CUMINet

Guest post by Søren Schmidt, PhD and Researcher at The Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).

Afghanistan– a new Vietnam or a new Iraq?

Lecture for The Danish Societ for Central Asia, University of Copenhagen, November 10, 2009.

1. Introduction. We have now been in Afghanistan for eight years. The government seems to be weaker than ever and Taliban stronger than ever. The more soldiers the West sends to the country, the worse it goes. What is the problem and how can we understand what is happening? I will try to answer on two levels. My comments are on the general, long-term level. Although it is important to see the general picture, this does not mean that from this we can deduce what should be done in concrete terms in the present situation. First, I will try to outline what I see as the problem in Afghanistan, and then use the two historical narratives – the surge in Iraq and experience from Vietnam – to try to understand the strategic situation in which we find ourselves.
2. What is the problem? We are in Afghanistan because of Al Qaeda and 9-11. International terrorism is a security problem for us, which requires us to act. We invaded Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda. In the meantime, a so-called mission creep has occurred, and the originally simple goals have expanded into helping Afghanistan’s government, which we helped to power in 2001, gain control of the country in order to prevent Al Qaeda from returning. In short: nation building. This is where the problems start. Because Afghanistan, like all other third-world countries, is engaged in its own historical state- and nation-building process, which involves determining how to organize the country and how to divide power. This process has developed into a regular civil war – as in so many other places – between the city-based political coalition based, on one side, on the northern alliance of the country’s ethnic minorities and selected warlords and based on the narcotics economy, and on the other, a religious extremist Pashtun movement, which is also in alliance with selected warlords and partly financed by narcotics, and whose political programme is to establish an Islamic state with Shari’a as the law of the land. We know that Afghanistan will never become stable without a local partner with sufficient legitimacy and political influence to govern the state. While it is difficult to see who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, it is not difficult to see that we are siding with the losing side, which in addition to lack of support in the south is now also in trouble with large segments of its support among the Tajik minority group. So this is the problem: We want to contribute to stability, but we need a local partner to work with who can unite the country. Instead of contributing to reconciliation between the two sides in the civil war, we have instead become part of it.
3. Iraq. Can we turn developments around as we did in Iraq with the ’surge’, when we became allies with Sunni-Islamist groups in Anbar Province to fight against Al Qaeda? Can we become allies in a similar way with local Pashtun militia groups in the fight against Taliban? While Al Qaeda were foreigners that ravaged Anbar, Talibans are Pashtuns who had not only ravaged but have built up a real alternative social system that provides law enforcement and an ombudsman system to ensure against abuse of power. Before we see concrete evidence that it is possible to fight Taliban in this way, I think it wise to be sceptic regarding this strategy. Another important difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is that in the Iraqi civil war, we sided with a strong Shia-Islamist coalition with roots in Iraq, since 60 percent of the population are Shiites, and with a well functioning patron-client network base and a loyal militia that received uniforms and could function as the national security force – and on top of that had support from the neighbouring country, Iran. We have no reason for any optimism regarding the Karzai government’s ability to emulate Malik on any of these points. As already stated, Karzai has a very narrow power base; in addition to the old warlords, whose behaviour was the direct cause of the birth of Taliban, he does not have a similar patron-client network, and he receives no support from the neighbouring country, Pakistan. Rather, just the opposite!
4. Is it then Vietnam that provides a frame of reference for understanding the strategic situation? After he retired, the former American defence minister, Robert McNamara, characterized the Vietnam War as a great misunderstanding, which over two million Vietnamese and 58,000 American soldiers died for. The Vietnamese nationalists believed that USA was an imperialist power, which like France wanted to dominate and exploit their country. USA, on the other hand, considered Vietnam to be part of the communist block, and it was therefore necessary to stop communism in Vietnam as part of the global fight against communism. None of this was correct according to McNamara. The conflict in Vietnam was a civil war. We sided with the weakest side; and the strongest side was not fighting on behalf of world communism but for Vietnamese nationalism. Their alliance with China was tactical, not strategic, which became obvious when South Vietnam collapsed in 1975 and USA withdrew. Already in 1978, war broke out between communist Vietnam and communist Cambodia (an example moreover of a successful humanitarian intervention), and the year after between communist Vietnam and communist China. Is what we are witnessing today also a mutual misunderstanding? Taliban (and Al Qaeda) consider us imperialists who will repress their national Islamic culture, while we consider them to be the frontline for a global Islamist movement that wants to defeat us and destroy our way of life. I think that to a great extent this is the case. While we fight Taliban, because they are allied with Al Qaeda, Taliban, it seems, is mainly allied with Al Qaeda, because we have turned both into our enemies. Gulbuddin Hikmatyar said recently: “Taliban government came to end in Afghanistan due to the wrong strategy of Al Qaeda”, indicating that they have different interests and, having learned from their experience, is likely to act differently today in relation to Al Qaeda.
5. Conclusion. The mixture of nationalistic and international terrorism is a dangerous cocktail that needs to be unmixed, if we wish to protect our real interest – which is to fight the latter. If we examine the relationship between the two variables – our military intervention in Muslim countries, and the strength of nationalistic and international terror movements – we find a causality that goes both ways. The more we strengthen our military presence in the Muslim countries, the better we can fight them. Unfortunately, I believe the opposite relationship is even stronger: the greater our military presence in Muslim countries, the stronger the terror movements become and the more we weaken those on whose behalf we intervene. The net effect is therefore negative. This understanding ought to form the basis for our long-term strategy. The really difficulty lies in combining this with the short-term necessity to combat international terrorism and make sure that the pursuit of the long-term strategy does not, here and now, cause the presently low-intensity civil war to become red-hot.

by Anders Hastrup.

This summer and autumn brought news from the Sudanese capital to the front pages of the Western press and media agencies as the journalist Lubna Hussein was arrested in a Khartoum cafe along with several other women for wearing trousers, forbidden by the country’s Islamic law. Islamic law was introduced as early as 1983 in Sudan, and has been enforced vigorously in the early 1990s since the coming to power of the present Islamist military dictatorship. Although Islamism has cooled down immensely since the 1990s and the terrorists have gone elsewhere, the case is a reminder of the inherent contradictions of a imposing a stern Islamist rule in a country with one of the strongest, independent and well- educated female elites on the African continent.

Muslim dress, again

I initially ignored commenting on the Lubna Hussein case of this summer/autumn, as I was annoyed by the fact that it is only when stories of women and Muslim vs. Western dress emerge that the Western press bring news of Sudan, home of two of Africa’s most devastating and longest running civil wars. The war in the South is erupting again. It looks as if the CPA, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 that ended the North South war is failing. The past 6 months have seen acts of war and violence in the South that by far exceeds events in Darfur in their sheer brutality and number of people killed. The culture of impunity and violence still engulfs the entire region of Darfur where as many as 2.5 million people are internally displaced relying on food aid from the international agencies in the most expensive continuing relief effort in the world.

Where is the analysis of the interconnectedness of Sudan’s real tragedies? Why is Western media obsessed with a discussion of pants vs. dresses? There are more interesting and important stories that come out of the biggest country in Africa, I thought, and decided not to devote any further attention to the matter. However, the story continued to grow as Lubna Hussein, a strong and powerful journalist from North Sudan refused to the accept the punishment of flogging and took the case to court. And to the Western media. Lubna Hussein’s position as a UN employee gave her an international backing and a direct link to the world of international media. The case blew up in Western media much to the embarrassment of the ruling elite in Khartoum.

Relations with the West

The Khartoum government’s relation with the Western countries is ambivalent and ambiguous. On the one hand, the ICC indictment of President Bashir over war crimes in Darfur have worsened relations and cooled down a lot of recent improvement in diplomatic ties between Khartoum, the US and the ever amorphous “International Community”. While promising genocide lobbyists in their own country to take a tougher stand on Darfur, the Obama administration has signaled a new beginning and a fresh look at Sudan-US relations much to the dismay of the protagonists of the Save Darfur movement, the biggest civil movement on overseas matters in the US since the anti- Vietnam movements of the 60s and 70s.

Khartoum doesn’t really need the US that much right now. They are perfectly all right with leaving the mayhem of Darfur to the international aid agencies and ill equipped and understaffed AU and UN forces. Money is pouring in, Khartoum is a booming city thanks to the increasing oil revenues and the industrious Chinese who are completely remaking the Northern Sudanese infrastructure and constructing the Meroe dam on the Nile. The Chinese don’t ask questions. Khartoum is doing more than ok at the moment, thank you very much.

The Lubna Hussein “trousers-gate” scandal is embarassing because it gives the Sudan exactly the coverage it doesn’t like in the West as (yet another) of the backward-looking Islamist regimes, which it certainly is not. In this way the “trousers-gate” scandal echoes the scandal over the British schoolteacher who named a teddy bear “Mohammed” in 2007 and was imprisoned and expelled from Sudan. The case blew up in Western media and the teacher ended up receiving a Presidential pardon.

The elite in Sudan are tired of this portrayal. The Sudan Northern elite are among the oldest educated elites on the African continent, a real cosmopolitan bunch who have very successful diasporas and are doing very well where ever they may roam. This is true of both women and men. They are as far from the Taliban as you can get. The “trousers-gate” scandal is a threat to the Sudanese Northern elite, not because of negative publicity in the West, but because of this publicity’s negative internal effect on the elite themselves.

The Turabi fatwa and the role of women in Sudan

Sudan is a country characterized by many things among them strong, willful, articulate and independent women. They are the real glue that holds the country, especially the Northern elites, together. Sudanese politics are fragmented but held together to a large extend by intermarriages of the families of the ruling elite. Secular, Sectarian, Communist, Islamist, all of these fractions are intermarried and a large network of wives can to a large degree be thanked for the coherence of North Sudan.

Losing the women of Sudan would be a far more devastating blow for the survival of the Sudanese elite than any economic sanctions, ICC indictment, UN missions or anything else imposed on Sudan from the outside. This is well known in Sudan and caused Hassan al Turabi to issue a most controversial fatwa in 2006 allowing Muslim women to marry a Christian or Jewish man.

Although an Islamist, and indeed the chief architect and ‘Ayatollah’ of the Islamic revolution in Sudan of 1989, he is also a pragmatic figure navigating through the (ever) changing political landscapes of Sudan. The fatwa is a pragmatic tool to hinder the brain drain of Sudan’s women, who see their opportunities dwindling in the “unnatural” limitations imposed on them by Islamism. The “trousers-gate” scandal of Lubna Hussein is precisely an internal scandal for the Sudanese elite, who, hopefully, feel increasingly alienated from the police forces cracking down on immodest behavior in the public space. Sudan cannot survive without a highly educated, articulate, strong and independent women like Lubna Hussein in the long run.

Hopefully the realization of this will teach the Sudanese forces to treat their women with greater respect, not clamping down on their freedom of movement, expression, dress and their possibility to put on trousers if they so desire.

By Rasmus Christian Elling.

Saturday, when I got back from watching Bahman Ghobadi’s new movie ‘No One Knows About Persian Cats’, I was excited, almost in a trance, and felt I had seen the best Iranian movie in years. Actually, last time I had this feeling was when I saw ‘The Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine’ by Bahman Farmanara, some eight years ago.

I’m no film critic or cinema expert, but in my world, ‘Persian Cats’ is nothing but a masterpiece. In a style reminiscent of Fatih Akin’s  ‘Crossing the Bridge,’ Ghobadi introduces us to the Iranian underground music scene while telling a gripping tale of two young Iranian talents who wish to go abroad, where they can express themselves freely as indie rock musicians. They are trying to assemble a band to do one last illegal show and raise funds for a tour in Europe. During their quest to find musical soul mates and get the visa- and passport-problems solved in Tehran’s underworld, we see and hear some of the best in modern Iranian music: beautiful soul and blues in underground studios, pounding hip hop beats on construction sites in the asphalt jungle of Tehran, thrashing death metal in a cow house and much more. The musical journey is interwoven with a visual journey of extremely beautiful pictures, cutting up Tehran’s urban sprawl music video style.

‘No One Knows About Persian Cats,’ which won the Jury’s Special Prize at 2009 Cannes Film Festival, shows an Iranian music scene that – not unlike Iranian cinema itself – has grown in its inhospitable environment of repression and censorship into something wild and beautiful. Something uniquely Iranian. The fearless, passionate actors on this scene are not blindly imitating the West, they are not an Iranian MTV generation. They represent an authentic declaration of love towards music across borders and boundaries, and a drive towards defining what it means to be Iranian in the 21^st Century. Among its many fascinating characters, we meet Hichkas – hands down, Iran’s best rapper and my personal favorite. In contrast to the protagonists and their dreams of khârej (outside of Iran), Hichkas makes a patriotic assertion of love to the fatherland, and he rejects an invitation to go abroad. We have rock musicians who quote Persian poetry and take equal inspiration from Western rock and Iranian traditional music. The scene is homegrown, 100% Iranian and 100% underground.

That said, ‘Persian Cats’ – like so many other films – also represents a utopia: the idea, so thoroughly cultivated and romanticized by Western journalists, exile-Iranian memoir writers and fans of Tehran’s cosmopolitan youth. This is the sometimes-exaggerated dream of a wild, secular and democratic generation waiting to burst through the cement walls of Islamic theocracy and conservatism. Surely, this idea, unless balanced with a view from ‘the other side of the story’, is a fantasy based on a false dichotomy. It is a projection of ‘our’ hopes and dreams for Iran on a canvas that is, in reality, much more nuanced and complex than a battle between modernity vs. tradition and freedom vs. religion and art vs. censorship. All young Iranians do not share the perspective presented in ‘Persian Cats’: not all are driven by the exact same passions we see in the protagonists and not all share their views on the sublime greatness of indie rock and hip hop. Not all speak, dress and act as they do.

Nonetheless, there is enough evidence to state firmly that since the late 1990s, the Iranian underground scene has exploded. It has taken over the space in Iranian popular culture once occupied by the exile-Iranian music scene in Tehrangeles, California, with its torrent of mindless pop. Statistics also speak their clear language about brain drain, and anyone who has traveled or lived in Iran will probably agree that many young Iranians do dream of going abroad, of being able to speak up and of not fearing the authorities. This is why ‘Persian Cats’, while being part fantasy, is also part reality. It is a fictitious documentary, ‘based on a true story’, and starring many of the people who actually live this life every day. This is not a one-eyed Western glance at our heroes in the Gucci Generation. It is a reflection on a profound cultural movement. An evolution much more powerful than Mousavi, Khatami and Karroubi’s ‘reformist wave’.

‘Persian Cats’ differ greatly from other ‘festival-type’ Iranian movies in its format, language and goal. While there is an underlying, sad story of despair and desperation, well known to fans of Iranian cinema, literature and poetry, ‘Persian Cats’ differ by being… well… funny. There is humor, there is the speed-talking streetwise figure of Nader, the lovable remnant of pre-revolutionary gangster flicks in Hajj David and the fast-paced motorcycle trips through Tehran. All together, it is an experience that is miles away from, say, Abbas Kiarostami’s slow-paced, lo-fi rural realism – and even from Kiarostami’s recent attempt at upbeat urban social critique, ‘Ten‘.

So is that why Abbas Kiarostami hates ‘Persian Cats’? We may soon find out, because today Bahman Ghobadi released a shocking open letter to the Grand Man of Iranian New Wave Cinema on the net. The ruckus allegedly started when Kiarostami gave Ghobadi a scathing critique after a screening of ‘Persian Cats’ in Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago. Iranian media quoted Kiarostami saying ‘If Bahman Ghobadi thinks there are better circumstances for creating movies outside of Iran, I congratulate him. But for me, personally, I don’t believe in leaving Iran. The place I can sleep comfortably is my home’. He added that he had never seen anything good from those Iranians who left the country and that he would always want to create movies in his homeland and in his mother tongue. However, he might also have said much more than that, at least to Ghobadi himself, at least according to Ghobadi. Indeed, Ghobadi’s letter that surfaced today is, well, very harsh.

In it, Ghobadi states that he has always had great respect and much love for Kiarostami, and that before this, he wouldn’t even had dared to write Kiarostami a letter; but that, now, he is forced to respond:

‘It all started that damned night. The night when you grabbed my arm and pulled me aside and told me you didn’t like my movie. I wasn’t angry, but surprised. You didn’t see the movie for the first time in Abu Dhabi, but in my own home several months before. And you said you liked it’, Ghobadi begins. At the Abu Dhabi screening, however, Kiarostami instead lambasted not just Ghobadi, but also Ja‘far Panahi (Kiarostami’s former assistant director and winner of several prizes) in phrases Ghobadi had never expected from the Grand Old Man: ‘You accused me, and other filmmakers who have heard the voice of the people in the underground, in the closets, homes, streets and backstreets of our city, of lying in our films’ … ‘My dear and respected Master! I, and all film-lovers, respect your opinion on cinema. But that does not mean that we can allow you, in the manner of dictators, to tell everybody in the art world what to do, or to judge any film that is not silent, voiceless and unrelated to the troubles in society, like your own works, as worthless’.

Ghobadi continues to state that Kiarostami does not have the right to accuse and criticize filmmakers like Ghobadi for the ‘social responsibility’ they express in their films. He argues that Kiarostami’s criticism is a way for the Grand Old Man to justify his own ‘silence and conservatism’ vis-à-vis the acute problems in Iranian society: ‘In all these years, you have created films without the slightest influence from politics and society, which of course, is your right and your choice. Silence is also your right, even though if you were to open your mouth and criticize the rulers’ oppression and the chaotic conditions in society, you would still enjoy much more safety than the rest of us … The United Nations [would] stand by you. Nonetheless, as I said, staying silent is your right. What is not your right is to utter words that will become headlines in Iranian pro-government newspapers, [words that] make the regime happy. How can you allow yourself, with nasty words, to mock filmmakers who try to support the oppressed people, and worse, to state, in the language of religious dictators, what is forbidden? What has happened since we must hear these words, which we used only to hear from state officials [working with] cinema and from journalists at Kayhan, from you?’.

‘What is forbidden’ – nahi az monkar – is part of a Quranic quote used as an Islamist slogan by the Iranian state to forbid certain behavior and culture, and Kayhan is the vicious mouth-piece of Ayatollah Khamene‘i that is used to brand opposition politicians, intellectuals and artists as foreign agents, spies and sell-outs. That should give you an idea of how severe this counterattack sounds when read in its original Persian.

‘Earlier, you have stated that Iran is the best place in the world for making films’, continues Ghobadi. ‘Maybe for filmmakers such as yourself and for the kind of films that you make. But you are perfectly aware that filmmakers who are concerned with an independent and intellectual cinema, and who are concerned with Iran and Iranian society today, are suffering under military base-like conditions in the film industry. How can you claim that a country that enforces the strictest censorship on film is the best place for filmmaking in the world? In a situation where our filmmakers, one after the other, is forbidden to leave the country, and in which some of them, such as Ja‘far Panahi, lose their opportunity to partake in major, international projects due to [these restrictions], how can you – instead of defending and supporting them – reproach them for not making their films in Iran, which is, according to you, the best place to do so in the world?’

Ghobadi asks Kiarostami if he was joking? And if not, why he himself is making his next movie in Tuscany, Italy? And then Ghobadi retorts to the question of his leaving Iran: ‘I have never left the country by my own will and wish. They threw me out of my country. They closed all doors to filmmaking before me. Despite all these problems, and while you were preparing your new film in Italy, I created my last film in the heart of Tehran’.

Ghobadi indicates that Kiarostami has blamed him for making young Iranians want to leave Iran with ‘Persian Cats’, and then he returns to Kiarostami’s statement about sleeping comfortably at home: ‘How can you sleep peacefully when the whole world knows what is happening to Iran’s young people every day? How can you sleep calmly when the people of Iran can not; when they live in fear of a dark future for their children? Do you even know how it is to make a film in fear and terror and without a permit? Do you know how it is to be imprisoned due to your film’s success in Cannes, or interrogation due to things you said abroad? I have experienced all this on my own body, and that is why I cannot sleep comfortably at night like you. That is why the Iranian society is more important than film to me today. In order to help my compatriots who live in pain and injustice, I am even ready to leave the film industry and do my service to them’.

The part of the letter that really caught my attention (which has to do with my own research) was the following, in which Ghobadi relates to Kiarostami’s earlier statement about creating movies in his one’s ‘own country’ and in one’s own ‘mother tongue’. Ghobadi writes: ‘They have never forced you to silence because of your being Kurdish and your being a Sunni Muslim. But in that same country, which is also my country, they have never allowed me to make a movie in my own mother tongue [which is Kurdish], and one of their reasons for stopping my films was exactly that. Like you, I too want to make films in my own country and in my mother tongue. I am also in love with my country and my home. But all this has been taken away from me because I wouldn’t stay silent. And you have all this, paid for by not speaking up and by staying silent.’

Ghobadi finishes the letter: ‘Dear Mr. Kiarostami! In these sensitive and crucial days, whether you want it or not, whether it is right or not, the only criterion for dignity, honor and pride is to follow the people and not to follow those who oppose the people. With your statements, you have forbidden us to protest and to support the [Iranian] people at [international film] festivals, or to create films about social and political problems. The people will not forget the silence of artists. The people is the best judge of history.’

Harsh words, indeed. So is this a ‘beef’ in the industry – a catfight between two huge egos? Or is it indicative of a paradigm shift in Iranian new wave cinema? I believe it is a combination of both. Parts of Ghobadi’s letter is somewhat embarrassing, and having personally met Kiarostami and seen his films (including Ten, which certainly is not the clean, conservative and pro-regime material Ghobadi wants you to believe Kiarostami represents), I cannot help feeling that it is too much and too harsh. Of course, we do not know exactly what Kiarostami said to Ghobadi on that ‘damned night’ in Abu Dhabi. But calling Kiarostami a representative of the same stuff we read in Kayhan seems a little bit too over the edge. Blaming Kiarostami for not speaking out against the violence and repression in Iran lately is maybe not the right way to use your energy.

However, Ghobadi may also have some salient points in his implicit criticism of the Kiarostami-esque cinema: it does seem at times to lack balls. One problem is that the type of cinema Kiarostami creates, or used to create (and that Ghobadi, Panahi and several others, for that matter, have until recently created) were for many years the only type of cinema we in the West saw of Iran. A lot of exile Iranians became fed up when all we saw from their homeland were simple villagers, innocent children and handicapped people, refugees in barren mountains or desolate wastelands, never ending panoramic shots of rural landscapes and poetic meditations on ‘small things in life’. I’ve been at practically every screening of Iranian films in Denmark for the last ten years, and there were always a couple of Iranians who would get up and leave the cinema a few minutes into the films. ‘Why do they always portray Iran like this?’ would be the question. Film experts, on the other hand, would celebrate this type of cinema as unique and would tell us how the glance of an actor in a particular shot was actually a profound criticism of society, how a girls movement in another shot indicated intercourse, that Iranian film had developed its own secret language of criticism despite and because of censorship, and so on. It is my impression that many ‘ordinary’ Iranians – that is, non-film experts – really didn’t care. They wanted to see and feel the daily struggles and dramas of the homeland, and not the underacted contemplative art house stuff that so excited Western film critics.

With movies like Panahi’s 2000 ‘The Circle’, Rakhsan Bani-Etemad’s 2001 ‘Under the Skin of the City’ or Dariush Mehrjui’s 2007 ‘Santuri’ – and, as mentioned, Kiarostami’s 2002 ‘Ten’ – Iranian new wave artists of the first generation have take off the gloves, even several years before Ghobadi. Indeed, Iranian cinema has a long tradition of social critique. However, second-generation artists like Ghobadi – whose fiancée, the journalist Roxana Saberi were imprisoned on charges of espionage during this summer’s unrest in Iran – have now not only taken off the glove, but also grabbed a club, and started to hit back. He may expect others to follow suit and live up to their obligation as socially aware, critical intellectuals – like filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, touring the world as a Dalai Lama-like representative of The Green Movement or like the singer and composer Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, who has told Iranian state media not to use his music anymore after the 2009 state violence against the opposition. Or Ghobadi may expect people such as Kiarostami at least not to criticize him when he hits back at the Islamic Republic.

So, is Ghobadi right in lashing back at the Grand Old Man, so publicly and so fiercely? I’m not sure. But it is certainly a debate that will help shape the future of Iranian cinema. Now go watch ‘Nobody Knows About Persian Cats’. I love that movie!

by Rasmus Christian Elling.

Unfortunately, I do not have time for an in-depth analysis, but the following pieces of recent news points to an escalation of the conflict between Iran and Saudi-Arabia:

Iranian Arabic channel taken off air

“The operators of Nilesat and Arabsat cited a breach of contract according to Egypt’s MENA news agency, but al-Alam said they had not been given a reason. Analysts say some Arab governments are worried about the channel’s popularity and Iran’s growing regional influence.”

Iran warns Saudi-Arabia against continued fingerprinting of pilgrims

“Tehran has shown strong reaction to the new rules set by the Saudi officials against Iranian pilgrims.”

Yemen accuses Iranian ‘religious institutions’ of backing armed rebellion

“Yemen, the poorest Arab state and a known base for al-Qaeda, is fighting a vicious war in the northern mountains near the border with Saudi Arabia against a Shia tribal group known as the Houthis. The authorities now claim to have seized an Iranian-crewed vessel carrying anti-tank missiles off the Yemeni coast near the Houthi stronghold on Monday.”

Iran is expanding its activity in the Red Sea

“Tehran aims to turn Yemen into a regional arena for conflict, as part of its ongoing dispute with several countries in the region”

Saudi air force bombs Yemen rebels

“Arab countries allied to the US, such as predominantly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Egypt, fear Shiite power Iran could gain influence in Yemen through the rebels.”

Yemeni Shi’ite cleric and Houthi disciple ‘Issam al-Imad: Our Leader Houthi is close to Khamene‘i

“In the interview, Al-Imad describes the religious, ideological, and political affinity that has evolved between the Yemeni Houthis and the Iranian regime, saying that the Houthis have effectively converted from Zaidi Shi‘a to Twelver Shi‘a, which is Iran’s official religion”

What to make of all this? Discuss!

by Rasmus Christian Elling.

Sunday, a small radical Sunni group again attacked Iran. A suicide bomber targeted a meeting close to a small town on the border with Pakistan in the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Among the around 40 dead were six or seven high-ranking Revolutionary Guard commanders. This is the latest act in a long-running small-scale war with insurgents in a volatile corner of multi-ethnic Iran. It is also yet another good reason why many Iranians feel their country is under attack by its many enemies.

According to the state-owned Iranian Press TV, Jondollah (aka. Jundullah, Jundallah) – a Sunni Muslim, Baluchi terror group – has claimed responsibility for the  (read more about Jondollah here). For at least six years, Jondollah has been behind several acts of terrorism, including ambushes on military convoys, assassination, abductions and execution of officials and soldiers.

Reportedly, a group of Revolutionary Guard commanders, Shiite and Sunni clerics and local tribal leaders were supposed to congregate at a ‘Unity Meeting’, where they would discuss security issues in the province, which has been marred for many years with drug smuggling, terror and armed gangs. Among the Revolutionary Guards were Brigadier Nour-Ali Shushtari (deputy commander of the Guard’s ground forces, head of the local main base), Brigadier Rajab-Ali Mohammadzadeh (provincial commander) and commanders of major cities and towns in the province. Several of the tribal leaders and both Shiite and Sunni clerics also died.

The terror act has been described by Iranian officials as a foreign-sponsored blow to the Iranian state’s endeavor at reconciling Shiites and Sunnis, and as an attempt at disrupting security and creating ethnic and sectarian strife in multi-cultural Iran. Namely, the US, Britain and Pakistan have been accused for supporting Jondollah. This is not the first time Iran makes this accusation, and there is still reason to take this claim seriously and not dismiss it categorically as just another piece of propaganda or political paranoia. In particular, there have been speculations for several years whether or not the US have been in contact with Jondollah, or maybe even trained and equipped them (see here, here, here and here – also see Press TV interview with Jondollah leader Abdolmalek Rigi’s brother here and here).

Just as with earlier episodes, Iranian officials have again linked Jondollah to ‘Talibanism’, Al-Qaeda and Wahhabism, and thus there is also an indirect accusation against Saudi Arabia, whom Iran has accused before for supporting not only Baluchi militants, but also Kurdish guerillas (see Uskowi Iran’s analysis here).

The Iranians have been very clear this time that the Jondollah is using Pakistan as a safe haven. Ahmadinejad stated that certain elements in the Pakistani state support the Jondollah. I interpret his statement as condemning not an overall Pakistani strategy, but rather the notion of rogue elements from within the Paki intelligence and military establishment – autonomous elements who share anti-Shiite tendencies with various extremist factions in Pakistan. The Iranian parliament demanded swift military action – including attacks over the border and into Pakistan. I don’t think this will happen unless the Pakistanis agree (maybe unofficially, as seems to have happened in the case of Iran attacking PJAK on Iraqi soil). Indeed, Iranian media have reported that during a phone call, Ahmadinejad and Zardari agreed to coordinate actions against Jondollah.

However, instead of dwelling on the different (conspiracy) theories and whether or not they can be true – including the admittedly interesting question of whether the US is (still?) supporting Jondollah – I will focus on the impact on Iranian public opinion.

It is my impression that Iranians in general do not perceive Jondollah as a group fighting for ethnic or sectarian rights – and certainly not for democratic values. The Iranian state-run media, government officials and the clergy have thus succeeded in planting the Wild East image among ordinary Iranians: that Sistan-Baluchistan has always been ‘wild’, plagued by unruly tribal marauders and drug gangs. The Jondollah is thus perceived as bandits (ashrâr) and not as political activists, symptomatic of a primitive barbaric culture that has more to do with ‘Afghanistan’ than ‘Iran’.

Pundits in Iran, however, are very well aware of the several layers of political and social implications in Jondollahs activities, whether ethnic, sectarian, regional or international.

In general, ‘opposition’ bloggers – that is, those bloggers who generally support a major democratic change in Iran, whether through the ‘reformist’ alternative or through overthrow – certainly do not cheer for Jondollah. Even though these bloggers are among the most ardent critics of The Revolutionary Guards, they forcibly condemn Jondollah’s suicide mission. One example is this blogger who is clearly not a fan of the Islamic Republic. His view is that of the classical Persian nationalist, and his blog post is introduced in the name of the Zoroastrian diety:

“This act clearly underscores that [Jondollah] do not care the least bit for Iran. They are a bunch of extremist Wahhabis, who are abusing the diversity of the Iranian people. They want to create ethnic strife, and on top of it, religious-sectarian strife. The existence of such people in Iran is a disgrace for all Iranians. The age of ethnicity and tribalism is over, and our country must discard all ethnicities in order to enter the new world – even though we’ve never actually have had ethnic units in our country”

Another ‘Green’ (that is, pro-reformist) blogger condemns the attack on ‘defenseless people’ and identifies the two sides of Sunday’s fight, The Revolutionary Guards and Jondollah:

“The Guards are now known to everyone, and they do not need thorough introduction. They are an organ, the members and employees of which may be of the Iranian race but surely do not share the positive traits of the people of this country… We have all witnessed how they violently and vehemently attacked [their own people] … But Jondollah, on the other hand, is no more than a bunch of bandits and thieves: people who stop innocent and unarmed civilians on the road, in the middle of the night, tie their hands and shoot them all down [referring to earlier Jondollah ambushes].”

He continues to portray Jondollah as ‘rabid dogs’, ‘hungry wolves’, ‘wild pigs’ and rhetorically asks those who have named Jondollah a ‘popular resistance movement’ exactly what good Jondollah has ever done for Iran. He states that the group’s leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, has never been and will never be a representative of neither the Iranian people nor the people of Sistan-Baluchistan. He concludes:

“I would personally never want my name alongside that of the Revolutionary Guards … and would certainly never cooperate with them. However, if I should ever be forced to chose between the Guards of the Islamic Republic and Jondollah, without doubt I would chose the fortress of the Guards, and I would fight to root out the terrorism of this extremist religious and Taliban-esque [Jondollah] …”

However, the more or less nationalistic view on the issue – i.e., Jondollah being a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity and not the regime of the Islamic Republic – is also supplemented with more nuanced views. Indeed, in the Persian blogosphere one often encounters an understanding for the bereaved, extremely poor people of Baluchistan, as well as sympathy for civilians who are inevitably going to get caught up in the ‘bloody revenge’ promised by Iranian authorities. One commentator on a website wrote that ‘tomorrow they will surely round up four random, innocent guys and execute them in public as “terrorists”’.

As usual, there are several conspiracy theories floating around cyberspace. One blogger – identifying as an Iranian woman – argues that this bombing should be seen as the latest in a string of ‘IRGC eliminations’: in other words, she is implying that the killing of the Revolutionary Guards commanders is part of a wider attempt at eliminating the old cadres of the IRGC in order to let the younger members take over. That theory seems a bit too far-fetched, but nonetheless reflect how widespread myths and ideas about the IRGC are in Iran today.

However, in my interpretation, the main point that shines through most cyberspace writing in Iran is the belief that Jondollah is a mercenary group. Thus, both the regime and the ordinary people will see the latest attack as the mindless spilling of (more or less) innocent blood by foreign powers pursuing their own geostrategic agendas through proxies such as Jondollah.

In February this year, the US State Treasury branded PJAK, the PKK-affiliated Kurdish guerilla group fighting the Iranian state, as terrorists. It will be interesting whether or not the US under Obama’s administration will also place Jondollah on the list. According to this article from ILNA, an Iranian news agency, Obama’s administration is considering to do exactly that. It would be the only decent thing to do. Jondollah is an extremist and opportunist group, willing to work with anyone, and willing to shed the blood of both civilians and military personnel. It is not a ‘popular resistance group’, as VOA once introduced them. Jondollah is a terrorist group, nothing more, nothing less.

by Daniella Kuzmanovic.

Wednesday, October 14^th, it was once again time for the yearly assessment of Turkish efforts to meet the political and economic criteria in relation to the EU membership negotiations (http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2009/tr_rapport_2009_en.pdf). With regard to the political criteria all the usual critical issues are, as could be expected, mentioned in the report: Minority issues, the Kurdish problem, human rights, equality with regard to gender, sexual orientation and disabled people, children’s rights, labor and union rights, the role of the military in politics, administrative structural problems in the bureaucracy, anti-corruption initiatives, the structure and functioning of the judiciary, the Ergenekon case, freedom of expression, and the lack of action with regard to the Cyprus issue and the question of opening Turkish ports for Cypriotic vessels. This year, in the light of the on-going tax case against the Doğan media group, and the accompanying verbalized attacks against the group’s media and journalists from members of the ruling party, concerns regarding freedom of speech were, as could also be expected, particularly emphasized.

My attention, though, was immediately drawn to a couple of smaller sections of the assessment report (page 20) dealing with civil society. This should perhaps not come as a surprise, since civil society in Turkey has been my object of research for some years. The role of civil society and input from civil society is frequently mentioned in the report. But on page 20 there are a couple of paragraphs that deal with some of the many challenges civil society faces in Turkey. One deals with the issue of funding, another with the issue of state – civil society relations:

“Some legal provisions place an undue burden on the operations of associations. There are high fines or severe punishments for failing to comply with the Law on Associations [note 23 inserted: In the event of failure to keep the necessary records of an association, the executives of the association are liable to imprisonment of between three months and one year.] The legal obligation to notify authorities before receiving financial support from abroad places a burden on associations. Negative portrayal in certain media and at times disproportionate inspections of NGOs receiving funds from abroad, including EC funds, remain a further cause for concern.”

[…]

“There is a growing awareness in public institutions and in the public at large about the crucial role played by civil society organisations, including in the accession process. However, some difficulties encountered with the consultation procedures reflect the lack of trust between State institutions and civil society organisations. The legal framework for collection of donations and tax exemptions for NGOs needs to be strengthened, in line with EU good practice, to improve NGOs’ financial sustainability.”

To take up the latter first, for sure one of the main obstacles with regard to an enhanced role for civil society in Turkey is the lack of trust between state authorities and particular sections of civil society. That is to say those sections which have traditionally perceived themselves as being in opposition to the statist elite and the authoritarian state tradition in Turkey, and which have used the idiom of civil society to express this opposition from the mid 1980ies onwards. Having stated this, I have also stated that the lack of trust, among other, has to be understood with reference to the events of September 12, 1980 (i.e. the military coup) and the subsequent clamp down of state authorities on a range of civic political and intellectual forces, but particularly leftists. The result of the 1980 coup were also a number of highly restrictive laws with regard to associations (dernek) and foundations (vakıf), associations being more heavily controlled than foundations, though, since associations were associated with leftist activities. In addition the lack of trust must also be understood with reference to the events of February 28, 1997 (the so-called postmodern coup) particularly aimed at pro-Islamic forces. These two sections are in fact two prominent sections of that part of civil society in Turkey, which aims to influence the political developments and decision-making processes. Many of the NGO’s that have the attention of the EU are indeed part of a broader leftist tradition.

The restrictive laws on associations and foundations have in recent years finally been revised. However, building trust between state authorities and civil society takes more than legal revisions and strengthening of procedures. Yet the wording in the progress report makes it sound as if the issue of trust is a technical issue, rather than stemming from those broader historical experiences of the past decades that still influences state- civil society relations. The EU does in fact support trust-building measures with regard to state-civil society relations in Turkey, but the report fails to mention this.

The first of the quoted paragraphs touching upon the issue of funds from abroad for civic activities, deals with the way in which the influx of foreign support for civic activities is perceived in Turkey by state authorities and by “certain media”. As a matter of fact, foreign funding for civic activities is also a major issue of debate among civic activists themselves. For several reasons accepting foreign funds is viewed with suspicion by some segments of civil society, and those organizations that do receive funds from the EU, the Soros Foundations or alike thus make themselves a liable target for critique from various other segments of civil society. One of the main aspects of this critique pertains to a firm belief that funds do not come with ‘no strings attached.’ They are part of a political-ideological ambition (or plot as some would prefer) to establish ideological and economic dominance in Turkey. Not least US funding has been read with such a perspective in mind, the Soros Foundation being seen as a prominent example of how a US neo-liberal, pro-Israeli segment is gaining influence in Turkey. A book entitled ”Project democracy”: Sivil örümceğin ağında (Project democracy: In the web of the civil spider) (Ankara: Ulus Dağı Yayınları) is a prime example of such thinking. Other aspects of the critique pertain to a desire among civic activists to dissociate themselves from western values and influence more generally speaking, in order to state that their organization does not adhere to such values.

The issue taken up in this section of the progress report is in fact a complex issue pertaining yet again to the way in which various historical experiences form part of civic activism in Turkey. One pertains to the question of Turkish sovereignty, which is close to the heart of both traditional Kemalist civil society organizations that hold on to the notion of Turkey as ‘threatened’ by foreign powers, as well as to those leftists who see themselves as involved in a global anti-imperialist struggle. Another pertains to the struggle between western modernity including political values, and what not least a number of pro-Islamic organizations perceive as ‘local’ (read: authentic) forms of civic activism. That was just to mention a few of the aspects of the issue. Again the report barely hints at the variety of historical experiences, which are involved in constituting the critique in certain media and the general suspicious attitude towards foreign funds. I stress the importance of this outlook and sensitivity towards the historical experiences in play in order to underline how technical solutions aimed at transparency, alterations of legal structures and bureaucratic procedures is only one aspect of supporting civic culture in Turkey. This has also been pointed to in numerous reports on civic culture in Turkey, such as those from TÜSEV. I just wish, the sections in the EU progress report had also shown even greater sensitivity towards the issues at stake.

By Sune Haugbolle.

On Thursday night, al-Jazeera aired its much touted and feared programme about racism in Denmark. The trailers aired in the last week had sent alarm bells ringing among both politicians and media here in Denmark. The programme promised to expose Danish racism, intolerance, and Islamophobia, and could maybe trigger negative reactions in the region?

So far, no sign of an uproar from that notorious Arab street that should cause Danes to be alarmed… First of all, because people in the Middle East have much more important things to worry about than Danes and Denmark (I know this is hard to believe for some). And second, because the programme did not touch on any of the religiously fused issues that brought matters to a head during the Muhammad cartoon crisis. The story about failed integration in Western Europe is not a new one, even though the programme probably added to any dismay Arabs may already have felt towards Denmark. And maybe just because a lot of people will have found the tone a little shrill – certainly if they have any personal experience with Denmark.

I personally found instructor Awad Jouma’s portrayal of our problems with immigration, racism and crime in Denmark really black and white, both in content and form. The programme zoomed in on the most negative aspects and blew them out of proportion. Talk about al-rai wal-rai al-akher… For example, there was an unreasonably large focus on the Danish Nazi party, a tiny group of lunatics and not in any way representative of neither Danish attitudes towards immigrants nor the real political issues at stake.

Namely, principally, the Danish People’s Party and its central position in Danish politics since 2001. The regime change in 2001 was touched upon, but not analysed in any details that could have helped Arab viewers understand the situation. If any one thing about Denmark and Muslims would be worth communicating to the Arab world, it would be a nuanced, detailed story of how an extreme right wing party (Fremskridtspartiet) in the mid-1990s morphed into what has become the deciding factor in Danish immigration policies. How fears of Islam among some population groups have been blown out of proportion and used politically, and in the process changed the basic rules of public debate in Denmark.

As it was presented here, the viewer had no chance of understanding why around 10% of the Danish population vote for this party, how it conquered parts of the middle ground, and what relation this change has to racism. And, not least, how a large part of the Danish population is both alarmed and ashamed about our right-wing turn. The viewers of this programme would have learned little about neither the Danish “Kulturkampf” between left and right, nor the important implications it has had on politics and media in the last seven years. And it is no excuse that the director was an outsider: indeed, he was not. Awad Jouma lived most of his life in Denmark, and has previously shown some of the more positive aspects of that experience in a documentary about his father, also shown on al-Jazeera.

What we got instead was a vaguely formulated thesis, sustained by the usual fare of over-dramatizing background music, about how racism in the Danish population, broadly speaking, has lead to a number of things: to failed immigration, to crime among young immigrants, to the Danish police assisting ostensibly racist biker gangs like Hell’s Angels in their ongoing war against immigrant gangs, and how Danish foreign policy has become completely entangled with American and Israeli interests. All a result of racism in Danish society, mind you. The blame fell squarely on the Danish population.

There is of course racism, and there are anti-Muslim sentiments in Denmark, which is something we are all struggling with. And there is, in my opinion, way too little debate about it in the Danish media which appear to have agreed that tackling racism amounts to “political correctness,” a “Swedish” stage of development which Danish society has luckily long surpassed, as the Danish immigrant politician Nasser Khader formulated it on the news show DR2 deadline Thursday night. We should face our demons, (even if that makes us Swedes in the eyes of some), by all means, and we and outsiders interested in Danish affairs should understand how mainstream politics became infused with fear of “the other.” Not least because it not a purely Danish issue, but a problem in all of Europe. Therefore TV documentaries, very influential media forms in today’s world, are welcome.

But such a project calls for a nuanced and sensitive critique, not sensationalistic TV journalism. Where the programme worked tremendously well was in the parts where it talked about conditions in Denmark’s Sandholm asylum seekers center, which like other such centres truly is a shame and a crime. But mostly, we were served a spicy sauce of conspiracy theories, racist bikers, and the gloomiest shots of wonderful Copenhagen I have ever seen in my life! Every single image was of grimy suburban streets in February. Having seen this programme I think more than one Arab viewer would have been left wondering why anyone would have wanted to leave the Middle East for Denmark in the first place.

Understanding the roots of violence, racism and cultural divides in our societies can never be a blame game. The first thing we must realise is that they are shared predicaments, and that we must look for the answers, in a careful and nuanced way, both in Europe and in the Middle East.

An African view of the 40^th anniversary of the Libyan “revolution”

by Anders Hastrup.

This past month have seen a lot of commentaries and analyses of the 40^th anniversary of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, in the wake of the extravagant celebrations in Tripoli on September 1^st. Various newspapers, magazines and online journals have focused on the changing role of Libya in world politics seen from the West and the Middle East. Focus has been directed at the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing and the change of Libya’s role in sponsoring terrorism along with speculations about the end of sanctions, oil concessions and the country’s tourist potential.

Middle East commentators, such as Fred Halliday have focused on how the Qaddafi regime was seen from the Arab World and emerged inspired by Nasserism to meddle in the many different conflicts throughout the Arab world. Fred Halliday’s article is an impressive firsthand account of the direct and indirect destructive influences of the Libyan “kleptocracy” throughout the Middle East in the past 40 years and is highly recommended.

In this piece I want to move away from the Arab Middle East and shed light on the destructive influence that Qaddafi has had on the African continent, especially in the Chad-Sudan border region, the region of Darfur, where the Libyan President holds significant responsibility for creating the janjaweed militias, responsible for the mayhem and destruction of Darfur.

An analysis of Qaddafi’s role in Africa is even more pertinent since Libya gained presidency of the African Union this year. Qaddafi has always been ambitious on behalf of his country and its role in the world. After trying out a series of political experiments and half baked alliances with radical groups of almost all dispositions in the Arab World, Qaddafi has looked to some of his African neighbours as a laboratory for his dangerous ideas. Nowhere have the effects of his megalomania been more destructive than in Sudan’s Darfur region.

In order to fully comprehend Libya’s role in Darfur, one must analyse the special triangular relationship between Libya, Chad and Sudan and the way the region of Darfur has been the stage where the regional ambitions of all the three countries have been played out, often in a very violent manner.

Qaddafi and the Chadian Arabs

The Chadian Arabs have for a long time formed the core of the opposition to successive Chadian presidents. Put simply, there is a dichotomy between the North and South in Chad that in some ways resembles the historical North-South divide of Sudan. In Chad, however, the roles are reversed: A poor marginalised Arab North revolt against the Christian South who has monopolized political power in the hands of a narrow elite.

As early as 1966, the Chadian opposition group National Liberation Front for Chad, FROLINAT, was formed in Nyala, capital of South Darfur State in Sudan, starting a long tradition of the use of Darfur as base for disgruntled Chadian Muslims and Arabs. The political mobilisation of the Arab tribes of Chad in the initial FROLINAT and subsequent Chadian rebel movements can to a large degree help explain the origin of the janjaweed militia, whose gang raping, horse-riding murderers hold the responsibility for the displacement of more than 3 million people and the disintegration of an area the size of France into impunity and chaos.

The role played by Libya is crucial in understanding the origin of the janjaweed phenomenon in the region. In 1969, Muammar Qaddafi took power in the country and promoted a series of grand schemes, not only for Libya, but for the entire continent. Initially inspired by the Arab socialism of Egyptian President Gamal Abd al Nasser, Qaddafi became a radical Arab nationalist and sought to export his radical ideas on the African continent. This meant creating a new sense of Arab/Muslim identity among many Bedouins of the Sahel region who received both ideological and military training for the creation of an Arab homeland, the “Arab Belt” across the region. The Christian government of Chad quickly became the focus for Qaddafi’s struggle for “Arab supremacy”. This struggle was one of Qaddafi’s many experiments, where ideologies are utilized as ad hoc creations for colonising and obtaining the raw political control over given areas. He armed the nomadic Arab tribes with weapons and a dangerous ideology of Arab supremacy in this ethnically diverse region. His short-sighted goal was the instability of the Chadian regime. Qaddafi wanted Chad. The long- term effect was a continuing culture of impunity for the region’s Arabs, now armed with modern weapons against the villages of the African populations of Darfur and Eastern Chad.

A look to the margins

In many ways, the origins of the janjaweed can be traced to the meeting of the Arab Chadian opposition, armed by Qaddafi, with the North Darfur Abbala Arabs: The Arab Chadian opposition had arms and moved across the border to their camel herding neighbours, themselves poor landless Arabs of Darfur who were desperately seeking recognition and triggered by a new found ideology where they were the master race.

Roughly speaking, the same dangerous alliance of weapons and an ideology of racial supremacy merged in Sudan’s Darfur region. The area of Darfur and Eastern Chad has historically been the same, the same tribes, Arab and African, live on both sides of the border. Like Qaddafi used the marginalised Arabs of Chad to create a loyal “Arab Belt”, the Khartoum government used the landless Arabs of North Darfur to crack down on the emergent violent opposition. The results of this meeting between these groups can be found in the fierce and ruthless militias unleashing an unprecedented mayhem in Darfur in the first years of the new Millennium.

The most important reason for the janjaweed phenomenon is sheer poverty, marginalisation and the lack of fixed land and land rights. In Darfur, the camel herding Abbala Arabs did not have their own dar, meaning abode or homeland. They shared this lack of spatial recognition with many of the tribes of the Arab tribes of Eastern Chad.

Both Khartoum and Tripoli under the rule of Colonel Qaddafi have skilfully looked to the marginalised Arabs of the triangular region of Libya, Sudan and Chad for the creation of an often short lived loyal belt for the control of the region. The present conflict in Darfur must be seen through these regional dynamics and the inverted roles of the marginalised and the marginalising. The North Darfur and Chadian Arabs, have thus gone from servants to masters through a skilful manipulation by Colonel Qaddafi and Omar al Bashir.

The 40^th anniversary of Qaddafi’s “revolution” is the anniversary of one of the most controversial, extravagant and eccentric regimes of the past generations. The flamboyant character of Muammar Qaddafi has taken Arab political kitsch to a new level. The Green Book and subsequent ideological mutations of the Tripoli regime have been the laughing stock of many analysts who have mocked the weirdness and melodramatic character of the increasingly clown-like figure of the Libyan President.

However, Muammar Qaddafi might laugh last. Not many people have made any point of commenting on his current Presidency of the African Union and the fact that he, through this, remains incredibly influential on the African continent and not just a lone, howling mad wolf. He has, undoubtedly helped many Africans who have worked in the booming oil businesses of Libya, and many of my Darfurian friends still travel to Libya there and sustain large families in Sudan by their Libyan salaries. However, the indirect economic assistance to numerous Darfurians must be viewed against Colonel Qaddafi’s  most dubious legacy in the region: he played a major role in sowing the seeds for the murderous janjaweed militias in Darfur. His Presidency of the African Union, its peacekeeping forces form the core of the international deployment in Darfur, is a scandal.

by Rasmus Christian Elling.

While the war against Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program continues – with its usual suspects at the forefront and behind the screens (1, 2, 3, 4 … and counting) and with the usual stream of unreliable ‘sources’ being quoted liberally by global media to prove evil Iranian schemes and distorting the issue beyond recognition – a related and very relevant news item has received surprisingly little attention.

Last week, Muslim-majority states in the UN nuclear assembly pushed for a resolution – albeit, a nonbinding resolution – urging Israel to allow UN inspection to all its nuclear sites and to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty. What is amazing is that this is the first time in 18 years the nuclear conference has been able to pass a resolution criticizing Israel for its illegal, ‘clandestine’ program.

It has been a public secret for years that Israel has the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, yet Israel has never confirmed or denied this. Furthermore, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East not to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is, of course, part of the absurdity in the global Israeli propaganda war and constant military threats against Iran that those Western and Israeli politicians, ‘experts’ and lobby groups so worried about an Iranian bomb rarely if ever discuss the issue of Israel’s weapons – as if it was completely unrelated to the nuclear politics of the region. It comes across as particularly hypocritical and ludicrous when the chief delegate of the US – a nuclear-armed nation that wages wars in the Middle East while actively obstructing any attempt to hold Israel accountable in the nuclear conference – rejected what she called ‘redundant’ and ‘an attempt to use this resolution to criticize a single country’.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Iranians have sought to capitalize on the resolution and the setback it represents for Israel’s allies who have prevented the resolution for nearly two decades. The Iranian ambassador Ali-Asghar Soltanieh has hailed the resolution as a ‘glorious moment’, and ‘a triumph for the oppressed people of Palestine’. He added that Tehran would happily pay the expenses connected with a probe into the clandestine Israeli nuclear program ‘for the sake of global peace and welfare’.

The Israeli response shouldn’t come as a surprise either. The Israeli delegate stated that the resolution was ‘openly hostile to the state of Israel’ and that the Iranians and Syrians are trying to create a smokescreen for their own pursuit of nuclear weapons.

It is the sad irony of nuclear politics that Israel is just as big a threat to the fragile NPT regime as Iran is: outraged when the US hints it might be a good idea for it to join the NPT, and then deriding the NPT for not being a ‘miracle cure’.

It is the sad irony of global politics that a state such as the current Iranian regime is put in a position to capitalize on the resolution and thus present itself in the Muslim world as a righteous power while doing its own dirty work at home.

However, none of this should come as a surprise. Should it?

by Sune Haugbolle.

So, after months of wrangling, Hariri yesterday finally proposed a cabinet line-up to President Michel Suleiman, and to the whole of Lebanon’s fractured political landscape. As expected, the proposal follows the earlier idea of a unity government with a 15-10-5 division of ministries, 15 to March 14, 10 to March 8 and 5 to Suleiman’s lot.

The main problem with the proposal is that it was essentially put forward without a prior agreement – since an agreement couldn’t be found. Hariri failed to meet Aoun’s demand that he get the Interior Ministry, and that his son-in-law, Gibran Bassil, keep the Telecommunications Ministry. Hizbollah, for their part, have refrained from putting pressure on Aoun, and without that happening the old rhino is unlikely to budge. This is to say nothing of Hizbollah’s own problems with the proposal, which falls short of meeting their own demands of guarantees.

So, nothing has chnaged really. Perhaps the only thing that should make us wonder is the timing of the announcement. Of course Hariri couldn’t stall forever; something had to happen, even if he likely knew that March 8 would reject his cabinet proposal out of hand. On the other side, it is possible that there were regional strategic reasonings behind Hariri’s actions. The proposal comes while Syria, March 8’s strongest external ally, is caught up in a spat with Iraq over last month’s Baghdad bombings, for which Iraq holds Syria partially responsible.  (For Danish speakers, here is a link to me talking about the Syria-Iraq controversy on Danish TV DR2 last Tuesday).  

Bashar al-Asad has refused to even acknowledge the nature of the problem, and despite Turkish and American attempts to set up a joint committee to investigate the border, Iraq is taking action on its own. Since last week, Iraqi security forces have been gathering on the Syrian border in an attempt to curb infiltration of Ba’athist militants, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is pushing for a UN tribunal to investigate foreign complicity in the bombings.

If Hariri has indeed reacted to these events, which occupy local media quite a bit more than international ones, he may have calculated that Syria’s focus on its dispute with Iraq, in addition to increasing domestic and international pressures on Iran, will weaken Hizbollah to the point where it is compelled to accept his cabinet. If this is indeed the case, Hariri has made a mistake: Hizbollah’s strength or weakness is not so much relative to regional events, as we have seen before, but primarily an effect of their own perception (which is ever strong and determined). Therefore the most likely outcome of the cabinet proposal is yet more threading water for Lebanon.