Middle East Research and Information Project: Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971
When President Barack Obama addressed the UN General Assembly in September 2010, he sounded hopeful that by the following year there would be “an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations — an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.” Sure enough, in September 2011, the Palestinians asked the UN Security Council to recognize a state of Palestine — but Obama ordered the US delegate to veto the request. What gives?
On Tuesday I became a citizen of the United States. Almost ten years ago, I was granted permanent residency. Between my Green Card and my naturalization certificate lies the seemingly endless decade of the “war on terror.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, says its chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, has a “physics problem.”
According to a 2008 accord between the United States and Iraq, the US military is to be evacuated from Mesopotamia — down to the last tank mechanic and dishwasher — by the close of the calendar year. Lately, there have been hints that Iraq might want a “residual force” of as many as 12,000 troops to stay, but nothing firm.
Hence Mullen’s dilemma: How does the Pentagon plan for withdrawing its personnel and equipment when it doesn’t know for sure how many soldiers will be leaving? There are only so many C-130s to load and so much time in which to load them.
Back in 2004, three years into the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 Commission report made its debut to the gushing admiration of the Washington press corps. The report was everything that the mainstream media adores: bipartisan, devoid of divisive finger-pointing, full of conventional wisdom.
Take this pearl: “One of the lessons of the Cold War was that short-term gains in cooperating with the most brutal and repressive governments were often outweighed by long-term setbacks for America’s stature and interests.”
At about 11 pm on May 2, Bahrain’s criminal investigations directorate summoned Nedhal al-Khalifa, a 42-year-old dermatologist. Her father dropped her off at their headquarters at the ministry of interior at about midnight. Her family, including her four young children, didn’t hear anything from her until she was released two days later. Her husband, Sadiq Abdulla, a vascular surgeon, also 42, was detained in the same fashion on April 14. His whereabouts and condition remains unknown, as does the reason for his detention.
In the coming days, many will pore over the Guantánamo files released by Wikileaks to find startling revelations or to justify pre-existing positions. But before diving in, it may help to reflect on a few things that may not be explicit in the documents but are crucial to understanding their significance. These include:
Stability is the least understood and most derided of the trio of strategic interests pursued by the United States in the Middle East since it became the region’s sole superpower. Vexing, because it is patently obvious code for coziness with kings, presidents-for-life and other unsavory autocrats. Perplexing, because it seems to involve only cost, lacking the material benefit of protecting oil deposits or the domestic political profit of backing Israel, the two other members of the troika.
Egyptian current events prove one point for good: Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, US presidents wish their favored Arab states would forever remain nice, docile autocracies.
Of course, the Obama administration protests loudly to the contrary. President Barack Obama has gone on national television twice during Egypt’s amazingly courageous popular uprising to profess his admiration for the pro-democracy protesters in the streets. He praised their stand for “universal” human rights. Addressing them directly, he expressed his “unyielding belief that you will determine your own destiny and seize the promise of a better future for your children and your grandchildren.”
As the Mubarak regime turns to violence in a vain attempt to repress the peaceful protests that have swept Egypt’s streets for over ten days, the risks associated with current US strategy for Egypt and the wider region continue to grow. In its response to the events, the Obama administration has subtly shifted its message, incrementally increasing pressure on the regime over the last week. But the more important story is the remarkable continuities reflected in the administration’s approach.
With another interminable presidential campaign approaching, Americans grit their teeth as the aspirants to the White House take turns deploring the country’s dependence on foreign (particularly “Middle Eastern”) oil. It is a theme as old as disco and the pet rock — vapid and dull, yet forever capable of arousing popular scorn. On the one hand, every president since Jimmy Carter has set the goal of ridding the United States of this scourge, but to no avail, for American consumption of imported petroleum inexorably climbs. On the other hand, volatile gasoline prices, climate change and the specter of terrorism enhance the urgency of finding an alternative, if not to oil, then at least to oil of Middle Eastern provenance.
I was at Guantánamo Bay prison on Halloween. In a ghoulishly fitting coincidence, that was the same day a former child solider was convicted for war crimes for the first time since the end of World War II. Eight years and one day after Omar Khadr arrived at Guantánamo, his military commission case concluded with a plea-bargained sentence of eight more years.
Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was 15 on July 27, 2002, when US forces captured him in an Afghan village following a firefight. His father had sent him to Afghanistan the previous month to translate for an al-Qaeda operative.
As Israeli-Palestinian negotiations lurch from crisis to crisis, Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders have been suggesting they may go to the United Nations to seek resolutions confirming the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories and recognizing a reality of Palestinian statehood.
The war in Iraq is over. Or so the government and most media outlets will claim on September 1, by which time thousands of US troops will have departed the land of two rivers for other assignments. With this phase of the drawdown, says President Barack Obama, "America's combat mission will end." The Pentagon is marking the occasion by changing the name of the Iraq deployment from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn.
Which American has done the most harm to Iraq in the twenty-first century? The competition is stiff, with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and L. Paul Bremer, among others, to choose from. But, given his game efforts to grab the spotlight, it seems churlish not to state the case for Vice President Joe Biden.
Why would the Israeli navy commandeer boats carrying collapsible wheelchairs and bags of cement to the Gaza Strip? Israel says that the aid convoys are trying to "break the blockade" of the densely populated Palestinian enclave. But why is there a blockade in the first place?
Sen. Chuck Schumer, an ardent supporter of Israel's policies, recently offered an unusually frank explanation before a Jewish audience in Washington. The siege of Gaza aims "to show the Palestinians that when there's some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement," the New York Democrat said. "To strangle them economically, until they see that's not the way to go, makes sense."
I had almost forgotten I’d sent in an application when the e-mail message appeared, like Mr. Big, out of nowhere. “Hi, Moustafa,” it began, as if we were old friends. “Thank you for e-mailing us regarding your interest in working on ‘Sex and the City 2.’ ”
At first glance, there’s a clear need for expanding the Web beyond the Latin alphabet, including in the Arabic-speaking world. According to the Madar Research Group, about 56 million Arabs, or 17 percent of the Arab world, use the Internet, and those numbers are expected to grow 50 percent over the next three years.
Many think that an Arabic-alphabet Web will bring millions online, helping to bridge the socio-economic divides that pervade the region.
Iyad Allawi, the not terribly popular interim premier of post-Saddam Iraq, is in a position to form a government again because he won over the Sunni Arabs residing north and west of Baghdad in the March 7 elections. The vote, while it did not “shove political sectarianism in Iraq toward the grave,” as Allawi would have it, rekindled the hopes of many that “nationalist” sentiment has asserted itself over communal loyalty.
“Insulting” is how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described Israel’s treatment of Vice President Joe Biden during his recent trip to Israel, to support peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s hard to dispute that assessment.
After meeting with Israeli officials and declaring there was “no space between the United States and Israel,” Biden was hit by news of the Israeli government’s approval of 1,600 new Jewish-only homes on Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem. The settlements are illegal under international law, and the US government has consistently opposed their construction since the Johnson administration.
Americans got a crash course on Yemen for Christmas.
That’s because we’ve wanted to know more about the little-known, dirt-poor country in southwestern Arabia where the “underwear bomber” who tried to blow up a plane — bound for Detroit from Nigeria on Christmas Day — says he was trained. President Barack Obama says, correctly, that “large chunks” of Yemen “are not fully under government control.” So it seems to make sense to strengthen the Yemeni government, to get at “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” as the local gang of Islamist extremists is known.
