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In the shambles that is the Maronite leadership, Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir has over the years been a beacon on the matter of Lebanon’s sovereignty. His inflexibility has served the country well, and this was demonstrated again in the blunt remarks he made this week on Hizbullah’s weapons. However, Sfeir made two other statements that showed that his inflexibility can be a double-edged sword, and that Maronites may suffer in consequence.
On Tuesday, both in Bkirki and later on after visiting with President Michel Suleiman in Baabda, Sfeir repeated that he did not see any possible coexistence between the state and Hizbullah, or more precisely between a sovereign national army and Hizbullah’s militia. Only a national army, he insisted, was entitled to defend the country. “Is it possible that there be a regular army and another army outside the legality [of the state] which one day points its weapons at the enemy, and the other points them toward the interior?” Sfeir asked.
The patriarch was only stating the obvious, which political Lebanon, in its inimitable capacity to sustain mirages, has been carefully ignoring as the government prepares a Cabinet statement legitimizing the existence of Hizbullah’s arms. So loud are the voices supporting counterfeit concord, that Sfeir is shouting in a desert. Faced with the impossibility of disarming Hizbullah, the politicians are justifying the party’s retaining its weapons, as if rationalizing an absurdity could make it more reasonable. The patriarch abruptly tore the veneer away.
One could argue that Sfeir enjoys the luxury of criticism because he doesn’t take the hard decisions. Yet there was much more to the patriarch during the latter two decades of the Syrian interregnum than talk. Under considerable threat during that time, isolated amid a craven political class at Syria’s beck and call, Sfeir was the Maronites’ only real leader, a debt that his critics, above all Michel Aoun, never acknowledged, so absorbed were they in their own authority. The patriarch understood that omission could be as powerful as action, and rejected Syrian invitations to Damascus, even as the Syrian-dominated security services found ways to intimidate the church by blackmailing its more corrupt and sensual clergymen.
But right after shattering the jar of complacency on Hizbullah, Sfeir was asked about the abolition of political confessionalism. And here the patriarch fell back into a disposition that showed why, for all his qualities, he is no innovator. He, quite correctly, stated, “What is the advantage of abolishing political confessionalism in [national] texts before doing so in [people’s] minds, if everyone says ‘I’m a Maronite, or a Druze?’” And when asked about Walid Jumblatt’s proposal for a communal rotation of the three presidencies, Sfeir responded that he did not understand it.
Jumblatt’s proposal was intentionally ambiguous. Did the Druze leader mean that all communities would benefit from being rotated into the three top posts in the state, or that the rotation would occur between the Maronites, Sunnis, and Shiites, who already hold those posts? The Taif Accord outlines the abolition of confessionalism, but it does so in parallel with the establishment of a Senate which would retain a sectarian breakdown, and which Jumblatt would like to see led by a Druze.
Sfeir is not a politician, so his evasiveness was defensible. However, his uneasy response showed he was still thinking, in a most conventional way, that the Maronites’ final protection remains the presidency. It’s true, confessionalism cannot be abolished in law before the outlook of the Lebanese is transformed. However, that line of reasoning is self-reinforcing. Unless you abolish confessionalism institutionally somewhere, unless you change laws somewhere, nothing will ever alter the confessional mindset. But what is needed is a gradual, self-sustaining process of change, where you modify texts to help modify minds, in a way that those who feel most threatened by such change find simultaneous compensations, institutional or otherwise, elsewhere.
Take the Senate. Regardless of whether it is headed by a Druze or not, such a body would be a valuable corresponding institution to a deconfessionalized Parliament, and according to Article 22 of the Constitution should address “major national issues.” The aim of a Senate would be to reassure those expected to lose most from deconfessionalization, namely the Christians, who continue to benefit from a 50-50 ratio in the legislature even though they make up less than that in the population. Sooner or later Christians will face challenges to the ratio. Better for them to negotiate a new formula from a position of strength than to obstinately defend a system that, if Sunnis and Shiites ever reach agreement, may be forcibly overturned in their disfavor.
What of Jumblatt’s rotation plan? Sfeir’s mistake, and that of many Christians, is to read too much into a Maronite presidency, whose powers have been depleted. In fact, the presidency has brought only woe to the community. Competition for the post has divided Maronites in a way the prime ministership and speakership of Parliament have not Sunnis and Shiites. The powers of the president are by and large less proactive than those of his Muslim partners. Therefore, why remain so unyielding toward a plan that would give Maronites a taste of political positions often more effective than the presidency, thereby offering them a chance to transcend their sense of communal decline; a plan, also, that might rejuvenate the political order by creating more frequent openings for fresh leaders?
The symbolism of being head of state is important to Maronites, but it is also an illusion. The presidency has power, but on a day-to-day basis, in the formulation of long-term policy, its latitude is more limited. Instead of resisting this, the patriarch, like all Christians, should consider new ways his community can reinvent itself in a Lebanon that is changing rapidly, where Christian irrelevance is, alas, becoming ever more flagrant.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Syria Exports Trouble
Paris, July 14, 2008. On the podium of dignitaries at the bottom of the Champs Élysées one man savors the irony of the moment. He has been invited by President Nicolas Sarkozy to this celebration of Bastille Day, when France commemorates the opening shot in its revolution to end absolutism. Yet for the invitee, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, this is a consecration, the first major sign that his regime's isolation is about to end, and that his brand of absolutist rule is getting stronger.
After the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, in February 2005, Syria, the only credible suspect in the crime, found itself accused and was forced to withdraw its army from Lebanon. Its subsequent rapprochement with Iran widened the rift between Damascus and two major Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. But within three years, Sarkozy, who hoped his efforts would earn France a greater role in the Levant, became the first major Western state to reverse that trend. Assad had surrendered nothing to warrant the embrace.
This has become a Syrian habit. Assad has been getting away with murder, literally. His regime allows foreign jihadists through Syrian territory to carry out attacks in Iraq. Syria has bolstered Hamas's intransigence over a settlement with Israel, and has encouraged the Palestinian Islamist movement to scuttle inter-Palestinian reconciliation. In Lebanon, Syrian meddling has been unrelenting since the pullout of its soldiers, while Assad has armed or allowed the rearming of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, violating U.N. Resolution 1701 that ended the Lebanon war of 2006.
The former U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, once declared that the Bush administration did not seek regime change in Damascus, only "behavior change." It achieved neither, and during his campaign, Barack Obama approved of a dialogue with Syria (and others) "without precondition," a gesture unlikely to alter Assad's behavior.
Today Syria continues to export instability in defense of its regime and interests, and the reality is that no one is doing anything about it--not the United States, the United Nations, the Arab states or the European Union. To Assad's dubious credit, he has positioned his otherwise weak country in a perfect dead spot regionally and internationally, unmolested by any political will to forcibly curtail Syrian misdeeds.
In Iraq, the Syrians have exploited several parallel dynamics--Sunni displeasure with the Shiite-led government, divisions in the Iraqi political elite, and American haste to withdraw--to ensure they have a say in a future Iraq and access to cheap Iraqi oil. Assad's regime, in addition to offering Al-Qaeda militants safe access into Iraq, also hosts Iraqi Baathists under its control. According to an Iraqi security official cited by the Washington Post, Syria allowed Baathists and Al-Qaeda to co-ordinate actions at a meeting held in Zabadani, Syria, last July 30.
Syria has also benefited from Obama's impatience to leave Iraq. Following devastating attacks against Iraqi government targets in Baghdad last August, the administration was markedly tepid when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki publicly blamed Syrian-backed Iraqi Baathists.
American military officials leaked that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was behind the explosions, not Baathists, leaving unmentioned the probability that the militants had entered through Syria. The State Department spokesman also played down the crisis, saying that "diplomatic dialogue was the best means to address the concerns of both parties." The Syrians surely read in that lukewarm reaction Washington's inclination to look the other way on Syrian transgressions, in order to facilitate its drawdown in Iraq.
On the Palestinian front, Assad is striving to achieve what his father, the late Hafez al-Assad, tried for decades to do with mixed results: Hijack the Palestinian card to use in Syria's own negotiations with Israel. Under Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians retained what was known as "the independence of the Palestinian decision." When Arafat died, however, gone was his ability to impose unity on Palestinian ranks, which allowed the Assad regime to gain the leverage it sought through Hamas' leader, Khaled Meshaal, who is based in Damascus. Syrian sway over Palestinian affairs only increased when Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, and subsequently expelled its Fatah rivals from Gaza.
Syria has not only used Hamas against Israel, it has also pushed the movement to thwart Egypt's ability to act as principle Arab mediator between Israelis and Palestinians. Egyptian officials accused Syria of pressing Hamas to undermine Egyptian-led negotiations last year to extend the truce in Gaza. Syria has taken a similar position on inter-Palestinian talks, whose successful outcome would revive Cairo's influence over Palestinian affairs, to Syria's detriment.
This has exacerbated Egyptian-Syrian hostility, even as Saudi Arabia earlier this year patched things up with Damascus in an effort to break Syria away from Iran. The Saudi-Syrian understanding, however, has not affected Assad's close ties with Tehran. Instead, it has handed Syria more latitude to re-impose its will in Beirut. The Saudis believe that one way to contain Hezbollah's power, and therefore Iran's, is to endorse a Syrian resurgence in Lebanon.
The Saudi turnaround vindicated Assad in his view that by destabilizing Lebanon in 2005 and the following years--during which time politicians, journalists, and security officials were assassinated--he managed to get his way. Yet nothing suggests that better Syrian-Saudi relations will end Syria's support for Hezbollah, which neither the Arab world nor the international community has made a condition for normalization with Damascus. On the contrary, since 2006 European states with contingents in the U.N. force in South Lebanon, which is charged with implementing Resolution 1701, have wooed Assad, fearful that his proxies might harm their soldiers.
After Hariri's murder, the U.N. Security Council set up an investigation and later a tribunal to identify the guilty. Almost half a decade later, the process has yet to show results. Assad is confident. Everyone is knocking at his door while Hariri lies forgotten. The Syrian president knows that in a world afflicted with amnesia he can do as he pleases.
After the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, in February 2005, Syria, the only credible suspect in the crime, found itself accused and was forced to withdraw its army from Lebanon. Its subsequent rapprochement with Iran widened the rift between Damascus and two major Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. But within three years, Sarkozy, who hoped his efforts would earn France a greater role in the Levant, became the first major Western state to reverse that trend. Assad had surrendered nothing to warrant the embrace.
This has become a Syrian habit. Assad has been getting away with murder, literally. His regime allows foreign jihadists through Syrian territory to carry out attacks in Iraq. Syria has bolstered Hamas's intransigence over a settlement with Israel, and has encouraged the Palestinian Islamist movement to scuttle inter-Palestinian reconciliation. In Lebanon, Syrian meddling has been unrelenting since the pullout of its soldiers, while Assad has armed or allowed the rearming of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, violating U.N. Resolution 1701 that ended the Lebanon war of 2006.
The former U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, once declared that the Bush administration did not seek regime change in Damascus, only "behavior change." It achieved neither, and during his campaign, Barack Obama approved of a dialogue with Syria (and others) "without precondition," a gesture unlikely to alter Assad's behavior.
Today Syria continues to export instability in defense of its regime and interests, and the reality is that no one is doing anything about it--not the United States, the United Nations, the Arab states or the European Union. To Assad's dubious credit, he has positioned his otherwise weak country in a perfect dead spot regionally and internationally, unmolested by any political will to forcibly curtail Syrian misdeeds.
In Iraq, the Syrians have exploited several parallel dynamics--Sunni displeasure with the Shiite-led government, divisions in the Iraqi political elite, and American haste to withdraw--to ensure they have a say in a future Iraq and access to cheap Iraqi oil. Assad's regime, in addition to offering Al-Qaeda militants safe access into Iraq, also hosts Iraqi Baathists under its control. According to an Iraqi security official cited by the Washington Post, Syria allowed Baathists and Al-Qaeda to co-ordinate actions at a meeting held in Zabadani, Syria, last July 30.
Syria has also benefited from Obama's impatience to leave Iraq. Following devastating attacks against Iraqi government targets in Baghdad last August, the administration was markedly tepid when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki publicly blamed Syrian-backed Iraqi Baathists.
American military officials leaked that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was behind the explosions, not Baathists, leaving unmentioned the probability that the militants had entered through Syria. The State Department spokesman also played down the crisis, saying that "diplomatic dialogue was the best means to address the concerns of both parties." The Syrians surely read in that lukewarm reaction Washington's inclination to look the other way on Syrian transgressions, in order to facilitate its drawdown in Iraq.
On the Palestinian front, Assad is striving to achieve what his father, the late Hafez al-Assad, tried for decades to do with mixed results: Hijack the Palestinian card to use in Syria's own negotiations with Israel. Under Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians retained what was known as "the independence of the Palestinian decision." When Arafat died, however, gone was his ability to impose unity on Palestinian ranks, which allowed the Assad regime to gain the leverage it sought through Hamas' leader, Khaled Meshaal, who is based in Damascus. Syrian sway over Palestinian affairs only increased when Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, and subsequently expelled its Fatah rivals from Gaza.
Syria has not only used Hamas against Israel, it has also pushed the movement to thwart Egypt's ability to act as principle Arab mediator between Israelis and Palestinians. Egyptian officials accused Syria of pressing Hamas to undermine Egyptian-led negotiations last year to extend the truce in Gaza. Syria has taken a similar position on inter-Palestinian talks, whose successful outcome would revive Cairo's influence over Palestinian affairs, to Syria's detriment.
This has exacerbated Egyptian-Syrian hostility, even as Saudi Arabia earlier this year patched things up with Damascus in an effort to break Syria away from Iran. The Saudi-Syrian understanding, however, has not affected Assad's close ties with Tehran. Instead, it has handed Syria more latitude to re-impose its will in Beirut. The Saudis believe that one way to contain Hezbollah's power, and therefore Iran's, is to endorse a Syrian resurgence in Lebanon.
The Saudi turnaround vindicated Assad in his view that by destabilizing Lebanon in 2005 and the following years--during which time politicians, journalists, and security officials were assassinated--he managed to get his way. Yet nothing suggests that better Syrian-Saudi relations will end Syria's support for Hezbollah, which neither the Arab world nor the international community has made a condition for normalization with Damascus. On the contrary, since 2006 European states with contingents in the U.N. force in South Lebanon, which is charged with implementing Resolution 1701, have wooed Assad, fearful that his proxies might harm their soldiers.
After Hariri's murder, the U.N. Security Council set up an investigation and later a tribunal to identify the guilty. Almost half a decade later, the process has yet to show results. Assad is confident. Everyone is knocking at his door while Hariri lies forgotten. The Syrian president knows that in a world afflicted with amnesia he can do as he pleases.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Barack and Hassan concur, the US is waning
It’s not often that Barack Obama and Hassan Nasrallah agree, but both made important speeches this week, and both appeared to concur that American power was on the decline.
Of course Obama didn’t quite put it that way. Instead, he merely implied the growing sense of American difficulty, the fact that the United States was “passing through a time of great trial,” which he made more palatable by sandwiching it between words of encouragement and resolve. His speech to West Point cadets on Tuesday was an effort to explain to his countrymen why it was important to send an additional 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. But what remained, despite the soaring rhetoric toward the end of the president’s speech, was the terrible burden all this placed on an America much gloomier than it was decades ago.
Obama chose to highlight domestic American rifts, when he remarked that “years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort.” He drew attention to America’s economic travails by noting that “[i]n the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our neighbors and friends are out of work and struggle to pay the bills. Too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars.”
As for the American enterprise in Afghanistan, the centerpiece of Obama’s speech was that he would actually start withdrawing American soldiers by July 2011. No, the United States would not bankroll an Afghan nation-building project, because (and here the president sounded more like a shopkeeper than a purveyor of global domination) such a scheme “sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost.”
Obama has always prided himself on being a realistic assessor of American limitations. However, listening to Hassan Nasrallah gloat at the weakness of the United States, you had to wonder if the US president misses the point. Power and success are in many respects fruits of perception. Just look at Nasrallah himself, who persuaded many a fool that the hecatomb of 2006 was a divine victory for Lebanon. Modesty in the exercise of foreign policy is a bad idea, particularly for the leader of the world’s most powerful country, whose destabilization, whether we like it or not, only destabilizes the global political and economic order.
No doubt, Obama was walking a fine line in his West Point speech. He had to persuade a skeptical American public, but also a Democratic-led Congress that will have to explain to an uneasy electorate why it must help finance a massive increase in funding for Afghanistan (officially some $30 billion) at a time of economic crisis. However, the president might also want to consider how America is viewed overseas. He’s proud that everyone wishes him well, that everyone applauds George W. Bush’s exit, but as the initial European reaction to Obama’s speech showed, Europe remains stone cold about assisting the United States with more troops of its own. It no longer costs much to tell Washington “No”.
Expect America’s foes in the Middle East to take more advantage of this situation. The Iranian regime, rather visibly, does not believe the Obama administration will attack Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear capability. And Obama’s haste to get out of Iraq, or Afghanistan as soon as he can, like his bellyaches about the economic difficulties facing the republic, exhibit far too little American nerve to frighten Tehran.
In Lebanon, Iraq, and on the Palestinian front, to name only these, the US has also had little to show for itself. The “peace process”, which Obama had described as the centerpiece of his regional considerations, remains hopelessly stalled; the Obama administration is so keen to pull out of Iraq that it has looked the other way while Iran has continued to increase its influence in Baghdad, and while Syria has allowed more Al-Qaeda militants through its borders to murder Iraqi civilians.
As for Lebanon, in the last two years the Americans have seemed off balance. This is in part because their allies have switched sides, with the Saudis effectively approving a Syrian political return to the country and the March 14 majority consequently in disarray. But Washington has also done little to bolster Resolution 1701, which has been eroded thanks to systematic violations by all sides. And the US Embassy in Beirut has sometimes seemed more preoccupied with development projects than with Lebanon’s role in the regional rivalry between the US and Iran.
Obama’s caution is defensible in some regards. War alone cannot be the benchmark of American power. Nothing would do more to harm the US than for it to sink itself into myriad conflicts it cannot win outright. In some ways, however, Obama failed to pick up on that lesson in the political realm, making ambitious promises concerning several complex Middle Eastern issues, without setting clear priorities, so that today, with little progress evident in any of them, the president stands discredited.
The mounting perception of American weakness will, arguably, be the most destabilizing factor in the Middle East in the coming years. It will alarm Washington’s allies and empower its foes, and Barack Obama’s stiff-upper-lip displays of candor, his persistent enunciation of American inadequacies, will only make things worse. Power may be a source of great evil, but not nearly as much as a power vacuum.
Of course Obama didn’t quite put it that way. Instead, he merely implied the growing sense of American difficulty, the fact that the United States was “passing through a time of great trial,” which he made more palatable by sandwiching it between words of encouragement and resolve. His speech to West Point cadets on Tuesday was an effort to explain to his countrymen why it was important to send an additional 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. But what remained, despite the soaring rhetoric toward the end of the president’s speech, was the terrible burden all this placed on an America much gloomier than it was decades ago.
Obama chose to highlight domestic American rifts, when he remarked that “years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort.” He drew attention to America’s economic travails by noting that “[i]n the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our neighbors and friends are out of work and struggle to pay the bills. Too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars.”
As for the American enterprise in Afghanistan, the centerpiece of Obama’s speech was that he would actually start withdrawing American soldiers by July 2011. No, the United States would not bankroll an Afghan nation-building project, because (and here the president sounded more like a shopkeeper than a purveyor of global domination) such a scheme “sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost.”
Obama has always prided himself on being a realistic assessor of American limitations. However, listening to Hassan Nasrallah gloat at the weakness of the United States, you had to wonder if the US president misses the point. Power and success are in many respects fruits of perception. Just look at Nasrallah himself, who persuaded many a fool that the hecatomb of 2006 was a divine victory for Lebanon. Modesty in the exercise of foreign policy is a bad idea, particularly for the leader of the world’s most powerful country, whose destabilization, whether we like it or not, only destabilizes the global political and economic order.
No doubt, Obama was walking a fine line in his West Point speech. He had to persuade a skeptical American public, but also a Democratic-led Congress that will have to explain to an uneasy electorate why it must help finance a massive increase in funding for Afghanistan (officially some $30 billion) at a time of economic crisis. However, the president might also want to consider how America is viewed overseas. He’s proud that everyone wishes him well, that everyone applauds George W. Bush’s exit, but as the initial European reaction to Obama’s speech showed, Europe remains stone cold about assisting the United States with more troops of its own. It no longer costs much to tell Washington “No”.
Expect America’s foes in the Middle East to take more advantage of this situation. The Iranian regime, rather visibly, does not believe the Obama administration will attack Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear capability. And Obama’s haste to get out of Iraq, or Afghanistan as soon as he can, like his bellyaches about the economic difficulties facing the republic, exhibit far too little American nerve to frighten Tehran.
In Lebanon, Iraq, and on the Palestinian front, to name only these, the US has also had little to show for itself. The “peace process”, which Obama had described as the centerpiece of his regional considerations, remains hopelessly stalled; the Obama administration is so keen to pull out of Iraq that it has looked the other way while Iran has continued to increase its influence in Baghdad, and while Syria has allowed more Al-Qaeda militants through its borders to murder Iraqi civilians.
As for Lebanon, in the last two years the Americans have seemed off balance. This is in part because their allies have switched sides, with the Saudis effectively approving a Syrian political return to the country and the March 14 majority consequently in disarray. But Washington has also done little to bolster Resolution 1701, which has been eroded thanks to systematic violations by all sides. And the US Embassy in Beirut has sometimes seemed more preoccupied with development projects than with Lebanon’s role in the regional rivalry between the US and Iran.
Obama’s caution is defensible in some regards. War alone cannot be the benchmark of American power. Nothing would do more to harm the US than for it to sink itself into myriad conflicts it cannot win outright. In some ways, however, Obama failed to pick up on that lesson in the political realm, making ambitious promises concerning several complex Middle Eastern issues, without setting clear priorities, so that today, with little progress evident in any of them, the president stands discredited.
The mounting perception of American weakness will, arguably, be the most destabilizing factor in the Middle East in the coming years. It will alarm Washington’s allies and empower its foes, and Barack Obama’s stiff-upper-lip displays of candor, his persistent enunciation of American inadequacies, will only make things worse. Power may be a source of great evil, but not nearly as much as a power vacuum.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Hizbullah serves us a reheated meal
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech last Monday, outlining Hizbullah’s latest “political document,” was a compendium of positions and interpretations the party had developed over the years. In that sense it offered few surprises. More revealing was that Nasrallah felt he had to make the speech now, recognizing that much has changed in Lebanon since 2005, when Syrian soldiers withdrew from the country and the favorable political environment Hizbullah had benefited from collapsed.
Nothing in the political document suggests that Hizbullah has altered its outlook when it comes to its relationship with the Lebanese state. The party continues to defend its military autonomy, and demands that we all come around to doing the same; it strives to push Lebanon in directions hostile to the United States and even Western Europe; at the center of its preoccupations are the Palestinian cause and the rescue of Jerusalem, casting serious doubt on Hizbullah’s willingness to limit its ambitions to liberating the Lebanese half of Ghajar and the Shebaa farms; and Hizbullah remains especially loyal to Iran, so that “the creation of contradictions with it represents a harming of the self and of Arab issues.”
And yet something has changed when Nasrallah feels the need to issue a second document on Hizbullah’s worldview to the Lebanese public (the first being the party’s Open Letter of 1985, announcing its political program). The party’s “Lebanonization” will never amount to much for as long as Hizbullah rejects the premises of sovereign Lebanese statehood. However, there can be no doubt that after 2005 Hizbullah was forced to contend much more with Lebanon, for whose domestic political ways and byways Nasrallah had expressed such contempt before that time, when Syrian cover gave him the luxury of focusing on his conflict with Israel.
Hizbullah’s record when it comes to Lebanon has been much more mediocre than Nasrallah cared to admit. It was amusing to hear the secretary general mentioning the need to respect Lebanon’s consociational system, just after his denunciation of sectarianism, perhaps because Hizbullah has systematically violated the rules of consociationalism and remains among the most sectarian of organizations. But that inconsistency helped better to explain why Hizbullah’s “rediscovery” of Lebanon after 2005 proved such a failure.
Over the past year, there has been much hand-wringing, particularly in the March 14 camp, that the May 2008 military onslaught of Hizbullah represented some sort of a victory. The view is simplistic. The offensive did substantiate that the party would resort to arms when its interests were at risk, but the long-term costs of that undertaking were prohibitive, and continue to rise. Hizbullah gained a blocking third in the Cabinet, and it did get the election law it wanted. However, neither brought the party very much. The impact of the blocking third was significant symbolically, but otherwise its repercussions were contained, while the election law did not produce an opposition victory last June as Hizbullah had hoped.
On the negative side, Hizbullah’s takeover of western Beirut highlighted its limitations. It showed the party could not afford to act against Christian areas, and that its capacity to hold hostage predominantly Sunni neighborhoods was limited in time. For its efforts, Hizbullah earned undying Sunni animosity, confirming it could only really get its way by resorting to its guns, undermining Nasrallah’s earlier claim that he would not turn his weapons on the Lebanese. Worse, Sunni anger and rising Christian doubts, expressed in the parliamentary elections, established that there no longer was a national consensus behind the “resistance.” Nasrallah’s credibility remains only as good as his threats.
Nasrallah’s need to submit his program to the Lebanese may have been surreptitious recognition of the setbacks brought about by the May confrontation. By communicating with his countrymen, the secretary general perhaps sought to publicly acknowledge that, somewhere, he had to be more transparent about his aims, more willing to address Lebanese society on equal terms, transcending the violence of the past.
But if that was indeed Nasrallah’s objective, his message all but neutralized it. Rather than being an instrument of interchange, Hizbullah’s document is a hypocritical effort to conceal that the party has every intention of imposing its priorities on Lebanon, regardless of what anyone else wants. The national dialogue over Hizbullah’s weapons will remain a sham. Nasrallah’s vision of a “state of resistance,” with Hizbullah as its vanguard, will continue to generate great tension, since a sovereign state and a sovereign militia cannot coexist. By reciting from his old song book, Nasrallah betrayed that for all his purported willingness to communicate, his preferred communication method is the monologue.
The secretary general will not persuade very many people to get over Hizbullah’s actions in 2005 and afterward. Most Lebanese will not soon overcome their suspicions of Hizbullah’s role in the assassination of Rafik Hariri and several others, regardless of whether the party is guilty. Few will forget Nasrallah’s speech on March 8, 2005, in defense of Syria, then and now the only serious culprit in the former prime minister’s killing. Few will soon forget the 2006 war, with its devastating consequences amid vacant exclamations of a divine victory; and even fewer can fail to grasp that the next war will be far worse, because Nasrallah’s vision, as outlined in his party’s latest document, only guarantees this.
In that light, the Nasrallah speech, like the document he read, has only heightened the contradictions in Lebanese society. Hizbullah realizes that the partial Syrian return to Lebanon, facilitated by Saudi Arabia, may restrict the party’s ability to maneuver in the way that it had been able to do until recently. Nasrallah’s effort to anchor himself better in the Lebanese political reality may be, in part, an effort to widen its political latitude with regard to Damascus, even as Hizbullah remains Syria’s main tool of intimidation in Lebanon. However, that only confirms the inconsistencies at the heart of Nasrallah’s reasoning.
We were waiting for something new on Monday; instead Nasrallah merely reheated yesterday’s meal. This demonstrated that Hizbullah is in more of a bind than it will disclose, devoid of fresh ideas. They’re here and we’re here, and for Lebanon’s misfortune only one of us can come out on top.
Nothing in the political document suggests that Hizbullah has altered its outlook when it comes to its relationship with the Lebanese state. The party continues to defend its military autonomy, and demands that we all come around to doing the same; it strives to push Lebanon in directions hostile to the United States and even Western Europe; at the center of its preoccupations are the Palestinian cause and the rescue of Jerusalem, casting serious doubt on Hizbullah’s willingness to limit its ambitions to liberating the Lebanese half of Ghajar and the Shebaa farms; and Hizbullah remains especially loyal to Iran, so that “the creation of contradictions with it represents a harming of the self and of Arab issues.”
And yet something has changed when Nasrallah feels the need to issue a second document on Hizbullah’s worldview to the Lebanese public (the first being the party’s Open Letter of 1985, announcing its political program). The party’s “Lebanonization” will never amount to much for as long as Hizbullah rejects the premises of sovereign Lebanese statehood. However, there can be no doubt that after 2005 Hizbullah was forced to contend much more with Lebanon, for whose domestic political ways and byways Nasrallah had expressed such contempt before that time, when Syrian cover gave him the luxury of focusing on his conflict with Israel.
Hizbullah’s record when it comes to Lebanon has been much more mediocre than Nasrallah cared to admit. It was amusing to hear the secretary general mentioning the need to respect Lebanon’s consociational system, just after his denunciation of sectarianism, perhaps because Hizbullah has systematically violated the rules of consociationalism and remains among the most sectarian of organizations. But that inconsistency helped better to explain why Hizbullah’s “rediscovery” of Lebanon after 2005 proved such a failure.
Over the past year, there has been much hand-wringing, particularly in the March 14 camp, that the May 2008 military onslaught of Hizbullah represented some sort of a victory. The view is simplistic. The offensive did substantiate that the party would resort to arms when its interests were at risk, but the long-term costs of that undertaking were prohibitive, and continue to rise. Hizbullah gained a blocking third in the Cabinet, and it did get the election law it wanted. However, neither brought the party very much. The impact of the blocking third was significant symbolically, but otherwise its repercussions were contained, while the election law did not produce an opposition victory last June as Hizbullah had hoped.
On the negative side, Hizbullah’s takeover of western Beirut highlighted its limitations. It showed the party could not afford to act against Christian areas, and that its capacity to hold hostage predominantly Sunni neighborhoods was limited in time. For its efforts, Hizbullah earned undying Sunni animosity, confirming it could only really get its way by resorting to its guns, undermining Nasrallah’s earlier claim that he would not turn his weapons on the Lebanese. Worse, Sunni anger and rising Christian doubts, expressed in the parliamentary elections, established that there no longer was a national consensus behind the “resistance.” Nasrallah’s credibility remains only as good as his threats.
Nasrallah’s need to submit his program to the Lebanese may have been surreptitious recognition of the setbacks brought about by the May confrontation. By communicating with his countrymen, the secretary general perhaps sought to publicly acknowledge that, somewhere, he had to be more transparent about his aims, more willing to address Lebanese society on equal terms, transcending the violence of the past.
But if that was indeed Nasrallah’s objective, his message all but neutralized it. Rather than being an instrument of interchange, Hizbullah’s document is a hypocritical effort to conceal that the party has every intention of imposing its priorities on Lebanon, regardless of what anyone else wants. The national dialogue over Hizbullah’s weapons will remain a sham. Nasrallah’s vision of a “state of resistance,” with Hizbullah as its vanguard, will continue to generate great tension, since a sovereign state and a sovereign militia cannot coexist. By reciting from his old song book, Nasrallah betrayed that for all his purported willingness to communicate, his preferred communication method is the monologue.
The secretary general will not persuade very many people to get over Hizbullah’s actions in 2005 and afterward. Most Lebanese will not soon overcome their suspicions of Hizbullah’s role in the assassination of Rafik Hariri and several others, regardless of whether the party is guilty. Few will forget Nasrallah’s speech on March 8, 2005, in defense of Syria, then and now the only serious culprit in the former prime minister’s killing. Few will soon forget the 2006 war, with its devastating consequences amid vacant exclamations of a divine victory; and even fewer can fail to grasp that the next war will be far worse, because Nasrallah’s vision, as outlined in his party’s latest document, only guarantees this.
In that light, the Nasrallah speech, like the document he read, has only heightened the contradictions in Lebanese society. Hizbullah realizes that the partial Syrian return to Lebanon, facilitated by Saudi Arabia, may restrict the party’s ability to maneuver in the way that it had been able to do until recently. Nasrallah’s effort to anchor himself better in the Lebanese political reality may be, in part, an effort to widen its political latitude with regard to Damascus, even as Hizbullah remains Syria’s main tool of intimidation in Lebanon. However, that only confirms the inconsistencies at the heart of Nasrallah’s reasoning.
We were waiting for something new on Monday; instead Nasrallah merely reheated yesterday’s meal. This demonstrated that Hizbullah is in more of a bind than it will disclose, devoid of fresh ideas. They’re here and we’re here, and for Lebanon’s misfortune only one of us can come out on top.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Permanent government, Lebanese style
The most amusing thing that happened last week was the doubt surrounding the future of the interior minister, Ziad Baroud, following his dispute with the director general of the Internal Security Forces, Ashraf Rifi. Some gullible souls actually worried that Baroud might resign.
The amusement came not from that fact that Baroud, competent and ambitious, was never likely to engage in such a career-ending move, but that even if he had decided to resign, it would have taken about half a dozen foreign governments to approve it.
That’s because our government “made in Lebanon” was really the child of a thousand fathers. There were, of course, the Americans and the French, but also the Saudis, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Turks, and to a lesser extent the Egyptians and the Qataris. So for Baroud, or anyone else, to walk out on his or her colleagues would reopen the infernal bazaar to new bargaining, until the international constellation of forces again aligns.
When in doubt, listen to Walid Jumblatt. The Druze leader recently remarked on Al-Manar television that he expected the current government to remain in place until the next parliamentary elections, in 2013. That seems an awful long time, particularly for so uninspiring a crew, but what Jumblatt was really saying was that the regional agreement over Lebanon would impose such stalemate.
In light of this, we’re entitled to reflect for a moment what the Independence Intifada of 2005 really brought us. It certainly didn’t provoke an intifada; or rather while it did force Syria to withdraw its soldiers, it failed to change the old order or push Lebanon into a durable phase of emancipation and sovereignty. On the contrary, instead of being tossed around by one state, Syria, the country’s future is now being decided by several states, few of which much care for each other.
However, as disappointing as this situation may appear when placed against the backdrop of the high ambitions almost five years ago, it does provide advantages. In the end, many fathers are better than one, particularly when that one father happened to be Bashar al-Assad.
Between 2004 and 2006, Lebanon benefited from a series of United Nations decisions that effectively placed the country under a form of international trusteeship. Security Council Resolution 1559 set the stage for the Syrian withdrawal and the disarming of Hezbollah; Resolution 1595 initiated an international investigation of Rafik al-Hariri’s assassination; and Resolution 1701 created a mechanism for the pacification of southern Lebanon after the 2006 July War.
That framework has been gradually eroded over the years. Hezbollah has resisted disarming, while the Lebanese political class, including leading members of the majority, has covered that refusal. The Hariri investigation has now become a tribunal, but there continue to be doubts about its outcome, given indications that the investigation stalled under the second commissioner, Serge Brammertz. As for Resolution 1701, it has been violated repeatedly by Hezbollah and Israel, but also Syria and Iran, with no penalties imposed on any of the parties.
Since Lebanon is a regional concern, and who can doubt that it is one, the country would benefit greatly from finding a complementary political framework to that of the United Nations, without abandoning the latter. The main objectives of this new form of trusteeship would be to guard as much as possible against a new war between Hezbollah and Israel, which would be especially devastating; to ensure that Syria does not return militarily to Lebanon, which the Assad regime would do in an instant if the conditions allowed it; and to gradually strengthen the authority of the state at the expense of domestic armed militias, particularly Hezbollah.
Syria and Iran would resist such measures, and in many cases they would do so successfully. However, the upshot of this give-and-take over Lebanon might often be compromises – between what the Saudis, Turks and Egyptians, with American and French support, seek, and what the Syrians and Iranians are willing to give up. These compromises, even if they perpetuate the status quo, might also, in certain ways, limit the ability of the Syrians and the Iranians, with Hezbollah, to bend the system their way, as they have continually tried doing in the past four years.
The reality is that far more states have an interest in stabilizing Lebanon than in destabilizing it, when it is mainly through instability that Syria and Iran sought to impose their preferences on the country in recent years. But Assad will always want more, exclusive control. To resist this, those Lebanese concerned with reinforcing their national sovereignty must think creatively of how to turn to their advantage the regional and international yearning to preserve a peaceful Lebanon.
Once more, Lebanon is the fruit of a convoluted compromise. That doesn’t say much about our ability to shape our own future, but it’s better than being solely a Syrian protectorate. It buys us some time, although it’s up to us, Lebanese, to determine what we do with that time.
The amusement came not from that fact that Baroud, competent and ambitious, was never likely to engage in such a career-ending move, but that even if he had decided to resign, it would have taken about half a dozen foreign governments to approve it.
That’s because our government “made in Lebanon” was really the child of a thousand fathers. There were, of course, the Americans and the French, but also the Saudis, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Turks, and to a lesser extent the Egyptians and the Qataris. So for Baroud, or anyone else, to walk out on his or her colleagues would reopen the infernal bazaar to new bargaining, until the international constellation of forces again aligns.
When in doubt, listen to Walid Jumblatt. The Druze leader recently remarked on Al-Manar television that he expected the current government to remain in place until the next parliamentary elections, in 2013. That seems an awful long time, particularly for so uninspiring a crew, but what Jumblatt was really saying was that the regional agreement over Lebanon would impose such stalemate.
In light of this, we’re entitled to reflect for a moment what the Independence Intifada of 2005 really brought us. It certainly didn’t provoke an intifada; or rather while it did force Syria to withdraw its soldiers, it failed to change the old order or push Lebanon into a durable phase of emancipation and sovereignty. On the contrary, instead of being tossed around by one state, Syria, the country’s future is now being decided by several states, few of which much care for each other.
However, as disappointing as this situation may appear when placed against the backdrop of the high ambitions almost five years ago, it does provide advantages. In the end, many fathers are better than one, particularly when that one father happened to be Bashar al-Assad.
Between 2004 and 2006, Lebanon benefited from a series of United Nations decisions that effectively placed the country under a form of international trusteeship. Security Council Resolution 1559 set the stage for the Syrian withdrawal and the disarming of Hezbollah; Resolution 1595 initiated an international investigation of Rafik al-Hariri’s assassination; and Resolution 1701 created a mechanism for the pacification of southern Lebanon after the 2006 July War.
That framework has been gradually eroded over the years. Hezbollah has resisted disarming, while the Lebanese political class, including leading members of the majority, has covered that refusal. The Hariri investigation has now become a tribunal, but there continue to be doubts about its outcome, given indications that the investigation stalled under the second commissioner, Serge Brammertz. As for Resolution 1701, it has been violated repeatedly by Hezbollah and Israel, but also Syria and Iran, with no penalties imposed on any of the parties.
Since Lebanon is a regional concern, and who can doubt that it is one, the country would benefit greatly from finding a complementary political framework to that of the United Nations, without abandoning the latter. The main objectives of this new form of trusteeship would be to guard as much as possible against a new war between Hezbollah and Israel, which would be especially devastating; to ensure that Syria does not return militarily to Lebanon, which the Assad regime would do in an instant if the conditions allowed it; and to gradually strengthen the authority of the state at the expense of domestic armed militias, particularly Hezbollah.
Syria and Iran would resist such measures, and in many cases they would do so successfully. However, the upshot of this give-and-take over Lebanon might often be compromises – between what the Saudis, Turks and Egyptians, with American and French support, seek, and what the Syrians and Iranians are willing to give up. These compromises, even if they perpetuate the status quo, might also, in certain ways, limit the ability of the Syrians and the Iranians, with Hezbollah, to bend the system their way, as they have continually tried doing in the past four years.
The reality is that far more states have an interest in stabilizing Lebanon than in destabilizing it, when it is mainly through instability that Syria and Iran sought to impose their preferences on the country in recent years. But Assad will always want more, exclusive control. To resist this, those Lebanese concerned with reinforcing their national sovereignty must think creatively of how to turn to their advantage the regional and international yearning to preserve a peaceful Lebanon.
Once more, Lebanon is the fruit of a convoluted compromise. That doesn’t say much about our ability to shape our own future, but it’s better than being solely a Syrian protectorate. It buys us some time, although it’s up to us, Lebanese, to determine what we do with that time.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Obama just can't afford to neglect Iraq
Next week, US President Barack Obama will announce his new strategy for Afghanistan. After a long delay, it’s about time. The available information suggests the president will increase US forces by some 34,000 over a nine-month period, to roughly 100,000, with various benchmarks set, which, if they are not met, would allow Obama to take “off-ramps” to reduce his military commitment.
This decision raises a question. Obama accused his predecessor, George W. Bush, of fighting the “wrong” war in Iraq, not the “right” one in Afghanistan. Given Washington’s different political challenges in the broader Middle East today, is Obama making that mistake in reverse? Is Iraq now the “right” war, while Afghanistan’s importance has been overplayed?
The question is academic. Obama is not about to revoke his withdrawal plan for Iraq. He intends to remove all American combat troops by August 2010, and all forces by the end of 2011. However, that only shines a light on the president’s ambiguities in defining his strategic priorities. In essence, does Obama consider it more important to contain Iranian power in Iraq and the Gulf region, or to inhibit Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan?
Both are worthy objectives. But as dangerous as Al-Qaeda is, there are numerous uncertainties about its capabilities as well as the advantages it might derive from a more favorable environment in the future – some of these raised by American officials themselves. For example, it is unclear whether a Taliban victory would necessarily enhance Al-Qaeda’s effectiveness. It might, but given the complex interests in the country today, not least those of Pakistan, as well as the fact that a comprehensive Taliban victory is less probable than it was in 1996, Obama’s deployment of 100,000 US soldiers can be legitimately questioned.
What is not open to question, however, is that the emergence of a powerful, even hegemonic, Iran may undo over six decades of American policy in the Gulf specifically, and the Middle East generally. Thanks to Bush’s blunders in Iraq after 2003, particularly his creating a vacuum there that Tehran exploited to its advantage, America’s allies to Iraq’s south have existential fears. There is very little to like in most Gulf regimes, but that’s irrelevant: Washington must decide whether it can afford to ignore their possible destabilization, even collapse.
In this context, the Obama administration’s approach to the Iranian nuclear program is essential. Much of the focus has been on Israel and whether it can tolerate a nuclear Iran. But Israel has a nuclear deterrence capability. America’s Gulf allies do not, and would be the first affected by an Iran in possession of atomic weapons. Their sole deterrent would be sectarianism, the manipulation of Sunni fears of Shiite domination. If Obama’s principle aim is to weaken Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, a Sunni-Shiite conflict in the Gulf that the United States indirectly permits by staying aloof in the region could spawn hundreds of Al-Qaedas.
Obama’s lack of a strategic vision has been written about to death. Everywhere, he speaks softly and carries a big carrot. A more pertinent question at this juncture is what should be done? A pullout from Iraq is inevitable. However, the US can do two things in the coming year to limit Iran’s ability to profit from the aftermath.
First, the administration must work to strengthen the authority and cohesiveness of the Iraq state by pushing much harder for Sunni-Shiite reconciliation, perhaps enlisting regional support; and it must help sponsor, even try to impose, an agreement between Baghdad and the Kurds over the disputed province of Kirkuk. This is easier said than done, particularly in the midst of an American drawdown, and would doubtless require Obama’s personal involvement. However, it can be done, because only an empowered Iraqi state, one whose different components are at peace with one another, would have a chance of limiting external meddling and avoiding a further escalation in domestic communal violence.
A second step must be to reinforce the American military presence in the Gulf area, as a fallback measure once the troops have left Iraq. This would demonstrate that the US intends to draw a line against Iran. Such an initiative would gain in significance by being formulated in a multilateral framework agreed, let’s say, with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
What about the Afghan conflict? Obama’s notion of “off-ramps” exposes the indecision in Washington, of wanting to have it both ways. According to press leaks, as of next June Washington will begin looking at a number of developments in Afghanistan – political reform, the performance of President Hamid Karzai and his sincerity in limiting corruption, military success, and more. If there are few signs of progress on these fronts, Obama would retain the option of cutting back American forces.
As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it on Monday, it’s “not just how we get people there, but what’s the strategy for getting them out.”
Yet what a contradiction it is for Obama to imply how vitally important Afghanistan is through a 30-percent increase in forces (in addition to the 21,000 troops he sent last March), while simultaneously affirming that if things don’t work out in the coming nine months, the US might reduce its presence. Either winning in Afghanistan is crucial, in which case the administration should avoid hard deadlines to remove its combat units, or it is not that crucial, in which case little justifies Obama’s large build-up.
It is this inconsistency that allowed Vice President Joe Biden to alter Obama’s thinking on the military plan presented by General Stanley McChrystal earlier this year. Biden prefers a more limited counter-terrorism strategy in Afghanistan, and while there may be flaws in the approach, his questioning has forced the administration to ponder how important Afghanistan really is. Part of that exercise requires reassessing its approach to Iraq and Iran, America’s greatest headache.
This decision raises a question. Obama accused his predecessor, George W. Bush, of fighting the “wrong” war in Iraq, not the “right” one in Afghanistan. Given Washington’s different political challenges in the broader Middle East today, is Obama making that mistake in reverse? Is Iraq now the “right” war, while Afghanistan’s importance has been overplayed?
The question is academic. Obama is not about to revoke his withdrawal plan for Iraq. He intends to remove all American combat troops by August 2010, and all forces by the end of 2011. However, that only shines a light on the president’s ambiguities in defining his strategic priorities. In essence, does Obama consider it more important to contain Iranian power in Iraq and the Gulf region, or to inhibit Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan?
Both are worthy objectives. But as dangerous as Al-Qaeda is, there are numerous uncertainties about its capabilities as well as the advantages it might derive from a more favorable environment in the future – some of these raised by American officials themselves. For example, it is unclear whether a Taliban victory would necessarily enhance Al-Qaeda’s effectiveness. It might, but given the complex interests in the country today, not least those of Pakistan, as well as the fact that a comprehensive Taliban victory is less probable than it was in 1996, Obama’s deployment of 100,000 US soldiers can be legitimately questioned.
What is not open to question, however, is that the emergence of a powerful, even hegemonic, Iran may undo over six decades of American policy in the Gulf specifically, and the Middle East generally. Thanks to Bush’s blunders in Iraq after 2003, particularly his creating a vacuum there that Tehran exploited to its advantage, America’s allies to Iraq’s south have existential fears. There is very little to like in most Gulf regimes, but that’s irrelevant: Washington must decide whether it can afford to ignore their possible destabilization, even collapse.
In this context, the Obama administration’s approach to the Iranian nuclear program is essential. Much of the focus has been on Israel and whether it can tolerate a nuclear Iran. But Israel has a nuclear deterrence capability. America’s Gulf allies do not, and would be the first affected by an Iran in possession of atomic weapons. Their sole deterrent would be sectarianism, the manipulation of Sunni fears of Shiite domination. If Obama’s principle aim is to weaken Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, a Sunni-Shiite conflict in the Gulf that the United States indirectly permits by staying aloof in the region could spawn hundreds of Al-Qaedas.
Obama’s lack of a strategic vision has been written about to death. Everywhere, he speaks softly and carries a big carrot. A more pertinent question at this juncture is what should be done? A pullout from Iraq is inevitable. However, the US can do two things in the coming year to limit Iran’s ability to profit from the aftermath.
First, the administration must work to strengthen the authority and cohesiveness of the Iraq state by pushing much harder for Sunni-Shiite reconciliation, perhaps enlisting regional support; and it must help sponsor, even try to impose, an agreement between Baghdad and the Kurds over the disputed province of Kirkuk. This is easier said than done, particularly in the midst of an American drawdown, and would doubtless require Obama’s personal involvement. However, it can be done, because only an empowered Iraqi state, one whose different components are at peace with one another, would have a chance of limiting external meddling and avoiding a further escalation in domestic communal violence.
A second step must be to reinforce the American military presence in the Gulf area, as a fallback measure once the troops have left Iraq. This would demonstrate that the US intends to draw a line against Iran. Such an initiative would gain in significance by being formulated in a multilateral framework agreed, let’s say, with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
What about the Afghan conflict? Obama’s notion of “off-ramps” exposes the indecision in Washington, of wanting to have it both ways. According to press leaks, as of next June Washington will begin looking at a number of developments in Afghanistan – political reform, the performance of President Hamid Karzai and his sincerity in limiting corruption, military success, and more. If there are few signs of progress on these fronts, Obama would retain the option of cutting back American forces.
As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it on Monday, it’s “not just how we get people there, but what’s the strategy for getting them out.”
Yet what a contradiction it is for Obama to imply how vitally important Afghanistan is through a 30-percent increase in forces (in addition to the 21,000 troops he sent last March), while simultaneously affirming that if things don’t work out in the coming nine months, the US might reduce its presence. Either winning in Afghanistan is crucial, in which case the administration should avoid hard deadlines to remove its combat units, or it is not that crucial, in which case little justifies Obama’s large build-up.
It is this inconsistency that allowed Vice President Joe Biden to alter Obama’s thinking on the military plan presented by General Stanley McChrystal earlier this year. Biden prefers a more limited counter-terrorism strategy in Afghanistan, and while there may be flaws in the approach, his questioning has forced the administration to ponder how important Afghanistan really is. Part of that exercise requires reassessing its approach to Iraq and Iran, America’s greatest headache.
Friday, November 20, 2009
A loud grumble shakes the Aounist jungle
There is discontent in the Aounist household. In an interview on Wednesday with Al-Mustaqbal, the former deputy prime minister, Issam Abu Jamra, a senior official in the Free Patriotic Movement, stated that he had sent a written complaint to Michel Aoun after Aoun appointed only one member from the movement, Gebran Bassil, to a cabinet post.
Aside from the fact that Abu Jamra reported his objection in a mouthpiece belonging to his political adversaries, he also noted that “all options [were] on the table” if he received no response to it.
Precisely what Abu Jamra can or will do is unclear. Aoun has treated his followers with considerable disregard over the years – openly favoring his son-in-law, Bassil, over all others, ensuring that none of his parliamentarians becomes too prominent, and running the FPM with a firm hand – and he’s done so because he knows they have little political weight without him. However, Abu Jamra’s move is significant, because it appears to be the first public salvo in a fight over the future of the Aounist movement, now that Michel Aoun has lost all the major battles that had allowed him to impose unity on his fractious flock.
The reality is that in the past four and a half years, Aoun has failed to capitalize on the considerable political advantages that he successively accumulated. He emerged as the most dominant Christian from the 2005 elections, but was unable to leverage that into his election as president in 2007. Had Aoun remained neutral in the confrontation between March 8 and March 14, he would inevitably have become head of state. No one, on either side of the political divide, would have mobilized against Aoun had he remained on good terms with both the majority and opposition.
Instead, Aoun sided with Hezbollah and Syria’s allies, in the hope that their power of intimidation would bring him into office. But in so doing, he only ensured that the March 14 majority would take any and all steps to block him, which they did by supporting Michel Sleiman, someone whom they initially mistrusted as being a Syrian creation.
The Doha Agreement, which endorsed Sleiman as president, was the first nail in Aoun’s political coffin, and it was followed by the parliamentary elections last June. Even though the general emerged with a larger parliamentary bloc, it was a Pyrrhic victory. He was unable to bring in a majority, as he and his allies had promised. Indeed, the fact that Aoun had become so polarizing a figure, in large part due to his partnership with Hezbollah, mobilized many more Christians against him, handing March 14 its new majority. That was the second nail in Aoun’s coffin.
The third appeared to be general’s abysmal performance in the negotiations over the government. From the outset, Aoun’s only acute concern seemed to be Bassil’s return as a minister, so that he bore a major responsibility for keeping the state on hold in the interest of nepotism. He rejected Saad Hariri’s first cabinet proposal on that basis. Recall that Alain Aoun and Farid al-Khazen had been named ministers in the lineup, one no worse than what Aoun ultimately accepted. But the general cared little that those two figures were among the more respected of his partisans; all his anxieties were focused on the son-in-law.
And if that was not enough, who could avoid noticing that a final agreement on the cabinet came when Bassil returned from Damascus, having heard from the Syrians that it was time for Aoun to be flexible. The general spent a decade and a half denouncing other Lebanese politicians for allowing their decisions to be taken in Damascus, only to fall into that nasty habit himself, and with a family member as errand boy.
As Aoun gets older, those under him are preparing for what comes afterward, accumulating cards. The general’s big battles are over. He’s not president, he failed to spearhead an opposition win, he takes orders from Syria, and he’s willing to throw caution to the wind in order to guarantee that Bassil succeeds him as head of the Aounist pack. That gamble, too, is likely to fail, and there are those around the general, his old comrades first, who this time don’t want to pay the price for his setbacks if it loses them their one chance of making it themselves.
Aside from the fact that Abu Jamra reported his objection in a mouthpiece belonging to his political adversaries, he also noted that “all options [were] on the table” if he received no response to it.
Precisely what Abu Jamra can or will do is unclear. Aoun has treated his followers with considerable disregard over the years – openly favoring his son-in-law, Bassil, over all others, ensuring that none of his parliamentarians becomes too prominent, and running the FPM with a firm hand – and he’s done so because he knows they have little political weight without him. However, Abu Jamra’s move is significant, because it appears to be the first public salvo in a fight over the future of the Aounist movement, now that Michel Aoun has lost all the major battles that had allowed him to impose unity on his fractious flock.
The reality is that in the past four and a half years, Aoun has failed to capitalize on the considerable political advantages that he successively accumulated. He emerged as the most dominant Christian from the 2005 elections, but was unable to leverage that into his election as president in 2007. Had Aoun remained neutral in the confrontation between March 8 and March 14, he would inevitably have become head of state. No one, on either side of the political divide, would have mobilized against Aoun had he remained on good terms with both the majority and opposition.
Instead, Aoun sided with Hezbollah and Syria’s allies, in the hope that their power of intimidation would bring him into office. But in so doing, he only ensured that the March 14 majority would take any and all steps to block him, which they did by supporting Michel Sleiman, someone whom they initially mistrusted as being a Syrian creation.
The Doha Agreement, which endorsed Sleiman as president, was the first nail in Aoun’s political coffin, and it was followed by the parliamentary elections last June. Even though the general emerged with a larger parliamentary bloc, it was a Pyrrhic victory. He was unable to bring in a majority, as he and his allies had promised. Indeed, the fact that Aoun had become so polarizing a figure, in large part due to his partnership with Hezbollah, mobilized many more Christians against him, handing March 14 its new majority. That was the second nail in Aoun’s coffin.
The third appeared to be general’s abysmal performance in the negotiations over the government. From the outset, Aoun’s only acute concern seemed to be Bassil’s return as a minister, so that he bore a major responsibility for keeping the state on hold in the interest of nepotism. He rejected Saad Hariri’s first cabinet proposal on that basis. Recall that Alain Aoun and Farid al-Khazen had been named ministers in the lineup, one no worse than what Aoun ultimately accepted. But the general cared little that those two figures were among the more respected of his partisans; all his anxieties were focused on the son-in-law.
And if that was not enough, who could avoid noticing that a final agreement on the cabinet came when Bassil returned from Damascus, having heard from the Syrians that it was time for Aoun to be flexible. The general spent a decade and a half denouncing other Lebanese politicians for allowing their decisions to be taken in Damascus, only to fall into that nasty habit himself, and with a family member as errand boy.
As Aoun gets older, those under him are preparing for what comes afterward, accumulating cards. The general’s big battles are over. He’s not president, he failed to spearhead an opposition win, he takes orders from Syria, and he’s willing to throw caution to the wind in order to guarantee that Bassil succeeds him as head of the Aounist pack. That gamble, too, is likely to fail, and there are those around the general, his old comrades first, who this time don’t want to pay the price for his setbacks if it loses them their one chance of making it themselves.
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