Basra, the Reluctant Seat of “Shiastan”
On December 24, 2005, an Iraqi writing under the signature “Hammad” published a remarkable message on a website devoted to southern Iraqi affairs:
The Lebanese Impasse
On November 11, 2006, the six Shi‘i ministers in the Lebanese government, affiliates of Hizballah and the Amal movement, left the cabinet in protest of their colleagues’ rejection of their demand for a government of “national unity.” Such a government would give the Shi‘i parties and their Christian ally, the Free Patriotic Movement of Gen. Michel Aoun, greater representation in the cabinet. The majority in the cabinet argued that Lebanese had elected their government, in the May–June 2005 parliamentary contests that came on the heels of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri and the departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon.
Louder Than Bombs
Political posters and banners are not new in Beirut. Activists have long hung portraits of party leaders or hastily spray-painted party symbols to claim territory, mark special events or simply insist on being recognized. At certain city intersections, these images are nearly always layered thickly, one literally covering up its competitor. Since the summer 2006 war, however, political imagery seems to have grown “louder.” Much of it bears the imprint, subtle or no, of transnational corporate advertising agencies.
Deconstructing Hizballah and Its Suburb
During the Israeli war against Hizballah in the summer of 2006, the innocuous Arabic word dahiya, meaning simply “suburb,” achieved an unprecedented notoriety. For several days, Israeli warplanes pounded one particular dahiya, the southern suburb of Beirut, whose neighborhood of Harat Hurayk contains Hizballah’s “security quarter” (al-murabba‘ al-amni). Various media presented Harat Hurayk as a fortress, a place whose destruction was justified because it sheltered terrorists who threatened the security of Israel. About 265 residential buildings, housing more than 3,000 housing units and 1,600 stores and workshops, were razed to the ground or heavily damaged.
Signs of a New Arab Cold War
During and after the 34 days of intense fighting between Hizballah and Israel in July and August 2006, observers advanced competing interpretations of the varied reactions in the Middle East. One popular narrative pointed to an emerging Sunni-Shi‘i divide in what one might label a “post-Arab” Middle East. According to Vali Nasr, author of the much discussed volume The Shia Revival, the Lebanon war marked a spillover of sectarian tensions manifest in Iraq, confirming his prophecy that cleavages within Islam will define the region’s major conflicts in the future.
The Muslim World Is Not Flat
This 1995 CIA map, often used in the media and in classrooms, reminds us that today Shi‘i Muslims are concentrated in only a few nation-states—Iran, Iraq, the Arab Gulf states, Azerbaijan and Lebanon in the Middle East, and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in South Asia. There are also numerous ‘Alawis in Syria, Alevis in Turkey and Zaydi Shi‘a in Yemen. The vast majority of Muslims in the world, approximately 90 percent, are Sunni.
From the Editor (Spring 2007)
Turkey, Cyprus and the European Division
More than years after the opening of the ceasefire line that divides Cyprus, the island is closer than ever to rupture. When the Green Line first opened in April 2003, there was an initial period of euphoria, as Cypriots flooded in both directions to visit homes and neighbors left unwillingly behind almost three decades before. But a year later, when a UN plan to reunite the island came to referendum, new divisions emerged. While Turkish Cypriots voted in favor of the plan, their Greek Cypriot compatriots rejected it in overwhelming numbers.
Wasting Time In The Middle East
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concluded her second trip to the Middle East in a month with little to show for her efforts. The meeting she hosted between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was undermined the day before it began. Olmert announced that Israel and the United States had agreed that they would boycott the Palestinian government of national unity which will be formed on the basis of the accords reached in Mecca unless it recognizes “the right of the State of Israel to exist,” stops “terrorism” and agrees to fulfill the agreements signed by the PLO.
The Pigeon on the Bridge Is Shot
“Sometimes they ask me what it is like to be an Armenian. I tell them that it is a wonderful thing and I recommend it to everyone.” These were Hrant Dink’s opening remarks at a conference entitled “Ottoman Armenians During the Collapse of the Ottoman Empire,” held in Istanbul on September 24 and 25, 2005.
The Pakistan Taliban
There and Back Again in Somalia
Somalia Airstrikes Are Not the Answer
On January 24, the US launched a second round of airstrikes in Somalia against alleged al-Qaeda terrorists believed to be responsible for the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Intended to eradicate these extremist elements from the Horn of Africa, the airstrikes instead exacerbated the chaos brought on by the fall of the Union of Islamic Courts to US-backed Ethiopian forces late last year. Continued instability renders Somalia ripe for the reemergence of the same kind of militancy the US strikes aimed to eliminate. Limited military actions cannot prevent Somalia from reverting to militant haven status, but a comprehensive, three-pronged US approach could.
Winter of Lebanon’s Discontents
In the two months since the standoff between the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and the Hizballah-led opposition began in earnest, the atmosphere in the Lebanese capital of Beirut has oscillated between ambient anxiety and incongruous routine. Tensions exploded on January 25, when four Lebanese were killed and over 150 wounded in street fighting that began on the grounds of Beirut Arab University near the neighborhood of Tariq Jadideh, and largely pitted Sunnis against Shi‘a.
A Reckoning Deferred
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? That haunting question, posed by John Kerry to Congress when he was a discharged Navy lieutenant in 1971, helped to slow, and eventually stop, a pointless, unpopular war in Vietnam. That question, in part because Kerry declined to pose it anew when he was a presidential candidate in 2004, has yet to slow the unpopular war in Iraq, if anything a more massive US strategic blunder than the Southeast Asian venture. But the question unmistakably haunts the senators who shuffle before the cameras to defend or denounce the planned “surge” of 21,500 additional American soldiers into Iraq as part of the White House’s latest ploy to postpone defeat.
Iraqis Deserved Better Justice
For much of the time that I wrote my biography of Saddam Hussein between 2003-2005, its ending remained unclear. Throughout the process of researching and writing the book, Saddam’s government was overthrown, and he went into hiding. In December 2003, US soldiers participating in Operation Red Dawn found him hovering in a spider hole near his hometown of Tikrit. As he was captured, Saddam said, “I am Saddam Hussein. I’m the President of Iraq, and I want to negotiate.” As it turns out, his American captors chose not to take him up on his offer. In the months ahead, Saddam was held in solitary confinement at Camp Cropper, a US military complex near Baghdad, where he wrote poetry, gardened, and developed a taste for American junk food.
Behind the Gaza Breakdown
The latest convoluted set of events within Palestine, and at its borders, form a depressing tableau that mirrors the conflict as a whole.
Study Group Shows Why US Must Leave
It is time for the United States to leave Iraq.
Not because the consequences of withdrawal won’t be dire for Iraq, but because these consequences are occurring anyway, in slow motion. Civil war and chaos already envelop the country, both conditions are getting worse and the United States is powerless to arrest the downward spiral.
Slowly, but too slowly for those who will die unnecessarily in the meantime, this somber reality is dawning on Washington. The report of the vaunted Baker-Hamilton commission, released December 6, offers a blunt diagnosis of multiple problems besetting the Bush administration Mesopotamian misadventure.
Editor’s Picks (Winter 2006)
Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin. The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Geneaology (London: Routledge, 2006).
Ansari, Ali M. Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2006).
Golan-Agnon, Daphna. Next Year in Jerusalem (New York: New Press, 2006).
Hirschkind, Charles. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
International Law at the Vanishing Point
In the summer of 2006, two border incidents were invoked by Israel, with strong US diplomatic support and material assistance, to justify a prolonged military offensive in Gaza and a crushing “shock and awe” assault on Lebanon. The main international response, effectively orchestrated by Washington, was built around the bland assertion that Israel has the “right to defend itself.”
