation towards their daily demise. The sun proceeds unhurriedly across the sky above our quarter until it hangs directly overhead and sheds its vertical rays, overwhelming the faded colours of the walls, or the doors, or faces, or freshly laundered clothes hung out to dry on the roof tops. Everything dries so incredibly quickly here.

And the last task our exhausted sun undertakes each day – after it has cast off its searing heat – is to descend towards the palace in complete peace. 

My literary references in Arabic tend to be overwhelmingly Egyptian, so a passage like this–with its focus on a traditional, lower-class space; its sense of cyclical timelessness; and its universal, allegorical elements (“the quarter,” “the palace”)–puts me strongly in mind of Mahfouz’s Children of the Alley, or The Harafish. 

I only skimmed the excerpts (a friend in Abu Dhabi sent them to me), and found them difficult to evaluate, partly because it’s hard to get a sense of a novel from a small truncated section, and partly because some of the translations seemed stilted. None of them really grabbed me. 

The blog Arabic Literature (in English) has a bio of Khal, as well as “mini-reviews” of the excerpts, worth reading. Others have written about the (I suspect, in literary circles, unsurprisingly catty) politics of the selection process.

UPDATE:

Having read the excerpts more carefully, I’d like to add something to my earlier, much-too-dismissive remarks. A Cloudy Day on the West Side by Mohamed Mansi Qandil creates a powerful sense of foreboding in its description of a young girl’s dangerous and mysterious trip with her mother, to have a Christian tattoo applied to her arm.

The mother paid no attention to her, and continued giving her orders: “I want it to be big and clear, but it should look faded as though it has been on her skin for many years, a real one, as though she had been born it.” 

America, by Rabee Jaber, tells of Martha, a Syrian woman who emigrates to America in search of her husband. It has some beautiful images:

..the train – like a kettle on a winter fire – would emit two plumes of steam and then a third before the roar reverberated and the black iron beast pulled away.

She was totally preoccupied with Khalil. After marrying him she thought of herself as having been an empty sack before that. Then Khalil had arrived and filled her with wheat and lentils. The first time she had heard the word “America” emerge from his mouth, her heart had missed a beat.

From the window in the hideous, black hotel (which she later remembered as leaning to one side, as if it were in danger of falling) she would see the smokestacks of the steamships bursting up into the clouds – that’s how low the clouds were!

And the section from Where the Wolves Grow Old, by Jamal Naji, has a great opening:

Azmi al-Wajih has humiliated me three times. The first was in the house of his father, who had fallen in love with me and married me. The second was on the day he caught me in the inner room of the house of Sheikh Abd al-Hamid al-Jinzir. And the third was thirteen years later, when I was thirty-eight years old. 

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Anyone who is interested in issues of Islam in America must certainly go see the new Shahrukh Khan film My Name is Khan. Despite all of its Bollywood silliness and melodrama, the film is surprisingly discerning on the experiences of Muslims in American society. Though it is set almost entirely in the U.S. (beginning in San Francisco and ending in Georgia), this film will go down as one of the most important Bollywood movies Shahrukh Khan has ever done.

Most obviously of course, the film reminds audiences all around the world that Bollywood’s biggest star ever is in fact a non-violent Muslim (the film’s most repetitive line is “My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist”). But it also does a number of other absolutely fascinating things, such as performing a reinterpretation of the Qur’anic Abraham-Ishmael story, and in a surprising turn, it spotlights the U.S.’s government abandonment of poor African-American communities.

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