Adel Al Toraifi

Goodbye

2011-02-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

The Blog has moved to the following link: altoraifi.wordpress.com

From the Toshka Republic to the Facebook Republic

2011-02-19T14:09:00.000-08:00

Friday 18 February 2011
By Adel Al Toraifi

At the same time as the world's media was preoccupied with the protests that were taking place in Egypt over the past three weeks, two of the largest internet-service providers in China blocked the word "Egypt" from their search engines, whilst the Twitter-like micro-blogging website Sina blocked any comments about the Egyptian demonstrations. China is behind the world's largest firewall, and this firewall is capable of blocking social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others. Last week the Chinese Global Times newspaper published an editorial entitled "Color revolutions will not bring about real democracy" which cautioned that the revolutions that took place in Egypt and other countries could result in political and economic unrest, warning that although democracy had been successful in the west "whether the system is applicable in other countries is in question…[and] some emerging democracies in Asia and Africa are taking hit after hit from street-level clamor."

There can be no doubt that the Chinese fear of the spread of the "infection" from Tunisia and Egypt into Asia is justified, and the Chinese authorities are arguing that their priority is not implementing a western-style democracy [in China] but rather providing development and services for more than a billion people. There are many, of course, who would disagree with this Chinese viewpoint which marginalizes democracy and freedom of expression, however the Chinese officials contend that the industrial revival in China has rescued hundreds of millions of Chine's people from poverty. In 1978 64 percent of the Chinese popular lived below the poverty line, however thanks to economic development and capitalist economic policies the percentage of Chinese people living below the poverty line has been reduced today to just 18 percent. Chinese officials like to compare the Chinese [political] model with the democratic Indian model, for despite the firmly established democratic principles in India, during the 1960s it had almost the same proportion of its population living below the poverty line. However due to the obstacles put in place by the trade union's with regards to India's democratic experience, over 41 percent of the country's population continue to live below the poverty line whereas the Chinese economy has this year overtaken the Japanese economy to become the second strongest economy in the world, whilst the Indian economy ranks at number 11.

By looking at both the Chinese and Indian models, it is clear that both Egypt and Tunisia are facing an extremely tough challenge with regards to the peaceful transfer of power. This is because both countries have to rebuild their countries infrastructure at a time when their economies are experiencing a worrying retreat. Thousands of Cairene activists utilized Facebook to stage demonstrations which overnight ignited into popular protests, resulting in an unprecedented state of civil disobedience. The majority of the opposition forces joined protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, demanding an end to the "system." Despite all the concessions, [constitutional] amendments, and pledges made by former president Mubarak, the protestors continued to reject a "constitutional transition [of power]", welcoming power being handed over to the [Egyptian] Supreme Military Council, and the suspension of the constitution. History will judge whether or not the protestors' insistence on toppling the entire regime was, politically and economically, in the interests of the Egyptian people.

In both cases [Egypt and Tunisia], it was repeatedly stated that the barrier of fear had been broken, however some have wondered whether the barrier of law and order was also broken. Citizens grew distrustful of security apparatus, and prison gates were thrown open allowing convicted criminals to escape. The problem with situations such as this is that an absence of security, a weak government, and the non-presence of law enforcement, opens the door for an endless torrent of protests and demonstrations that begin with demands for democracy and political rights but which will also see employees of the banking and transport sectors, and even the police, coming out to protest, until civil servants employed on temporary contracts in the public sector come out demanding job security, promotions, and bonuses. This state of chaos and disorder can be viewed as a natural side effect of any transitional phase. However, the real danger lies in the vulnerability of the economy and it potentially experiencing a sharp decline in the coming period, particularly as the economy played a key role in inciting the recent protests with regards to the soaring price of food and rising unemployment, which are both something that is being experienced globally.

The youth generation have achieved significant and historic demands with regards to constitutional amendments and combating corruption, however the internet or cyberspace is far removed from the hard facts with regards to the country's economic condition on the ground. Between 2006 and 2008, the Egyptian economy achieved a growth rate of more than 7 percent whilst during the global financial crisis the Egyptian economy maintained a growth rate of 4.7 percent. Some argue that Egypt's open-door economic policy has widened the class gap between Egyptian [social] classes. However it is also true – at least according to the latest World Bank report – that the economic reforms in Egypt contributed to improving the income of millions of working class Egyptians. These reforms have helped to keep poverty rates under the 20 percent barrier.

There can be no doubt that many place the blame for this on former president [Hosni Mubarak] and his successive governments over a period of 30 years, but what is really concerning is that these latest protests have cost Egypt more than 30 billion dollars, whilst the tourism sector – which makes up 10 percent of Egypt's labour force – has suffered substantial losses. This is not the only problem, but a country like Tunisia which has witnessed remarkable economic growth over the past few years has also seen more Tunisian citizens illegally migrating to Europe. However experts are now warning that the growth rate in countries like Egypt and Tunisia may fall to nothing over the coming three years. These countries largely depend on their tourism sectors, and the tourism industry in these countries may decline, not because tourists might be disinclined to visit these countries – for tourists may today want to visit these countries even more than before – but because travel agencies and the banks that finance them, will refrain from funding [foreign] projects out of fears over the changes that could be made to legislation and laws pertaining to the right of ownership and foreign investment during these countries transition to democracy.

In this week's Newsweek magazine's cover article [Demise of the Dictators], Professor Fouad Ajami argues that "from afar, the "realists" tell the Arabs that they are playing with fire, that beyond the prison walls there is danger and chaos. Luckily for them the Arabs pay no heed to these realists." Whilst in Britain's current affairs magazine "The New Statement", Olivier Roy, author of the book "The Failure of Political Islam" wrote that "the process of change will undoubtedly be long and chaotic, but one thing is certain: the age of Arab-Muslim exceptionalism is over." They are both right, and this path will indeed be long and chaotic, and unless these countries learn the logical lessons with regards to establishment a moderate and economically successful state, they may not succeed. The most important thing is not gaining freedoms or the right to political participation, but rather achieving economic progress and rescuing millions of poor people from the miserable conditions that they live in. This requires avoiding deceptive idealism and the virtual dreams of the internet revolutionaries and rather working on the ground to rebuild the state in a practical manner.

In the late 1990s, [former Egyptian prime minister] Kamal Ganzouri's government put forward the Toshka [New Valley] project, an irrigation project which the government pledged would lift millions of Egyptians out of poverty. However this project failed for a number of reasons, most notably because it was far too ambitious and unrealistic, and was inconsistent with the economic realities on the ground. Egyptian film director Khaled Youssef portrayed this failure in his comedic movie "Kalemni Shukran" [Call Me, Please]. The plot revolves around a character named Ibrahim Toshka, an example of an ordinary Egyptian youth living in a slum-area and working at odd jobs. For example, we see him working as a movie extra, a wedding organizer, whilst he also owns a small store that rents mobile phones. Toshka juggles all these jobs in order to earn a living and the film comments on the influence that media outlets now have on the lives of ordinary people, and [in the film] we see ordinary Egyptians demanding free telephone calls, whereas in the past they would have been demanding bread.

The Facebook youth have succeeded in stirring political life in Egypt in an unprecedented manner. But can they transform those protests into political and economic gains that go beyond Facebook's virtual republic? They rebelled against the Toshka republic that was based upon promises beyond the realm of reality, but will they succeed in creating a real republic that is capable of building a state and a developing economy. This is the question.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

After Tahrir Square?

2011-02-19T14:08:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 09 February 2011
By Adel Al Toraifi

There can be no doubt that the protestors in Cairo's Tahrir Square have proved their point regarding the departure of President Mubarak. However, those who have followed the situation in Egypt for years realize that the departure of the President may not change the conditions in Egypt; in fact living conditions could perhaps get worse. My aim here is not to diminish the importance of what happened, the protests have forced the President to step down from power [at the next elections], and the presidency will not be passed down to his son or one of his associates, whilst constitutional reforms and the establishment of fair elections have also been promised. However, for those waiting for Egypt to transform into a Western-style democratic country, or for the establishment of a prosperous middle class, or for the economic conditions of millions of poor people to improve; these are hopes that are becoming increasingly difficult [to achieve] day by day.

Today, many could say that the primary aim of the protests was to eradicate oppression and political tyranny, and enable Egyptians to make their own decisions, with dignity. However, these people may have forgotten, as their opposition reaches greater heights, that the rises in food prices and unemployment over the last three years – which are two global phenomena – have had a direct impact upon the direction of events [in Egypt]. Social networking websites – such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – provided the necessary arena for the demonstrators to mobilize, plan, and communicate, away from the interference of the authorities. However, what happened in Egypt – at least what can be observed, as of now – was not the “Facebook Revolution” or the “Twitter Revolution”, nor did it only consist of “democratic” protests or demands for “freedom”. True, the recent demonstrations may have raised banners such as “poverty”, “despotism”, “justice”, and many others, but the variety of slogans, as well as the diversity of participants, both ideologically and politically, means only one thing: this was “rage” against the ruling regime. The majority of key players in the initial protests were lower middle class youths who suffer from unemployment, or who work in modest jobs, even though they are educated to a university standard. This demographic, whose numbers are officially estimated at 5 million, were able to communicate via the internet and organize themselves. The chances of their success increased with the general air of popular resentment and rage at the situation in the country, and the events in Tunisia which represented the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Today it is difficult to review and assess the regime of President Mubarak in a rational and balanced manner because of the state of popular upheaval that we are witnessing. However if we can say anything today, it is that President Mubarak should have stepped down in a dignified manner a long time ago. His era has witnessed successes, and many significant mistakes, but over the last ten years in particular, there have been signs of old age and senility at the top levels of Egyptian power. Subsequently, the country sank into a debate surrounding the possibility of hereditary rule, and different wings of the National Democratic Party competed to monopolize money and power, amidst poverty and [popular] discontent, with some state institutes – most notably the security agencies – becoming mere instruments of the regime, rife with corruption and authoritarianism.

Despite all this, Mubarak's era being solely held responsible for the deteriorating conditions in Egypt will not help to resolve this crisis, in fact the problems afflicting Egyptian society will likely get worse, before they improve in the long run.

Within a few months, Egyptians will be able to elect a new president, amend the constitution, and achieve an elected parliament; yet solving the problems of the Egyptian state may take decades. 700,000 Egyptians enter the job market each year; 417,000 of whom are high school or university graduates, whilst only 18 percent of this figure will have graduated from technical or medical departments. These statistics are compounded by the declining overall level of education in Egypt, which is now globally classified as ranking 106 out of 130 countries. Not only this, but the Egyptian state is considered one of the most bloated states in the world, in terms of government apparatus, in other words the state and the public sector employ more people than is strictly required. The state has also financed projects to support services and basic needs in a manner that is beyond the country's economic capacity to meet, in a bid to buy the silence of the poor. This is not to mention Egypt's population explosion, which means that for decades, Egyptian state institutions will be unable to find solutions to housing or health problems, or rectify poverty levels in the country.

The Egyptian government is dependent on six major sources to achieve economic growth: tourism, oil and gas revenue, the Suez Canal, foreign investment, remittance for expatriate employment, and foreign aid. Any future government must protect the three sources that have been affected by the current crisis: tourism, foreign investment, and foreign aid. David Mack has warned against rushing to applaud the events in Egypt because the challenges of economic and structural reform will perhaps be too much for any one or two generations to overcome, especially if food prices and unemployment continue to rise, not to mention a decline in tourism, and shrinking foreign aid and investment in general. In this case, "the U.S. media and armchair theoreticians of democracy in the United States will be able to walk away at the end of the day. The Tunisians and Egyptians will not”. (David Mack, Hold the Applause, Foreign Policy, 3rd February 2011)

Currently, many fear the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and this fear is justified, yet it is not likely that the Muslim Brotherhood will be able to form the next Egyptian government on its own, either due to their inability to acquire sufficient votes, or for fear of international reaction. As a result, we are likely to witness short-term coalition governments. Today, Egyptian expectations are higher [than before], their criticisms will be greater now that they are aware that they possess the power to force [political] change at any time; if this were to occur Egypt may cease to function internally, amidst partisan and political conflicts that could last for decades.

As you can see, the problems in Egypt cannot be solely blamed upon the president – or corruption during his presidency. This is because, according to international reports, there is a widespread culture of corruption and bribery, inefficiency, and a lack of accountability in all aspects of society. Thus the coming days may pose greater challenges, because the stability that Egypt lived through for three decades – albeit in a non-democratic manner – ensured tremendous growth in tourism, and foreign investment. Assuming that tourism will continue and develop, foreign investment may not grow to the same extent, because investors have become unsettled by the magnitude of changes that Egypt may undergo in the coming phase with regards to its legislative and economic framework.

In his important book “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century", Samuel Huntington said that: “Judging on past experience, the two most influential factors in the stability and expansion of democracy are economic development and political leadership”. Any researcher who knows the political reality in Egypt is aware that there are many social and traditional obstacles preventing this.

The Tahrir Square youth have been able to make their voices heard by the world, but the crucial matter here is not one of objection and protest – for others have tried this in many other countries – but rather in transforming these protests into political and economic gains…that is true success.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

Bashar al-Assad’s views on the Egyptian and Tunisian Protests

2011-02-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 02 February 2011
By Adel Al Toraifi

In an extremely defiant interview that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave to the Wall Street Journal (31st January 2011), al-Assad spoke frankly about a series of demonstrations and protests taking place in a number of Arab countries, saying: "If you didn't see the need for reform before what happened in Egypt and Tunisia, it is too late to do any reform."

Important and accurate words, from the president of an Arab state at a highly sensitive time, whilst the majority of Arab regimes have remained silent. Perhaps someone observing President al-Assad’s strategy might ask: why would the Syrian President choose to comment, at this particular time, on attempts to change the political regime in two Arab countries? Furthermore, what is the nature of the reform, or change, which he has pledged to Syria and the Syrians in the coming phase?

Bashar al-Assad spoke at length –during the interview – about his vision for the world of internal Arab politics. He talked about governance, popular legitimacy, reform, and religious extremism, and he ended [the interview] by describing the correct process – according to his point of view – to achieve democracy in Syria. It can be said that the importance of this interview lies in the fact that the Syrian President spoke – perhaps for the first time – about the future of the Syrian regime, from an internal perspective, ending with eloquently conclusions similar to what can be found in books such as Ibn Khaldun's "Muqaddimah" or Machiavelli's "The Prince.". Talking about the recent events, al-Assad said: “Whenever you have an uprising, it is self-evident to say that you have anger, but this anger feeds on desperation. Desperation has two factors: internal and external. The internal [factor] is that we are to blame, as states and as officials…if you want to talk about the changes internally, there must be different kinds of changes: political, economic and administrative. These are the changes that we need."

According to President al-Assad, Syria is immune to what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. He said: “Why is Syria stable, although we have more difficult conditions? Egypt has been supported financially by the United States, while we are under embargo by most countries of the world. We have growth although we do not have many of the basic needs for the people. Despite all that, the people do not go into an uprising. So it is not only about the needs and not only about the reform. It is about the ideology, the beliefs and the cause that you have. There is a difference between having a cause and having a vacuum”.

To summarize the President’s (extensive) words, what happened in Egypt and Tunisia was the product of “despair”, and a lack of “hope” and “dignity”. He added that “You have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue. When there is divergence between your policy and the people's beliefs and interests, you will have this vacuum that creates disturbance. So people do not only live on interests; they also live on beliefs, especially in very ideological areas. Unless you understand the ideological aspect of the region, you cannot understand what is happening.”

As for al-Assad’s proposed solution, it is not the immediate application of democracy, because the people need to develop, and perhaps it will be the "next generation" that will practice democracy in the future. [Al-Assad said] gradual reform should be undertaken, to develop society, and society’s participation in the decision-making process must be taken into account. “If you want to be transparent with your people, do not do anything cosmetic, whether to deceive your people or to get some applause from the West. They want to criticize you, let them criticize and do not worry.”

I find myself in agreement with the Syrian President – when ballot box principles are immediately applied to societies, democratic values do not instantly become part of their consciousness, and the process does not achieve the desired results. Reform must be gradual, so that people can keep pace with the change. These are wise words on a theoretical level, but applying such principles on the ground is another matter!

The Syrian President was right in saying that countries such as Egypt and Tunisia have achieved economic growth, and made great strides in opening up to the outside world, yet despite this, uprisings have occurred. However, I disagree with the President when he says that “ideology” – in Syria’s case, Baathist ideology – and a “cause” – i.e. resistance – are safeguards against an internal vacuum. The era of cross-border ideology is over, and a human being today is no longer an anonymous individual of the people, but rather he has his independence and personal freedoms. When a regime uses a ‘cause’, whether this is the liberation of the Golan Heights, or Palestine, this does not provide security when faced with demands for civil and political rights. Here, let us reflect on the ‘Wali al-Faqih’ regime in Iran, which the president referred to as a model of popular will, despite the fact that it was built to resist and stand in the face of the West. Massive youth protests emerged demanding regime change in 1996, 1999, 2003 and 2009, which were all suppressed by the use of force. During the latest Iranian elections, millions came out to object to what they perceived as electoral fraud, and how did this “resistance” regime deal with the people? The ‘Basij’ gangs cracked down and suppressed hundreds on the streets of Tehran. The Revolutionary Guard was forced to reinstate Ahmadinejad by force to preserve the regime, and send the young members of the opposition to the Revolutionary Courts.

Finally, those young protestors participating in the demonstrations today are not doing so because of a ‘cause’, or an ‘ideology’, but because they want to change their miserable living conditions. It is perhaps a cause for concern that at the same time they do not have an alternative vision for the future. Likewise, their movement is being led by passion and enthusiasm, and thus the future of their aspirations are not assured should they return to their homes, as the outlawed parties will move to monopolize the current opportunities, and ride the wave of change.

All that the observer hopes for is that governments take the initiative to absorb these lessons, and work so their societies can avoid the pitfalls of these painful ordeals.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

Nasrallah: The Arab in Persian Lebanon

2011-02-19T14:03:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 23 November 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

In one of his speeches that he delivered from his exile in Paris, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “Umayyad rule was based on a preference of Arabs over others. It also opposed the branch of Islam which eliminates the national concept, and unites humans in one society, a society where race and color distinctions do not exist”. During the 1970s, Khomeini lived in exile in Iraq, when relations between the Shah and the Iraqi regime had slumped. Former Iraqi President Abdul Salam Aref had allowed Iranian dissidents to broadcast their publications and sermons on the radio. Khomeini was involved, according to some sources, in the inflammatory speeches against the Shah’s regime. However, after the Baathists signed a border agreement with the Shah in 1975, Khomeini was placed under house arrest, in an attempt to secure him as future leverage. Despite trying to escape, he remained in Iraq until the Shah pressured Iraq to extradite him, and he was allowed to leave, before eventually settling in Paris.

Khomeini’s view of Umayyad rule is supported by adherents of Imami Shia Islam. His stance cannot be considered as an insult to the Arabs, or Arabism, but it was certain that the Imam did not boast of his Arab origins – claimed by his family – in the same capacity as he believed in his religious ideology, which he was able to establish in Iran today. This clarification is necessary in light of the debate taking place these days about the Sunni-Shia dispute on one hand, and the Arab-Persian dispute on the other.

In June 2009, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah – the Hezbollah leader – during a televised speech, tried to justify his party’s relations with Iran, to the Lebanese and Arab public. He said, wondering: “Are we, as opposition, considered Arabs or non-Arabs? If what is meant here is Syria, it is an Arab state. If we mean Lebanon, whether it has established distinguished relations with an Arab country, or had links with another Arab axis - needless to mention their names or elaborate on their apparent influence in the Lebanese arena, or the upcoming elections – can we say that one party is an Arab and the other is not? The country in question could be Iran; although today there is nothing in Iran known as ‘Persian’, or ‘Persian civilization’. What exists in Iran is Islamic civilization. What exists in Iran is Muhammad’s religion from Arabia, from Tahami, from Makka, from Quraish, from Tamim and from Mathar, and the founder of the Islamic Republic [Ayatollah Khomeini] is an Arab, son of an Arab, and son of God’s messenger. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic today is Imam Khamenei, who is a Hashemite, and he descends from Quraish tribe. He also descends from Ali Bin Abi-Taleb [the prophet's cousin] and from the prophet's daughter Fatima al-Zahraa, all being Arabs."

At the time, Nasrallah’s statement did not draw any reaction from Iran, perhaps because the country was internally preoccupied with its elections. However, in the latter months of this year, the television recording – translated into Persian – was circulated widely both within and outside Iran. This caused embarrassment for Nasrallah, when many ethnic Persians thought he was undermining their Persian roots, and preferring Arabs over Persians. If Khomeini had angered the Arabs when he advocated religious ideology over Arab nationalism, then Nasrallah had done the same thing, with regards to the Persians.

Nasrallah is partly right, and partly wrong in what he said, for he was right when saying that the family of Imam Khomeini claims to descend from the Hashemite family [of the Prophet]. However, what Nasrallah did not tell his audience is that Imam Khomeini and his family were descendants of an Indian family, from the village of Cantor near the famous Indian city of Lucknow. Indeed, his Indian roots –which Khomeini does not deny – were the reason behind the media campaign against him, at the time of the Shah, describing him as an ‘Indian’ who wanted to incite civil strife in the Persian country. A member of the opposition at the time, Manouchehr Ganji, quoted the Shah as saying: “If Khomeini lifted the beard from under his chin, you would find (Made in England)”. Continuing this public defamation, the newspaper ‘Italaat’ denied that Khomeini was affiliated to the Prophet’s family, and even considered him to be the son of a British traveler, who settled in Iran and Iraq in the 19th century (Italaat, January 7th, 1978).

The fact is that the English case for Khomeini is a flimsy one. As for the controversy surrounding the validity of his Arab, Indian, or Persian origins, this is a matter for historians and genealogists, and is not a matter of politics. However, what is more important than Khomeini’s origins is his stance on the Sunni-Shia and Arab-Persian disputes. Historically, we can say that Khomeini was not a nationalistic man, or racist against other people, but he was a man of religious ideology, and his ideology always took precedent over nationalism. Khomeini was a spiritual leader more than he was a ‘Persian’, and this was one of the most important reasons for the spread of his vision, outside of the Walih al-Faqih in Iran. This also explains why his vision drew the admiration from some secular Arabs and western intellectuals. Despite some of his expressions, which targeted certain western and Arab rulers, Khomeini believed in the need to preach his Islamic revolution to the surrounding Arab and Islamic world.

When the Islamic revolution took place in Iran, Khomeini met with well-wishers from the Arab and western left, including the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Prior to the revolution he met with French philosopher Michael Foucault, whose "homosexuality" did not deter Khomeini from meeting him, in order to evangelize his Islamic revolution. Some still remember how the Iranian regime, under Khomeini, was able to establish public alliances and secret contracts, even with its enemies; Iran-contra. Therefore, Khomeini had no reservations about evoking Persian nationalism in Iran after the Iran-Iraq war. Indeed, Khomeini did not censor the Mullahs, who invoked sentiments of former Persian glory to galvanize the fighters. Last month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad draped a Palestinian-style Keffiyeh scarf, worn by Basij militiamen, over the shoulders of an actor dressed as Cyrus – the founder of the Persian Empire. Ahmadinejad has talked about Cyrus in high regard, calling him the “King of the world”. This is a remarkable statement in a state where the Shah once emphasized Iran’s proud past, over Islam.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is mistaken if he thinks that Iran is merely an Islamic state, because that is contrary to Iran’s present-day reality. Iranians are proud to be Persians, and the majority of them – even among the opponents of the Mullahs, reject foreign intervention in their country. This is a matter worth noting for Nasrallah. Religious ideology cannot completely replace national identity, and Khomeini was conscious of this, and exploited it for the benefit of the regime. The Iranian scholar, Dariush Shayegan, (Illusions of Identity, 1993, trans. Muhammad Mukkaled) when talking about both the Shah and Khomeini, said that: “despite the broad differences between them, they committed the same old mistakes. They managed to embody par excellence the two Iranian fatal practices; cultural schizophrenia and the dream of greatness with regards to reviving the Sassanid Empire, by the Iranian Shah, or spreading Islam internationally through an Imam, according to the sacred Shiite belief. Heaven and its contrary; the heaven of the great civilization on earth, and the heaven of resurrection and the Day of Doom in the heavens. Two different discourses; two visions representing two neighboring Irans: the Imperial Iran according to the discourses of kings, and Iran that suffered from the martyrdom blood. Yet their proximity can be summarized in the following: The extravagance of a nation who never refrains from dreaming beyond the bounds of its capacity”.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

The Republics of Fear

2011-02-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

Sunday 14 November 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

In the late 1980s, an Iraqi author, writing under a pseudonym, published a book entitled "Republic of Fear", which focussed on the reign of the Baath regime in Iraq. The author used an alias for fear of reprisals from Sadam Hussein’s intelligence forces. The Iraqi leader had just ended an eight-year war with Iran, and was boasting of victory in a delusional manner.

A few months after the book was published, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and his radical regime encountered opposition from international troops. Yet, instead of ousting the dictator leader by force, international efforts were limited to accepting his withdrawal, and imposing international sanctions.

Author Kanan Makiya republished his significant book in 1998, but this time under his real name, at a time when the US and British governments were considering a military strike, in response to the violations of Saddam Hussein’s regime. At the time, war did not materialize, yet five years later, the George W. Bush administration decided to carry out military operations, thus invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. As time passed, the invasion transformed into one of the bloodiest phases in the history of Iraq, with unprecedented violence based on sect, race, and secret intelligence, in a country that was ruled with an iron fist for over four decades.

During the past few years, there have been incidents of murder, assassination and bombings in every location. Iraq has turned into a republic of fear, perhaps more so than during the Hussein era. In the 1980s, the regime could sentence any of its opponents to exile, along with his family and even his entire neighbourhood, if he escaped from the capture of the security apparatus. Yet today innocent civilians disappear, or die in mass bombings, on a scale that has not been witnessed throughout history. It is true that suicide bombings take place in Western, Arab and Muslim countries, yet this is nothing compared to what happens in an endless cycle in Iraq.

Last week, a terrorist group committed a massacre against Iraqi Christians, and before the victims’ blood had dried, further bombings occurred amongst civilians, in districts with a Shiite majority. This news is sad and tragic, and if you look at a number of countries in the region, you would see that the expansion of terrorist organizations, in every Arab and Muslim country, is beyond imagination. Nevertheless, Arab officials still cast doubt, in the statements they issue, about the role of Islamic extremism, or they tend to attribute what is happening to foreign conspiracies, as was the case in Yemen recently.

From the 1960s until the late 1980s, Arab and Western intellectuals and writers used to believe that the region's problem with terrorism and violence was down to leadership, and certain ruling regimes. They believed that if Arab regimes were fairer and more peaceful, and ultimately more democratic, then their states would not have transformed into republics of fear. This interpretation is somewhat correct, but it is incomplete. The Iraqi model serves as proof that the problem does not lie in a lack of democracy, but rather in a deeper illness within these societies, causing them to turn towards uncontrolled violence. There are crises of identity, religion, and values, which are deeply rooted within these societies. Without confronting such crises, it would be impossible to break this vicious circle of mindless violence.

Politicians in our region refuse to face this truth, either because they seek to avoid the cost of recognizing and rectifying such crises, or because they are also unable to comprehend them, due to the fact that their perception of the world is a direct result of their social upbringing. Who can face his society and tell them that the identity they assume is not consistent with the modern world, or admit to them that their conception of religion, and the way they practice it, leads inevitably to extremism and violence. Who could tell their society that the values which they pride themselves upon are in fact a barrier, hindering their acceptance of basic contemporary principles such as human rights?

Left-wing intellectuals have argued extensively that a regime like that of the Islamic Republic [of Iran] is democratically superior to its Arab neighbours, because it holds periodical elections, and has institutions that provide public representation. Yet the truth of the matter is that Iran is no different from other regimes in the region, even the previous Iraqi regime.

In an article entitled "Iran: the Fear Republic", published by the Guardian newspaper on 21 January, 2010, Iranian scholar Mahdi Khalaji says: " Iran's clerical regime governs by a simple formula: he who is the most frightening, wins. ‘Victory by terrifying’ is a trope that is present in many of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speeches. Indeed, it is a reliable guide to his political philosophy." Khalaji is right, as some countries in the region govern in accordance with the principle of fear. We may also add that extremist organizations also adopt such similar policy, though in a more criminal manner, as the promotion of fear is a fundamental terrorist goal. Oppressive regimes use fear as a tool to tighten the grip on their own security, whereas Islamic extremist groups use terrorism to illustrate their presence, and as a means of ‘salvation’ for their sick-minded followers.

However, it is crucially important to recognize the fact that the crisis does not lie in ruling regimes only, but first and foremost within society. In his distinguished analysis of the Iranian Revolution, Said Arjomand indicates that the Iranian Revolution was never a revolution of ideas – in the manner of the French or American revolutions – but was a public protest incited by a variety of reasons, some of which were contradictory. He argues that the Iranian Revolution could have been suppressed had the Shah not been ill and weak, and refused to confront it by force.

Arjomand emphasizes that the fall of the Shah led to the revolutionary forces assuming power, and that this fall also led to the dissolution of institutions, relating to the state and the army.

Following a struggle between different groups, causing demonstrations and violence, the Mullahs achieved victory by force, and through adopting a policy of religious intimidation. According to Arjomand, the nation subsequently suffered a state of confusion and dispersion, and did not know what it wanted. (The Turban for the Crown, 1988)

Such a state of dispersion and loss was observed by author Kanan Makiya, who recently commented on the current Iraqi situation. In the interview he gave to Asharq al-Awsat on 18 March 2010, Makiya said "We have not solved this problem. I am not talking about our generation, your generation, or my father's. Rather we are talking about the current generation which operates in the Iraqi political arena, namely the entire political layer that has emerged since 2003. This is a new layer in Iraqi politics, where the old spectrum of politicians has been replaced by a new one, with new faces and characteristics as a result. There are exceptions, but what they share in common is that they do not know what they want; they are not self-confident."

Societies in the Middle East are experiencing the same problem, for they do not know what they want, and are experiencing a state of dispersion and loss. It is natural that a conflict of identities, religions, and values, would eventually lead to a fierce clash. There are regimes of fear, and societies of fear. Inside each there are those who intimidate, and those who are intimidated. Even history and culture, to which one may resort, are also based on fear and intimidation. As we witness all this happening, some people wonder: where did all this devastating fear come from?

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

Has Obama Failed in the Middle East?

2011-02-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

Monday 18 October 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

"Obama is indecisive", "the president's generals disagree with him", "Afghanistan is Obama's presidential battle." These are just a few extracts from Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars that sparked considerable debate upon its publication at the end of last month. Woodward spent around a year observing the Obama administration, conducting dozens of interviews with senior officials including President Obama himself. Woodward concluded that Obama, who had described the conflict in Afghanistan as a "just war" had become unable to find a way out of it, and that this war is on the verge of heavily affecting the future of his presidency at a time when his popularity has declined sharply due to the problem of unemployment and the decrease in America's economic growth.

There can be no doubt that Obama is facing domestic challenges which on one hand is related to the difficult situation that he inherited from his predecessor, and on the other to the growing conservative trend represented by the Tea Party movement that opposes all of his plans, and which is now preparing to break Obama's Democratic party at the mid-term elections. However, the greatest challenge facing Obama right now is the large proportion of the young people turning away from him after he failed to live up to their huge expectations. Perhaps the most fitting description of the crisis that Obama is facing was put forward by Professor Fouad Ajami, who wrote that "he appeared as a savior" and "the crowd is left to its most powerful possession – its imagination."

Obama's popularity might seem to be in decline in America; however, the greatest decline in Obama's popularity is in the Middle East; not just at a grassroots level, but also among the elite. It was natural for the people of the region to experience a moment of fleeting jubilation upon the election of an Afro-American candidate to the presidency; and particularly an American who calls for dialogue with the Muslim world, however it was just a matter of time before things returned to normal in the Middle East. What is interesting here is the decline in confidence of the Middle East's elite in Obama's ability to contribute to – let alone impose – stability on the region. The dominant impression amongst a huge sector of this Arab elite is that the Obama administration's weak position towards Iran, its controversial approach to Syria, its neglect of Lebanon, and its inability to make any political progress in Iran, not to mention its faltering peace project, point to signs of a huge failure.

In two articles published this week, one by James Traub (in Foreign Policy Magazine; 8 October), and another by Raghda Durgham (al-Hayat newspaper; 8 October), argued that the policies and positions adopted by the Obama administration were counter-productive, particularly the revival of the Syrian-Iranian axis, not to mention Lebanon, where the government is on the verge of collapse. What Traub and Durgham said was that the indecisiveness of the Obama administration towards Iran and Syria's policies – as well as the policies of their allies Hezbollah and Hamas – has decreased the momentum of democracy and independence in Iraq and Lebanon. This is something that has resulted in the Iraqi election results being delayed in the interests of the allies of Iran [in Iraq], and everybody remaining silent about the attempt that was made to blackmail the Lebanese Prime Minister by Syria and Hezbollah with regards to the international tribunal – despite his apology for accusing Syria of being involved in his father's assassinations given to this very newspaper.

In my opinion, the Obama administration is responsible for this, as well as responsibility for the change in the policies of a number of influential Arab countries, however any keen observer of US policy should have expected all of this.

It was natural for America under Obama – who won the presidential elections on an anti-war agenda – to move towards appeasement and become more pragmatic, avoiding confrontation with regimes classified as being opponents of the war in Iraq. Whilst at a political level, Obama was and remains a "realist" despite his victory with the help of the Democrat party left-wing.

Obama is a president who is a "realist" and avoids ideals and slogans, and in this he is closer to Nixon or Bush Senior. Obama chose the path of moderation, thereby losing both the left-wing and the right-wing. This is a strange comparison; however, everybody who knows Obama's political history is well aware of this. On the foreign policy level, he is no less pragmatic than the most realist politicians. Evidence of this can be seen in his inauguration speech in which he said that his administration was not aiming to change the world or impose the American democratic vision on anyone.

On the Arab level, the Arab-Syrian reconciliation began before Obama's rapprochement with Syria and, in fact, the French rapprochement with Syria preceded both the Arabs and the US. In other words, rapprochement with Syria was a project that three parties participated in; the US, Europe, and the Arabs. Therefore it is unfair to lay the blame solely on the shoulders of the Obama administration with regards to the deteriorating situation in Lebanon. The failure of the Obama administration in Iraq was a result of its persistence with the policies of the former administration, and the same applies to its rapprochement with Syria which actually began before the Bush administration left office. Therefore the Obama administration is not responsible for all this; it is only responsible for continuing in the same direction.

As for Iran, the Obama administration did all that it could. It managed to impose international sanctions against Iran with the assistance of China and Russia. It also succeeded in imposing additional US and European sanctions on Iran, which have placed Iran's economy in a precarious position. Just reading the "Economist" magazine's most recent report on Iran is enough to realize the impact that these sanctions have had. Should the Obama administration have done more than this?

Personally, I believe so, but what more could it have done if all the influential countries in the region are hesitant about escalation with Iran and its allies? The Obama administration is powerless at this point because everybody else is reluctant to take the decision to confront once more, and this is the crux of the matter. If the region's countries have no desire to confront the challenges of the Syrian-Iranian axis, I don't think the US or any other country would be willing to shoulder further responsibilities in this respect. The strength of countries like Iran and Syria stems from the fact that other countries – for whatever reasons – are unwilling to confront them till the bitter end. Obama fails when the others are unprepared to support him in undertaking a necessary confrontation, and share the costs with him. The Obama administration tried to revitalize the peace process but was humiliated by Netanyahu's government which managed to entangle the Obama administration in the settlement freezing issue and force it into making unjustified promises.

In fact, the solution to this is not in the hands of President Abbas, but rather with Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in Syria. Anybody who wants to strike a deal to ensure stability in Lebanon does not need to go to the presidential palace of Saad Hariri, but rather to Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's hide-out in the Beirut suburb of Dahiya. Anybody who wants to form a government in Baghdad has to first convince the Iranian ambassador to Iraq. In a nutshell, the ability of the US – or any other country – to change the situation depends on facing those powers that possess arms and forcibly imposing their logic.

To some, Obama's handling of the countless crises in the Middle East may not have been convincing and decisive, however, for a "realist" who is aware of the heavy cost of crucial decisions, he is not prepared to pay the costs for this whilst others do not wish to as well.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

Don't Worry…the Syrian-Iranian Axis is Alive and Well!

2011-02-19T13:57:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 12 October 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

This was the message of the Syrian-Iranian summit that took place in Tehran last Saturday between President Bashar al-Assad and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and in which the Supreme Leader of Iran Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also participated. President al-Assad's fifth visit to Iran since Ahmadinejad came to office took place at a time that the Lebanese and Iraqi arenas, as well as the Palestinian, are witnessing a number of complications. It was notable that only 20 days separated this visit and President Ahmadinejad's visit to Damascus, which itself came less than a week after the meetings that took place between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Syrian counterpart, and the Syrian President's meeting with the US Mideast Peace Envoy George Mitchell and the Iraqiya bloc leader Iyad Allawi. This shows that Syria remains active in playing the role of mediator between Iran and the outside world, and that it is the Arab country with the most influence on Iran.

President al-Assad described the relations between the two allies as being "close and continuing" adding that Syria and Iran "are in the same trench and have common aims." The Syrian President did not miss the opportunity to comment on the failure of the US-sponsored negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, saying that this is "nothing new." As for President Ahmadinejad, he confirmed the success of the "resistance" project, and called for the foreign occupation forces – the US, of course – to leave, welcoming any nation that wants to join the "resistance."

Perhaps someone observing what is happening in the region would ask; why do some believe that it is possible to separate Syria from Iran, or that Syria is willing to sacrifice its historic alliance with Iran? And in return for what?

In late 2003, the Americans accused Syria of allowing terrorists and arms to enter Iraq in order to undermine the US presence in Baghdad. As a result of this, the US issued sanctions against Syria and succeeded in convincing a number of Lebanese politicians to support UN Resolution 1559 in September 2004, which called for the withdrawal of foreign forces – Syrian troops – from Lebanon, and the disarming of Lebanese militias – Hezbollah. Only a few months later, Rafik Hariri was assassinated and Syria was publicly accused by a number of Lebanese parties of being responsible for this, complicating relations between Syria and a number of major Arab countries. Following pressure from the UN Security Council, Syria was forced to withdraw from Lebanon. At the time, the US, Britain, France and a number of major Arab countries decided to isolate Syria and Iran, especially in the aftermath of Iran's nuclear project and Ahmadinejad's election by the conservatives in Tehran.

In the following five years, Hezbollah started a war with Israel in 2006 that greatly affected Lebanese stability, and which was followed by protests and strikes in Beirut until this ended in 2008 with Hezbollah forces occupying Lebanon. As for Palestine, Hamas has been split apart by an internal war over government unity with the Fatah movement in 2007, and it also fought a war with Israel at the end of 2008.

During this phase, Iran and Syria committed to their alliance and were able to support their allies everywhere; from Lebanon to Iraq to the occupied territories. However the policy of isolating Syria and Iran by some Arab and European countries began to change since 2008; Syrian-Arab relations began to reconcile, and this included US and European rapprochement with Syria, under the pretext that it was possible to separate, or distance, Syria from Iran.

At the present time, it does not seem that this policy is bearing the desired fruit. It is true that rapprochement with Syria has succeed in restoring the (Syrian) channel of communication with Iran and the groups affiliated to it in the region, however nothing more than this. In other words, the region has returned to the state that it was in prior to late 2003, without any increase or decrease.

The American belief, for example, that it could distance Syria from Iran has been confirmed as being a delusion based upon pragmatic considerations that are not in line with the nature of the alliances in the region.

In his book, “Syria and Iran: the Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East” (2006) Jubin M. Goodarzi clarifies that many people are not aware of the extent of the deep ties that exist between the strategic interests of Syria and Iran, and that both regimes have begun to rely upon one another with regards to guaranteeing their stability. Goodarzi writes that despite their ideological differences, the two regimes have been allies for more than thirty years, and this despite the fact that Syria is "Arab Baathist" and Iran is a republic of religious clerics. Syria stood side by side with Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, and at the time Iran supported the Syrian presence in Lebanon, giving Syria the upper hand in policy-making there.

Therefore it is unlikely that Syria will accept the idea of concluding a peace agreement with Israel and abandoning Iran; this is because the Syrian regime – after the collapse of its alliance with Egypt following the 1973 war – relies upon Tehran for survival in the face of any potential foreign interference, not to mention the fact that Iran benefits from its alliance with Damascus, as Syria represents its primary transit route to the Levant and Lebanon with regards to supporting its allies there. Iran protected Syria from the threat of Iraqi aggression in the 1980s and 1990s, and were it not for Iran standing behind them; the US would have been able to compel Damascus to throw in its hand in the region. Hezbollah – which is affiliated to Iran – was able to maintain Syria's interests in Lebanon, defending Syria during the tensest of moments. In fact, we can say that without Hezbollah, Syria would never have been able to return to Lebanon and extract an apology from the Lebanese politicians. The same applies to the Hamas movements that succeeded in giving Syria the deciding vote with regards to the peace process and negotiations with America.

This does not mean that the Syrian-Iranian axis has succeeded, and that others have failed, but it does reveal that the "resistance" axis – as it is called – is still capable of overcoming the difficulties that it faces and undermining the opportunity for genuine peace and stability in the region. Many of those who bet on the emergence of a real axis to oppose the Syrian-Iranian axis are now facing disappointment.

Professor Daniel Bymen of the Brookings Institute in Washington said that despite their ideological differences, the Syrian-Iranian alliance is one that would make [Klemens Von] Metternich proud of the correctness of his theory that the balance of power – not ideology – is the secret to lasting relations between countries. In my opinion, the Syrian-Iranian alliance will continue so long as the diagram of regional alliances with America remains constant without change. We are not going to see a Syrian-Iranian divorce anytime soon so long as the internal situation in both countries remains the same. Until that time, don't worry, the Syrian-Iranian axis is alive and well!

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

The Need for Disclosure with Yemen

2011-02-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 05 October 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

The "Friends of Yemen" meeting that took place on the sidelines of the UN annual conference has come to an end. The meeting which was held in New York came eight months after the London meeting, and over four years after the 2006 Donors Conference had pledged to offer over $3 billion to Yemen, of which only a small fraction has reached the country. The reason behind this is that some donors lack confidence in the capability of Yemen's economic and development institutions to invest these funds appropriately.

The situation in Yemen today should be of a top priority for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, not only because of the increasing Al Qaeda activity and the emergence of the Huthi movement as a (relative) threat to the security of the Gulf borders, but also because Yemen – whose population stands at 23 millions – is the poorest Arab country. Yemen ranks 166 out of 174 countries in the international GDP list, and it is estimated that around 43 percent of the Yemeni population live below the poverty line. There are more than 10 million Yemenis who live on less than two dollars a day, and the country's unemployment rate has reached 40 percent. According to the most recent World Bank report on Yemen, the country's oil revenues are limited and its water reserves will be depleted by the year 2017. Therefore, the crisis goes beyond the presence of 300 members of Al Qaeda or the Huthi movement's control of some areas in the north; the situation is far more dangerous as the solidarity and the legitimacy of the state are at stake.

Whilst it is true that Yemen is not on the verge of collapse, as some of those who criticize the government are exaggerating, yet it has reached a sensitive stage of instability. Yemen was ranked 15th in the annual Failed State Index published by the Foreign Policy magazine in cooperation with the Fund for Peace. There are two points of concern regarding Yemen. Firstly, the central government, which has suffered since 2004 from Al Qaeda, Huthi, and southern secessionist threats, has become extremely fatigued by the successive wars. This has resulted in a misbalance of political power and has been costly to the state's treasury. The second point is related to Yemen's inability to address its economic crisis, to the point that social poverty is threatening the legitimacy of the governmental institutions, where resulting indignation strengthens the position of the government's three opponents.

Given these challenges, the concerned states in the region and beyond are facing a considerable challenge, as many of the security threats to countries like Saudi Arabia and the US are coming from Yemen. The assassination attempt targeting Prince Mohammed Bin Naif last year, was made by "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula", which is Al Qaeda's most dangerous branch. The Nigerian Omar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab, who attempted to blow up a US airliner last year, was also trained in Yemen. This means that security in Yemen is so weak that it represents a threat to a number of significant countries in the war on terror.

The solution that is being proposed, especially in some American and European political circles, is that the speediest way to resolve the Yemeni crisis is by addressing the economic situation. In fact, some officials and experts are now openly calling upon Gulf States to accept more Yemeni workers in a bid to limit the socio-economic effects of the crisis. A report published by the Mackenzie Financial Corporation in collaboration with the Yemeni government last August revealed that to improve Yemen's economy it needs to secure four million jobs in the Gulf over the next ten years. The number of Yemenis working in the Gulf today is only a little larger than the number working there in the 1980s. Even if the Gulf States agree to welcome this number of Yemeni workers, the foreign labor market in the Gulf, which already has 12 million workers, has no room for additional numbers.

Meanwhile, the Gulf States are finding it difficult dealing with the situation in Yemen, for they do not want to interfere in Yemen's internal affairs, partly due to the long history of disputes that they have had with Yemen, a situation which has only calmed in the past decade. As for the Yemeni workforce, the prevailing view is that the Gulf States cannot absorb millions of Yemeni workers as they previously could during the period of industrial and constructional boom that began in the mid 1970s and lasted until the second Gulf War (1990 – 91). Moreover, the number of skilled workers in Yemen is small in comparison with the total available workforce. As for sending skilled workers to seek employment in the Gulf, the Gulf States believe that it would be wiser for them to stay in Yemen to help reactivate the Yemeni economy.

In the 1970s and 1980s, there were approximately 1.5 million Yemeni workers in the Gulf. At the time, Yemen was a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council when it decided to support Saddam Hussein's regime following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The then US Secretary of State James Baker warned Yemen against voting against the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, saying that "Yemen would pay a heavy price." This came to pass, and within just a few months, more than 800,000 Yemeni workers were asked to return home. This incident greatly affected the Yemeni economy, especially after international aid to Yemen was reduced to $200,000, and the unemployed in Yemen became a huge burden to the Yemeni government. In addition, the 1994 Yemeni civil war created a new social and economic reality, whose features remain clear a decade later, and numerous domestic or international initiatives have been unsuccessful in rectifying the situation.

In an important study entitled "Yemen: The Collapsed Economy" published in Asharq Al-Awsat periodical (summer 2010), Nora Ann Colton said that "Yemen's problem, like any other country suffering economic transformation and depleting resources, is that the invisible hand of the market cannot work alone." The invisible hand of the market is a concept that was first used by economist Adam Smith (1759) and by many economists after him to describe the market's self-regulating nature based upon the laws of supply and demand. Colton wanted to say that at this stage the Yemeni economy is unable to function appropriately due to structural reasons. In other words the economic solution alone may not be sufficient to solve Yemen's current problems, but rather a new social contract is required to enable it to overcome its crisis. It is true that separation between the North and the South or even between Saada (Huthi stronghold) and Sana’a may not resolve the crisis, as some secessionists claim. This is because secession will not succeed unless these new entities are able to stand on their own as independent states, which is impossible. Let us recall that the south would not have been able to establish itself as an independent state without British support during the occupation period, and then the Soviet support during the Cold War.

Currently, Yemen does not seem capable of overcoming this crisis alone, but needs the help of others, and more importantly needs their advice and frank disclosure. If Yemeni officials continue to deal with the southern movement and the Huthis as though are Al Qaeda, this much needed peaceful solution will not occur. On the other hand, the regional countries that have tried to turn a blind eye to what is happening in Yemen are no longer safe from harm.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

Castro's Cigars and Ahmadinejad's Tobacco

2011-02-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 28 September 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

Perhaps many have heard of the interesting interview that Fidel Castro, the retired Cuban leader had with "The Atlantic" magazine (September 8), where he said, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." He directed a message to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop hating Jews and denying the holocaust. He described the Cuban Missile Crisis that was about to trigger a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union as "it wasn't worth it at all". Are these the end-of-life confessions of an elderly man? Maybe. However, it is notable that these confessions have not bothered Castro himself as much as they have concerned those believing in the revolutionary model, or rather, say, the revolutionary era.

It is difficult for anti-capitalists and anti-liberals to accept the idea of absurdity in the revolutionary demagogue. Despite the end of communism and the fall of the Berlin wall two decades ago, many ideological regimes and parties have survived in some form. They have kept the same ideological rhetoric while making superficial reforms, most notably privatizing some of the profitable state-owned institutions, which instead of helping to solve main economic problems, has created a new class of exploiters associated with the state. Although many anti-capitalist/liberal states have adopted a somewhat free economy and opened their markets to foreign investment, they have kept many restrictions in the form of an outdated (bureaucratic) governmental system.

The problem of economic reform is that it cannot be fragmented, and some of its conditions adopted while others are neglected. China, which has been economically “open” since the 1970s, recognized this fact; thus, it has worked hard to separate what is political from what is economic. It has created a sort of balance in an ambitious economic vision. True, this balance witnessed some tremors, such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when China recognized that it had to accept some of the consequences of economic reform, including the emergence of a middle class that has its own political and social demands. Now, 247 millions Chinese are classified as middle-class; this number is expected to reach 600 millions by 2015.

Cuba's problem was that it was imprisoned in its revolutionary leaders' dreams. It never thought of opening its doors to world economy until recently. In 1993, the economic conditions were deteriorating, so the Cuban authorities decided to permit the use of the US dollar. Within a few years, a little hope was raised in the revolutionary state due to the increasing revenues of tourism and trade, especially in the form of the famous Cuban cigars, despite American sanctions. However, instead of investing in this improvement, Fidel and his comrades decided to suspend the use of US dollar in 2004, which directly hit the Cuban economy. By the end of 2006, Cuba reached a deplorable state. As Castro himself faced a health crisis (2007), he transferred power to his brother Raul. One of the first decisions taken by the new government was to allow citizens to buy computers, mobile phones and microwaves, in a country where a government worker's salary does not exceed $20 a month.

Commenting on the controversy caused by what was said in Fidel Castro’s interview, a statement issued by Raul Castro pointed out that what the “leader” meant to say was "The economic model does not work, but this does not mean the revolution, the socialist virtues and the spirit of independence [no longer work]. He was specifically speaking of the economic model." Anyway, Castro, as many observers insist, is trying to market his brother’s economic reforms, especially in a time when his government has announced the lay-off of half a million Cuban government workers.

The Cuban model, which has been imprisoned in its own revolutionary totalitarian regime since 1959, has parallels in the Middle East and Africa, where armed groups seize power and impose their ideology on the political authorities regardless of the economic and structural losses inflicted on the state. Castro's regime had been supported by the Soviet Union until its fall. Then, Hugo Chavez went on to support Cuba by providing it with 100,000 oil barrels in the last five years. However, this support was of little help during the economic crisis, when the country became incapable of paying wages or running its institutions.

In the 1960s, Castro boasted that the tobacco farmers strike was one of the most important factors for the success of the revolution. Thus, he attempted to promote the idea that the cigar, once a luxury limited to the Bourgeoisie, should become available to workers and farmers as a symbol of the revolution and the nation. Similarly, in Iran 100 years ago, a fatwa (religious ruling) issued by Ayatollah Al-Shirazi (in 1891) prohibiting the use of tobacco caused Nasser Al-Din Shah to retract the granting of an export license to a British company. Eventually, Al-Shirazi issued another fatwa allowing the Iranians to smoke tobacco provided that one fifth of the tobacco revenues were put at his disposal. However, in Cuba, the cigar transferred from the farmers’ mouths to export shipments in search of hard currency.

Whilst the export of Cuban cigars to the US was prohibited, the most exported product to Iran is US cigarettes, which reached 158 million dollars during the Bush administration. In a move to limit the use of American cigarettes, a spokesman of the Anti-Smoking Association in Iran recently declared that American cigarettes are contaminated with pigs’ blood and nuclear waste, in an effort to intimidate the Iranians who have not been discouraged by the US sanctions from buying its cigarettes.

Cuba and Iran are similar to a great extent; both are “revolutionary” states, particularly hostile to the US, both have imposed internal isolation on their people and turned their economy upside down, such that capitalism/liberalism is considered a threat to the principles of the revolution. What, then, was the result? Today, Castro and his comrades are acknowledging the failure of their adventurous project, and are satirically moving towards capitalizing the economy, yet amidst conditions dated back to the Cold War. Iran witnessed a fierce war with Iraq that destroyed all its resources, and invested its reserves in groups and parties abroad. When Iran started its reconstruction project in the early 1990s, economic reform leaned towards a centralized economy. Ten years after economic openness, the Revolutionary Guards seized the most important economic companies and institutions.

All one can hope for is that Iran will not repeat Cuba's mistakes. Perhaps this motivated the old revolutionary Castro to advise the young revolutionary Ahmadinejad not to listen to the mullahs, as they are religiously indoctrinated people who make no compromises. Castro is right in this respect, as Cuba's cigars could not prevent the country from decline, similarly, Iran's tobacco will not make Iranians dispense with American cigarettes.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

Goodbye Atatürk

2011-02-19T13:51:00.000-08:00

Saturday 18 September 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

Last Sunday, 12 September, was a decisive and historic moment for Turkey, when over 58 percent of the Turkish people voted for a package of constitutional amendments proposed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Thirty years earlier, the army had toppled the government to end the conflict between the right and left in Turkish politics, but instead it left the country in the grips of a cold war between western and eastern camps. With public approval, the army took control of politics and reinstated the 1982 constitution, which defined Turkey as a "secular" and "democratic" country, invoking the spirit of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Since then, the army and the resulting secular judicial authority has essentially driven Turkish politics until the approval of last Sunday’s amendments. Despite the fact that the new amendment is the eleventh in a series of constitutional amendments, it is the most significant, and perhaps it will be the most effective in Turkish history, as it opens the door for the AKP, which has Islamic roots, to propose a new constitution in the future. An important question arises: Will the secular Turkey that we know so well embark on a process of change?

In his noteworthy book, What went wrong? (2003), Bernard Lewis argues that the Middle East has been suffering from an identity crisis since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. For more than 100 years, the peoples of the region have been confounded by questions relating to their regression in politics, culture and economics even though they possess a long history of invaluable achievement and contribution to the world’s civilizations. Two reasons have been given for this regression: either a loss of freedom—freedom to govern, to think and to be independent; or, a turning away from tradition, religious or otherwise. Turkey fits nicely into the first category in the form of Kemal Atatürk, and Iran represents the second category in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Lewis claims that the Middle East has been divided between these two poles, and all of the countries in the region will choose between a democratic secular government and the government of clerics.

Lewis, who specializes in the history of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, tends to prefer the Turkish option. He points out the possibility that countries in the region, including Iran, must first experience religious government before they will move to the second phase of secular democratic government. However, those who follow the developments in Turkey and Iran can almost see the opposite; rather, there seems to be an exchange of positions. In Turkey, the rise of the AKP has shifted Turkey's orientation to the Islamic side, while in Iran, the reformists are trying to limit the power of the Supreme Leader, which would reduce the authority of religion over politics in this Islamic state.

Under the headline, "What do the constitutional amendments mean for Turkey?" the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet mentions that the victory of the AKP in the referendum indicates that Turkey has already changed; it is no longer the western secular country that Atatürk envisioned. However, the party will not push for the application of Shariaa as the “Kemalists" warn, but rather it will lead its people a third way between the secular and the Islamic. Along this path, it will face both obstacles and compromises with both sides.

The issue of authority has long posed a problem in Turkey. The first Middle Eastern country to adopt the concept of independence, Turkey has oscillated between the principles of freedom and order; in other words, between the people and their governing authority. As Steven Kinzer puts it in Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds, since independence, the Turkish Republic has been stuck in a whirlwind of dualities: the West and the East, Islam and secularism, the army and democracy, freedom and order, and people and government. The AKP seems to have led Turkey towards the East, which could pit Islamic values against the western civil morals. Nevertheless, Turkey is still preserving its western democratic secular face.

The AKP has succeeded in escaping the guardianship of the army by means of these amendments, which grant the president and the parliament the right to appoint judges, and give the civil courts the right to put military personnel on trial. The recent amendments have also approved the right of elected members of parliament to retain their seats, even if their respective parties were dissolved. The military can no longer prevent Islamic parties or members from exercising their political rights—a clear victory for Islamists. However, the amendments are not only meant to enhance the power of the ruling Islamic party, but they also provide additional rights to minorities, women and children, as well as grant individuals significant rights that had not been given before.

The AKP may have increased its power, but it is worth remembering that the constitution still defines Turkey as a secular state—the opening sentence of the 1982 constitution. Even the Imam Hatip schools, which Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Sufi Islamic leader Fethullah Gülen graduated from, keep a photo of Atatürk in their classrooms and teach his principles in addition to the religious curricula. Indeed, Erdoğan and his party could defeat the Kemalist camp at the current stage, but Turkey has reached unprecedented political and social divisions where 40 percent of Turks oppose the AKP.

It misses the point to consider the AKP victory as the mere win of an Islamic trend over a secular trend; the socio-political side of this victory is more important. The westernized Kemalist elite that has grown inside Turkey’s judicial and military institutions, and has governed the country for about 40 years, is facing a coup by the Anatolian middle class. Hence, we can understand the ferocity of the current confrontation, where no day passes without protests or clashes between both sides.

In Wolfgang Becker's film, "Goodbye Lenin," a boy tries to convince his socialist mother, who went into a coma months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and woke up months after it, that socialist East Germany was in good condition so as not to shock her. Months later, the mother, who sincerely believed in the values of the socialist state, discovers the truth. I believe that the AKP can convince the Turkish people that Atatürk still exists, even though his dream disappeared long ago.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

Sadat's Shadow

2011-02-19T13:45:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 07 September 2010
By Adel Al Toraifi

For more than two decades, the United States has tried to conclude a peace agreement between the PLO and Israel. In the beginning there were the 1993 Oslo accords, which was a difficult breakthrough. However, this was the agreement that allowed the opportunity to form much-needed state institutions on the Palestinian territories. Yet this did not happen both as a result of the influence of religious parties on both sides, and as a result of dozens of suicide attacks carried out by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, which disrupted all guarantees of security and reconciliation. However, the failure of the peace process cannot be attributed only to the actions of Hamas, but also due to a series of errors committed by the Palestinian Authority, most notably the militarization of the second Intifada, and due to the regional effort exerted by some parties in order to disable any settlement that would be capable of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perhaps the important question here is: Will the latest round of negotiations fail to challenge the status quo?

The truth is that the U.S. administration has chosen the worst time, in the current era, to pressure the parties to sit at the negotiations table. It is true that many people both inside and outside the region were urging, and continue to urge the U.S. administration to revitalize the peace process, but mere pressure on the parties to sit at the table with the American president does not guarantee any tangible progress on the ground.

Why? The answer is clear. Whoever observes the situation inside the Palestinian territories and Israel will feel a (relative) sense satisfaction among the positions of all three parties (Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas). Let’s start with Israel, where the construction of the dividing wall has achieved concrete results: suicide attacks have dropped to their lowest levels, and since the war in Gaza (September 2008), Israel has not suffered many rocket-propelled grenade attacks, at least from Hamas. In other words, the Israeli siege of Gaza, whilst keeping Hamas in power, has achieved a kind of calm on the frontline, due to Hamas’s commitment to the ceasefire. For Hamas, since it assumed control of the Gaza Strip in the wake of a coup (June 2007), it has proven its ability to govern and impose its full authority on the Strip. At the same time, a state of neither peace nor war has provided a strong popular rationale for the movement, which has allowed it to remain a resistance movement and reject the Israeli presence. As for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, it has consented to the status quo and now focuses its work on transforming the West Bank into a stable, secure and economic model, and then perhaps it will succeed in convincing the population to abandon the Hamas government in Gaza.

The U.S. vision of peace is still transfixed, to a large extent, upon Sadat’s model. Despite three decades passing since President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel (1977), many of those concerned with the issue of peace believe that what is lacking in the [current] peace process is a courageous Arab leader capable of taking the decision for peace in the face of opponents on both sides. For this reason, some believe that King Hussein was courageous when he signed the Wadi Araba Peace Agreement (1994) with the Israelis, and the late Yasser Arafat had missed a historic opportunity for peace when he was reluctant to accept the Clinton proposals (2000).

True, the Palestinians were wrong to miss the opportunity to establish the state promised by the Clinton plan, but the Palestinians’ biggest error was their failure for sixty years to build state institutions that could make the Palestinian state a reality today. Sadat’s model is applicable with regards to countries such as Jordan and Syria, where it is possible to restore land through serious negotiations, which require a degree of compromise (concessions), in what are considered negotiations from the ground up.

The Palestinian situation is different, as the Palestinian identity, which has formed in the Diaspora, is concerned with the dream to restore the land lost, but the dream of the an actual state does not resonate in a tangible manner with the Palestinian people. In other words, what unites the Palestinian movements and groups is a resistance to occupation, but there is no consensus on the essence of a Palestinian state. Certainly, under the leadership of Arafat, Fatah held the vision of what should constitute a Palestinian state, and the Oslo, Wye River and the second Camp David negotiations reflect that. But Arafat and his movement could not achieve a consensus amongst the Palestinians, domestically and abroad, on the principle of a Palestinian state living side by side with the state of Israel. Palestinian parties and groups have always remained hostage to their loyalties and a foreign agenda. With the exception of the slogan to ‘liberate the land’, which has long been exploited financially and morally, those rival movements and groups have nothing in common in terms of a dream for a united country. Therefore they will remain in competition and strive for funding from foreign sources, no matter how detrimental the agenda [of these sources], in relation to the project of [establishing] a civil Palestinian state.

In her wonderful book ‘I Hope For Peace’ (2009), Jehan Sadat speaks how her husband's assassination created a void in her life, and after some time passed, she found she had a need to discover herself, and find a positive role that gave her life meaning. The utmost honour [she could give] to her husband was to continue the peace plan which led to his assassination at the hands of Islamic extremists. But at the moment of truth, according to her book, she recognised that it was necessary for her to come out of the ‘shadow of Sadat’, in order to discover herself. Therefore she embarked upon university studies and achieved a Doctorate degree, and worked hard to promote peace. She also contributed to the work of a charity that promotes respect between religions and cultures.

The U.S. administration also needs to come out of the shadow of Sadat, and the conviction that true peace will not be achieved by signing an interim agreement between the parties, as much as it would help Palestinians build the institutions and the foundations of a civil state. America needs to encourage the Palestinians to build a state by contributing to the improvement of Palestinians’ lives, and alleviating their suffering, including the Palestinians in Gaza. Even Hamas, which rejects peace with Israel, should convince them that building institutions and strengthening the rule of law are in their favour. It may not be possible for the U.S. administration to deal directly with Hamas until it abandons its military wing, but American civil institutions could be encouraged to invest in education and humanitarian infrastructure in the Gaza strip.

As for the Palestinian Authority, it must come out of the shadow of the past, and begin in earnest the construction of state institutions, at least in the West Bank, and eliminate corruption. Then the door will be open for Hamas to conduct a historic review of its position, for the need for a resistance movement is only temporary, whereas the need for a genuine state institution remains.

Published in Asharq Alawsat Newspaper

2008-06-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

How an Obama Presidency Might Change the Middle East

Die Zeit newspaper
5 June 2008

By: Adel Al Toraifi

It’s hard to say how many Middle Easterners knew about Barak Obama before the Iowa speech last January, nevertheless, there appear to be plenty now. The news of an African-American candidate was surprising from a country which is negatively perceived in places like the Middle East. Obama’s message of hope and change found its way not only to American audiences, but to a broad population of affluent middle-class Arabs. They see in him the kind of hope that the “American Dream” meant forty years ago when America was the face of democracy and the land of opportunity to many people in the region. In almost all of the Arab media coverage of the Democratic nomination race, Barak Obama received a stunning approval from Arab viewers. From Islamists, such as Hamas in Gaza Strip, to liberal intellectuals and writers, such as the prominent Arab columnist Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, Obama is hailed as a savior of what remains of America’s image and fair judgment.

Yet, it is important to note that despite this warm reception, some in the region, if not the majority, think he is too good to be true. The rise of an American politician, who holds an Arabic rooted name “Barak” from a Muslim father , and who went to an Islamic school in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, seems talking directly to the hopes and inspirations of most Arabs and Muslims. Perhaps this is what makes them skeptical of his chances of becoming the next president. A large number of politicians, journalist and ordinary citizens are dismissing his chances, citing racism, Anglo-American culture, inexperience and in some cases Zionism, as main obstacles to his presidential bid. But what happens if he was to succeed in winning the presidential race?

In my opinion, Barak Obama would present a great change for the region. He might not solve all of the region’s protracted conflicts, and there are plenty of them, but he would certainly change the way that America is perceived and viewed in the Middle East and that is in itself a great challenge. The public perception of the United States is vital in Saudi Arabia and many parts of the region and a change from what the Bush administration has offered over the past eight years will be highly anticipated. If Obama keeps his word about respecting the sensitivities and complexities of the region’s politics, withdraw from Iraq, stimulate the peace process and offer a better alternative to the people of the region, he will definitely win hearts and minds.

Presidents Carter, Bush 41 and Clinton all earned some respect, and in some cases admiration, in the region for their efforts to bring peace and reconciliation, and Obama would be no different. Even though no American president could ever satisfy all the demands and hopes of the Arabs, whom we have to agree, are skeptical of peace with Israel, a serious American effort to bring the Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiation table would certainly have an impact on the region. As for Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, an American president who is willing to sit with them, with no pre-conditions, might seem desirable, but it may not be to their advantage. An active American foreign policy which advocates peace and coexistence in the region would put intense pressure on those countries and organizations that thrive on anti-Americanism and will deprive them of their strongest argument.

The Middle East will certainly see interesting changes during an Obama presidency.

Why is Saudi Arabia becoming the major power in the region?

2008-04-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Adel Al Toraifi
May 6, 2007
Saudi-US Relations Information Service

When the recent fight broke out between Fatah and Hamas militants in Gaza, the whole Middle East was affected by the brutal and unprecedented struggle over power in the Palestinian territories. Egyptian efforts to curb the deadly carnage failed and for the first time in the history of Egyptian mediation Hamas accused Cairo of siding with its opponents by supplying arms and ammunition to Fatah factions. The internal Palestinian war stopped only after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called upon both parties to negotiate a unity government in the city of Mecca. Surprisingly, both parties agreed within hours. For Fatah it was the only option to avoid the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, created by the Oslo Peace Process. As for Hamas, it sought to seize the opportunity of Saudi recognition due to what had been a cautious Saudi policy towards the rise of Hamas power after the 2006 elections.

The Mecca agreement signed between the Palestinian parties in February 2007 is one example of how Saudi Arabia is becoming a major regional power. Although Saudi power and diplomacy have clearly been effective since the early seventies, the last three years have brought great changes to the definition and dimension of Saudi power.

Historically, Saudi power in the region has experienced ups and downs and it is possible to frame these into three main intervals. The first reflects the creation of a modern kingdom in the heart of the Arab peninsula that encompasses the two Muslim holy places, Mecca and Medina. Due to its expansive landscape and relatively large population it played a highly influential role among its neighbors. Although Saudi power did not extend beyond the Gulf, when the Arab nationalistic wave spread across the Middle East and several monarchies were overthrown in a series of revolutions and military coups, the Saudis faced a major challenge. Consequently, until the end of the sixties Saudi resistance to Nasserism pushed the monarchy towards reliance on its western allies. The second phase in Saudi Arabia’s regional role can be attributed to a number of major events; first, the Arab defeat in 1967 by Israel, which spelled the decline of the Arab National movement of Nasser, and second, the rise of oil prices in the early seventies, which triggered the formation of a strong wealthy state, and the exercise of Saudi financial power as a heavy-duty tool in its foreign policy.

The Nixon administration observed this transformation and promoted a Middle East doctrine asserting the necessity of supporting moderate regimes, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, to counter Soviet interference in the Middle East. Therefore, dependency on America by Saudi Arabia and Iran grew significantly during the seventies and by the early eighties three major petroleum countries (Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran) played a larger role in Middle East affairs while a weakened Egypt struggled to maintain its position.

The eighties provide a good example of Saudi effectiveness in the region. At first, the fall of the Shah to an anti-American regime alerted the Saudis to oppose the Shia Islamist revolution by helping to arm Iraq and counter the Mullahs ideologically. In addition, the Saudis moved against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and led a pan-Islamic resistance to the communist occupation, which served American and western policies. From controlling oil prices worldwide to exercising its financial wealth in the region and abroad, the Saudis were able to hold an unprecedented position in the Middle East, and appeared to be an important mediator in Arab and Islamic affairs, brokering monumental peace treaties such as the Taif accord (1989) and the Afghan peace talks (1993).

However, Saudi power experienced a setback throughout the nineties. The initial reason for this was the first Gulf War (1991) when the Americans and Saudis orchestrated the formation of an international coalition to liberate Kuwait and stop Saddam Hussein’s aggression towards his neighbors. Saudi Arabia’s invitation to American and western troops was opposed by Arab nationalists and Islamists across the Middle East, and inflicted inconceivable damage on the Saudi image among ordinary Arabs who were opposed to American foreign policy. However, the setback in the rise of Saudi influence became most evident when King Fahd suffered a debilitating stroke in 1995. Although Saudi foreign policy remained the same, the weakness of the ruling Saudi king had an effect on the country. The immediate outcome was that Saudi policymakers found themselves more reluctant to interfere in regional affairs unless they were driven to it. In other words, they drew back from initiating steps and fostering agendas and instead priority was given to national politics.

King Abdullah was handed the foreign and economic files around the end of 1997. In the region he was known and respected by many leaders but his popularity did not extend beyond his fellow citizens, and in the West he was mistakenly observed as a pro-Arab nationalist and a critic of the West. Things worsened when the second intifada (2000) erupted following the failure of peace talks. Saudi Arabia, as well as other Arab countries, like Egypt and Jordan, was criticized for not putting more pressure on their American ally. Although the Saudis did argue seriously with the Bush administration over the devastating situation in the Palestinian occupied territories these efforts where overshadowed by September 11th. The Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on America using young deluded Saudis had a catastrophic impact on the Saudi-American relationship and in many ways limited the Saudi role in the region. For more than three years the Saudis faced significant challenges, specifically American pressure to initiate changes in the social and education system, an increased terrorism threat within the country and several national problems like reform calls, poverty and unemployment, all of which required serious attention.

King Abdullah took over in August 2005, after the death of King Fahd, and carried out a comprehensive reform plan that included political, economic and educational changes. However, more significant is the rise of King Abdullah as a regional leader of special status. Certainly, the fall of Iraq as a power and the rise of Iran as a threat to the region have helped to enforce the Saudi position in the Gulf region and in the rest of the Arab world. But that does not explain Saudi Arabia’s current role nor does it answer the growing popularity of the Saudi ruler.

Since the late sixties, when certain influential Arab leaders, like Nasser of Egypt and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, passed away, there has been great demand within the Arab nations for a symbolic hero, a father figure leader. Saddam Hussain tried to establish himself as the new pan-Arab leader, as did other heads of state of his generation, without success because the inter-Arab conflicts and turmoil within their own countries swept away their ambitions. King Abdullah seems different. By being a simple, direct statesman he has escaped being characterized using negative stereotypes and has escaped criticism because he was not present during the difficult days of the eighties and early nineties.

Today, he enjoys the virtue of being a leader without a troubling past. Hence, across the Middle East he is gaining considerable acceptance, and even during the hard days of last July when Israel retaliated against Hezbollah attacks, the Saudi king stood firm in condemning Hezbollah’s actions and later Israel’s disproportionate response. Although Saudi Arabia was attacked and criticised by anti-Israeli protesters, who raised flags and displayed posters of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, King Abdullah was not targeted at all. In fact, he was later praised for bringing together Iraqi religious leaders for a peace dialogue in Mecca and for curbing the Palestinian civil war.

The last Arab Summit in Riyadh presented a clear view of how Saudi Arabia is reviving not only its regional role and power, but also becoming the only Arab country capable of challenging Iranian ambitions in Iraq and Lebanon. With Egypt lagging behind owing to critical domestic problems, Saudi Arabia appears the single player in Arab affairs. This, however, has brought enormous pressure to bear on Saudi Arabia to intervene in almost every conflict in the Middle East from Iraq to Darfur, and the Saudis are already juggling too many issues at once.

However, two main differences can be seen in the new Saudi ascendancy: first, they are acting completely independent of any pressure, namely the United States, and this can be observed from the fact that the Saudis are speaking to and even dealing with states that America refuses to deal with. Currently, they are conducting intensive meetings with the Iranians; they still talk to Syria despite their own resentment; they are conducting a mediation mission between different Lebanese factions and moreover they have received Hezbollah officials despite last year’s confrontation. What is even more surprising is that America is increasingly relying on Saudi regional power. With its continuous stumbling in Iraq, America is looking to Saudi Arabia to ease the tensions in many situations. This might explain why it patiently swallowed King Abdullah’s description of the American presence in Iraq as an "illegal occupation." Some might say that America has come to realize that he no longer speaks for himself alone but rather as a leader of the Arab states.

The second change in Saudi power is that it no longer relies on its religious status or its wealth, but on its own prestige and soft power. With around fifteen highly anticipated visits of dignitaries and heads of state, excluding the last Arab Summit, since the beginning of this year Saudi Arabia has surpassed every other Middle Eastern capital as the main destination of outside visitors to the region seeking to strengthen relations with the rising star of the desert. Furthermore, with the Arab Peace Initiative gaining momentum around the world, the Saudi king is becoming more determined to help resolve current conflicts within the region.

The future of Saudi power is not yet clear, but many argue that it could last longer than it did previously. Iraq seems to pose a great challenge, which the Saudis are very cautious about dealing with. However, with deaths reaching nearly one hundred every day, according to recent UN figures, the Saudis may need to engage in aiding America in Iraq and pressuring its neighbors to stop their costly interference. If America decides to encounter Iran soon, Saudi Arabia’s unique position could be significantly affected. The 1990 Gulf war is a good example. The Saudis are eager to resolve the Iranian issue diplomatically and avert American attempts to escalate the situation with Tehran. Nevertheless, some critics in the region still accuse Saudi policies of being responsible for creating a seemingly polarized environment. However, the Saudis reply that they are merely reacting to what is happening rather than opting to change anything. The good news is that King Abdullah is not in search of a grand legacy. He is simply doing what he thinks is right, and this is what makes his country’s power special.

Arab Summit Contoured by Regional Crises

2008-04-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

Fears Over Iraq, Lebanon, Iran Become Backdrop for Renewed Peace Initiative

By Faiza Saleh Ambah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 28, 2007; A10

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 27 -- Arab heads of state began gathering Tuesday to relaunch a five-year-old peace initiative that was initially rejected by Israel, ignored by the United States and left dormant by Arab leaders after it was introduced in 2002.

A changed Middle East -- marked by the violence in Iraq, the crisis in Lebanon and Iran's ascendance -- is spurring renewed interest in the plan, analysts said.

"There is an urgency now because of Iran's increasing influence," said Abdel-Moneim Mustafa, Egypt bureau chief for the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. "The United States is pushing for a resolution to the Palestinian problem because they now understand that it's all interconnected; you can't have peace and stability in Iraq without peace and stability in Palestine. The greater Middle East project starts in Palestine, not Iraq," Mustafa said.

Saudi Arabia, never known as a diplomatic powerhouse, has become more assertive in recent months. In February, Saudi leaders persuaded warring Palestinian factions to agree to a power-sharing government. The kingdom has also sought to resolve the political impasse in Lebanon between the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah and the Western-backed government of Fouad Siniora. And the kingdom's national security adviser, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has been trying to ease the standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

"Iran has taken advantage of the failure of the peace process, and the vacuum in Arab leadership," said Riyad Mansour, managing editor of Jordan's Addustour newspaper. "It supported Hezbollah and embraced Hamas when all Arab doors were shut to them. Iran's growing influence is the slap that woke up a sleeping Arab world."

Saudi political analyst Adel al-Toraifi said the failure of the United States' Middle East policies has also increased its reliance on oil-rich Saudi Arabia. "It's no longer all about oil," Toraifi said. "Now it's all about politics. They need them to help counter Iranian influence, to keep Iraq stable," he explained. With spiraling violence in Iraq, and Egypt grappling with internal issues, "now there's only the Saudis," Toraifi said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has reached out to moderate Arab governments -- some of which do not recognize Israel -- partly on the basis of their shared concern about Iran's rising regional influence.

But since Olmert expressed fresh interest in the Arab initiative, the Palestinians have sworn in a new Hamas-led unity government that does not recognize Israel. The hard-line policies of the new Palestinian government may make it difficult for Arab leaders to change the initiative in the ways Olmert has said are needed for it to serve as a basis for peace talks.

When the initiative was announced during an Arab League meeting in Beirut in 2002, it offered Israel for the first time full recognition by all its Arab neighbors in exchange for the return of Arab land captured during the 1967 Middle East war. The plan also called for the right of return to present-day Israel for Palestinians who fled or were forced out when the Jewish state was created in 1948.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said that unless the reference to the right of Palestinians to return is removed from the initiative, or rephrased to suggest the refugees be settled outside Israel with fair compensation from the Israeli government, the plan cannot be a starting point for serious negotiations.

Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said the initiative would also have to be softened on the issue of Israel's final borders. Olmert has said he will not give up Israel's largest settlements, which have been built on land captured in 1967.

Shoval said Israel should use the common mistrust of Iran to rally moderate Arab support, perhaps producing "an Arab declaration of detente toward Israel" from the summit.

Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, told Saudi television on Tuesday that the plan would not change . "The only part of the plan that Israel likes is the normalization of ties. But if Israel wants something, it needs to give something. There will be no normalization without talking about refugees and withdrawal from Arab lands," he said. "We will not change any aspects of the plan. Nothing is for free."

Correspondent Scott Wilson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Lebanon: CHANGING REACTION

2006-07-31T06:01:00.000-07:00

Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 27

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a “new Middle East” that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, Jordan, with the International Crisis Group, said, “The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world.”

Distinctive changes in tone are audible throughout the Sunni world. This week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt emphasized his attempts to arrange a cease-fire to protect all sects in Lebanon, while the Jordanian king announced that his country was dispatching medical teams “for the victims of Israeli aggression.” Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.

The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan — offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — could well perish.

“If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance,” it said, “then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.”

The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.

American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the United States in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.
There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah — and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long — would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.
But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960’s, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.

Egypt’s opposition press has had a field day comparing Sheik Nasrallah to Nasser, while demonstrators waved pictures of both.

An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of President Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.

After attending an intellectual rally in Cairo for Lebanon, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote a column describing how he had watched a companion buy 20 posters of Sheik Nasrallah.

“People are praying for him as they walk in the street, because we were made to feel
oppressed, weak and handicapped,” Mr. Negm said in an interview. “I asked the man who sweeps the street under my building what he thought, and he said: ‘Uncle Ahmed, he has awakened the dead man inside me! May God make him triumphant!’ ”
In Lebanon, Rasha Salti, a freelance writer, summarized the sense that Sheik Nasrallah differed from other Arab leaders.

“Since the war broke out, Hassan Nasrallah has displayed a persona, and public behavior also, to the exact opposite of Arab heads of states,” she wrote in an e-mail message posted on many blogs.

In comparison, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s brief visit to the region sparked widespread criticism of her cold demeanor and her choice of words, particularly a statement that the bloodshed represented the birth pangs of a “new Middle East.” That catchphrase was much used by Shimon Peres, the veteran Israeli leader who was a principal negotiator of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which ultimately failed to lead to the Palestinian state they envisaged.

A cartoon by Emad Hajjaj in Jordan labeled “The New Middle East” showed an Israeli tank sitting on a broken apartment house in the shape of the Arab world.

Fawaz al-Trabalsi, a columnist in the Lebanese daily As Safir, suggested that the real new thing in the Middle East was the ability of one group to challenge Israeli militarily.

Perhaps nothing underscored Hezbollah’s rising stock more than the sudden appearance of a tape from the Qaeda leadership attempting to grab some of the limelight.
Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast a tape from Mr. Zawahri (za-WAH-ri). Large panels behind him showed a picture of the exploding World Trade Center as well as portraits of two Egyptian Qaeda members, Muhammad Atef, a Qaeda commander who was killed by an American airstrike in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. He described the two as fighters for the Palestinians.

Mr. Zawahri tried to argue that the fight against American forces in Iraq paralleled what Hezbollah was doing, though he did not mention the organization by name.

“It is an advantage that Iraq is near Palestine,” he said. “Muslims should support its holy warriors until an Islamic emirate dedicated to jihad is established there, which could then transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine.”

Mr. Zawahri also adopted some of the language of Hezbollah and Shiite Muslims in general. That was rather ironic, since previously in Iraq, Al Qaeda has labeled Shiites Muslim as infidels and claimed responsibility for some of the bloodier assaults on Shiite neighborhoods there.

But by taking on Israel, Hezbollah had instantly eclipsed Al Qaeda, analysts said. “Everyone will be asking, ‘Where is Al Qaeda now?’ ” said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi columnist and expert on Sunni extremists.

Mr. Rabbani of the International Crisis Group said Hezbollah’s ability to withstand the Israeli assault and to continue to lob missiles well into Israel exposed the weaknesses of Arab governments with far greater resources than Hezbollah.

“Public opinion says that if they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?” Mr. Rabbani said. “In comparison with the small embattled guerrilla movement, the Arab states seem to be standing idly by twiddling their thumbs.”

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo for this article, and Suha Maayeh from Amman, Jordan.

Lebanon Crisis

2006-07-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

Lebanon: Saudis and the Old Arab World
Arabnews, The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily, 26.07.2006

By Adel Al Toraifi
altoraifi@alriyadh.com

Recent events in Lebanon have brought up a number of questions regarding the real target of the Israeli military operations taking place there. Israel has crossed all red lines in a shameless invasion of Lebanon. They took aggressive action against unarmed civilians, alleging that was the only way to get to Hezbollah. Hezbollah, on the other hand, gave reasons for initiating the crisis. Its members claimed that their operation was to release the prisoners of Hezbollah and other detained Arabs. Both parties have advanced spurious reasons to justify their actions.

In short, the war is an indirect Iranian-Israeli battle on an alternative battlefield - Lebanon. The Iranians and the Israelis realize this too. We are face to face with an Israeli-Persian conflict for power and authority at the expense of the region's peace. It's a battle for hegemony that both sides are engaged in and one of its aims is to isolate two major countries: Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The missiles that are being used to shell Lebanon were released by orders from Tehran and Syria. Hezbollah didn't initiate this operation to release the Palestinian or Lebanese prisoners or with the motive of undoing the blockade around Gaza or to solve the dispute over Lebanon's Shaba farms. There are other parties involved with Iran that approve of Hezbollah's ideologies and dynamics. For instance, Shiite parties in Iraq are isolating and eradicating their Sunni brothers. Hamas is allied with Hezbollah because the former held obsequies and memorial gatherings to lament the death of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

The Iranians have rejected the proposals from the international community seeking to stop its nuclear weapons project. When the issue was brought to the Security Council, Iran asked for an extension until next August. The time exte nsion had already been planned so as to set off a new conflict that would lift the burden from their shoulders.

Jordan's King Abdallah noted previously that there was an Iranian attempt to foist a political Shiite strategy on the region. The Iranians have a vision of controlling 140 million Shiites in the region. They believe that their government and authority should hold sway over more than one country. There is no better proof of this than Hezbollah flags and Hassan Nasrallah's pictures that have been used in protests by some Shiites in Bahrain and Kuwait. Iran is trying to say that it holds the key to solving the crisis and that whoever thinks of participating in solving problems must go to Tehran, not to Riyadh, Cairo or any Arab capital. Iran has conditions and plans for the region that would make it stronger than their Arab neighbors.

Only Saudi Arabia realizes this and rejects such plans in every possible diplomatic way. Saudi Arabia has tried many time s to convince Tehran to give up its inclinations that disrupt the balance of power in the region and neutralize opportunities for peaceful cooperation and existence.

King Abdullah has expressed his dissatisfaction on many occasions over Tehran's efforts at the "not peaceful" nuclear program. Up to now, the Saudis have never refused an invitation to Tehran. They have made it clear on many occasions that they are willing to cooperate and support a regional partnership. Saudi Arabia will, however, never accept the idea of dragging the region into a conflict that innocent Lebanese pay for in order to enhance the Iranian position.

Iran must realize that Saudi Arabia and no other country began a diplomatic campaign through Prince Bandar ibn Sultan - secretary-general of the National Security Council - to convince Washington not to proceed with its plans to attack Iran. In fact, Saudi Arabia reached the limit by building an international agreement with Russia and Euro pean countries to prevent a fatal confrontation with Iran. Iran must think seriously of the consequences of this crisis and its impact on its relations with neighboring countries. For a start, Iran can pressure Hezbollah to cease taking these risks.

As for Hassan Nasrallah, he is upset by the Saudi position. In his recent speeches he sounds like Osama Bin Laden, reflecting his fears of the Saudi position0 that is totally aware of the tragic results of these events. Hassan Nasrallah reminds Saudi Arabia of Israeli "cluster bombs" in 1996. He claims that was a victory despite the Saudis' disapproval of his operations. But what Nasrallah doesn't want to admit or say is that if it weren't for the Saudis and the French, Lebanon would have never been able to overcome that problem.

Rafik Al-Hariri, who designed the plans for the country, was supported by Riyadh and not Tehran. Nasrallah says, "What has been demolished, friends will help reconstruct using pure virtuous money." In fact, this is not a ploy that he can use against Saudi Arabia in his speeches. Saudis along with some Gulf countries and international and European loans rebuilt Lebanon. Saudi Arabia provided the largest loans of any country in the region; I do not say this begrudgingly but as a way of saying that Saudi Arabia did its duty when others in the region did not.
We are sick and tired of all the accusations against Saudi Arabia that come along with every crisis. Saudi Arabia can take part in all efforts aimed at stopping the suffering of Arabs and in settling the Arab problems.

Arabs of the old world are now free to choose between renewing their cooperation on an international legal basis relying on real facts and political logic, or they can become involved in a Western-Persian Cold War.

- Adel Al-Toraifi is a Saudi writer. He is based in Riyadh

Copyright:Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

Hizbullah winning over Arab street

2006-07-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

Hizbullah winning over Arab street
By Dan Murphy and Sameh NaGuib
Tue Jul 18

With Israel's confrontation with Hizbullah and Lebanon lurching closer to all-out war, winds of anger are blowing through the Middle East that are likely to strengthen the political hand of radical Islamists from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

Since the fighting began, at least 24 Israelis, 12 of them civilians, have been killed and at least 175 Lebanese, nearly all civilians. In recent weeks, about 200 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in a separate showdown between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group who won power in elections earlier this year.

The confrontation – coupled with the rising civilian toll – also poses a serious threat to US interests in the region.

Islamists who are hostile to Israel and the US – and to their Arab allies who have criticized Hizbullah – are shoring up support, increasing the chances they will seize power if the elections President Bush has urged for the region take place.

Iran is making new friends, as is Syria. And if history is a guide, a new wave of outrage could bring new recruits to terrorist groups, much as Israel's occupation of parts of Lebanon in 1982 fueled the rise of Hizbullah.

Last Friday, Mr. Bush called Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia – America's closest Arab allies – and urged them to help defuse the crisis. Those calls, and the attitudes of those countries' people, served to emphasize the ways in which this crisis could hurt Israeli and American interests far beyond Lebanon and the Palestine territories.

Jordan's King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak responded with a joint statement condemning Hizbullah for "adventurism that does not serve Arab interests." Soon after, a Saudi spokesman also blamed Hizbullah "adventurism" as "exposing Arab nations ... to grave dangers without these nations having a say in the matter."

But countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have little influence over the militant Shiite group and its backers Iran and Syria, so their statements may be of little practical value. Instead, their comments emphasize the widening gap between these regimes and their people.

"These events put pressure on Arab governments to take action, and they haven't," says Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington. "Shouldn't they be recalling their ambassadors? That's what the people on the street would be thinking."

That gap, fed by support for Palestinians, hatred of Israel, and anger at its close alliance with America, is already being exploited by the region's Islamist movements, turning TV images of dead civilians into political opposition to their own regimes. In particular, the peace deals signed by Egypt and Jordan with Israel make these governments less popular with their people.

"The Arab leaders are traitors who work for the Americans and the Israelis.... [Hizbullah leader] Hassan Nasrallah represents Arab and Islamic dignity," says Ahmed, an Egyptian mechanic who asked that his full name not be used.

"The regime claimed that peace with Israel would create prosperity and jobs. But we have been at peace for over 20 years and have not seen any prosperity. We can't watch our Palestinian and Lebanese and Iraqi brothers be slaughtered every day and do nothing."

In Saudi, too, the regime's position isn't shared by its public. "I don't think the Saudi government's statement is in tune with how most Saudis feel about the Lebanese situation," says Bassem Alim, an activist lawyer based in Jeddah, and frequent government critic.

"The way they said it was extremely damaging to their reputation in the Islamic world."

Anger at Saudi Arabia's close relationship with the US, and by association Israel, has long generated support for Al Qaeda among many Saudis, so the government has taken a risk by speaking in a manner that jihadists view as supporting Israel.

But he and other analysts say that Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia's history of animosity with Shiite Iran, which sought to challenge the Saudi monarchy's position of leadership among world Muslims after its Islamic revolution, has left the regime more nervous about Iran's nuclear program than about flareups of terrorism that, while dramatic, have never challenged the regime.

"The Saudis are trying to make sure that the United Nations and the Security Council will be involved in the region as a way of controlling Iran,'' says Saudi political analyst Adel al-Toraifi.

The escalating confrontation between Israel and Lebanon is also helping Syria and Iran gain influence and prestige among Arab populations for their strong support of Hizbullah and Hamas.

"Iran will certainly benefit from Hizbullah strikes in some ways,'' wrote Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Washington. "They distract from its nuclear activities. They show the Arab and Muslim world that Iran is a government willing to strike at the Israeli enemy... [and] Israel's reprisals build Arab and Muslim anger against the US."

Meanwhile, Hizbullah, with its status as the most organized force in the region willing to oppose Israel, is likely to deepen its support among Lebanon's Shiite community and at the same time exacerbate the sectarian tension in the country that fed its 16-year civil war, which ended in 1990. In Egypt thousands have protested what they're terming "Israeli aggression."

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's strongest and most popular opposition movement, stated its strong support for Hizbullah and Hamas and condemned Arab governments for passive support of Israel. Hamas is an informal offshoot of the Brotherhood.

"The position of the Arab regimes has ... [become] one of silence toward Israeli crimes and probable collusion of some regimes with the enemy," Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mahdi Akef said last week about the fighting in Lebanon.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Monday, he lashed out at Arab leaders again, and then went further, comparing Israel with Nazi Germany and praising Hizbullah. "The Lebanese who kidnapped the Zionist soldiers are true nationalists led by a great man. These regimes continue to serve foreign interests completely ignoring and repressing the demands and hopes of their people," he said.

In Jordan, a protest of a few hundred citizens over Israel's strikes into Lebanon Saturday also focused on the restrictions on political organization and speech inside the country. Many Jordanians say the repressions of their own regime are tolerated by the US in exchange for Jordan's peace deal with Israel.

And as the crisis has spiraled, even Arab leaders close to the US and Israel, have warned of the potential for blowback. "Israel will not emerge as a victor in this war. It will only create more enemies," Egyptian President Mubarak said Monday. "The war will only inflame Arab animosity toward Israel (and) many anti-Israel extremist forces will surface."

On Monday, at least 17 Lebanese were killed in Israeli bombings, and the Israeli military confirmed a raid into Lebanese territory the previous day. Eight of the dead were Lebanese soldiers. Hizbullah responded with another volley of rockets at Haifa, which exploded without causing casualties.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that Israel would pursue its offensive against Hizbullah until two captured soldiers were returned and Lebanese Army troops controlled all of southern Lebanon.

The fighting led to calls from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the insertion of an international peacekeeping force into southern Lebanon, though that's an option that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert staunchly opposes.

Whether Syria or Iran has the ability to force Hizbullah leader Nasrallah to release two Israeli soldiers his forces kidnapped a week ago, precipitating the crisis, is unclear. Nasrallah, a fiery Shiite cleric, has vowed to release the soldiers only in exchange for three Lebanese and a much larger group of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Note: Rasheed Abou-Alsamh from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and wires contributed to this report

A Saudi rebel prince has vision for reform

2006-07-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Talal hopes long-held liberal ideals take hold on kingdom
By Anthony Shadid
The Washington Post
May 14, 2006

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The coffee was served, then the dates. And at that, Prince Talal, the son of Saudi Arabia's founder and long the ruling family's bete noire, smiled wryly. "This is what we used to live on," he said, "dates and camel's milk."

It was his way of saying: To look ahead, sometimes we need to look back.

Talal is 75 now, still tall and formidable, with a glimmer of defiance as he smoked a cigarette, cautiously doled out by an aide. But humbled by back pain, he is a shadow of the man once known as Saudi Arabia's "Red Prince." The color represented his politics, a leftist bent that as a young man turned him against the ruling Saud family, shook the kingdom and led him into exile in Lebanon and Egypt.

His voice is softer these days, mellowed perhaps by failure, but the words about his family remain remarkably the same.

"Here, the family is the master and the ruler," he said of his brothers and cousins, as he sat at Fakhariya Palace. "This style can't continue the same way. There has to be change in the nature of authority, if things are going to change in the kingdom itself."

Talal is many things: for 50 years, the most liberal figure in a family that remains the most conservative and traditional of the Persian Gulf's monarchies and tribal dynasties; a philanthropist who brings a ruthlessness to business that he once saved for politics; a glimmer of light for the kingdom's liberals, many of whom acknowledge that change here will probably only come under the auspices of religion and its modernization, not through the secular talk of civil society and individual rights.

Perhaps most compelling, though, is that Talal takes a debate about democratic reform in the Arab world, defined lately by the Bush administration, and illustrates a broader, more enduring context, one that speaks to experience rather than promise. His calls for change are little different than in the 1950s and '60s, when he was dismissed as a communist sympathizer; he remains a critic of U.S. policy, citing Iraq's trauma as the latest example. To Talal, the battle itself is not new, only the players. And in his words are a sense of vindication for ideas he believes are no less crucial today.

"The world has changed, not me," he said. "History has proved the rightness of what I was talking about."

"Some of the members of the family were against those ideas," he added. "Now they're talking about them."

On politics, women, reform
These days, Talal advocates a constitution that would bind an absolute monarchy by law, "a social contract between the ruler and those who are ruled." The parliament, now an appointed, relatively toothless body known as the Consultative Council, would be at least partially elected, with the right to oversee the budget, monitor the government and question ministers, he said.

Women? "Right now, we have more than 2 million female students," he said, shaking his head. "When they graduate, where are they going to go? Either you close the schools and leave them to illiteracy or you grant them an opportunity to work."

He laughed. "Can you imagine, can anyone imagine, that women cannot drive in Saudi Arabia?" he said.

His list went on: Progress is impeded by "the opposition of religious extremists." The religious establishment, long the allies of his family, should stand aside as the country forges a division of power -- judicial, executive and legislative. Along the way, the kingdom, he said, must determine the mechanism of passing the monarchy from the aging sons of the country's founder to their grandsons before simmering rivalries between the branches of the House of Saud flare into the open.

"The goal remains the same," he said, "the participation of people in forming opinions and making decisions."

The same words, a different era: "Now we're freed from the notion of the Red Prince, the name the Americans gave me."

Talal was reputed to be the favorite son of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the desert warrior who fielded a puritanical army in his conquest of much of the Arabian Peninsula between 1902 and 1925. He became in king in 1932, eventually siring Talal and 35 other recognized heirs, the descendants of an array of marriages that cemented his connections with the country's fractious tribes. Talal's mother was a servant -- some say of Circassian origins, others say Armenian -- who, it is said, eventually became his favorite wife.

Talal was among the savvier of the children, spending time in Beirut, where he married Mona al-Solh, the daughter of Lebanon's first post-independence prime minister. (One of their children, Walid bin Talal, is a billionaire Saudi investor.) For Talal, Lebanon was an introduction to pan-Arab aspirations, espoused by the leading Solh family, and was a taste of the emerging cosmopolitanism of Beirut.

Finding his place
The years after the king's death in 1953 were unsettled. Power was inherited by his eldest son, Saud ibn Abdul Aziz, a spendthrift more adept at showering largesse on the tribes than administering the country. His brothers soon contested his rule, and Talal navigated the rivalries for influence. Early on, the present Saudi king, Abdullah, was an ally, and in time as a minister, Talal began pushing for reform -- a constitution, elections, a parliament and free press. Together, he and his allies became known as the "Free Princes," a name taken from the Free Officers that overthrew Egypt's monarchy in 1952 and were eventually led by Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

He admits now to moving too fast.

"We were too young," he said. "We wanted 100 percent, but if we took 50, even 60 percent, we would have been blessed."

King Saud rejected the idea of a constitution, and Talal bitterly criticized the decision in statements to Egyptian and Lebanese newspapers. When Talal went for vacation in Beirut in 1961, the king moved against him, declaring him persona non grata.

He recalled the confrontation at the Saudi Embassy in Beirut as the ambassador asked him and his brothers to turn over their travel documents: "I said, 'Why?' He said, 'I don't have reasons, it's the order of King Saud.' I said, 'If the passport is the property of Saud, go ahead. If the passport is the property of the kingdom, then I have every right to keep it.' And I gave him the passport."

Against his better judgment, Talal and four brothers sought help in 1962 from Nasser, who had electrified a generation with promises of Arab unity, the liberation of Palestine and denunciations of regimes he deemed regressive, Saudi Arabia among them. Unlike most of the Saudi royal family, Talal was enamored with the Egyptian president -- he feels the same today, he said -- but he feared being exploited.

"I said to Nasser, we came here just for the passports because we want to go to Lebanon. I didn't want to stay with him. I knew his policy. I knew his way of thinking," Talal said. "He told me, 'I'll give you 500 passports.' "

The passports didn't come for two months. In the meantime, Talal spoke on the Voice of the Arabs, a Cairo-based radio station that often carried Nasser's stentorian voice. The speeches -- denouncing Saudi Arabia's rulers and calling for democratic reform -- solidified his reputation as the Red Prince. It would be another two years before he returned to Saudi Arabia.

Mistrust of U.S.
For years, Talal remained silent, amassing a fortune and running a philanthropy. But in past years, he has begun pressing the issue of reform again, often from Fakhariya Palace. To him, the family can bring about change by redefining its role.

"In the 21st century, the king should be the guardian of the law, but the laws and legislation should come from the people, and the people should elect the members of the parliament," Talal said, sitting next to a rendering of the family tree.

He retains his suspicion of U.S. intentions. He traveled last week to Egypt, speaking at the American University of Cairo. He was relaxed, in a crisp, dark suit and maroon tie. At one point, he urged women in the audience to ask questions. As he did 45 years ago, he tried to distance his country's needs for reform from U.S. policy in the region.

"Does America want direct and transparent elections that allow the people to make their own decisions in choosing who will be in power?" Talal said, in reference to the success of Islamic activists in recent elections in Egypt and the Palestinian territories. "Or are we tailoring elections to the United States that serve American interests?"

In the mercurial politics of the House of Saud, Talal's role is debated. He is a member of the family council, a body of 18 influential members drawn from Abdul Aziz's sons and grandsons and other branches of the family. Some say he has the ear of Abdullah, and his son, Prince Turki, says he talks to the king weekly. That gives the country's small coterie of liberals hope.

"It's going in his direction. He was just 40 years too early," said Beshr Bekheet, an economist and candidate in last year's municipal elections.

Others discount any special influence, and in private, some princes are especially venomous about Talal's past. As a liberal in a country where the monarchy claims authority through religious legitimization, Talal remains a maverick.

"Even a cleric -- an outspoken but a minor one -- would command more attention from the government than he would," said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi writer and newspaper columnist.

Talal, a little hard of hearing, doesn't claim influence. To describe the king these days, he quoted a description of a U.S. president before and after he took power. "He was simple before he was president. But as president, he's become a peacock."

At the end of his story, Talal posed for a picture. He decided to don his traditional white headdress, reluctantly. Tradition still doesn't sit well.

"I hate to wear this," he said.

Special correspondent Lindsay Wise in Cairo contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

CPJ Special Report, Saudi Arabia May 2006

2006-07-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

Al-Watan columnist Adel al-Toraifi witnessed the change overnight. A day before the bombings, al-Toraifi’s editor had spiked a prescient column warning of the threat from religious fanatics who operate openly in the kingdom. Headlined “To Prevent a Saudi Manhattan,” it discussed the looming terrorist threat in Saudi Arabia and said that religious sheikhs were inflaming tensions and promoting extreme interpretations of Islam. The article ended up running prominently on Al-Watan’s opinion page two days after the bombings. “My editor knew it could be published and that I would not be punished for it,” al-Toraifi said.

In the following months, al-Toraifi and other Saudi writers served up daring columns on extremism that obliquely criticized the government for tolerating Islamist fanatics. Newspapers examined how extremists exploited the education system to indoctrinate youths. Commentators scrutinized Wahhabi restrictions on women and what they called hard-liners’ intolerance of other religions’ beliefs.

“It grew to the point where I wrote that the religious establishment continues to be an obstacle to the war on terrorism,” al-Toraifi said.

_____________________________________________________________________________________By Joel Campagna, Joel is a senior program coordinator responsible for the Middle East and North Africa at the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Note: Read the complete reoprt on the CPJ web site

We Should Refrain From Defending Our Enemies

2006-04-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

We Should Refrain From Defending Our Enemies

By Adel Al-Toraifi

Arab News
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily
Sunday, 9, April, 2006 (11, Rabi` al-Awwal, 1427)

Very few are capable of offering constructive criticism. It is the scale on which the loyalty of a citizen irrespective of his position could be measured. Does criticism or differing in opinion mean lack of loyalty?

While attempting to find an answer to this difficult question let me refer to two events that caught my attention last week. The first was Custodian of the Two Holy Mosque King Abdullah’s address to the Shoura Council’s opening session. The second was a news item about a Saudi woman’s plan to join the lawyers’ team defending Saddam Hussein. I want to discuss the second point first and show how short people’s memory can be.

Reem Al-Habib, 29, is a law graduate from Harvard working for a company in the west of the Kingdom. She joined the team of defense counsels of Saddam Hussein and seven of his henchmen who are on trial on charges of massacring 148 people in Dujail.

Reem has the freedom to work for any one she chooses. It is a matter of ethics. It is precisely based on the ethical aspect that I differ.

I want to make it clear that I am not justifying the American invasion of Iraq. I am speaking only from the Saudi point of view. She is, apparently, of a very short memory as most of the people in Saudi society are.

Since the US launched the war in Iraq, the Saudi society has been feeling sympathy for the Iraqi people. The sentiment is quite understandable but when you go to the extent of exonerating the brutalities of the Baathist regime it is something else .

A Saudi citizen’s decision to defend Saddam in the court and take a public stand justifying his reprehensible deeds in the Gulf War II including launching of 37 missiles against Saudi towns is mystifying. About 15,000 Saudis in Al-Khafji including women and children had to run for their lives under the missile attack. The war cost the Saudis $35 billion apart from killing 38 and wounding 175 people. Several families were left without their breadwinners. So it is very difficult to find the motive behind the Saudi lawyer’s passion for defending Saddam.

If she did it in search of glory then there are several other honorable ways to achieve it other than striving to offer to defend a former oppressor. If she is spurred by the objectionable American style of conducting the war she could have chosen to defend the Saudis falsely accused of financing terrorists in the US courts or the Saudi youths languishing in Guantanamo prison. At least Saddam is getting a fair trial though he used to deny a similar treatment to several prisoners in his jails.

One wonders why the Saudi lawyer has no pity for the dead Iraqis buried in mass graves or the living prisoners who dared to speak out against Saddam. Or she could have spoken for the rights of the Saudi citizens harmed by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or the civilians threatened with Scud missiles. Lebanese lawyer Bushra Al-Khalil is yet another proof of the falling standard of the legal profession in the Arab world.

Some Saudis studying abroad are too naive to resist the leftist habit of denying the heinous crimes committed by the Baathist regime. They claim that Saddam is not responsible for the Dujail massacre of 1982 because no official document is currently available to prove his complicity. Again, they argue that the mass graves unearthed at several places in Iraq had nothing to do with Saddam. The graves might have been the leftover from the Iran-Iraq war, they say.

The leftist academicians in the US also claim that there is no proof to blame Saddam gassing 5,000 Kurds in Halabja as he did not possess any chemical weapons.

The Arab intellectuals with leftist inclinations blame Iran for triggering the Iran-Iraq war. Based on a report of laboratory tests, an organization investigating war crimes has affirmed the responsibility of Saddam’s regime for the crime. The organization observed “ the absence of direct material evidence linking Saddam Hussein with the crime does not mean ignoring the fact of the discovery of 1,700 bodies there.”

Until April 2005, 260 mass graves were found at various locations proving the savagery of the Baathist regime. The shocking discovery prompted the Human Rights Commission to set up the Iraqi National Center to search for the missing. The Baath regime rendered 1.5 million Iraqis homeless; another million left their schools because their social rights were denied. About 3,500 people released by Saddam’s secret police had their tongues wrenched out and ears or hands amputated.

I had referred earlier to King Abdullah’s speech. In his keynote address to the Shoura Council last week, the king said: “We could not afford to remain frozen while the world around us is changing.” These words, according to political analysts, mean that the Saudi leadership is confident enough to admit its shortcomings and is on the road to rectify them. It is a great deed to offer the right advice when the country needs it.

Saudi women should make use of the ruler’s promise for reforms, change and liberalization. Reem should have rallied round the Saudi women who are unable to meet the cost of litigation instead of freely offering her services to the notorious Iraqi ruler who denied his people their due rights.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

Young and Restless

2006-04-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

Young and Restless

Saudi Arabia's baby boomers, born after the 1973 oil embargo, are redefining the kingdom’s relationship with the modern world

By Afshin Molavi
April 2006
Smithsonian magazine

Scented smoke from dozens of water pipes mingled with Lebanese pop music at Al-Nakheel, a seaside restaurant in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. Saudi men in white robes and women in black abayas, their head scarves falling to their shoulders, leaned back on red cushions as they sipped tea and shared lamb kebab and hummus. Four young Saudi women, head scarves removed, trailed perfume as they walked past. Nearby, a teenage boy snapped photos of his friends with a cellphone. At an adjoining table, two young men with slicked-back hair swayed their heads to a hip-hop song echoing from the parking lot.

“Look around,” said Khaled al-Maeena, editor in chief of the English-language daily Arab News. “You wouldn’t have seen this even a few years ago.”

Saudi Arabia, long bound by tradition and religious conservatism, is beginning to embrace change. You can see it in public places like Al-Nakheel. You hear it in conversations with ordinary Saudis. You read about it in an energetic local press and witness it in Saudi cyberspace. Slowly, tentatively, almost imperceptibly to outsiders, the kingdom is redefining its relationship with the modern world.

The accession of King Abdullah in August has something to do with it. Over the past several months he has freed several liberal reformers from jail, promised women greater rights and tolerated levels of press freedom unseen in Saudi history; he has reached out to marginalized minorities such as the Shiites, reined in the notorious religious “morals” police and taken steps to improve education and judicial systems long dominated by extremist teachers and judges. But a look around Al-Nakheel suggests another reason for change: demography.

Saudi Arabia is one of the youngest countries in the world, with some 75 percent of the population under 30 and 60 percent under 21; more than one in three Saudis is under 14.

Saudi Arabia’s changes are coming not only from the authorities above, but also from below, driven by this young and increasingly urban generation. Even as some of them jealously guard parts of the status quo and display a zeal for their Islamic faith unseen in their parents’ generation, others are recalibrating the balance between modernity and tradition, directing bursts of new energy at civil society and demanding new political and social rights. “We must face the facts,” said al-Maeena, who is 54. “This huge youth population will determine our future. That’s why we need to watch them carefully and train them well. They hold the keys to the kingdom.”

Saudi arabia, home to a quarter of the world’s known oil reserves, is one of the United States’ key allies in the Middle East. Yet its baby boom was launched by an act of defiance—the 1973 oil embargo, in which King Faisal suspended supplies to the United States to protest Washington’s support for Israel in its war with Egypt and Syria. As oil prices rose, cash-rich Saudis began having families in record numbers. The kingdom’s population grew about 5 percent annually, from 6 million in 1970 to 16 million in 1989. (The current growth rate has slowed to about 2.5 percent, and the population is 24 million.)

Those baby boomers are now coming of age. And as Saudi analyst Mai Yamani writes in her book Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia, “Their numbers alone make them the crucial political constituency.”

[pullquote]

Their grandparents largely lived on subsistence farms in unconnected villages where tribe, clan and ethnicity trumped national identity. Their parents (at least the men) worked in the burgeoning state bureaucracy and trained with the foreign engineers and bankers who flocked to the kingdom; they lived in an era when television, foreign travel, multilane highways, national newspapers and mass education were novelties. But the boomers live in a mass culture fed by satellite TV and the Internet, consumerism, an intellectual glasnost and stirrings of Saudi nationalism. “I’m not sure young Saudis grasp the enormity of the changes in just three generations,” al-Maeena told me. “It is like night and day.”

The boomers, however, did not grow into fantastic wealth. In 1981, the kingdom’s per capita income was $28,000, making it one of the richest countries on earth. But by 1993, when I first met al-Maeena in Jeddah during a year I spent there on a journalism exchange program, the kingdom was recovering from both a long recession (oil prices had dwindled) and a war on its border (the Persian Gulf war of 1991). Per capita income was declining rapidly, and boomers were straining the finances of a largely welfare-driven state. Government jobs and scholarships for foreign study grew scarce. (In 2001, per capita income was a quarter of what it had been in 1981.)

Arabic satellite television was in its infancy, and state censorship was pervasive—in August 1990 the Saudi government prohibited the media from publishing news of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait for three days. But as the ’90s progressed, technology forced change. Long-distance telephone service became affordable. The Internet began to shrink the world. Aljazeera became a boisterous news channel breaking social, political and religious taboos. Many young Saudis began to feel they were living in a country with outdated institutions: an education system that favored rote learning over critical thinking, a religious establishment that promoted an intolerant brand of Islam and a government that was falling behind its neighbors in economic development.

“The 1990s were not a good decade for young people,” said one young Saudi civil servant, who asked not to be named because he works for the government. “We didn’t have the secure jobs of our parents’ generation, and our government was basically incompetent and getting too corrupt.” In the private sector, employers preferred skilled foreigners to newly minted Saudi college graduates. “We were just sitting still while everyone else seemed to be moving forward,” the civil servant added.

Then came September 11, 2001, and with it the revelation that 15 of the 19 men who launched the attacks on the United States were Saudis—acting under the auspices of another Saudi, Osama bin Laden. “That event and the [West’s] anti-Saudi reaction made me feel more nationalist,” said Khaled Salti, a 21-year-old student in Riyadh. “I wanted to go to America and defend Saudi Arabia in public forums, to tell them that we are not all terrorists. I wanted to do something for my country.”

Ebtihal Mubarak, a 27-year-old reporter for the Arab News, said the attacks “forced us to face some ugly truths: that such terrible people exist in our society and that our education system failed us.” She called May 12, 2003, another infamous date for many Saudis: Al Qaeda bombed an expatriate compound in Riyadh that day, killing 35, including 9 Americans and 7 Saudis. A series of attacks on Westerners, Saudi government sites and Arabs ensued, leaving hundreds dead. (In late February, Al Qaeda also took responsibility for a failed attempt to blow up a Saudi oil-processing complex.)

[pullquote]

Most violent opposition to the ruling al-Saud family comes from boomers—jihadists in their 20s and 30s—but those extremists are hardly representative of their generation. “When we think of youth in this country, two incorrect stereotypes emerge,” Hani Khoja, a 37-year-old business consultant and television producer, told me. “We think of the religious radical who wants to join jihadist movements, like the 9/11 guys, or we think of extremist fun-seekers who think only of listening to pop music and having a good time. But the reality is that most young Saudis are somewhere in the middle, looking for answers, curious about the world and uncertain of the path they should take.”

In dozens of conversations with young Saudis in five cities and a village, it became obvious that there is no monolithic Saudi youth worldview. Opinions vary widely on everything from internal reform to foreign policy to the kingdom’s relations with the United States and the rest of the West. Regional, ethnic and religious differences also remain. Young Saudi Shiites often feel alienated in a country whose religious establishment often refers to them as “unbelievers.” Residents of Hijaz, a cosmopolitan region that encompasses Mecca, Jeddah and Medina, regularly complain about the religious conservatism and political domination of the Najd, the province from which most religious and political elites hail. Some Najdis scorn Hijazis as “impure Arabs,” children fertilized over the centuries by the dozens of nationalities who overstayed a pilgrimage to Mecca. And loyalty to tribe or region may still trump loyalty to the state.

But despite these differences, the kingdom’s baby boomers seem to agree that change is necessary. And collectively they are shaping a new national identity and a common Saudi narrative.

Ebtihal Mubarak is one of several talented female reporters and editors on the Arab News staff. That in itself is a change from my days at the paper more than a decade ago. In recent years the News has doubled its full-time Saudi female staff and put more female reporters out in the field. Mubarak reports on the small but growing movement for greater political and social rights for Saudis. Persecution by extremists is a common theme in her work. As she surfed Saudi Internet forums one day last fall, she came across a posting describing an attack on a liberal journalist in the northern city of Hail. “A journalist’s car had been attacked while he was sleeping,” she said. “A note on his car read: ‘This time it’s your car, next time it will be you.’”
A few years ago, such an episode would probably have ended with the Hail journalist intimidated into silence. But now, Mubarak worked the phones, speaking with the journalist, the police and outside experts, and put together a story for the next day’s paper, quoting the journalist: “What happened to me is not just a threat to one individual but to the whole of society.” Thanks to the Internet, the episode became a national story, and the subject of vigorous debate.

And yet: after Mubarak exercised the power of the press, she faced the limited power of Saudi women. Once she filed her story, she hung around the newsroom, glancing at her watch—waiting for a driver, because under a patriarchal legal system Saudi women may not drive. “I feel like I’m always waiting for someone to pick me up,” she said. “Imagine a reporter who cannot drive. How will we beat the competition when we are always waiting to be picked up by someone?”

Mubarak reflects how much Saudi society has changed, and how much it hasn’t. Like her generational peers, she comes from the urban middle class. Yet as a working woman, she represents a minority: only 5 percent of Saudi women work outside the home. Most are stifled by a patriarchal society and a legal system that treats them like children.

Beyond matters of mobility and employment opportunity is the issue of spousal abuse, which, according to Saudi newspapers, remains prevalent. In one high-profile case, the husband of Rania al-Baz, the country’s first female broadcaster, beat her nearly to death in 2004. Saudi media covered the case with the zeal of British tabloids, creating widespread sympathy for the victim and sparking a national debate on abuse. The case even made it to “Oprah,” where al-Baz was hailed as a woman of courage. Once the spotlight dimmed, however, the broadcaster succumbed to pressure from an Islamic judge and from her own family to forgive her husband.
Tensions between the old and the new aren’t always so consequential, but they persist. Hani Khoja, the TV producer, told me that he “wanted to show that it is possible to be religious and modern at the same time” on the popular youth-oriented show “Yallah Shabab” (“Let’s Go Youth”). Another program that promotes a more modern view of Islam is “Kalam Nouam” (“Speaking Softly”). One of its hostesses, Muna AbuSulayman, embodies that blend. Born in 1973, AbuSulayman followed her father, a liberal Islamic scholar, around the globe, including nine years in the United States, where she studied English literature. (Saudi universities opened their doors to women in 1964.) Today, in addition to her television work, she advises billionaire businessman Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal on philanthropic activities that seek to build links between the Islamic world and the West.

The prince’s company, Kingdom Holdings, has the only known Saudi workplace that allows Muslim women to choose whether to wear the hijab (the Islamic veil and other modest apparel) or Western dress. (The prince also employs the only female Saudi pilot.) Kingdom Holdings’ quarters look more Beirut than Riyadh, with fashionable women in corporate attire shuffling between offices. AbuSulayman, however, chooses to wear the hijab—on the day I met her, a striking green head scarf and shirt ensemble. “The hijab is such an overexamined issue in the West,” she told me. “I like wearing it. We as women face more serious issues.”
And even as she acknowledges that “the opportunities available to me today were unavailable a generation ago,” she says, “We are hopeful to achieve more. I expect my daughter to be living in an entirely different world.”

“I am from Burayda, that famous city you Western journalists are curious about,” Adel Toraifi said when we met at a Holiday Inn in Riyadh. He was smiling—Burayda is the heartland of Wahhabi Islam. Toraifi, now 27, came of age in one of the most conservative regions of the kingdom.

More than two centuries ago, Sheikh ibn Abd al Wahhab emerged from the desert there with a puritanical vision of Islam focused on the concept of tawhid, or the oneness of God. At the time, he made a key alliance with the local al-Saud ruler, who pledged to support the passionate preacher in return for support from the religious establishment. Eventually, Wahhabism spread across central Arabia, even when the al-Sauds lost power twice in the 19th century (to regain it again in the early 20th). When King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, began his march across the Arabian Peninsula in the early 20th century to reclaim his tribal lands, he revived the bargain with the descendants of Sheikh ibn Abd al Wahhab, known today as the al-Alsheikh family.

[pullquote]

The essential outlines of that relationship remain intact. Wahhabi preachers hold the highest positions of religious authority, while the al-Sauds hold political authority. Today’s Saudi Wahhabist is quick to condemn those who belong to other schools of religious thought as impure or, worse, kufr, unbelievers. That explains part of the political radicalism of young Saudi jihadists—but only part.

Another explanation might lie in the evolution of Saudi Arabia’s education system. In the 1960s and ’70s, the kingdom fought a rear-guard battle with Egypt for regional hearts and minds. To counter Gamal Abdel Nasser’s secular pan-Arab nationalism, the Saudis promoted a conservative pan-Islamism. While Egypt, Syria and Jordan were expelling Islamist radicals, many of whom were college graduates, Saudi Arabia welcomed them as teachers.

When Toraifi was 13, he decided to become a religious scholar in the Wahhabi tradition. For five years, he led an ascetic life, studying the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad several hours a day. “I was not a radical,” he said, “but my mind was not open, either. I dreamed of becoming a respected scholar, but I had never read a Western book or anything by an Islamic modernist or Arab liberal.”

As he walked home from evening prayer one day, he was hit by a car. After three months in a coma, he spent more than a year recuperating in a hospital, thinking and reading. “I thought to myself: I did everything right. I prayed. I fasted. I learned the Koran by heart, and yet I got hit by a car. It was troubling to me.”

Once recovered, Toraifi took to reading Western philosophy and Arab liberals with a seminarian’s zeal. He studied engineering, but political philosophy was his passion. After taking a job as a development executive with a German technology company, he began writing articles critical of Wahhabism—including one published shortly after the May 12, 2003, attacks warning that a “Saudi Manhattan” was coming unless religious extremism was checked. He was excoriated in some religious Internet forums, but the government largely let it pass.

Then Toraifi repeated his views on Aljazeera, whose coverage had often been critical of the royal family. That, apparently, crossed a line: afterward, Toraifi said, Saudi intelligence detained him for several days before letting him go with a warning. Then an establishment newspaper offered him a column—writing about foreign, but not domestic, affairs. The gesture was seen as an attempt to bring a critic into the mainstream. But he dismisses concerns that he might have been co-opted. “I will continue speaking about the importance of democracy,” he told me. (In December, he accepted a fellowship at a British think tank, where he is writing a paper on Saudi Arabia’s reform movement.)

The Al-Sauds number some 7,000 princes and princesses. The most senior princes are sons of the late Ibn Saud, who died in 1953, and most are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Their sons include Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former director of Saudi intelligence and the current ambassador to the United States. Third- and fourth-generation princes have just begun to make their marks, and while the occasional rumor about corruption or a wild night in a European disco makes the rounds, several third-generation princes are becoming important drivers of modernization.

Mohammed Khaled al-Faisal, 38, is one of them. The Harvard MBA runs a conglomerate of diverse businesses, including a world-class industrialized dairy farm. When I visited his Riyadh office, he proudly described an initiative that his company had taken to hire village widows and unmarried women to work at the dairy.

[pullquote]

“In order to circumvent protest from local religious authorities, we reached out to them and asked them to consult with us on the proper uniforms the women should wear on the job,” he said. “We didn’t ask them if we could employ women; we simply brought them into the discussion, so they could play a role in how we do it. I am a businessman. I want to get things done. If my aim is to employ more women, I will try to do it quietly and not just to score political points against the extremists.”

Economic reform, he went on, is “the chariot that will drive all other reforms.” What Saudi Arabia needs, in his judgment, is more small and medium-sized businesses and the jobs they would provide.

“I see my older brother unemployed,” said Hassan, a dimpled 14-year-old. “I’m afraid that will happen to me too.” The four other students in the room, who ranged in age from 13 to 16, nodded their heads in agreement.

They and their teacher met me in an office in Qatif, in the oil-rich Eastern Province—home to most of Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Muslims. Some of the most vitriolic abuse from Saudi religious authorities and ordinary citizens is directed at Shiites, who make up only 15 percent of the population. Though they share job anxiety with their Sunni peers, they feel that upward mobility belongs primarily to Sunnis.

Two of the youths attend a village school several miles away, while the other three go to the local public high school. The lack of a college in Qatif, many Shiites say, is an example of the discrimination they feel.

I asked if teaching had improved since 9/11. “The new teachers are good,” said Ali, a smiling 15-year-old, “but the old ones are still around and still bad.” The students said their teachers praised bin Laden, ridiculed the United States or described Shiites as unbelievers.

Recently, Ali said, he had brought sweets to school to celebrate the birthday of a prominent Shiite religious figure, and his teacher reprimanded him with anti-Shiite slurs.
I asked if they ever thought of leaving Saudi Arabia.
“No, Qatif is my home,” said Hassan. “I am proud to be from Qatif.”
Are they proud to be from Saudi Arabia?
Mohammad, who had spoken very little, answered: “If the government doesn’t make us feel included, why should we be proud to be from Saudi Arabia? If they did include us more, then I think we would all be proud.”

Public pop concerts are banned in the kingdom, so musically inclined young Saudis gather at underground events or in small groups. Hasan Hatrash, an Arab News reporter and musician, took me to a heavy-metal jam session in Jeddah.

Hatrash, who abstains from drink and covers the hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage, for local papers, had spent the past two years in Malaysia, waiting tables and playing guitar in bars. When I asked about his eclectic tastes, he said, “I am a Hijazi. We have DNA from everywhere in the world.”

At a walled villa in Jeddah, young men were tuning guitars and tapping drums. Ahmad, who is half-Lebanese and half-Saudi, is the lead singer of a band known as Grieving Age. He introduced me around. A few of the musicians, including Ahmad, had long hair and beards, but most did not. One wore a Starbucks shirt—for his job, afterward. Another worked as an attendant on Saudia, the national airline, and a third worked in insurance. All seemed exceedingly polite.

They played songs from the genre heavy-metal fans call “melodic death.” It had a haunting appeal, though the lyrics were, predictably, unintelligible amid the heavy bass. On the walls, a poster of the British band Iron Maiden competed for space with one of Mariam Fares, a sultry Lebanese pop star.

[pullquote]

When Hatrash took the stage, he played a series of guitar favorites, such as Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and softer rock, to the seeming delight of the heavy-metal aficionados.

Throughout the evening, more young men arrived—but no women. Some took turns playing; others just watched. By midnight, the jam session had wound down. “This is a tame event, as you can see,” Hatrash said. “There is no drinking or drugs. We are just enjoying the music.”
I asked if he could envision a day when he could play in public, instead of behind closed doors.
He just smiled and launched into another song. Someone jumped up to accompany him on the bass, and Ahmad mouthed the lyrics. The guy in the Starbucks shirt rushed out the door, late for his shift.

The virtuous king

2006-03-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

The virtuous king

Adel al-Toraifi

January 19, 2006 Edition 2 Volume 4
bitterlemons-international.org

During the first signs of the late King Fahd's illness in 1995, Saudis woke up suddenly to the question of succession. Saudis had come to picture King Fahd as a modernist leader well versed in domestic politics. Inheriting a welfare state in the late 1970s due to high oil revenues, Fahd enjoyed a strong and powerful image among his citizens and abroad. Indeed, Fahd's public persona was so strong it overwhelmed everyone else, including the crown prince, Abdullah. In 1997, King Fahd handed Abdullah authority over two key issues in Saudi policymaking: foreign affairs and the economy. Thus did Abdullah begin to prove himself as a leader. His involvement in regional politics as the representative of the Saudi state in different world conferences and gatherings brought him great success among the Saudi public. Yet, he also faced growing problems inside the kingdom, including unemployment, poverty, weak public services and growing public criticism and calls for reform. In effect, Abdullah was running only half the system. The other half was run either by those responsible for state security or the retinue of Fahd.Thus, when Fahd died last August there was no question about succession, but also high expectations of change. Within days of accession, Abdullah's portrait adorned city buildings and rear windows of public owned vehicles. It was now the era of the "Virtuous King", one newspaper headline said. But what brought about such expectations compared to the doubts that shook the nation in the late 1990s?In the early 1980s, Abdullah was not favored much by western observers. Since Abdullah enjoyed good relations with Arab leaders in the region, he was thought to be a pro-Arab nationalist and an opponent of the West's regional policy. But this was a false reading of his character. The aftermath of September 11 provides a good insight into the complications that Abdullah had to contend with prior to his accession. With the US administration pressing for a full makeover of the Saudi state, Abdullah was placed in a difficult situation. On the one hand, he wanted to show he could stand up to Washington, and on the other he understood the importance to the kingdom of fighting terrorism and reform. As one taxi driver told me: "he wants to do things his way". To do so, he had to convince not only the Americans to understand him but also his brothers.On the regional front, Abdullah won approval for his Middle East peace initiative at the Arab Summit 2002 in Beirut, which brought him favorable international attention. Following the tensions in Saudi-American relation, Abdullah implemented a gradual reform in religious schools and as regards Friday sermons in mosques to allay American concerns of a growing terrorism threat from Saudi Arabia. And in April 2004, when George W. Bush was preparing his speech on American energy strategy during the peak of the oil prices, Abdullah visited the American president in Crawford, Texas, to assure him of controlled oil prices and with a promise of establishing new refineries. With Saudi Arabia embroiled in a direct fight against terrorism on its own soil, Abdullah became a close ally.In the last two years, Abdullah's fears for the country began to fade on another front too. Oil prices were steadily increasing after seven years of ups and downs. The increased revenue brought with it the possibility of re-invigorating the welfare state. A healthy welfare state provides a monarchy with stability. If people are assured more and more secure wealth, calls for greater participation in authority lessen. In 2003, the internal reform movement was at the height of its powers and delivered a call for a constitutional monarchy, but the situation dramatically changed after the stock market boom generated by the high economic performance of state-owned oil companies. Just lend your ear to Saudi social gathering these days and you will immediately realize the difference: from a deep detestation of government corruption to a deep analysis of the stock market and the best ways to earn a quick and immense profit.Nevertheless, King Abdullah has remained true to his reform promises. Days after his inauguration, he freed the political prisoners in the "constitutional monarchy" case. Leaks to the press expressed his disappointment with how Saudi security authorities had dealt with that case, yet no rift in the regime was created by an official condemnation of the Interior Ministry's performance.In other ways, the new king has already made a significant difference in the lives of Saudis. He authorized a 15 percent pay rise for government employees, established a new human rights committee with wide-ranging powers, canceled the National Media Council, which was used to channel the domestic media, signed the WTO entrance agreement, established a "Fighting Poverty" national campaign, donated $543 million to a new housing project for needy families, re-implemented the mass overseas scholarships that had been frozen for 15 years, and last, but not least, made it easier for the average citizen to gain direct access to the king than it has ever been.The image of Abdullah as the "Virtuous King", however, should not fool anyone into thinking that Saudi Arabia's problems are at an end. Tremendous reforms are still needed in order to transform Saudi Arabia into a democratic state. There is hope, but the struggle for human rights, freedom of speech, religious openness, juridical independence and political participation are still at an early stage.- Published 19/1/2006 © bitterlemons-international.org
____________________________________________________________________

Adel al-Toraifi is a political affairs commentator on the opinion pages of al-Riyadh newspaper. He is currently a Chevening Fellow at the Center for Studies in Security and Democracy at Birmingham University.

Adel Al Toraifi

2005-12-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

CNN report Adel Al Toraifi on Terrorism

2005-08-17T07:00:00.001-07:00

CNN interviews Adel Al Toraifi

Bush Dynasty Family Friends And Business Partners In Saudi Arabia Trying To Figure Out Why They Keep Murdering Americans

May 15, 2003

Terror Attacks Provoke Soul-Searching In Saudi Press By Julie Stahl CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief May 15, 2003
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Editorials in Saudi newspapers indicate the Saudi people are grappling with the fact that some 15 of their countrymen carried out a triple suicide bomb attack in Riyadh this week, killing 34 people, Americans among them. Nearly 200 others were wounded.
While some editorials declared the perpetrators could not have been true Saudis, others said that the fact that the bombers were Saudis could not be ignored.
The root causes had to be explored, the editorials said, and could not be swept under the rug as they were after the September 11 terror attacks in the United States. (Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens.)
Saudi papers are not government-run, but they are connected to the Saudi regime. Translations of the articles, which appeared in Wednesday's papers, were provided by the independent Middle East Media Research Institute on Thursday.
Adel Zaid Al-Tarifi, a columnist for Al-Watan, criticized the official sheiks and columnists for not awakening until a catastrophe happened. He also criticized the failure to deal with the "real causes and roots of the ideology of jihad [holy war]," blaming it on an imported ideology and ignoring the roots in their own culture.
"Our religious message includes many phenomena of religious extremism," Al-Tarifi wrote. "A quick glance at the Friday sermons in the mosques or at the fatwas [religious edicts] can attest to this."
Western experts have long pointed to mosque sermons and the anti-Western school curriculum in Saudi Arabia as the type of incitement that breeds the hatred that leads to terrorism.
According to Al- Tarifi, "The jihad groups find ideological cover in the religious message spread by the mosques and schools... The fatwas...have inflamed the emotions of many and provided a legitimate basis for these acts. Some fatwas justified September 11; other fatwas depicted these events as 'blessed [Islamic] raids.' During the Afghan and Iraq wars, the fatwas sent many wretched young men to the hopeless battlefield..."
Al-Tarifi argues that many messages coming from schools, homes and mosques need to be reformed. The columnist declared that terrorism cannot be blamed on economic or psychological conditions.
"These conditions can account for the behavior of criminals, but cannot account for a terror event based on religious belief. Religious terror cannot be contained, because it is part of the religious belief of those who carry it out," he wrote.
He said that terror attacks are not new to Saudi society and should not push the country towards "religious extremism" as it has in the past because it would lead to a "Saudi Manhattan" (Manhattan being a reference to the Sept. 11 terror attacks at the World Trade Center in N.Y.).
Al-Tarifi noted that he had written the article prior to Monday's three car bombings in Riyadh, "and I am sorry to say that the Saudi Manhattan has indeed happened," he added.
Editorials published on the website of the Saudi English language Arab News had a similar theme.
In an article entitled, "Too Much Dust to Go Under the Carpet," columnist Raid Qusti charged that the theme in Saudi papers over the attack was "denial."
"I picked up an Arabic newspaper yesterday morning. After reading the huge headline about the three blasts that rocked Riyadh, a certain well-known writer began his exposition. And then the magical words came to the surface, 'You are not Saudis. You could not have been Saudis. Your actions are despised by us all.'
"The exact same denial was seen in other publications. Nobody wants to admit that the perpetrators, the terrorists who carried out these heinous acts, were Saudis, many bearing well-known Saudi family names," Qusti wrote.
It is the same denial that happened after September 11, he wrote, and if the Saudis cannot admit that their "own flesh and blood" carried out the attacks then there will be more such incidents in the future.
"Who are we trying to fool? Ourselves, or the international community? Neither can be fooled," he said. "The time of pretending that radicalism does not exist in Saudi Arabia is long past. The time for pretending that we are above errors and could not possibly commit terrorist attacks is no longer with us...
"How can we expect others to believe that a majority of us are a peace-loving people who denounce extremism and terrorism when some preachers continue to call for the destruction of Jews and Christians, blaming them for all the misery in the Islamic world?"
Qusti slammed a leading sheik's denunciation of terrorism, because it ignored some key points: "We needed to hear three questions that are never asked. Like dust, they are swept under the carpet: Why are more and more Saudi young men being fed with radical ideas? Who are the people brainwashing them? How are they being radicalized? And so it happens that so much dust is swept underneath the carpet that it finally bursts out in full view of everybody. At last, the truth that was hidden has come out," he said.
In a second editorial in Arab News entitled, "The Enemy Within," the writer tells the Saudis they must face the fact they have a terrorist problem.
Last week's announcement that the government was searching for a terror cell should have been a wake-up call, he said, "particularly to those who steadfastly refuse to accept that individual Saudis or Muslims could ever do anything evil, who still cling to the fantasy that September 11 and all the other attacks laid at the doors of terrorists who happen to be Arab or Muslim were in fact the work of the Israelis or the CIA....
"We did not want to admit that Saudis were involved in September 11. We can no longer ignore that we have a nest of vipers here, hoping that by doing so they will go away...
"The suicide bombers have been encouraged by the venom of anti-Westernism that has seeped through the Middle East's veins, and the Kingdom is no less affected. Those who gloat over September 11, those who happily support suicide bombings in Israel and Russia, those who consider non-Muslims less human than Muslims and therefore somehow disposable, all bear part of the responsibility for the Riyadh bombs," the editorial said.
But several editorials in the Saudi paper Okaz took an opposite approach, blaming the terror attacks on imported ideology and drawing a distinction between suicide bombers.
"Blaming the extremist phenomenon of people who blow themselves up to harm others on our curriculum is not objective or fair, because this phenomenon is new, and it is inconceivable that it is the product of the curriculum that has served our society for half a century," Khaled Hamed Al-Suleiman wrote.
"Ideological extremism is merchandise that was never manufactured or sown in this land; it is merchandise imported to this land, duty-free, and the one who exported it got nothing for it, except the pure souls harvested by indiscriminate acts of terror," Al-Suleiman said.
"No country in the world has been spared terror... and therefore we must not go overboard in analyzing these practical ramifications," he added.
Also in Okaz, Abed Khazandar tried to differentiate between different kinds of suicide attacks.
"If I carry out suicide operations against an enemy occupying my land, killing my children, and expelling me from my home, this is legitimate jihad," Khazandar wrote.
"But if I carry out similar operations against innocent civilians who came to Saudi Arabia at the invitation of its government in order to serve the country and train its sons, then this is a criminal and terrorist act.
"This is the unjust killing that Allah forbade. In this case, taking their own lives is the equivalent of killing innocents, primarily because they caused no damage to American interests, as they claimed, but damaged their homeland," he said.
Calling the terrorists "foreign cave dwellers" - a reference to al Qaeda members who trained and lived in the caves of Afghanistan - Hamad bin Hamed Al-Salame denied any Saudi connection with the terrorists in an article in Al-Jazirah. He told them, "depart our country and go to hell.""

http://www.welchreport.com/pastnews_c.cfm?rank=792

Fareed Zakaria Quote Adel Al Toraifi, Newsweek

2005-08-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

May 26, 2003, U.S. Edition

Now, Saudis See the Enemy
For decades, supporting Islamic extremism has been cost-free for the Saudis-government and people alike. Not anymore
By Fareed Zakaria

Last week’s attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco show two contradictory things about Al Qaeda. It remains strong enough to launch serious operations. Yet since September 11, 2001, it has not been able to hit a single military, governmental or symbolic target anywhere in the world. Over the past two years in Indonesia, Tunisia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, Al Qaeda has gone after soft targets. And while it’s relatively easy to blow up hotels, nightclubs and residential buildings, indiscriminate violence against locals ensures that Al Qaeda loses appeal in country after country. That means governments gain support to act.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Saudi Arabia. For decades now, supporting Islamic extremism has been cost-free for the Saudis—government and people alike. They could appease militants, appear pious and buy themselves peace, all with little consequence. But now that Al Qaeda has for the first time killed Saudi civilians, the terrorist group might—just might—have destroyed the true basis of its support. Fundamentalist terror is finally going to be fought in the Arabian heartland, the only place where it can be rooted out.

Al Qaeda Strikes

Read Saudi Arabia’s newspapers these days. “The time of pretending that radicalism does not exist in Saudi Arabia is long past,” writes Raid Qusti, a columnist for the Saudi English-language daily Arab News. “How can we expect others to believe that a majority of us are a peace-loving people who denounce extremism and terrorism when some preachers continue to call for the destruction of Jews and Christians, blaming them for all the misery in the Islamic world?” The columnist Adel Zaid Al-Tarifi writes in Al-Watan: “What many of the official sheiks and columnists—who do not awaken until a catastrophe occurs—say about the phenomenon does not deal with the real causes and roots of the ideology of Jihad... Jihad groups find ideological cover in the religious message spread by the mosques and schools.”

An editorial in the Arab News titled “The Enemy Within” read: “Crushing them [the terrorists] will not be enough. The environment that produced such terrorism has to change. The suicide bombers have been encouraged by the venom of anti-Westernism that has seeped through the Middle East’s veins, and the Kingdom is no less affected. Those who gloat over September 11, those who happily support suicide bombings in Israel and Russia, those who consider non-Muslims less human than Muslims and therefore somehow disposable, all bear part of the responsibility for the Riyadh bombs.”

The Saudi government will surely take security measures and act more aggressively on intelligence tips. But it needs to take much larger steps—cleansing its mosques and media organizations of militant mullahs, sidelining the Religious Affairs Department, reforming its educational system and shutting down the private funds that flow to Wahhabi organizations abroad, spreading militancy and extremism. “The other road map Washington must provide is to the Saudis, detailing what they need to do,” says Ahmed Bishara, a leading Kuwaiti commentator.

The Saudi government is saying the right things so far. Its spokesman Adel al-Jubeir said to me, “You can expect to see dramatic change in Saudi Arabia, both security measures and political reforms, to ensure that such ideologies do not flourish.” His boss, Crown Prince Abdullah, seems to be a genuine reformer. The kingdom will soon announce a commission to formally re-examine the concept of jihad in Islam. But Abdullah will have to consolidate his power to drive real change.

On a bad day, the Saudi political system looks like medieval Europe, with its king, dukes, earls and viscounts all milling about the court in a gentle, ceaseless power struggle. The current situation would make for a nice Shakespearean drama. King Fahd, 80, is barely alive. His existence, however, keeps Abdullah from completing the succession. The two most powerful ministries—Defense and Interior—are run by Abdullah’s rival brothers. The king’s favorite son is flirting with Wahhabi extremists to gain allies. Europe moved from its medieval politics to absolute monarchy in the 16th century. Sometimes it seems that Saudi Arabia hasn’t gotten there yet.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s reaction to the bombings in Saudi Arabia has been to point out that Al Qaeda cannot be negotiated with. “The only sure way to security... is to go eliminate the terrorists.” Of course this is true. But the larger battle that must be waged here is a battle against the political and ideological conditions that make such groups thrive. After all, the United States has waged war against Al Qaeda for two years, destroyed its home base, rolled up dozens of its cells and shut down hundreds of bank accounts around the world. Yet it could not—and probably cannot—stop such attacks on civilians. There are simply too many soft targets in the world. We’ve been tough on terror. It’s time to get tough on the causes of terror.

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/052603.html

Young Saudis Brainwashed

2005-08-17T06:42:00.002-07:00

MEMRI
Special Dispatch Series - No. 898
April 22, 2005 No.898

Young Saudis Brainwashed by Islamists Have Been Transformed by the Writings of Arab Liberals
Columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Watan, Adel-Toraifi, wrote an article in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News on April 7, 2005, titled "The Young Killers and Victims of Contemporary Jihad," which criticized Jihad in Iraq and discussed how the writings of Arab liberals are helping to reform former Islamists. The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
Saudi Columnist: The Arab Nations Neglect the Misery of Others as Long as it Does Not Affect Them
"According to a BBC report last week, the number of civilian casualties as a result of the ongoing violence in Iraq since July 2004 has spiraled to 3,274. Although official figures are not available, some sources, such as Iraqbodycount.net, run by academics and peace activists, estimate some 19,696 civilian casualties. To be fair, however, we must not forget the Iraqi soldiers who have died in their efforts to secure, and also to spread, democracy in Iraq. We are left with a total of 25,000 Iraqis killed by either former Ba'thist rebels or the jihad group led by [Abu Mus'ab] Al-Zarqawi.
"Nothing can be compared to what happened last month in Hilla. The Al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility for the deaths of at least 124 people when a massive car bomb exploded in the worst incident since the U.S.-led invasion nearly two years ago. The coverage of this massacre in the Arab media was poor in general and rather sketchy. No clear condemnation of the act was heard from Arab nations. It is not that they supported or justified it, but it was merely a matter of neglecting the misery of others as long as it didn't affect them. If this tragedy had happened in Palestine, for example, then the Arab reaction would have been overwhelming. And yet, Arabs wonder why their grievances don't receive the attention of others!"
Thousands of Saudis, Misguided and Deluded, Have Gone to Wage Jihad in Iraq
"Iraqi officials recently announced that more than 532 jihadi Arabs were arrested while fighting with Iraqi insurgents. Fifty-nine young Saudis were among those accused of terrorist acts against the Iraqi people. Since the collapse of the Ba'thist regime in April 2003, hundreds of young men have been urged to go fight in Iraq under a widespread call for Jihad by some sheikhs who are close to the Salafi-Jihadist movement.
"Faris Bin Hizam, an authority on Al-Qa'ida, estimates that up to 2,500 Saudis may have gone to fight in Iraq. Jihad networks estimate that 120 have been killed up to now. The majority of those killed have come from the Northern and Central Province and 36 from the Eastern Province. A family in Dammam has lost three young members during the ongoing insurgency in Iraq.
"The story of Ahmad Abdullah Al-Shayea, a 21-year-old Saudi who confessed to driving a fuel truck that he blew up, killing 10 Iraqis last December, shows the degree of misguidance and delusion that has led some young Saudis into such pointless violence."
"The Syrian Role"
"Many sources have confirmed the Syrian role in the training and smuggling of these jihadis from Syria into Iraq. After harsh international criticism of Syria, more than 120 jihadis from the Gulf were arrested by Syrian authorities, some of whom were sent back to their countries. One of them, Abu Hamza Al-Tabukee, a famous Salafi-Jihadi member, was arrested with a 20-year-old Saudi last year."
"Many Sheikhs Work Hard to Convince Jihadis in Prison to Change Their Ideology"
"The numbers of those arrested before they were able to get to Iraq is not known, but many sheikhs are working hard to convince those jihadis in prison to change their ideology. Some of the young men refuse to listen since they argue that they are following the call of Jihad as written in the Qur'an and the Prophet's Hadith.
"When the war began in Iraq along with the accompanying call for Jihad, the feeling of danger was not felt until Al-Qa'ida began attacks in Saudi Arabia..."
"Jihad Has Become the Prime Method of Salvation in the Muslim World"
"The jihad scheme in general, which developed in the Islamic world during the last third of the twentieth century, has caused drastic changes in thought and ideology. Upon the collapse of communism and the resurgence of Islamic ideology, jihad as a fundamental concept became the number one method of salvation to overcome the weakness felt by Muslim nations.
"The so-called Jihad scheme actually has several names, and irrespective of the countries that the jihadis are coming from, the ideological methodology is almost the same. It is obvious that some of the countries have been pushed and were reluctantly involved in the scheme in one way or another. Their mistakes in doing so have generally produced the present dilemma. The Al-Qa'ida Battar training camp that was discovered by security forces outside Riyadh was set up more than a year ago around the same time as the beginning of the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia. The Battar camp focused and fed on the numerous disturbances and tensions related to geography, history, and thought in the Islamic world."
Transformation to a Moderate Islam Was Influenced by the Writings of Liberal Arab Intellectuals
"A month ago I visited Al-Rass, in northern Al-Qassim, where I spoke to very promising young minds that had shifted from their Islamic ideological background to a moderate type of Islam. This transformation [to a moderate type of Islam] was influenced by the writings of liberal Arab intellectuals.
"Political Islamic thought and classical Salafi preachers were the reason why a lot of young Saudis ended up as killers in Allah's name.
"In a very religious and intolerant environment, it is simple to change a young man from a state of emptiness into a killing machine. I couldn't imagine during my visit that Al-Rass' tranquility could be shattered for more than three days by dangerous terrorists similar in age to those I spoke to.
"The eighteen young Saudis involved in the deadly confrontation that began last Sunday are considered terrorists by most people, but they are also victims of the deadly ideology of jihad. The challenge of saving the hopes of the young Saudi generation is difficult, but without promoting openness and religious tolerance, the young generation will face a horrible risk before they can join in the global hopes and dreams of a better future."
________________________________________
[1] Arab News (Saudi Arabia), April 7, 2005.

"A Saudi Manhattan"

2005-08-17T06:42:00.001-07:00

Columnist 'Adel Zaid Al-Tarifi wrote (Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), May 14, 2003.):
"…What many of the official sheikhs and columnists — who do not awaken until a catastrophe occurs — say about the phenomenon is inappropriate, and does not deal with the real causes and roots of the ideology of Jihad and of accusing [others] of heresy. They suffice by describing what took place as an imported ideology, and ignore the roots imprinted in our culture… Our religious message includes many phenomena of religious extremism. A quick glance at the Friday sermons in the mosques or at the Fatwas can attest to this…"

"The Jihad groups find ideological cover in the religious message spread by the mosques and schools… But even if we set aside the main reasons why the Jihad stream was formed, there are many other, selfish reasons… The Fatwas, for example, that are issued by the leaders of the Jihad stream, and even by the sheikhs of the Islamic awakening [stream] in the past two years, have inflamed the emotions of many and provided a legitimate basis for these acts. Some Fatwas justified September 11; other Fatwas depicted these events as 'blessed [Islamic] raids.' During the Afghan and Iraq wars, the Fatwas sent many wretched young men to the hopeless battlefield…"

"The important question is this: What must be done? Many of the pulpits of education, such as the school, the home, and the mosque, need reform today. Anyone who wants to attribute what happened to economic or psychological conditions is missing the truth. These conditions can account for the behavior of criminals, but cannot account for a terror event based on religious belief. Religious terror cannot be contained, because it is part of the religious belief of those who carry it out. What can be done with people who think that anyone who does not agree with their fundamentalist path deviates from the path of righteousness? Those who carry out these deeds are not victims, but criminals…"

"These events are not newborn in our society, as some would like to present them. It is enough to mention the bombings of 1996, and of 1997. Reactions to these events were diverse. What is important regarding this most recent event is that it must not push us towards further religious extremism, as has happened in the past. Further religious extremism will lead us to a 'Saudi Manhattan.'"

"I wrote this article a day before the three bombings [and following the arrest of an Al Qa'ida cell in Saudi Arabia about a week ago], and I am sorry to say that the Saudi Manhattan has indeed happened."

Adel Al Toraifi commentary on international Media

2005-08-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

Smooth succession
"It is still not clear who will be named the deputy crown prince," said Saudi political analyst Adel Al-Toraifi in a phone interview from Riyadh. "They may leave the decision for later."
AL-AHRAM 4 - 10 August 2005 Issue No. 754
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/754/re1.htm

Saudi Islamists strike gold
"I anticipate that the government will appoint non-Islamists to balance the municipal councils," said Adel Al-Toraifi, in an interview with the Weekly.
"I think the government did not want to interfere and change anything in the outcome of these elections, as they knew they could re-balance the outcome when they appoint the remaining seats of all the councils," he added.
AL-AHRAM 28 April - 4 May 2005 Issue No. 740
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/740/re6.htm

In the Telegraph, Tim Butcher and Rasheed Abou-Alsamh (the latter writing from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia) quote 'Adel Al-Toraifi, a writer and political analyst in the capital, Riyadh, [who] said he did not believe that women would be allowed to drive or vote in the next five years. Such a change of policy would risk antagonising the ultra-conservatives, whose support of the royal family has been crucial to the longevity of their rule. Mr Al-Toraifi said: "If they allow women to drive and vote, it will spell the end of their control over the population and it would be too dangerous for them.'' '

Respects paid to newest monarch
Saudi political analyst Adel Al-Toraifi said a new generation of royals already is being groomed to take over when power passes to the next generation.
"Abdullah has appointed his son, Mutaab bin Abdullah, head of the National Guard, which is a very important post, nearly equivalent to that of minister of defense," Mr. Al-Toraifi said.

Prince Sultan has appointed his son, Khaled, deputy defense minister, and powerful Interior Minister Naif has appointed his son, Muhammad, deputy minister of interior. So there does seem to be some planning going on in the royal family after all," he said.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES August 4, 2005
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20050803-112025-7668r.htm

Saudis to select non-islamist

"I think the government will appoint non-Islamists to balance the municipal councils," Saudi political analyst Adel Al-Toraifi said.
"I think the government did not want to interfere and change anything in the outcome of these elections, as they knew that they could rebalance the outcome when they appointed the other halves of all the councils," he added.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20050425-093841-5129r.htm
http://saudielection.com/en/vb303/showthread.php?t=213&goto=nextoldest

Saudis act to ensure calm after king's death
However, Adel Al-Toraifi, a writer and political analyst in the capital, Riyadh, said he did not believe that women would be allowed to drive or vote in the next five years.
Such a change of policy would risk antagonising the ultra-conservatives, whose support of the royal family has been crucial to the longevity of their rule.
Wednesday 17 August 2005
Telegraph Group Limited
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/02/wfahd02.xml

Saudis Give Insurgents a Month to Surrender
Los Angeles Times/June 24, 2004
"The government fights in a religious way because they don't want to lose their legitimacy," said Adel Toraifi, a Saudi researcher and writer who specializes in militant movements. "The difference is so slight between the government and the terrorists, so they can return to society without major problems."

Abdullah pardons activists, lawyer
August 9, 2005
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
"The release of the three reformists was the right thing to do," said Riyadh-based political analyst Adel Al-Toraifi. "It will show those released that there is a new environment of change".

In Saudi Arabia, fresh recruits for Al Qaeda

"The picture the authorities had of Al Qaeda's strength in Saudi Arabia was not accurate. They have more sympathizers and fighters than they thought, and their language of violence continues to find takers here and support among a segment of Saudi society that shares the common religious ideology of Wahhabism," says Adel al-Toraifi, a columnist at the newspaper Al Watan.

"The problem is that we're not dealing with the extremist thought that makes these men fertile ground for the call to violence; we're only dealing with the violence," says Mr. Toraifi.
April 16, 2004 edition Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0416/p06s02-wome.html

Saudi Arabia: Vanishing Ink

In an Al-Watan op-ed (Aug. 6), Adel Zayd al-Tarifi focused on financial support for terrorism. “Money transfers were happening prior to Sept. 11 even in the United States itself before such problems were detected in other countries such as Saudi Arabia,” he said. “And terrorist organizations benefited from charity activities in Saudi Arabia…under a curtain of misrepresentation [of themselves].”

Worldpress.org

http://www.worldpress.org/print_article.cfm?article_id=1620&dont=yes

Al Qaeda terror riles Saudi public
"This is the third-generation of Al Qaeda fighters, and a lot of their leadership has been killed," says analyst Adel al-Toraifi, who follows the group closely. "There are fewer people to lead attacks."
"The following period could be more dangerous if disgruntled or disillusioned young men decide to carry out attacks on their own," says Toraifi.
June 21, 2004 edition

washingtonpost.com
Al Qaeda's Return Revives Iraq Debate
Fatal Bombings Also Trigger Saudi Soul-Searching
washingtonpost.com Staff
Thursday, May 15, 2003Saudi columnist Adel Zaid Al-Tarifi, writing in Al-Watan, a pro-government daily, says the problem is the Saudi educational system.
"The jihad groups find ideological cover in the religious message spread by the mosques and schools. . . . Some fatwas [religious edicts] justified September 11; other fatwas depicted these events as 'blessed [Islamic] raids.' .. .Many of the pulpits of education, such as the school, the home, and the mosque, need reform today. Anyone who wants to attribute what happened to economic or psychological conditions is missing the truth."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59219-2003May15?language=printer

Saudi Spinning

In the daily al-Watan, immediately after the bombings, 'Adel Zaid Al-Tarifi wrote: "Jihad groups find ideological cover in the religious message spread by the mosques and schools . . . Fatwas, for example, that are issued by the leaders of the Jihad stream . . . have inflamed the emotions of many and provided a . . . basis for these acts. . . . During the Afghan and Iraq wars, the Fatwas sent many wretched young men to the hopeless battlefield. . . . The important question is this: What must be done? Many of the pulpits of education, such as the school, the home, and the mosque, need reform today . . . What can be done with people who think that anyone who does not agree with their fundamentalist path deviates from the path of righteousness? These events are not newborn in our society, as some would like to present them."
05/16/2003
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Saudi Press: Initial Reactions to the Riyadh Bombings
Calls for Self-Examination
Following the bombings in Riyadh, some articles in the Saudi press called for criticism and reform of Saudi society. Columnist 'Adel Zaid Al-Tarifi wrote: "...What many of the official sheikhs and columnists - who do not awaken until a catastrophe occurs - say about the phenomenon is inappropriate, and does not deal with the real causes and roots of the ideology of Jihad and of accusing [others] of heresy. They suffice by describing what took place as an imported ideology, and ignore the roots imprinted in our culture... Our religious message includes many phenomena of religious extremism. A quick glance at the Friday sermons in the mosques or at the Fatwas can attest to this..."
"The Jihad groups find ideological cover in the religious message spread by the mosques and schools... But even if we set aside the main reasons why the Jihad stream was formed, there are many other, selfish reasons... The Fatwas, for example, that are issued by the leaders of the Jihad stream, and even by the sheikhs of the Islamic awakening [stream] in the past two years, have inflamed the emotions of many and provided a legitimate basis for these acts. Some Fatwas justified September 11; other Fatwas depicted these events as 'blessed [Islamic] raids.' During the Afghan and Iraq wars, the Fatwas sent many wretched young men to the hopeless battlefield..."
"The important question is this: What must be done? Many of the pulpits of education, such as the school, the home, and the mosque, need reform today. Anyone who wants to attribute what happened to economic or psychological conditions is missing the truth. These conditions can account for the behavior of criminals, but cannot account for a terror event based on religious belief. Religious terror cannot be contained, because it is part of the religious belief of those who carry it out. What can be done with people who think that anyone who does not agree with their fundamentalist path deviates from the path of righteousness? Those who carry out these deeds are not victims, but criminals..."
"These events are not newborn in our society, as some would like to present them. It is enough to mention the bombings of 1996, and of 1997. Reactions to these events were diverse. What is important regarding this most recent event is that it must not push us towards further religious extremism, as has happened in the past. Further religious extremism will lead us to a 'Saudi Manhattan.'"
"I wrote this article a day before the three bombings [and following the arrest of an Al Qa'ida cell in Saudi Arabia about a week ago], and I am sorry to say that the Saudi Manhattan has indeed happened."(
Special Dispatch, 15. Mai 2003
http://www.memri.de/uebersetzungen_analysen/laender/persischer_golf/saudi_riyadh_15_05_03.html

November 2003, pages 19-20
washingtonpost.com
Special Report
Who's Hiding What? Saudi Arabia and the Missing 28 Pages
Writing in al-Watan Aug. 6, Adel Zayd al-Tarifi pointed to Al-Bayoumi as another example of political spin, in part because he already had been interviewed before his return to Saudi Arabia from the U.S. In his al-Watan op-ed, al-Musa argued that it seemed suspicious that U.S. intelligence agencies trumped up Al-Bayoumi, when these very same agencies had released him and sent him back to Saudi Arabia with a plane ticket they had provided.
Argued Al-Tarifi in his al-Watan op-ed, "the issue of [rectifying] the funding of terrorism is dependent on a number of necessary supervisory controls over finances; money transfers were happening prior to Sept. 11 even in the U.S. itself before such problems were detected in other countries such as Saudi Arabia. And terrorist organizations benefited from charity activities in Saudi Arabia…under a curtain of misrepresentation [of themselves]."
As al-Tarifi summarized, if a country with very efficient administrative and security institutions such as the U.S. couldn't detect terrorist activities before the events of Sept. 11, then Saudi Arabia had no hope of doing so.
Finally, as al-Tarifi pointed out, the importance of this latest crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations over the missing 28 pages is that it is a matter of "reputation." Even if Saudi officials continue to maintain close ties with the White House and those government officials not politically motivated, he argued, Saudi Arabians are losing in the realm of American public opinion, and they need to reach out more and "explain themselves" better.
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/November_2003/0311019.html

NYtimes.com
March 7, 2004
The Jihadi Who Kept Asking Why
But Mansour is in a category of his own. As Adel al-Toraifi, a political-science student and friend of Mansour's, told me, ''Mansour has personally experienced almost every role in modern Saudi society'' -- from his painful childhood, to his long history with Islamic scholarship, to his experience as an extremist and his political reformation. ''So if you want to understand this period of transition in Saudi Arabia, and the debates about reform, you must study Mansour.''
As Adel al-Toraifi, Mansour's close friend explained, Mansour didn't change because he wanted music and wine and women. ''There is no politics in Mansour,'' he said. ''He didn't change because he found a new ideology. He changed from thinking deep inside Islam.''
Intellectuals and reformists in Saudi Arabia have now examined this Salafiyya movement and used these young radicals as examples to set forth a theory that traces the lineage of today's terrorists back to the early 20th century ''Brothers'' -- Bedouin tribesmen who embraced a Wahhabi revivalism so ferocious they were happy to die killing or converting other tribes as they conquered the peninsula. All Saudis know the story's ending: the Brothers revolted against the king who'd breathed life into them, and he slaughtered most of them. But in the 80's, the royal family resurrected the spirit of those ''Brothers'' during the ''Islamic Awakening,'' and exploited the resulting Salafiyya movement to spread Wahhabism around the world through mosques and Koranic schools and jihad. ''The famous leaders of the foreign jihadi groups in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Bosnia were Saudi,'' Adel al-Toraifi maintained. Bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri ''depends on fatwas from Wahhabi ideology. We must be honest. Wahhabism was a creator of violence since the beginning of its history.'' Yesterday's pious heroes are today's terrorists.
As unfathomable as it may be given the horrific events of Sept. 11, many Saudis -- even those who are progressive -- feel an ambivalent sympathy for this jihadi generation left over from Afghanistan -- militants, not unlike the Vietnam veterans, who have been hung out to dry by their government, unable to readjust to civilian life and left to stew in their habits of violence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/magazine/07SAUDIS.html

altoraifi

2005-05-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

altoraifi

An Echo in the Funerals at Dusk

2005-04-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

Adel Al-Toraifi,
Arab News — 24, February, 2005

In one of his darker poems Khalil Hawi wrote:
How heavy is the shame,
Do I bear it alone?
Am I the only one to cover my face with ashes?
The funerals that the morning announces
Echo in the funerals at dusk.
There is nothing over the horizon,
Save for the smoke of black embers.
Hawi, a poet of renown and professor at the American University of Beirut, killed himself in the late evening of June 6, 1982, at the age of sixty, on the balcony of his home in west Beirut. He had picked a dramatic occasion for his death: Early in the day Israeli armored vehicles had barreled into Lebanon. “Where are the Arabs?” Hawi had asked his colleagues on the university campus before he went to shoot himself.
The story of Hawi comes back to haunt us as we confront the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri last week, not only because both men died at the age of sixty, but also for their loyalty to their country and in the way they died.
It’s difficult to imagine how some people could pay such a high price for their dreams of peace and dignity. But in countries of much sectarianism like Lebanon, political ambitions, even those which are for the nation’s benefit, are always dangerous.
Lebanon is a classical example of Middle Eastern identity problems and Beirut is not just another Middle Eastern city, but a city of great demands. The long line of politicians and nationalists who risked themselves for its sake reflects such demands. Somehow, Hawi and Hariri would be perceived distinctively because neither of them wanted to sacrifice their fellow Lebanese for their own goals; instead they sacrificed themselves.
The devastating Civil War years, from 1975 to 1990, killed more than 44,000, leaving about 180,000 wounded; many thousands more were displaced or left homeless or emigrated. Much of the once-magnificent city of Beirut was reduced to rubble and the town divided into Muslim and Christian sectors, separated by the so-called Green Line.
Driven by Saudi efforts at reconciliation, the Lebanese came together to sign the Taif Agreement in 1989, after several rounds of failed cease-fires. The agreement has been the common political ground until now for Lebanon’s stability. Similar to a special regime created by the French in 1861, it provided a framework of peace, security and good government. It also allowed the rapid development and reconstruction of the present Lebanese Republic, although the interpretation of that agreement has varied among Lebanese politicians in the past decade.
Hariri, who played such an extraordinary role in the preparation of the Taif Agreement, was prime minister for 10 of the 15 years since the end of the civil war and was the driving force behind the massive multibillion dollar reconstruction program there. His last term in office, which ended with his resignation last October, was marred by a cold relationship with Syria.
The great wellspring of goodwill following the first years of the reconstruction had parried the contentions of the civil war.
But what seemed to be a smooth transition to unity revealed a growing controversy in the act of extending pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud’s term in office by a further three years last September.
It’s the first time that the Taif Agreement would be used by both pro-Syrian politicians and the opposition to bolster their positions. The roots of the conditions that may have influenced the assassination of Hariri date back to the year 2000 when Hikmat Shihabi, the Syrian military chief-of-staff and a great ally of Walid Jumblatt, the famous Druze leader, was accused of earning millions of dollars from Syrian purchases of Soviet-built arms during the 1980s.
Jumblatt, who had worked with the Syrians as an ally since the early 1980s, later felt deserted by the Syrians and began forging electoral alliances with the Christian Kata’ib and National Bloc parties and negotiated a “political charter” with the Maronite leader Amin Gemayel, who had returned to the country in July 2004. Moreover, he began calling for a “correction” of Syrian-Lebanese ties and condemned Syrian interference in the political process.
This move of Jumblatt, who now leads the opposition, is not as innocent as it seems. Regardless of the true intentions of those leading the opposition, the important thing is that it was motivated by genuine public disappointment in the current Lebanese situation.
The Lebanese state in the post-Taif era had become over-influenced by Syrian intervention in local politics. This involvement was accepted to some extent after the war. But continued Syrian influence reached an annoying level in the growing democratic system in Lebanon, forcing the emergence of a police state.
Under international pressure, the United States and France tabled a United Nations resolution last September against Syria. The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1559 which calls on Syria to cease intervening in Lebanese internal politics, withdraw from Lebanon, and for the disbanding of all Lebanese militias.
How is Syria reacting to this international pressure?
Unfortunately, Syria is trying to react to the recent public criticism in Lebanon and international pressure with the same old policy: Forging alliances with unpopular Lebanese politicians; depending on Hezbollah’s power, which is loyal, to minimize the current opposition, and finally by trying to create a negative image regarding the American and French backing of the resolution by describing it as a pro-Israeli move.
What Syria is really missing here is a sense of the great disappointment among the Lebanese. The regional Arab reaction is not far from the international one. The Gulf foreign ministerial council called on Syria last September to adopt the UN resolution.
Marwan Al-Moashar, Jordan’s foreign minister, warned Syria and the Lebanese regime of negative consequences if they neglected the Security Council resolution. Even Hezbollah will not risk its power to stand in the way of a rising nation that is calling for actual independence.
History shows that much failure befalls those leaders who miss seeing the right time of to withdraw. Victories in politics are not simply measured by how many lands are conquered or wars won, but by minimizing the losses.
The big anti-Syrian demonstration called by the opposition and held this week in Beirut, shows that the Lebanese have reached for the first time a higher stage of national unity. This popular will and its outcome shall undoubtedly determine and influence the path of democratic reform in the region.
If Hawi was alive today with no doubt he would have said: “Why don’t the Arabs leave us alone?”
— Adel Al-Toraifi is a Saudi writer and political commentator based in Riyadh. He can be reached at: altoraifi@yahoo.com.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily
Thursday, 24, February, 2005 (15, Muharram, 1426)

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=59470&d=24&m=2&y=2005&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion

The Young slaughters & Victims of contemporary Jihad

2005-04-15T06:16:00.000-07:00

Adel Al Toraifi*

arabnews, Thursday, 7, April, 2005 (27, Safar, 1426)

ACCORDING to a BBC report last week, the number of civilian casualties as a result of the ongoing violence in Iraq since July 2004, has spiraled to 3,274. Although official figures are not available, some sources such as Iraqbodycount.net, run by academics and peace activists, estimate some 19,696 civilian casualties. To be fair, however, we must not forget the Iraqi soldiers who have died in their efforts to secure, and also to spread, democracy in Iraq. We are left with a total of 25,000 Iraqis killed by either former Baathist rebels or the jihad group led by Ayman Al-Zarqawi.
Nothing can be compared to what happened last month in Hilla. The Al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility for the deaths of at least 124 people when a massive car bomb exploded in the worst incident since the US-led invasion nearly two years ago. The coverage of this massacre in the Arab media was poor in general and rather sketchy. No clear condemnation of the act was heard from Arab nations. Its not that they supported or justified it, but it was merely a matter of neglecting the misery of others as long as it didn’t affect them. If this tragedy had happened in Palestine, for example, then the Arab reaction would have been overwheming. And yet, Arabs wonder why their grievances don’t receive the attention of others!
Iraqi officials recently announced that more than 532 jihadi Arabs were arrested while fighting with Iraqi insurgents. Fifty-nine young Saudis were among those accused of terrorist acts against the Iraqi people. Since the collapse of the Baathist regime in April 2003, hundreds of young men have been urged to go fight in Iraq under a widespread call for jihad by some sheikhs who are close to the Salafi-Jihadist movement.
Faris Bin Hizam, an authority on Al-Qaeda, estimates that up to 2,500 Saudis may have gone to fight in Iraq. Jihad networks estimate that 120 have been killed up to now. The majority of those killed have come from the Northern and Central Province and 36 from the Eastern Province. A family in Dammam has lost three young members during the ongoing insurgency in Iraq.
The story of Ahmad Abdullah Al-Shayea, a 21-year-old Saudi, who confessed to driving a fuel truck that he blew up, killing 10 Iraqis last December, shows the degree of misguidance and delusion that has led some young Saudis into such pointless violence.
Many sources have confirmed the Syrian role in the training and smuggling of these jihadis from Syria into Iraq. After harsh international criticism of Syria, more than 120 jihadis from the Gulf were arrested by Syrian authorities, some of whom were sent back to their countries. One of them, Abo Hamza Al-Tabukee, a famous Salafi-Jihadi member, was arrested with a 20-year-old Saudi last year.
The numbers of those arrested before they were able to get to Iraq is not known, but many sheikhs are working hard to convince those jihadis in prison to change their ideology. Some of the young men refuse to listen since they argue that they are following the call of jihad as written in the Qur’an and the Prophet’s Hadith.
When the war began in Iraq along with the accompanying call for jihad, the feeling of danger was not felt until Al-Qaeda began attacks in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi security forces found during their efforts to stop terrorism in the country was the fact that some Al-Qaeda members tried to hide their presence in this country by claiming to have been killed in Iraq.
The jihad scheme in general, which developed in the Islamic world during the last third of the twentieth century, has caused drastic changes in thought and ideology. Upon the collapse of communism and the resurgence of Islamic ideology, jihad as a fundamental concept became the number one method of salvation to overcome the weakness felt by Muslim nations. The so-called jihad scheme actually has several names, and irrespective of the countries that the jihadis are coming from, the ideological methodology is almost the same. It is obvious that some of the countries have been pushed and were reluctantly involved in the scheme in one way or another. Their mistakes in doing so have generally produced the present dilemma. The Al-Qaeda Battar training camp that was discovered by security forces outside Riyadh was set up more than a year ago around the same time as the beginning of the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia. The Battar camp focused and fed on the numerous disturbances and tensions related to geography, history, and thought in the Islamic world.
A month ago I visited Al-Rass, in northern Al-Qassim, where I spoke to very promising young minds that had shifted from their Islamic ideological background (Al Sahwa) to a moderate type of Islam. This transformation had been influenced by their reading modern political thoughts written by liberal Arab intellectuals.
Political Islamic thought and classical Salafi preachers were the reason why a lot of young Saudis ended up as killers in Allah’s name.
In a very religious and intolerant environment, it is simple to change a young man from a state of emptiness into a killing machine. I couldn’t imagine during my visit that Al-Rass’ tranquility could be shattered for more than three days by dangerous terrorists similar in age to those I spoke to.
The eighteen young Saudis involved in the deadly confrontation that began last Sunday are considered terrorists by most people, but they are also victims of the deadly ideology of jihad. The challenge of saving the hopes of the young Saudi generation is difficult, but without promoting openness and religious tolerance, the young generation will face a horrible risk before they can join in the global hopes and dreams of a better future.

Saudi Writer
altoraifi@yahoo.com

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=61735&d=7&m=4&y=2005