This conflict has raged on for months. Many hope that the Kenyan offensive in the South and the African Union (AU) force in Mogadishu will quell the violence and stabilize Somalia after years of death and destruction.

Al Shabaab announced a ‘tactical withdrawal’ from the Somalia capital in August after an offensive by AU and government forces.

The main players on the Kenyan side have to be the Americans and the French. In October, the US revealed that it has sold military equipment and offered logistical support and training, although this has been taking place for sometime now. The US is also supporting the AU mission in Somalia (AMISOM), providing drones, body armor and night vision capability.

This equipment has been put to good use. In Late January, an alleged al-Qaeda member from London was killed in a missile attack on his car from an American drone on the outskirts of Mogadishu.

France, like Washington, is also providing logistical support to Kenyan forces. Col Thierry Burkhard said in late 2011 that French planes would transport military equipment to Kenyan soldiers near the Somali border. However, he denied Kenyan military claims that a French warship had shelled a Somali town.

With the help of both the French and the US, the Kenyan military is definitely no Mickey Mouse fighting unit. The Kenyan Air Force is well-armed with F-5 Tiger Attack jets, MD-500 and Chinese-made Harbin Z-9 helicopters.

In early January, F5 air strikes killed at least 60 Al-Shabaab militants in southern Somalia. The combination of air strikes by the jets and attack helicopters has helped pave the way for the Kenyan army and their tanks and armored personnel carriers to advance. This includes Vickers Mk3s, T72s, Humvees and the South African Puma M26.

Al Shabaab, or the ‘Youth’ in Arabic, has been using guerrilla tactics to thwart the Kenyan firepower and they have been successful. Besides utilizing the typical terrorist group arsenal of AK-47’s, RPGs and hand grenades, they have become masters of the Improvised Explosive Device or IED.
A typical example of how Al Shabaab uses the IED is as follows: “when they need to target a suicide attack to its opponents, first they arrange a single person to carry out this attack as to be the suicide man, they put on his body a number of explosive belts and then they dress the person with the uniform of a TFG military soldier, which they are capable to find. They then load the vehicle with the explosive materials mostly containing eminent flammable items, and they also pack with the vehicle mixture of gun powder, car batteries, acids, a number of mobile phones, and sometimes a missile is put inside the vehicle to cause destructive power to the entire vehicle.”

Al Shabaab does have allies. First and foremost are their Yemeni counterparts, who recently shipped two boats loaded with military logistics, light weapons, Kalashnikovs and ammunition, and hand grenades. It is also believed to have the support of Eritrea, but this is something that the Eritrean government denies.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. This old saying might not ring true for Al Shabaab or does it? It is believed that al-Shabaab is losing political support in Somalia due to the famine and its preventing humanitarian aid from reaching those who desperately need it. There are also accusations of internal divisions within the al-Qaeda faction.

In retaliation, al-Shabaab is using a similar campaign of propaganda with the use of social media like twitter. They joined in December (@HSMPress) and now have over 10,000 followers. The Kenyan Defense Force joined about a month earlier, in November (see KDF spokesman Emmanuel Chirchir @MajorEChirchir who has over 21,000 followers). Al-Shabaab tries to persuade the Somalian people by saying Kenyan troops are violating the sovereignty of their country and that they are the main line of defense against the hostile foreign invaders.

The BBC’s East Africa correspondent Will Ross says it is increasingly hard to know who is telling the truth in what is a hard-fought propaganda war (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15559584). And this will not change over the coming months.

Photo 1- Courtesy of Reuters (Al Shabaab militants parade new recruits after arriving in Mogadishu October 21, 2010, from their training camp south of the capital of Somalia). Available at: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/235664/20111021/at-least-10-peacekeepers-killed-in-somalia-battle.htm
Photo 2- Courtesy of Daryl Chapman, Bauhinia Photography (Z9 Helicopter, taken on July 6th, 2010). Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/darylchapman/4768078868/

China and the U.S.: Who’s winning?

The IMF is much publicized as saying earlier this year that China will have a larger economy than the US in 2016.  That statement is true depending on two factors — how you value a country’s output or GDP and what your forecasts for GDP growth are.  If China’s economy is valued at today’s market exchange rates and at the costs and prices currently prevailing in the different economies, its economy is much smaller than America’s and will not surpass it for many years to come.

In 2010, US GDP was about $14.7 trillion and China’s was about $5.9 trillion.  BUT, valued at what economists call Purchasing Power Parity, that is a dollar buys the same basket of goods in the US and in China (which would mean we would have to increase China’s undervalued currency, kept low to increase exports, and correct for some price and cost differences), then China’s GDP suddenly becomes over $9 trillion while US GDP remains roughly the same.

The second factor is what is your growth forecast for these economies.  Well, China has been growing at 8-11% per year for many years now and the US economy cranks along at about 2-3% growth, not bad but not stellar for a developed economy.  So, many economists straight-line out that growth record for the years to come and, say, okay, China’s economy will be larger than the ever fearsome US economy in 2016.  It may well be, but history has shown us that economic success stories turn sour and sluggish economic dogs transform into race-winning greyhounds.  Witness, poorly growing Brazil’s and Peru’s transformation into fairly robustly growing economies and “peripheral” Europe’s turn to bust in recent years.

And, watch out for China’s potential property price bubble, its huge, opaque and state-directed financial system, and considerable political risk in the Middle Kingdom.  As for the US, it has proven “declinists” wrong before — remember Paul Kennedy’s book in the 1980s about the decline of the US?  He didn’t foresee the tech boom of the late 1990s when America grew by nearly 5% per year.  Likewise, those predicting the decline of the US economy today — with its labor market flexibility, dynamism, highly developed financial markets, relatively nimble political system (that’s right, compare it to Japan’s) and technological prowess — may be proven wrong again.

And what about power?  Political scientists discuss power in relative rather than absolute terms.  That is, even if the US economy grows nicely, emerging market economies are likely to grow more rapidly.  Thus, the US economy will decline in relative terms.  It must.  It can’t maintain its wealth gap forever as long as EM economies continue to appropriate technology and know-how from the developed world.  So, since a nation’s economy is the underpinning of its power — in political and military terms, US power will decline relatively.

Power has other dimensions too, including alliances, and it seems implausible that a hostile power could erect in the near term an alternative coalition to really challenge US-led alliances worldwide.  Finally, it all depends on whether you are a foreign policy realist, believing we live in a dog-eat-dog world, or a foreign policy liberal, believing we have erected effective multilateral institutions with broad participation, including nations that could be possible adversaries, such as China, India and Russia.  If you believe in the latter, then the relative decline of US power may not yield the insecurity and threats realists would have you worry about. China, India and Russia (and others) would have too much to lose.

What should the US do about all this, policy wonks?  For starters, cut the fiscal deficit and develop a medium-term plan to reduce entitlement spending and get government debt to GDP down to a moderate level.  That said, the government should invest in infrastructure and education and perhaps in basic research, maybe by freeing up funds through closing tax loopholes and cutting subsidies to farmers and others.  And, once the economy rebounds, let’s put the Tea Party back in the Lipton Tea box, so that we can raise America’s comparatively low tax burden and fix these roads and bridges and educate these kids.

On the defense front, the US should begin to wield military power more effectively, like Les Gelb recommended in a Foreign Affairs article last year, by avoiding costly land wars and instead leveraging alliances and employing more “surgical” tactics.  President Obama’s happily successful (and lucky?) foray into the Libyan conflict, whereby the US played a leading role, but left much of the dirty work to France and Britain, may be a case study.

He appealed for all parties involved in the conflict to ensure that the thousands of refugees currently trapped in Tripoli and other areas are “properly protected from harm,” according to a press release from the UNHCR.

“Thousands of third-country nationals in Libya will be feeling great fear and uncertainty at this time,” he said. “We have seen at earlier stages in this crisis that such people, Africans especially, can be particularly vulnerable to hostility or acts of vengeance. It is crucial that humanitarian law prevails through these climactic moments and that foreigners – including refugees and migrant workers – are being fully and properly protected from harm.”

The call for safety comes after hundreds of thousands of migrant and refugees, as well as citizens, flee war-torn cities in Libya. As shots are fired and snipers take aim in the capital, many are desperately seeking escape. Refugees in the area already left their home countries for many of the same reasons once before, and must do again.

Many migrant workers have already fled the country to Niger. The International Organization for Migration and the Red Cross have set up emergency camps in the city of Dirkou. The IOM estimates that around 200,000 West African workers have returned from Libya.

The conflict is taking much longer than expected. NATO has been present for five months now, and will remain until the situation is resolved and Muammar Qaddafi is out. It is nearing an end, however, as rebel forces have captured the capital.

“The Qaddafi regime is clearly crumbling,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today. “Now is the time for all threats against civilians to stop, as the United Nations Security Council demanded.”

Dear Brother:

I write these few lines to let you know we’re doing well, on the whole, though it varies from day to day: sometimes the wind changes, it rains lead, life bleeds from every pore. To tell the truth, I’m not quite sure where we stand; when you’re up to your neck in war, you can’t tell till the end whether to celebrate or mourn. And there it is, the crucial question: whether to follow or precede the others. The consequences aren’t the same. Some victories can fall short, while some defeats are the beginnings of truly great victories. In this game where death always takes you by surprise, there is the time before and the time after, but only one extraordinarily fleeting moment to make up your mind.

Look at those poor Yemenites, who rejoiced when their miserable Saleh was carted away on a stretcher. They said to themselves: he is dead, now we shall live at last. But the monster came back to life, mad with rage, and he will be without pity. The Westerners hesitate to let him go. There’s no relief in sight, only caciques on the lookout, jihadists lying in wait, and tribes armed to the teeth: you can’t make a democracy with that. Same thing elsewhere: people don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Gaddafi drives humanity to despair, refusing to die; Boutef drives God to despair, refusing to speak his final prayer; and what to say about Assad, he drives Death to despair, killing faster than it does. How long it is, this Arab spring, and how uncertain its days.

I won’t say anything about Tunisia, dear Mohamed; you’re the last person I want to offend. But you know, that’s how the caciques in your country are, indefatigable, clever as chimpanzees, unctuous as insurance agents, giving with one hand what they take away with the other. They get it from the Phoenicians, who were so devious and grasping one wonders how they ever disappeared, if they ever really did. Bourguiba the great shofet was all smiles and smooth manners; he undressed people with his charm. In truth, he only gave them what was theirs already. Women having rights—what could be more natural? That’s what he succeeded in doing, giving Tunisian women what they’d gotten already, from God and from themselves: beauty, intelligence, freedom. In Tunisia, they say, “Bourguiba gave us,” but this is an error, and from such errors dictatorships are born. What someone gives you, another can take back. Bourguiba was in power for thirty years, as long as Mubarak and Saleh, and it was his creature Ben Ali who succeeded him. It’s time to open our eyes: there is no freedom but that we give ourselves. If Ben Ali’s successor promises freedom and democracy, we must drive him out; he is a dictator. The Tunisians have better things to do, don’t they, than explain to him that they’ve given themselves freedom and democracy, and expect from him sound management of the country’s budget, the rest is none of his business. So: no speeches, no religion, no quavering voices, no acts—none of it! And watch out for famous men; they are thieves of revolutions.

The other bandits in the brotherhood—the Bouteflikas, the Mubaraks, the Ben Alis, the Assads and their gang—have tried hard to imitate Bourguiba, but despite him revert quickly to their true natures: murder, torture, robbery.

Jesus once said something like: he who makes the wine is not he who drinks it. You, Mohamed, brave and noble son of Sidi Bouzid: you delivered the spark, your task is done, the task is ours now to finish. Cross my heart and hope to die, we’ll finish it; our children will live in the peace we have made for them.

But let’s take the long view for a moment. Can he who does not know where to go find the way? Is driving the dictator out the end? From where you are, Mohamed, next to God, you can tell that not all roads lead to Rome; ousting a tyrant doesn’t lead to freedom. Prisoners like trading one prison for another, for a change of scenery and the chance to gain a little something along the way. And that, you see, is where I fear for our revolutionaries. They lack perspective. In ‘88-‘89, we drove the dictator Chadli, not the worst bandit ever, from Algeria, and what did we do right after that? Threw ourselves into the arms of Islamists, abandoned ourselves wholly to trabendo, that carcinogenic trade in contraband, and, as little streams feed great rivers, we made ourselves black marketers on a global scale. Did we stop there? No, not at all, we deserted our children, they became fish food or were lost in the cesspits of illegal immigration, with the promise of a short, barren life. And, quite proud of ourselves, we grew thick as thieves with Bouteflika, the worst bandit on earth.

Dear Mohamed, if you can come back, tell them you didn’t set yourself on fire for this, tell them you wanted the dictatorship and its shadows, all its shadows, the straitjackets of clannishness and nepotism, the racism of the State and anti-Semitism as the only way of looking at the world, Islamism or exile as the only hopes—that you wanted all these fatal things swept from our path to make way for a life that is clean, peaceful, warm, and friendly.

Dear Mohamed, dear hero, it is not given to one person to light the fire and make the soup, but it is just that all should dip their bread in it. We must free ourselves of our evils, but also care for the petty, the deranged, the mad imams, the traffickers. Lest we replace an ignorant, corrupt elite with a jargon-ridden elite every bit as profiteering, living mainly in the West where the local democracy accepts them with difficulty, for such is democracy: it recognizes only its own, those who have fought for it. I feel like that’s how things happen in the Arab world, which is trying to wake from several centuries of daydreams and despotism, but it’s true that in the smoke and tumult of suppressions, it’s hard to tell truth from falsehood. Urgency is imperious, and keeps us from seeing very far.

That’s what I wanted to say to you, dear Mohamed. If you could show yourself and enlighten us, it would be nice—from up there you know the future of the world.

~ Boualem Sansal
Algiers, Spring 2011

“To the Palestinians I would say: You believe the Israelis are stiffing you because they think they have you in box. If you resort to violence, they will brand you terrorists. And if you don’t resort to violence, the Israelis will just pocket the peace and quiet and build more settlements. Your dilemma is how to move Israel in a way that won’t blow up in your face or require total surrender.

You have to start with the iron law of Israeli-Arab peace: whichever party has the Israeli silent majority on its side wins. Anwar Sadat brought the Israeli majority over to his side when he went to Israel, and he got everything he wanted. Yasir Arafat momentarily did the same with the Oslo peace accords. How could Palestinians do that again today? I can tell you how not to do it. Having the U.N. General Assembly pass a resolution recognizing an independent Palestinian state will only rally Israelis around Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, giving him another excuse not to talk.

May I suggest a Tahrir Square alternative? Announce that every Friday from today forward will be “Peace Day,” and have thousands of West Bank Palestinians march nonviolently to Jerusalem, carrying two things — an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other. The sign should say: “Two states for two peoples. We, the Palestinian people, offer the Jewish people a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders — with mutually agreed adjustments — including Jerusalem, where the Arabs will control their neighborhoods and the Jews theirs.”

If Palestinians peacefully march to Jerusalem by the thousands every Friday with a clear peace message, it would become a global news event. Every network in the world would be there. Trust me, it would stimulate a real peace debate within Israel — especially if Palestinians invited youth delegations from around the Arab world to join the marches, carrying the Saudi peace initiative in Hebrew and Arabic. Israeli Jews and Arabs should be invited to march as well. Together, the marchers could draw up their own peace maps and upload them onto YouTube as a way of telling their leaders what Egyptian youth said to President Hosni Mubarak: “We’re not going to let you waste another day of our lives with your tired mantras and maneuvering.”

Crazy, I know. Bibi is reading this and laughing: “The Palestinians will never do that. They could never get Hamas to adopt nonviolence. It’s not who the Palestinians are.”

That is exactly what Mubarak said about the Egyptian people: “They are not capable of being anything but what they are: docile and willing to eat whatever low expectations I feed them.” But then Egyptians surprised him. How about you, Palestinians, especially Hamas? Do you have any surprise in you? Is Bibi right about you, or not?

As for Bibi, his Tahrir lesson is obvious: Sir, you are well on your way to becoming the Hosni Mubarak of the peace process. The time to make big decisions in life is when you have all the leverage on your side. For 30 years, Mubarak had all the leverage on his side to gradually move Egypt toward democracy — and he never used it. Then, when Mubarak’s people rose up, he tried to do it all in six days. But it was too late. No one believed him. So his tenure ended in ruin.

Israel today still has enormous leverage. It is vastly superior militarily and economically to the Palestinians, and it has the U.S. on its side. If Netanyahu actually put a credible, specific two-state peace map on the table — not just the same old vague promises about “painful compromises” — he could get the Americans and Europeans to toss in anything Israel wanted, including the newest weapons, NATO membership, maybe even European Union membership. It could be a security windfall for Israel. Does Bibi have any surprise in him or do the Palestinians have him right: a big faker, hiding a nationalist-religious agenda under a cloak of security?

It may be that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are incapable of surprising anyone anymore, in which case the logic on the ground will prevail: Israel will gradually absorb the whole West Bank, so, together with Israel proper, a Jewish minority will be ruling over an Arab majority. Israel’s enemies will refer to it as “the Jewish apartheid state.” America, Israel’s only true friend, will find itself having to defend an Israel whose policies it does not believe in and whose leaders it does not respect — and the tensions between the U.S. and Israel displayed in Washington last week will seem quaint by comparison.”

There has been much discussion and grandiose speech-making on the Middle East this week. First Obama gave a “big” address on the Arab Spring, and he even touched on the Israel-Palestinian peace process too. Then Bibi Netanyahu arrived in town for meetings with Obama and to give a speech to a joint session of Congress (minus Rand Paul, who skipped it). Others far smarter than me and more in touch with the real decision-makers have already offered their thoughts and reactions. (For a few good ones, see the Christian Science Monitor, Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast, and the PLO’s representative in the US Maen Rashid Areikat, who wrote in Politico this morning “Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and policies of changing the geography and demographics there show that Israel is in the business of prolonging the occupation, not ending it.”)

Nevertheless, I have a blog and can therefore offer my own, totally original and ground-breaking analysis for your perusal. Firstly, Bibi’s speech does nothing for the peace process. “Netanyahu’s real message to Congress: there will be no peace talks” is the headline of CSM’s article on the speech, and they are not wrong. It is in Israel’s–and especially the current government’s–interest to sit down with the Palestinians, because come September and the UN General Assembly, the Palestinians are almost certain to come to the negotiating table with an endorsement of statehood from most countries in the world. Israel and the US would rather hash things out without involving the UN. But if Netanyahu sticks to the conditions he laid out in his speech today, the Palestinians might get up and walk out saying “see you in September.” I don’t blame them. Netanyahu made some unreasonable claims today, claims that do not serve Israel, the Palestinians, or the US.

What claims are these? Well he maintains that Israel cannot return to the borders of 1967. These borders, between Israel and the future state of Palestine as laid out in UN Resoultion 242 (pdf), are no longer acceptable for Netanyahu’s government. They were for Ehud Olmert, who went even further than arguing for a return to the ’67 borders:

“We must give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and return to the core of the territory that is the State of Israel prior to 1967…Every government will need to tell the truth, which unfortunately will require us to tear out many parts of the homeland in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.”

But Netanyahu calls these borders “indefensible”. Presumably he thinks that Israeli settlements in the West Bank will become part of Israel and the Palestinians will be compensated with other territory. Today, he promised to be “generous”. But as Peter Beinart rightly points out, these settlements as part of Israel territory would make the international border even more indefensible than it already is:

“…if Israel’s 1967 border is indefensible against conventional attack, land swaps of the sort that Clinton and Olmert envisaged actually make the problem worse. The settlement of Ariel, which Olmert hoped to swap for land inside Israel, juts like a bony finger 13 miles into the northern West Bank. According to the 2003 Geneva Initiative, keeping Maale Adumim, another large settlement for which Israel might swap land, requires a thin land bridge across a Palestinian state to Jerusalem. How on earth would keeping these islands of Jewish settlement make Israel’s borders more defensible? To the contrary, if Israel ever did suffer a conventional attack from the West Bank, one of the first things it would do is evacuate places like Ariel and Maale Adumim, precisely because their location makes them, well, indefensible.”

Then there is the issue of Jerusalem, which Netanyahu says will not be divided and will remain the capital of Israel, and no part of the city will lie in Palestine. And on the refugee situation Netanyahu asserts that it will be resolved “outside the borders of Israel,” meaning Palestinian refugees can go back to the West Bank or Gaza but will not be allowed to return to their homes if they are (were) in Israel. With these preconditions, what do the Palestinians have to gain from going back to the negotiating table?

In this humble blogger’s opinion, Israeli security–that much-shouted about idea that doesn’t seem to have a beginning or an end but is rather an all-encompassing excuse used by diplomats to explain anything from “excessive” force by the IDF to preconditions for negotiation to the ultimate basis of Israel’s existence–depends on making concessions to the Palestinians, making hard choices, uprooting some settlements, standing in an inevitable storm of Israeli extremists who believe that all of Palestine belongs to the Jews, talking to Hamas, and guaranteeing complete, viable and secure autonomy for Palestine. Then and only then will there be peace.

But now the prospects for peace seem even more remote than ever before. After all these speeches and commentators commentating, it will be quiet on the Israel-Palestine issue for a few weeks. But beware the day the Palestinians follow their brothers in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Bahrain. The day they start protesting peacefully, united, calm, and determined–that is the day Bibi should fear most. Come September, with no real progress on a final settlement, the Palestinians will finally have Palestine declared a state despite any strong-arming of the international community by the US or Israel.

And then what Bibi?

Twilight on the corniche in Beirut in February

The chatter in the news and on Twitter today is about President Obama’s big speech on the Middle East at the State Department tomorrow. What will he say? There is no question this is a serious opportunity to get the Arab Spring back on track. It has veered off course in recent weeks. President Assad in Syria has succeeded in his vicious crackdown on protests. In Bahrain, protestors and their supporters in newspapers and hospitals are being sentenced to long prison terms for crimes against the government. Egypt is facing worsening economic troubles and violent religious tension. And on Sunday Israel watched a terrifying spectacle unfold: unarmed Palestinians exercising their right of return all on their own, climbing border fences, tossing rocks, waving flags, and falling to the IDF’s bullets.

Obama now faces an opportunity to seize the initiative in the Arab Spring and the Israel/Palestine conflict together (he meets with Netanyahu on Friday). Here is what he should say:

1. Sorry. To the Bahrainis and Syrians especially, Obama needs to apologize. Thanks to Shadi Hamid at Brookings for voicing this argument. The Obama administration turned a blind eye to atrocities committed by the Bahraini monarchy. Over the past several weeks, the Sunni government has been bulldozing Shia mosques, sometimes at night so that people wake up to giant piles of rubble. The government also targeted doctors and journalists, the vast majority of them Shias, for supporting the protests. The US has stayed silent. Of course, this silence has much to do with the fact that the US fifth fleet is stationed in Bahrain. It also has much to do with our Saudi allies. Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were immediately worried that the mainly Shia-driven protests in Bahrain would find support across the gulf in Iran. After Washington abandoned Hosni Mubarak to his fate, Obama lost some credibility in the eyes of the Saudis. The House of Saud thought he would do the same to them if a democratic movement took hold there. Staying silent on Bahrain, therefore, made strategic sense to Team Obama.

Obama also owes an apology to the Syrians. Many of the protestors who took to the streets probably hoped that the US would respond the way it did in Egypt and in Libya — where we condemned the violence and the leadership, and supported armed intervention on behalf of the reform movement (in Libya). They were wrong. It was never an option that the US would support intervention in Syria. Assad, brutal as he is, is preferable to the instability that Washington and Jerusalem believe might come if he fell. Sure, the US condemned the crackdown, funded Syrian opposition groups, and imposed sanctions on the top leadership in Damascus (until today, that didn’t include President Assad). But Washington said and did little else. Many people say this is because we have no leverage over Syria. Bullshit, says Michael Young, editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star. “The reality is if anyone has leverage over Syria, it is the United States.” I’m not sure I agree — Iran probably has a bit more credibility in Damascus — but the fact remains that Bashar al-Assad, like his father, is a murderer, his inner circle greedy and corrupt, and the people of Syria deserve more. I met many of them in February, and was surprised and overwhelmed by the pro-America sentiment they expressed. I don’t mean to suggest this is Washington’s fault, just that someone should have done something. If the UN Human Rights Council is unable act against state-supported violence like this, what is it for?

An apology would also go a long way toward remedying Washington’s longtime support for Arab autocracies. Read this post from Steve Cook at my old employer, the CFR. Cook writes Obama must somehow acknowledge “Washington’s past support for the dictators of the region. This would be an important symbolic gesture that could help ameliorate the mistrust with which many in the region view the United States.” Stability in the Middle East is not something that can be created by supporting dictators like Mubarak or violent regimes like the Bahraini monarchy. It is a long-term project. Our best chance at addressing the roots of instability in the Middle East and Islamic terrorism is by supporting the peoples’ rights to political and social liberty. Also — how can we chastise Assad for human rights abuses but stay silent about Bahrain? All dictators deserve the same treatment.

Lastly, an apology should include some reasoning on why Obama and his Administration made the decisions they did. Everyone knows that strategic concerns and those of your close allies guide policy, but will Obama come out and say this? Will he discuss why it took until yesterday to sanction Assad? Will he say that he and his allies were worried about losing a friendly government in Bahrain and a base for the fifth fleet, and concerned about the spreading of Iranian Shia influence, and therefore stayed silent? A movement as widespread and revolutionary as 2011′s Arab Spring deserves an announced strategy, even if that strategy depends on each individual situation.

2. Obama should announce financial support for new Middle East democracies. This is something he is likely to do. Today Obama announced about $1 billion in economic activity with Jordan, and will also send them 600,000 metric tons of wheat. According to the Wall Street Journal, Egypt has spent almost $3.5 billion of its foreign exchange reserves as tourism, foreign investment, and remittances from abroad have dried up since the revolution. Congress, in trying to find ways to cut spending, might question further aid to Egypt (we already give them about $1.3 billion each year). But money is what Egypt needs. In a scenario that has played out many times in the history of the Middle East, a deteriorating economy can create a more conservative, more Islamist, more repressive, more anti-West government. Financial assistance in smart and long-term packages will help democratic movements in the Middle East keep the momentum.

3. Obama should address the Israel-Palestinian peace process. It has failed. George Mitchell resigned this week after struggling along in a process without any new ideas and where neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians wanted to meet with him. Sunday was not a good day for Israel — Nakba Day rallies spilled over into Israel from Syria and Lebanon, and a dozen people were killed. In Syria, where numerous checkpoints and fences block the road to the Golan Heights, government forces likely stood aside to let them pass. It was a convenient and familiar strategy for Assad: create tension with Israel to prove that his hand is on the faucet, that the US and Israel need him to maintain stability along their mutual border. But in Lebanon, everything was peaceful until the IDF started shooting.

In September, the Palestinians are expected to ask the UN for recognition of their state. The US and Israel don’t want this to happen — the US would prefer not to have to make a choice between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and the Israelis don’t want to deal with Palestinian negotiators waving an endorsement from the UN. If Obama is smart, he will lay out the beginnings of a plan tomorrow and with Netanyahu on Friday. This plan will involve the creation of Palestine sometime soon and the resolution of all the problems that come with that bombshell, most importantly the issue of refugees, their children, and their grandchildren.

It’s easy to imagine the Palestinian issue as a more and more dangerous powder keg. The Palestinians have so far been conspicuously absent from the Arab democratic movements sweeping the rest of the Middle East. Israel is rightly stressed about them protesting peacefully in large numbers — if something were to go wrong, the IDF has a history of dealing with these problems very poorly (see Gaza flotilla). If the IDF starts shooting, Assad and Ahmadinejad will jump into action. They will yell that Israel (and the US) do not support Arabs’ right to democracy, self-rule, and social liberties. Iran has been quietly building up Hezbollah’s arsenal to the point where it might be able to provoke and sustain another war with Israel. And that is exactly what the Middle East does not need at this point.

A lot hinges on the Israel-Palestine peace process. Obama would be smart to lay down a plan over the next few days.

Tune in tomorrow for the speech, and see also a post-speech interview with Foreign Policy‘s Marc Lynch, NPR’s Andy Carvin, and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.

Today I want to think about Iran. There has been a struggle for power going on at the highest levels of Iranian government over the past month or so. It all started when President Ahmadinejad fired the minister of intelligence, Heydar Moslehi. But Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei then reinstated Moslehi, and Ahmadinejad protested by refusing to show up for work for ten days. This was a mistake, said Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii in a story on NPR yesterday. “He was told to come back to work in no uncertain terms. Many supporters of Mr. Khamenei went in public and essentially said over and over again that the president of Iran has no legitimacy or support or public standing unless the leader gives him so,” Farhi says.

At PBS’ Tehran Bureau, analyst Muhammad Sahimi did background research on the origins of the Ahmadinejad-Khameni power struggle:

…the rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei goes back to at least 2007. That October, Ahmadinejad forced out Ali Larijani, the current Majles speaker, who was then secretary-general of the Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator. The significance of the move was not that Ahmadinejad had forced out someone who had run against him in the 2005 presidential election, but rather that Larijani has always been very close to Khamenei and has carried water for him for decades. More importantly, this was apparently done without prior consultation with Khamenei. In his place, the president appointed Saeed Jalili, a hardline ideologue and a close friend at the time. Ahmadinejad also fired Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejehei, and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, all of whom had been imposed on him. Thus, Ahmadinejad’s practice of forcing out officials in charge of those organs of the government informally under Khamanei’s control, namely, the Foreign, Intelligence, Defense, and Interior Ministries of — and, more generally, those in decision-making positions in the areas of security and foreign policy — is hardly new.

Ahmadinejad and Khamenei appeared to patch things up after the disputed 2009 elections. Khamenei stood by his president when the international media and Iran’s Green Movement, led by Mir Hossein Mousavi, condemned the presidential election as fraudulent. Ahmadinejad tried to make the reconciliation official by kissing Khamenei’s hands during the inauguration ceremony – the first Iranian president to do so.

Ahmadinejad and his controversial but very loyal chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei (who may have pushed the president to stop showing up for work after Moslehi was reinstated by Khamenei) have been involved in a campaign the past few years to draw power away from the clerical establishment. Their main ideological tool in this process is Iranian nationalism. As Sahimi writes:

Ahmadinejad, Mashaei, and their inner circle began invoking symbols of Iranian culture’s glorious history, in an effort to appeal to Iranians’ fierce nationalism. The government made arrangements to bring to Tehran in September 2010, for the first time since the 1979 Revolution, the Cyrus Cylinder, which is held by the British Museum. The Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform with an account by Cyrus the Great (circa 600-529 BCE), is considered by some to be the world’s first human rights charter. That angered the ultra-conservatives and reactionaries, because for the first time since the 1979 Revolution a senior official was paying tribute to the history of pre-Islamic Iran. Moslehi publicly labeled Ahmadinejad’s appeal to nationalism a policy perpetrated by Iran’s enemies. Basij commander Mohammad Reza Naghdi said, “Just because there have been kings in our history does not mean that we should be proud of them.” He also rebuked the president’s chief of staff: “Mashaei pays more attention to the Cyrus Cylinder than to the pious people.”

This is a stressful issue for the clerical establishment because it threatens the nature of the Islamic Republic as a nation based on the principles of Shia Islam rather than the Persian heroes and history of Ahmadinejad and Mashaei. In an article for Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel yesterday, Geneive Abdo discusses this struggle:

Ahmadinejad and Mashaie, whom the president hopes will succeed him when his term expires in 2013, envision a future Iran devoid of Islamic orthodoxy. This attempt to take Iran in a new direction has prompted accusations from high-ranking clerics that Ahmadinejad and Mashaie are influenced by religious “deviants” who believe in supernatural powers and djinns, or spirits. In fact, in the past Mashaie has said he can interpret for himself the Islamic texts, such as the Koran, and does not need the clergy — an enormous threat to the clerical establishment’s claim to religious sanction for their hold on power. In response, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi told a group of IRGC officers and staff that, “In order to learn the religion, one must go to scholars of the religion and not to exorcists and monks. Which wise person would accept learning the faith from exorcists and monks instead of scholars of the faith?”

Abdo concludes that Khamenei’s Iran is preferable to Ahmadinejad’s – “It might seem counter-intuitive, but Khamenei’s survival and that of the clerical system is in the West’s interest. The alternative — a highly militarized state run by the Revolutionary Guards — would be much worse.”

But, she notes, “Not only would Ahmadinejad and Mashaie’s vision lead to the marginalization of Iran’s clerics, but it would also make it far less likely that Iran could exert influence in Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, Palestine and continue to call the shots in Iraq. Without the clerical establishment, Iran would have no religious or moral authority to interfere in these countries, where Iran seeks to extend its political influence in the name of Islam.”

Ahmadinejad’s brand of foreign policy is based on a pragmatic view of how to expand Iran’s power in the Middle East and to strengthen anti-Israel and anti-Western groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Domestically, he enjoys the loyalty of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose leadership is well-connected with military and political groups throughout the Middle East. But his pragmatic, hard-headed, and militant foreign policy is creating friction with Iran’s identity as an Islamic Republic and its clerical leadership. Ahmadinejad, aided by Mashaei, wants to consolidate political power for himself and his allies by providing a competing ideology and character for Iran. But to go up against the Supreme Leader is a dangerous game. Khamenei in recent weeks has made it clear who is in charge. Several of Mashaei’s associates have been arrested on charges of sorcery, corruption, and demon worship. Nader Hashemi of the University of Denver puts these arrests in perspective: “There’s no sort of deep principles involved here…really it’s a battle between different Mafia-style political camps, each combating against the other camp in order to obtain political power as way of advancing their own group’s political clout.”

Ahmadinejad is now back at work, as is the intelligence minister. Better be more careful next time you antagonize the allies of the Supreme Leader, Mr. President.

There will be no help coming from the U.S. or UN to the Syrian protestors. The protests in Syria are fundamentally different from those in Yemen, Egypt, and Libya, and they have been distorted by the international media and other forces using the protests to pursue narrow and selfish goals. In the calm that seems to have settled in Syria over the past few days, and as I mull over the true nature of these protests, here are two great resources on the situation in Syria.

First, a video by two Hungarian journalists who posed as tourists in Damascus. With English subtitles.

Second, check out this interview by blogger Elias Muhanna with Montreal-based Syria commentator Camille Otrakji.

I was there two months ago but thinking about it now makes it seem like decades ago. This morning I turned on Al Jazeera and watched a correspondent standing against the backdrop of the now closed Syria-Jordan border discussing her proximity to Daraa, the Syrian town where protests erupted a few weeks ago, only a few kilometers up the road. Citizens in Daraa have family in Jordan, she said, and they are using Jordanian SIM cards and cell phone service to communicate across the border. President Bashar al-Assad’s brother controls Syria’s main telecommunications company – the same company that requires foreign tourists to scan their passports and fingerprints before they can purchase a SIM card – so Daraa citizens probably can’t rely on domestic mobile phone networks.

I crossed that border two months ago in a car packed with rugs and other wonderful items from the Old City in Damascus, three friends, and a chain-smoking driver. Looking at a map today I realized we must have driven through (or just around) the city of Daraa. There are tanks in those streets now.

As the Syrian crackdown continues today I can’t help but wonder why Washington’s response to the crisis has been so tame. There still haven’t been any calls on Assad to step down. We intervened in Libya to save civilians who were in danger of a massacre by government forces. This is true – even more so – in the case of Syria, where between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed by the current president’s father in a 1982 uprising. It doesn’t look like Assad the Younger’s policy toward rebellion will be any different.

And Syria is of much greater importance to U.S. national security than Libya. Syria is Iran’s only ally in the region, an important conduit for Iranian arms to Hezbollah and Hamas, and a long-time enemy of Israel, our staunchest ally in the region. The downfall of the Assad regime would relieve the U.S. of a persistent nuisance for Middle East policy. Even though the prospect of a friendly, pro-Western government establishing itself in Damascus is far from certain, Assad’s ouster would fundamentally change the nature of regional politics.

And yet it has taken until now for Washington to push ahead with sanctions against the Syrian leadership. Only two days ago, when the death toll in Syria stood at 400, did White House spokesman Jay Carney announce that the United States is “pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown in Syria and to make clear that this behavior is unacceptable.” It is perhaps worth noting that the sanctions will not directly target President Assad, and there are still no calls for him to step down.

There seems to be a consensus in Washington that the U.S. has no leverage over the Syrian government. They are wrong, writes Andrew Tabler, a journalist formerly based in Damascus. He lists three concrete actions the Obama administration could take: highlight Assad’s human rights abuses by bringing Syria in front of the UN Human Rights Council; work closely with European allies to develop sanctions; issue an executive order that allows the Treasury Department to freeze accounts used by Syria’s leaders; and to broaden those directives to target a wider range of Syrian officials responsible for rampant corruption – a central grievance of the Syrian protestors.

The first recommendation is unlikely to challenge Assad’s brutal crackdown because the UNHRC’s effectiveness and legitimacy has been questioned as a result of a 2003 decision to appoint Libya’s representative as its chair. The targeted sanctions and strongly worded condemnation of human rights abuses, on the other hand, are the very least the U.S. could do.

No doubt the Obama administration has also been considering the nature of a Syria without Assad, and been slightly worried. As Robert Kaplan recently wrote in Foreign Policy, Syria has only remained a nation as a result of strong and often brutally repressive central government. Because of the proximity of Syria’s major population zones to Jordan and Lebanon (already volatile themselves), weakened or no authority in Damascus would have a destabilizing effect across the region. As Kaplan writes, “Rather than face a ‘steadfast’ and rejectionist, albeit predictable, state as the focal point of Arab resistance, Israel would henceforth face a Sunni Arab statelet from Damascus to Hama — one likely influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood — amid congeries of other fiefdoms. The unrest in Syria brings the Middle East perhaps to a precipice. Peaceful or not, the future of the region will be one of weakened central authority. Mesopotamia at least has a historic structure, with its three north-south oriented ethnic and sectarian entities. But Greater Syria is more of a hodgepodge.”

It brings me great sadness to think of the violence being brought upon the Syrian people by the Middle East’s most repressive regime. Syrians are a wonderful people – walking through the Old City in February I was surprised by the smiles that spread on the faces of the shopkeepers when they heard I was from New York. “We love Americans,” they said, “such nice people.” My mother traveled through much of the rest elsewhere in Syria the same week, and reported similarly generous, hospitable, and pro-America sentiment across the country. As some have written, our intervention in Libya probably encouraged the Syrians to take to the streets in protest; the courageous protestors must have hoped that the West might intervene to save them from slaughter as we did for the Libyans. Washington’s inaction and muted response to this grave crisis does not live up to the faith in America held by those Syrians I met in February.

Amman is a vast, sprawling metropolis, but not very exciting. A map of the city looks like the cross section of an enormous anthill, with curving roads criss-crossing each other and leading nowhere in particular. It was an epic hassle to get to our hotel – do no Jordanian taxi drivers know how to read a map? Granted the map we were showing them was a picture from Google Maps saved on a dying laptop, but it clearly pointed to the street where the hotel was. Our driver stopped another taxi and they discussed the situation, which mostly entailed studying the map with confused expressions and asking us if we had some other information that would help. As if a map clearly marking the hotel’s location wasn’t enough? I didn’t understand – they were taxi drivers, this is their city, the map was in Arabic…why don’t you know how to get from here to there! Such is life in Amman.

Downtown is monotonous. Shawarma and falafel shops are sprinkled throughout the sleepy streets, and almost every other store sells the same goods – clothes, mostly knockoffs from China, electronics from years ago in faded boxes, soccer memorabilia, various knick-knacks. The one redeeming part of the downtown area was closed (it was nighttime) – the old city, which contains a huge Roman coliseum and other ruins. We peered through a chain link fence at the giant stadium, dimly lit by the surrounding city. The long shadows and our outsider’s perspective emphasized the chasm between we travelers and this strange city, where history is hidden behind fences, taxi drivers can’t find their way around, and the city center seems stuck in the 90s.

We met four American students at a shawarma stand one night. They’d been there for two months, teaching English. What do you do at night, we asked. “Chill out, experience the nightlife.” What nightlife? We looked around. They smiled. There is none.

Or taxi driver later that night was talkative. “You hear this! Libya.” He pointed to the radio. “BBC Arabic. I listen all day. Libya bad. Gaddafi very bad.” He looked over at me in the passenger seat, and frowned. I agreed, not knowing what I could say that he would understand. It was silent for a moment. What about here? I pointed down at the floor of the car, and the highway underneath. Protests here, like in Egypt or Libya? “No.” He shook his head firmly. “Jordan okay. King Abdullah, good king!”

King Abdullah II began his reign of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in February 1999 after the death of his father, King Hussein. Robert Fisk calls the Hashemites “a family of loss,” and he is not wrong. Abdullah’s great-great-grandfather Hussein was the emir of the province of Hejaz, in present day Saudi Arabia, but was driven out by an Islamic fundamentalist movement – the Wahhabis, loyal to the al-Saud family. Abdullah’s great-grandfather, also Abdullah, was appointed emir of Transjordan by Winston Churchill after WWI. Abdullah the elder had wanted to rule in Palestine but the European powers had other ideas. His brother Faisal, expelled from Damascus by the French in 1920, became king of Iraq.

After the creation of Israel in 1948 Abdullah I annexed the West Bank of the Jordan River while the rest of Palestine became part of Israel. In Baghdad in 1958 Faisal II (grandson of Abdullah I’s brother) was murdered in a coup d’état that brought the Ba’ath party to power. In 1967 the Hashemites of Jordan joined with Syria and Egypt in the disastrous war with Israel, and were driven out of East Jerusalem and the West Bank by the victorious Israelis. Thus, in less than fifty years, the Hashemites lost the Hejaz, all of Palestine, and Iraq.

The territory of Hashemite Jordan that remains today stretches from the Jordan River in the northwest to Aqaba on the Red Sea in the south, and borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the east. It is mostly desert: only 4% of the land is arable, and only 1% forest. I can personally attest to seeing nothing but desert, rock, and scattered shepherds with their flocks between Amman and Petra – a three-hour drive. Jordan has been called “as artificial a country as the British ever invented,” and in 1957, John Foster Dulles said it had “no justification as a state.” But King Hussein, who ruled as absolute monarch from age seventeen to his death in 1999, managed to hold on to what he had through an often bewildering combination of allegiance, intelligence, shrewd strategy, and a propensity to shock.

The ascension of Abdullah the younger to the throne in 1999 was a complicated affair. Hussein’s brother Hassan, crown prince of Jordan for thirty-four years, was relieved of that role after rumors spread of him planning a coup – he was accused of trying to fire the chief of staff of the army and allowing his wife to change the carpets of the royal palace in anticipation of becoming queen. Both stories seem to be untrue. He presented himself to King Hussein saying, “How have I offended you? Here is my gun. If I have been disloyal to you, please shoot me – but do not disgrace me.” Hussein reassured him but then presented him with a letter of dismissal at the end of January 1999. Hussein’s son Abdullah was now crown prince.

Since assuming the throne Abdullah has proven a more adept economic manager than his father. Hussein often used the treasury, which was filled almost entirely by foreign countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the U.S., as a personal bank account and source for patronage. Abdullah pursued a more balanced economic strategy. He set up a free trade zone in Aqaba and five other special economic zones across the country. According to the Financial Times, Amman is the sixth most cost-effective city in the Middle East, and it only sits behind cities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the capital of Bahrain as the most attractive destination for direct foreign investment. Since Abdullah took the throne, real GDP growth has averaged 7% and per capita GDP more than doubled.

Unfortunately, these rosy indicators hide an uncertain and unbalanced economic future. The service industry accounts for over 70% of GDP and more than 75% of jobs. Meanwhile, 35% of the population is under fourteen years old, and the unemployment rate is probably near 30%. The global recession didn’t make things any better — GDP growth slowed to 2.3% in 2009.

Worse still, political corruption did not die with King Hussein. In 1998, Transparency International rated Jordan thirty-eighth out of eighty-five in the Corruption Perceptions Index. Today, they are fiftieth. The few anti-government protesters that have turned out on the streets of Amman cited government corruption as one of their main complaints. In response, Abdullah dismissed his cabinet on February 1, instructing the new ministers to “correct the mistakes of the past.”

However, Jordan has largely escaped the turmoil sweeping the rest of the Middle East and North Africa. One of the most important differences between protests in Jordan and those in Cairo, Sanaa, or Damascus is no one in Jordan is calling for King Abdullah to step down. Jordanians like their monarch. They want him to reform, not depart. As long as his promises of economic and political reform are serious, it looks like a Hashemite king will continue to rule over part of the Middle East for some time to come.

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Near the old Roman coliseum is a small workshop where a generation of knife-makers have quietly churned out beautiful silver daggers. We were treated to a demonstration. “This is the same kind as we made for King Abdullah,” said the middle-aged artisan who was showing us how to decorate the hilt of a steel knife. “The photo is just over there. But that one is a little different – made of silver.” He was proud that his family’s workshop had produced a knife for the king of Jordan. I asked if he was a good king. “Yes.” He gave a thumbs up. “King Abdullah, good king.” Turning back to the photo, I couldn’t help thinking he doesn’t look very king-like. Once again it seems looks aren’t a good judge of policy.

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We were only in Syria for two days. Most of that time was probably spent rug shopping. It’s a lot of fun, and Syrian rug dealers love talking about their rugs, history, culture, and much else. They’ll talk forever if you let them. And they love Americans.

The Syrian government’s relationship with America is a different story. During a walk around the Umayyad Mosque on our first morning, we were photographed and followed by a guy who must have been with the police or security services. At first he stood a hundred yards away, taking pictures of us, then the mosque, then us, then the courtyard, then us again. He didn’t try very hard to disguise himself. Later, he was waiting for us on the threshold of the prayer hall as we reclaimed our shoes. He held his digital camera not more than two feet from my face, set to movie mode. My friend was behind him, looking at my face on his camera. He filmed me for perhaps six or seven long seconds, then panned to get a shot of each of us.

That was one of two interactions we had with the Syrian authorities. We also bought phone cards, which turned out to be quite a serious endeavor. First the phone guys put the cards in the phones to made sure they worked. Passports were scanned, checked, and our details entered into the computer. Not done yet, though. They also needed to scan our fingerprints. This seems like a lot of work for a phone card. But now the phone company had a very thorough record of who we were, when we entered the country, and what our fingerprints look like. And who controls the phone company? That night, when we called the U.S., we could hear a complicated series of clicking as the call connected. Hello Syria.

Our drive into the country was thrilling. We and our luggage were crammed into a tiny Hyundai with a chain-smoking, potato chip-eating, generally nice but slightly crazy driver who must have imagined himself on some racetrack in the desert with no one else on the road. He paid no heed to cars or trucks in his way. At several points on the highway up the mountains outside Beirut, we drifted into oncoming traffic and flew around some slow-moving traveler. I suppose they could paint lanes onto these highways and enforce one or two traffic laws, but then the drive would have been way less exciting.

We stopped briefly for the driver to buy more chips. I took a photo of those wonderful diesel Mercedes that are everywhere in Lebanon. I think this one was dark red.

When we crossed the Syrian border, posters of President Bashar al-Assad welcomed us to his country. We were going to see a lot more of his face over the next few days. It was plastered on shop windows, along roads and highways, and his portrait even hung in many homes, restaurants, and market stalls. He is a nice looking president, with a tie and trimmed mustache. Unfortunately, his welcoming appearance doesn’t carry over to his politics.

Bashar and his father Hafez, both Alawite Muslims have ruled Syria since 1971. Though largely stable, the Assad era has witnessed various periods of rebellion and conflict. In the 70s and 80s, the Muslim Brotherhood carried on a rebellion against the Ba’athist regime. Guerrilla attacks by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood against the government were fairly common, and the violence culminated in the mobilization of the army to avenge the death of dozens of senior Ba’athist representatives in Hama, a picturesque city north of Damascus on the Orontes River. Fighting between the Sunni rebels and the army, led by Hafez al-Assad’s brother Rifaat, continued for several weeks. Tanks bombarded the old city, destroying many historical buildings. Estimates of the death toll range from 10,000 to 40,000. When Fisk visited the city in 1983, “the old city – the walls, the narrow streets, the Beit Azem museum – had simply disappeared, the ancient ruins flattened and turned into a massive car park.”

The tight control of Syrian society by the government continues to this day. The people are withdrawn and uncomfortable talking about politics. Modern Damascus is monotonous in appearance and activity. Everything looks the same. The buildings are all the same tone of gray. Many city blocks are filled with dilapidated buildings. The streets are crowded with traffic, the taxis are falling apart, and most stores sell clothes or bootleg computer programs or shawarma.

I took this photo from the window of our hotel room. It could represent more than just a neighborhood. Large parts of Syrian society are broken, held together only by a strong and repressive government in Damascus. There was almost no development or construction to speak of. We saw several large, half-constructed buildings that stood completely empty, with no current construction; who knows for how long they had been like that.

Before our visit, protests against the government fizzled and died. The wave of rebellion that has swept North Africa had not taken hold here, even though Syrians have many of the same grievances as Egyptians and Libyans – repressive governance, brutal security forces, poverty, and economic disparity. Last week’s Economist notes the preventive measures taken by the Syrian government to head of public discontent: “consumption tax cut on coffee and sugar, reduced customs duties on food, more money to the Social System Fund for the poor, and increased wages and heating allowances for the civil service.”

Will it be enough? Syrian citizens seem less passionate about achieving new social freedoms than their regional brothers. Calls on Facebook to incite a Syrian revolution achieved 13,000 “likes,” but the protests themselves fell flat. Perhaps it is because many Syrians remember how the Assad family deals with revolt.

We landed in Beirut’s international airport at 11:30pm. It was raining. We needed two things: local currency and a taxi. Luckily, it appeared that there were upwards of thirty drivers who would have loved to take us to our hotel.

Unaccustomed to haggling, we accepted a steep fare from the most persistent driver. Off we went down the highway, listening to a stream of broken English about Beirut’s taxis and why they have no meter. We didn’t realize it at the time but shortly after leaving the airport we passed the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps, the site of a terrible massacre in September 1982.

On the morning of September 16, 1982, Loren Jenkins of the Washington Post, Karsten Tveit, a Norweigen television correspondent, and Robert Fisk of The Times were walking dazedly around the refugee camps. The bodies of the dead were everywhere, in the road, alleyways, on top of heaps of rubble, behind broken doors, and buried under a loose covering of dirt. The murderers had only just left. They had been sent in to look for terrorists; instead they killed civilians and refugees. One of those involved in the massacre later said “Pregnant women will give birth to terrorists; the children when they grow up will be terrorists.”

As the morning wore on, Fisk stared in amazement at groups of Israeli soldiers as they peered around corners, looking for “terrorists”. “There are terrorists in the camp and you will be killed,” one told Fisk. He didn’t understand: “Everyone there is dead. Can’t you smell them? Really, women and children have been murdered in there. There are dead babies.” They thought he was mad. It was surreal. The “terrorists” had left. The “terrorists” were the ones who had committed this atrocity. The badges on their uniforms said they belonged to Christian militias, either Phalangist or those under the command of Major Saad Haddad. They had raped and slaughtered their way through the camps, and they had hastily buried the evidence in large graves, or simply left bodies to bloat in the sun where they lay. How could such a thing have happened?

In the days that followed, details emerged about the massacre. On Thursday, September 16, armed men were seen leaving the same airport where I had just landed. They drove the short distance to the refugee camps in Humvees provided by the Israeli military; at the entrance of the camps, they passed Israeli checkpoints. The soldiers manning these checkpoints were later filmed turning back Palestinians who were trying to escape the camps. The killings began that Thursday morning. At night, the Israelis shot flares into the sky so that the camps were bathed in a terrifying, unearthly light. On Friday, an Israeli army battalion commander was told by his men that Palestinians were being massacred. He said, “We know, it’s not to our liking, and don’t interfere.” As many as 2,000 people were killed.

The entire story is still incomplete. Fisk and others have claimed that there is another large grave under the nearby Beirut golf course, covered by wide, luscious green lawns and the city’s well-off sportsmen. The owners of the golf club disagree and refuse to investigate. Who knows what lies beneath?

This of course is one episode among many in Lebanon’s violent recent past. Throughout the civil war and even today, alliances and rivalries are constantly changing, and every side has committed one atrocity or another. Take the infamous Black Saturday on December 6, 1975 as an example. In a terrible orgy of bloodletting, Christian Phalange militiamen, in retaliation for the murder of four Christians in east Beirut earlier that day, set up a roadblock at the eastern end of the Ring motorway and cut the throats of the first forty Muslims to drive past. Muslim militias followed the Christian example, setting up a roadblock of their own at the western end of the motorway. Perhaps 600 civilians of both faiths were calmly slaughtered that day.

Today, Beirut is peaceful, at least for now. But the scars of its past are not invisible. Through much of the city, bullet-ridden and bombed-out buildings lurk around corners. Monuments to a dark and disappearing past, they stand next to boring concrete high-rises, thrown up haphazardly into the air. The skyline is an uneven maze of buildings, many of which look almost exactly the same – reddish-brown concrete with dark windows, exposed and dangling wires, and satellite dishes. Their shadows hide a few old mansions that almost seem to cower, despite their size, behind tall fences, grassy courtyards, and security guards. And everywhere stand the cranes that build more hotels and more high-rises in an endless, anything-goes construction boom.

Downtown Beirut, which was effectively demolished during the civil war, is now a collection of high-end designer shops, art galleries, and luxury car dealerships. In Hamra, west Beirut, the sleepy campus of the American University sits on a hill overlooking the Corniche and the wide, blue-green calm of the Mediterranean. Over in Gemmayze and Achrafiye, east Beirut, are the clubs that made Beirut famous as the capital of the Middle Eastern party scene. On the streets, wonderful old Mercedes taxis belch black smoke through exhaust pipes and gray cigarette smoke from the driver’s window. The streets are a scene of controlled chaos – only some stoplights are actually on, lane divisions don’t exist, one-way street signs are ignored, and pedestrians weave their way through honking cars; it’s every man for himself. The old, the new, the quiet, the chaotic, and the glitzy. This is the Middle East.

Our first meal, at midnight the night we arrived, was in a 1950s-America style diner on Rue Hamra. It was a slightly surreal experience. The placemats and menus had large black-and-white photos of young Americans having a picnic at some indistinct, idyllic location. There was a dog and a small child, lots of smiles, and a full meal spread on a blanket on the ground. In the restaurant itself, the booths and stools was decorated with shiny metal and red pleather reminiscent of American diners. We ate burgers with French fries and ketchup. But the beer and the waiters were Lebanese, and people could smoke inside, so in the back of my head I knew I wasn’t in New Jersey. Nevertheless, when we paid the bill we asked the waiter where we could get some falafel. Falafel? he said. Just some classic Lebanese food? we suggested. Ah – down the road. He pointed. As we walked out I was confused. Isn’t falafel big over here? This is the Middle East?

Walking around Hamra the first morning, it soon became clear that Beirut is not what it used to be. What it used to be wasn’t clear, however. Old Beirut is not easy to find. Many landmarks of the old days are gone forever. Wimpy’s, a legendary café and sandwich joint, was the nerve center of west Beirut’s intelligentsia culture before and during the civil war, where academics, journalists, and others would sit with a cigar and coffee. It was also the site of an infamous event in 1982. Khalid Alwan shot and killed two Israeli soldiers as they drank coffee at Wimpy’s. Alwan was a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and they still commemorate this event. Wimpy’s is a Costa now.

Today’s Beirut is a city of contradictions and confusion. It is a city of terrifying recent violence, a disappearing past, and an uncertain present. Layer upon layer of rich history lies hidden underneath the modern cityscape. It is hidden because Beirut is not just strolling casually into the modern world – it is attacking with gusto. Sadly though, there is little regard for history. In the crazy construction explosion, no one cares for archaeological or architectural treasures.

I wonder if it is a deliberate but subconscious decision to bury the past. Perhaps it is a quest to reinvent the city, to shed the suffocating cloak of civil war and violence and embrace modern technology, architecture, culture, and materialism. In 2000, Robert Kaplan wrote, “Rather than reform or soul-searching, Lebanon has sunk into collective amnesia and rampant consumerism.”

Beirutis seem hell-bent on achieving something – a new identity or role in the region and the world, whether it be a position as a financial hub of the Middle East, a haven for artists, the party capital of the eastern Mediterranean, or simply a safe and interesting tourist destination.

Several of these it is well on its way to achieving. A small artist community has sprung up in recent years. The galleries in Gemmayze, downtown, and in the neighborhood of Mar Mikhael are hip enough to fit in New York or London. Indeed, an article in the Wall Street Journal Magazine in December 2010 devoted much attention to Beirut’s burgeoning art scene. World-renowned architects have helped transform downtown Beirut into a home for designers and artists. Together they are creating a vibrant scene and modern culture not found in any other capital city in the Middle East.

“Where art flourishes, commerce follows,” says the WSJ article. The author is not wrong. Take a drive through downtown Beirut and you’ll pass an Armani, Louis Vitton, Hermes, Jimmy Choo, Yves Saint Laurent, and many others. Just check out this enormous list of stores in the new Beirut Souks. The Souks, rebuilt by the real estate company Solidere (Société Libanaise pour le Développement et la Reconstruction de Beyrouth), “crystallize Solidere’s vision of Beirut city center as a complete, synergetic district,” according to the website.

Solidere has been at the center of the reconstruction and development of downtown Beirut, and has enjoyed more than its share of controversy in the process. Founded and run by the late former prime minister Rafiq Hariri (and then his son, also a former prime minister, Sa’ad Hariri), Solidere became the face of Beirut’s redevelopment. The Hariris made it a personal quest to rebuild and clean up the city. But they were accused of illegally expropriating land belonging to low-income Beirutis, paying them a fraction of what their land was worth, and parceling out the properties to international developers. And they were prime ministers. Conflict of interest? Solidere won the government contract to rebuild the old souk, which was centuries old but damaged by the civil war. Hariri the older disregarded conservationists and government construction regulations, and tore the whole thing down. In its place he built Beirut Souks, now home to the city’s high-end designers and auto dealers.

Ironically, one of the most visible monuments in downtown Beirut today is the skeleton of the old Saint-Georges Hotel, the side of which is decorated by an enormous “STOP SOLIDERE” sign. It seems that Solidere wants the hotel, for one reason or another. To knock it down and build something else, or to repair and sell it, perhaps. But the owner of the Saint-Georges, Fady El-Khoury, has waged a lengthy and public struggle to keep Solidere away from his beloved hotel, a Beirut landmark. Just take a look back at the April 1958 issue of National Geographic, where the Saint-Georges is the backdrop to photos of yachts, surfers, and water-skiers on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The situation today has apparently reached a stalemate – the hotel stands empty and lifeless, a monument to a dark past and a conflicted present.

Many have hailed Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East,” and the New York Times listed it as the number one place to visit in 2009. Lonely Planet called it one of the top ten liveliest places in the world. This is a far cry from the dark days of the civil war and the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. It also creates an incomplete picture.

To me, Beirut is a wounded city, where the wounds are covered up by modern construction or hidden away from the usual haunts of tourists. The destruction wrought by the civil war is rapidly vanishing, and the city is on a full-blown mission to reinvent itself, to forget the violence, and to bury the past. But it is not totally gone, even now. Nevertheless, Beirutis deserve a little credit – they’ve created a city-center devoted to luxury shops, developed an attractive and exciting art scene, and the clubs and parties are unrivalled in the region.

But this cover-up is also a tragedy. Not only are archaeological treasures disappearing under characterless modern construction but the leftovers from a violent past are being glossed over and forgotten. Like the green swathes of the golf course in Beirut, underneath a newfound fascination with luxury and materialism lies a dark, sad, and angry history.

The murder of Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 did nothing to assuage this damage. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is expected to accuse Hezbollah of organizing the assassination; in anticipation of this, Hezbollah’s cabinet ministers and allies in the Lebanese parliament abandoned their posts, shutting down the government. In January, Hezbollah’s choice for prime minister was nominated to succeed Sa’ad Hariri, who refused to reject the accusations of the Tribunal. So despite (thus far) escaping the protests that have swept many countries in the Middle East, Lebanon cannot escape it’s own brand of political instability. It doesn’t help that Iran and Syria continue to help Hezbollah prepare for a new war with Israel.

What was it F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote at the end of The Great Gadsby? “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Lebanon is haunted by its past, by violence, and by conflict. But perhaps because of this, modern Lebanese will not tolerate a return to the violence of their fathers and grandfathers. They are certainly moving at a frenzied pace to forget the past and move on. Here’s to hoping they succeed.

I just returned from a fourteen-day tour of the Middle East. As dictators falter and topple left and right, this is certainly an exciting time to be in the region. “The new Middle East,” you might call it. Simmering resentment, propelled by youth movements, disappointment in the status quo, and a sense of serious social injustice, ignited protests from Libya to Yemen. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia is gone. His friends in government also resigned. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt soon followed. Muammar Gaddafi might soon be next. Waiting in line are President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain. Instability might even spread to Saudi Arabia.

In addition to being an exciting time for the Middle East, it is also an uncertain period. No one knows what might happen in Libya, or if a new Egyptian government will actually solve Egypt’s economic problems, or if Tunisia’s government will stabilize, or which dictator might be next.

Despite the uncertainty however, this is also a period of promise. The voices of the people have overpowered those of dictators, security forces, and thugs. Nonviolence and moderation, not terrorism or extremism, have driven the protestors on the streets. Islam has been a constant presence, but there were no suicide bombers and barely a peep out of Al Qaeda. So far.

The Tunisia turmoil came out of nowhere, and those paying attention were shocked when Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia. Soon after, the world was riveted to Al Jazeera’s live coverage from Cairo, and millions of people cheered with the ecstatic and persistent protestors in Tahrir Square when President Mubarak finally resigned. Now we are following a civil war in Libya, where a stubborn Gaddafi family backed up by mercenaries and thugs refuses to take the hint and give in. And we are still watching as protests in Oman, Bahrain, and Yemen gather momentum. There is no end in sight.

Many have called it the “Arab Spring,” and the world has smiled and congratulated Egyptians, Tunisians, and others as they win a difficult fight for social and political freedoms against overbearing tyranny. But many have also cautioned, saying tougher tests lie ahead. As one intelligent commentator put it, “We must all remember that public anger does not automatically create solutions to serious cultural and economic problems, and the chaos and upheaval that inevitably attend even benign and popular revolutions may have severe economic repercussions.”

Nevertheless, it has been an exhilarating ride, and I was lucky to have my first taste of the greater Middle East during this time of turmoil and change. I did not visit Cairo, or Benghazi, or anywhere else where protesters were on the streets. Nevertheless, the view from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey was different from the view from New York. What will follow in the next few days is a series of posts on my experiences and reflections; a little history; a few predictions; some irony, confusion, and disappointment; but above all, excitement for the future of the Middle East.