Virtual Diplomacy, Real Damage

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post-29/11/2009

The statement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Riyadh last week expressing French willingness to mediate talks between Syria and Israel is the latest indication of Syria’s emergence from diplomatic isolation.

Damascus has largely rebuilt its links with Europe and the Arab world. There is now a real possibility of a revival of indirect talks between Israel and Syria.

Such talks, if they take place, are almost certain to get nowhere.

Still, the near guarantee of failure of any talks does not render Sarkozy’s offer insignificant. It is to be hoped that the Netanyahu government resists the temptation to reopen the Syrian track.

Why might the government be tempted to enter indirect negotiations with Syria at this point? It is an article of faith among European countries and in the current US administration that a peace process between Israel and one or other of its enemies is essential. Israel’s international diplomatic position currently leaves a lot to be desired. The perceived US distancing from Israel has emboldened those very considerable elements in Europe who would like to see increased pressure on the Jewish state.

There appears to be little hope of substantive movement in stalled talks between Israel and the troubled, perhaps moribund Palestinian Authority. Talks with Syria could provide the illusion of diplomatic motion which could help alleviate claims that Israel represents an intransigent barrier to progress toward regional stability.

Why would such talks almost certainly fail? The formula for success in negotiations between Israel and Syria is no longer the ’90s recipe of land for peace. A breakthrough in Jerusalem-Damascus negotiations would be predicated on the basis of “land for strategic realignment.”

That is, Syria would be expected to abandon its regional alliance with Iran in return for Israeli territorial concessions on the Golan Heights.

Damascus, however, has made abundantly clear that such a realignment is not on the table. The reasons are fairly obvious. Syria’s current stance of alliance with Iran gives the Damascus regime most of what it needs. Syria is seen as a vital part of any regional diplomatic process, because of its ability to spoil progress through its alignment with radical forces.

As Syria’s recent rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and France suggests, keeping the alliance with Iran comes at very little cost. And there is a deeper sense that the Damascus regime is comfortable with its place in the Iranian alliance, which enables it to indulge in the nationalist chest-beating and poses of “resistance,” which it enjoys.

So reviving the appearance of talks with Syria might seem a cost-free move for Israel. It could make the Europeans happier, diverting the oft-made (and incorrect) claims that Israel currently has the most right-wing government in its history. And it would almost certainly not lead to any potentially dangerous actual concessions to Damascus.

But this is not so. Restarting talks with Syria would not be cost-free.

Syria has emerged from isolation without in any way modifying its alliance with Iran, and its support for terror organizations in Lebanon, Iraq and among the Palestinians. This achievement is testimony not to any hidden diplomatic genius lurking among the Ba’athists of Damascus. Rather, it shows the weakness, confusion and disunity of those forces in the region and beyond it who might be expected to have an interest in challenging Iran and its allies in their bid for dominance of the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia in the last week suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of the Syrians in the Lebanese arena. The formation of the new Lebanese government represents an effective surrender of pro-Saudi forces in that country to the allies of Iran and Syria. Yet the Saudis are understood to be maintaining their improved relations with Damascus out of a shared desire to undermine the Maliki government in Iraq.

France, meanwhile, wishes to play an increased role in regional diplomacy and sees the revival of close relations with Damascus as a way to do this. France also (astonishingly) thinks that Syria could play a role in mediating with Iran over its nuclear program.

Both Paris and Riyadh have thus elected to place short-term gain over long term interest.

The bigger picture of the Israeli and broader Western interest in the region requires the containment and ultimately the rolling back of the currently emboldened Iranian-led alliance. Reviving the prospect of Israeli territorial concessions to Syria, at a time when Damascus is engaged in sponsoring organizations engaged in proxy war with Israel and others would be to reward aggression.

It would furnish an additional argument in the armory of Iran and its supporters who maintain, not without reason, that the camp facing them is weak and responds to pressure by making concessions.

The Obama administration has so far held off from joining in the rush to make up with Syria. Washington has sent a series of visitors to Damascus and is preparing to appoint a new ambassador. But the sanctions remain in place, and the administration appears mindful of Syrian actions in Iraq, Lebanon and among the Palestinians.

The administration has failed, nevertheless, to articulate a clear understanding of the current strategic picture in the region. The building of clarity in this regard represents a core strategic interest for Israel. It would be mistaken to sacrifice this interest on the altar of any short-term alleviation of pressure resulting from a revival of virtual diplomacy with the Assad regime.

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New Manifesto reveals a more Sophisticated, Confident Hizbullah

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post-15/12/2009

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah this week announced the publication of a new political manifesto, outlining the goals of his movement. The document is the successor to Hizbullah’s first manifesto, published in 1985, and many regional analysts have hailed it as reflecting the group’s “Lebanonization.”

This term is intended to mean that the new manifesto represents the abandonment of the movement’s core Shi’a Islamist outlook, and its acceptance of a new role as an influential player in Lebanese domestic politics. However, this view is excessively optimistic. The new manifesto reveals that Hizbullah’s strategic goals are unchanged.

Observe: The November 2009 manifesto does not differ substantively from its predecessor in terms of its view of the region and the clashing elements within it. Its first part, entitled “Domination and Hegemony” in the English version, consists of a long denunciation of the United States and its role in the Middle East and the world post-1945.

The US is depicted as the “root of all terror,” and a “danger that threatens the whole world.” Washington is seen as in the process of implementing a “New Middle East project” intended to dominate “the nations politically, culturally, economically and through all aspects.” The creation of the “Zionist entity” is described as the most “dangerous step” in the American drive for hegemony. The English-language document reiterates Hizbullah’s support for “armed struggle and military resistance” as the best way of “ending the occupation.” The longer Arabic version is less ambiguous, committing Hizbullah to “liberation of all the usurped land” and restoring the “usurped rights of all no matter how long and how great the sacrifices.”

So no change in the core strategic view. But proponents of the idea that the document reflects a more pragmatic Hizbullah have pointed to the lack of “religious rhetoric” in the new manifesto, compared to the 1985 document.

It is correct that the new manifesto does not include the previous document’s call for the establishment of an “Islamic Republic” in Lebanon. But here an interesting discrepancy emerges. The longer, Arabic version of the manifesto is steeped in religious rhetoric and Islamist terminology. Nasrallah opens his statement with two quotations from the Koran. The manifesto’s first section refers to “resistance in the way of jihad,” and the “jihadi way.” The section dealing with “Palestinian resistance” depicts Hizbullah as practicing “jihadi resistance.” The section dealing with Iran notes the “blessed Islamic revolution led by the Vali al-Faqih Imam Khomeini.” (The latter phrase refers to the system of government operative in Iran, Vilayat al-Faqih – rule of the jurisprudent, i.e., clerical rule.) The section on “resistance” deals with the movement’s “mujihadeen and its martyrs.”

The Arabic version of the manifesto also contains a whole section entitled “Jerusalem and the Aksa Mosque,” which asserts that “to liberate Jerusalem and defend Aksa Mosque” is a “religious duty” incumbent on Muslims.

But in the English-language version of the manifesto, the section on Jerusalem, and all the phrases mentioned above, do not appear. The English version, indeed, is innocent of all reference to jihad or Koranic quotation. On Al-Manar, it is not made clear that the English version contains only selected excerpts from the manifesto. On the regime-supported Syrian News Station Web site, meanwhile, the English version is presented as the “full text of Hizbullah’s new political document.”

The discrepancies suggest that Hizbullah considers it in its interest to tone down or remove the pro-Iranian and jihadi parts of its identity when presenting itself to the outside world. But the full document in its original form suggests that the movement has not strayed far from its original path.

The new manifesto contains a call for the ending of the sectarian system of political representation in Lebanon. This is the final aspect cited by those asserting that Hizbullah is undergoing a process of moderation. But this does not represent a concession on Hizbullah’s part. The movement believes, possibly correctly, that the Shi’a community has a long-term demographic advantage in Lebanon. Ending Lebanon’s consociational system is therefore intended, in the fullness of time, to deliver the country into its hands.

In the meantime, Hizbullah established de facto in the violence of May 2008 that there was no force within Lebanon that could prevent it from asserting its will. It has forced its opponents to accept its conditions in negotiations for the formation of a new government. The new cabinet is set to contain an opposition-blocking third and will also overtly endorse the continued independent role of Hizbullah’s armed forces.

The new manifesto suggests that Hizbullah circa 2009 is a far more confident and comfortable player in Lebanon than it was in its earlier years. The reason for this, however, is not because the Shi’a Islamist movement has adapted itself to prevailing Lebanese realities. It is because Hizbullah has successfully imposed itself upon these realities, and hence may now proceed at its own pace.

On this basis, Hizbullah has secured the perimeter of the Iranian-financed state-within-a state that it maintains in Lebanon.

The new manifesto represents the movement’s willingness to coexist on its own preferred terms with other elements within the country. This coexistence is intended to usher in a “natural” process that Hizbullah believes will, in the fullness of time, result in its domination of Lebanon.

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Lebanon: Conflict widens to Syria

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post-03/02/2010

In the last week, senior Israeli policymakers made statements of an uncharacteristically bellicose nature regarding Syria.

It is unlikely that these statements were made because of sudden random irritation toward Israel’s hostile northeastern neighbor.  Rather, the statements probably constituted part of a message of deterrence to Damascus.

The need to project deterrence itself derives from a series of significant changes currently under way on the ground in Lebanon – reflecting Syria’s ever tighter alignment with Hizbullah and the pro-Iranian regional bloc of which it is a part.

These changes take place against the backdrop of awareness that the tactics likely to be adopted by Israel in a future war with Hizbullah carry with them the very real possibility that Syria could, on one level or another, be drawn in.

On Saturday night, Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled said that another conflict on the northern border was a “matter of time.” Peled noted that in the event of such a conflict breaking out, Israel would hold “Syria and Lebanon alike responsible.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, meeting with Michael Williams, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon earlier this week, expressed his concern that Hizbullah fighters have been training on surface-to-surface missile systems in Syria.

Then, on Tuesday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak noted in a speech that if Israel was forced to fight Syria, “we won’t fear and we’ll defeat them.” Why the sudden ministerial loquaciousness?

It may with some justification be asserted that to assume any coordination behind the statements of Israeli ministers is to betray a touching naivete. All the same, the near-simultaneous ministerial recollection of the Syrian threat should be considered in conjunction with the following facts:

Hizbullah has in the last weeks deployed advanced Syrian-made surface-to-surface M-600 missiles on the territory of Lebanon. The missiles, which according to Jane’s Defence Weekly are copies of the Iranian Fateh-110 system, have a range of 250 kilometers and carry a 500-kg warhead.

They bring the entirety of central Israel within Hizbullah’s range. The missiles are precision-guided, meaning that in the event of renewed conflict, Hizbullah would be able to use them to target military facilities or heavily populated areas.

According to Jane’s, the deployment of the M-600s adds to concerns already expressed by Israel at Syrian supplying of the (relatively unsophisticated) SA-2 air defense system and the SS-N-26 surface-to-sea missile to Hizbullah.

Syria’s undaunted and increased support for Hizbullah appears to reflect a clear strategic turn taken by Damascus. Lebanese analyst Tony Badran this week drew attention to a recent and relevant report in the Qatari daily al-Watan which quoted Syrian sources who claimed that “a strategic decision has been taken not to allow Israel to defeat the resistance movements.”

Such statements, if genuine, indicate that the Syrian regime is aware of the potential price to be paid for its current orientation, but feels that the risk is worth taking.

The Syrians have not, according to available evidence,  yet passed the point of no return – which, as Badran notes, would be the provision of sophisticated anti-aircraft systems to Hizbullah. The SA-2, if deployed, could constitute a danger to IAF helicopters, but not aircraft.

Israel has made clear that the deployment of systems capable of threatening Israeli aircraft by Hizbullah would constitute a casus belli.

But beyond the specific issue of weapons systems, the logic of confrontation in Lebanon suggests that Syria may find it hard to avoid direct engagement in a future Israel-Hizbullah clash.

Since 2006, Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria has formed the key conduit for weapons supplies to Hizbullah. And Hizbullah is reported to have relocated its main military infrastructure north of the Litani River, in the Bekaa Valley, in areas close to the Syrian border.

Which suggests that if Israel wants in a future conflict to strike a real blow against Hizbullah, this implies an Israeli ground incursion into the Bekaa.

Should such an incursion take place, the Syrians would be intimately involved in supplying Hizbullah just across the border, and the possibility of Syrian casualties at Israeli hands would become very real.

It is again worth remembering that on August 4, 2006, 34 Syrians were killed when the IAF bombed a packing house on the Syrian side of the border thought to contain weapons for Hizbullah. The Syrians did not respond at that time.

But an Israeli incursion into the Bekaa would logically raise the question of either the Syrians ceasing their real-time supplying of Hizbullah (very unlikely), or Israel acting to prevent this.

Of course, the point of deterrence is to deter. The ominous statements from Israeli officials are not meant to signal an imminent war. Rather, they are intended to convey to the Syrians that they should not think their alliance with Hizbullah is cost free, and that they would be advised to adhere to red lines.

The developing logic of the situation in Lebanon is nevertheless widening the circle of future conflict.

The bottom line is that any future strike at Hizbullah that does not take into account its status as a client of Iran and Syria, is unlikely to be able to land the kind of decisive blow to the organization which alone would justify such a strike.

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Muslim World: Iran – The End is not Nigh

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post-02/01/2010

The ongoing demonstrations in Iran are testimony to the continued strength and resilience of Iranian civil society. They make a mockery of the Islamic Republic’s ambition of offering a model for successful Muslim governance to the world.

The next major manifestation of the protests is likely to be February 11 – the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution. The seventh and 40th days following the deaths of those killed this week are also likely to witness dramatic scenes.

Still, the overheated punditry of the last week predicting the imminent demise of the regime, claiming that this is the beginning of the end for the Islamists in Teheran and that a “tipping point” has been passed is misleading and should be questioned.

Two parallel movements exist in Iran, each of which seeks to change the nature of the Islamic Republic as it has existed since 1979.

The first of these has been much in evidence this week, in the protests and demonstrations that have rocked Teheran and other cities. This is the so-called “Green movement.” It has no clear ideology beyond a deep dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. Within its ranks, one may find supporters of the reformist wing of the current regime, including former presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami.

The protest movement also undoubtedly includes individuals and groups with a far more determined and radical agenda, who would like to see the end of the regime established in 1979. But no credible, organized revolutionary leadership with a clear program for toppling the regime can yet be identified from within the broad mass of this movement.

The second “movement” exists within the regime itself. This is the trend whose most visible representative is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The coalition of hard-line conservative political associations which produced Ahmadinejad, along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, have been steadily advancing in the institutions of the Islamic Republic over the last half-decade.

Unlike their opponents in the Green movement, this group has a clear and unifying set of ideas and goals. Their aim is a “second Islamic revolution,” which will revive the original fire of 1979. What they are aiming at is the replacement of clerical rule with a streamlined, brutal police-security state, under the banner of Islam. This state will be committed to a goal of building regional hegemony – through possession of a nuclear option and the backing of radical and terrorist movements.

This year has been mixed for the Iranian hard-line conservatives. On the one hand, the electoral “victory” of Ahmadinejad and the subsequent backing given to him by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei represented their biggest advance yet. Ahmadinejad later reinforced his victory by forming a cabinet packed with hard-line conservatives and Revolutionary Guardsmen. This cabinet is currently administering Iran.

There were gains further afield, too. The closest regional allies of the hard-line conservatives – Hizbullah – have become the effective governing force in Lebanon. Iran’s Palestinian clients, Hamas, are maintaining power in Gaza, as well.

But on the other hand, 2009 is also the year in which the limitations of the hard-liners and their ideas became apparent.

The ongoing unrest in Iran may not constitute an immediate danger to the regime, but it surely indicates that large numbers of Iranians have no desire to see their country turned into the instrument of permanent Islamic revolution and “resistance” envisaged by the hard-line conservatives. The domestic unrest thus hits significantly at their legitimacy and their ability to promote their regime as a model for governance to the Arab and wider Muslim world.

More tangibly, the Iranian hard-liners have not had it all their own way over the last year in the field most dear to them – the practice of political violence.

Their resistance model failed in a straight fight with the IDF in the early part of the year. Hamas’s 100-man “Iranian unit” suffered near destruction in Gaza. The client Hamas regime in Gaza managed to kill six IDF soldiers in the entire course of Operation Cast Lead. This is a failure, and has been recorded by all regional observers as such.

In addition, there appears to be an attempt to demonstrate to the Iranians that the use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy is a two-way street. Hence the killing of 29 Revolutionary Guards in a bombing near the Iran-Baluchistan border in October, and the mysterious explosion in Damascus last month which killed a number of Iranian pilgrims.

These are significant setbacks. Still, the bottom line remains that for as long as they maintain the loyalty of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Basij militia, and the patronage of Khamenei, the control of the hard-line conservatives is not in danger.

Should a real challenge to the power of the hard-liners emerge, the likely prognosis would be for prolonged civil strife, rather than their swift departure. This is not a tired and decaying elite, parallel to the East European communists in 1989. The Iranian hard-liners and their allies regard themselves as the wave of the future, only now ascending to the pinnacles of power. They will not go quietly.

So the prospect is for a long struggle in Iran. The Iranian people are not about to enter the stage like a deus ex machina, with one stroke destroying the Islamist regime and solving the agonizing problem of the Iranian nuclear program.

The most determined revolutionary current in Iran remains the hard-line conservatives. Their eventual failure is a near certainty, because they are likely to fail in building the real-world basis – political, social, economic and military – which alone could support their boundless ambition. Even then, much will depend on the will of the Western and regional enemies of the regime in confronting them.

But contrary to some of the more overexcited opining this week – the playing out of all this still has a way to run. The end is not yet at hand.

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Malevolent Inspiration

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jonathanspyer

10/07/2010

Beirut this week witnessed the passing of one of the seminal figures of the Lebanese Shi’ites – Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Tens of thousands of mourners followed the coffin in its southern suburbs, with chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Delegations came from across the region – from the holy cities of Najaf in Iraq (where Fadlallah was born) and Qom in Iran, as well as from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the regional center of Sunni Islamic study.

Hizbullah, with which Fadlallah had maintained a complex relationship over the years, declared three days of mourning. Movement leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is reported to have paid a nocturnal visit to the mourning family. Fadlallah, designated a terrorist by the US, was referred to as Hizbullah’s “spiritual leader” in its early years.

Israelis who have heard of Fadlallah are likely to have a vague sense of him as a Shi’ite cleric based in Lebanon and linked to Hizbullah. But he was a far more substantial and complex figure than this might suggest.

He was regarded by many across the region as a leading spiritual authority, a marja altaklid (source of emulation) of Shi’ism. He was revered among the Shi’ites of Lebanon and beyond them. Fadlallah established a sizable network of charitable and educational institutions with which his name will continue to be associated.

He was also one of the central figures in the development of the Shi’ite variant of political Islam over the last half century. He offered words of justification for suicide bombings, accused Israel and Jews of exaggerating the numbers of those killed by the Nazis, suggested that the Jews and elements in the US might have been responsible for 9/11 and hoped uncompromisingly and apparently to his last breath for the collapse of the “Zionist entity.”

Fadlallah began his political activity in Iraq, where he was among the founders of the Dawa party, in the late 1950s. This is the party of former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al- Maliki, and is one of the leading political forces of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. After arrival in Lebanon, Fadlallah was active among the impoverished and largely politically silent Shi’ites in the early 1960s. He was instrumental in forging the attempt to fuse traditional Shi’ite concepts with the notions of “anti-imperialism” and political opposition to the West and Israel. He pioneered the linking of the cause of the Shi’ites of Lebanon with that of the Palestinians. Fadlallah also welcomed the Iranian revolution of 1979.

In the early 1980s, Fadlallah was prominent in the Shi’ite political and spiritual ferment from which Hizbullah emerged. He has been referred to as the movement’s spiritual guide. The US authorities held him responsible for giving his blessing to the 1983 suicide bombings in Beirut which killed 241 US marines and 58 French paratroopers.

While the precise organizational links between Fadlallah and the nascent Hizbullah organization are not clear, it is beyond doubt that the ideas which he had pioneered helped create the political and ideological space from which the movement emerged.

His outspoken calls for the destruction of Israel, for militant opposition to US regional policy and in defense of the methods of terrorism represent the ideological soil from which Hizbullah grew. Fadlallah also, of course, operated in the same physical environment as Hizbullah. It is said that Imad Mughniyeh, later Hizbullah’s most prominent military figure, for a time served as one of his bodyguards.

Yet these close early links notwithstanding, Fadlallah later distanced himself from the Iranian regime, and this led to a similar cooling of relations with Hizbullah. Though an early supporter of the Islamic Revolution, Fadlallah disassociated himself from the system of Vilayet e-Faqih (Rule of the Jurisprudent) which the revolution spawned. This is the system whereby Iran’s Shi’ite clerics ruled directly, under the leadership first of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and then his successor Ali Khamenei.

This system was not the banner under which the revolution was made, though it may be assumed that it was the intention throughout of Khomeini to implement it.

Nor does it derive inevitably from Shi’ite thinking regarding proper relations between religious and political authority. According to Fadlallah, clerics should wield influence, but should not rule directly in the administrative sense. Fadlallah also considered that the speedy implementation of an “Islamic state” was not relevant to the complex Lebanese reality. What was needed, rather, was to slowly “prepare the scene” for the creation of such a state.

Some have also suggested that the relatively modest achievements of Khamenei in terms of religious study and erudition further inclined Fadlallah toward maintaining a distance from the regime.

Hizbullah, of course, is the creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and is committed both to the principle of Vilayet e- Faqih, and to its current personification in Khamenei. As such, Fadlallah’s critical stance led to a distancing between him and the movement.

Lebanese analysts have pointed out that this was reflected in the response of the movement to his death. Hizbullah called for a mass turnout for Fadlallah’s funeral, and was seemingly effusive in its eulogies. In mourning his passing, Hizbullah spokesmen stressed his support for the destruction of the “Zionist entity.” But Hizbullah statements also stressed the status of Khamenei as a marja, while failing to use this term to describe Fadlallah.

Ultimately, the career of Fadlallah is testimony to the incendiary power of ideas. He never wielded a gun, nor involved himself in the precise planning of operations against the US and Israel. Few Hizbullah men looked to him as their marja, and a loyalty to him was said to even be a motive for suspicion in the movement’s circles in later years. Nevertheless, his role was crucial in creating the religious, ideological and moral climate from which Hizbullah emerged.

Working far from the spotlight in his early years, he helped prepare the soil from which later, less ambiguous figures and organizations would grow and flourish.

 

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Arab World: Battleground Yemen

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post-09/01/2010

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday described the current situation in Yemen as “a threat to regional stability and even to global stability.” She was referring to the fact that Yemen is the latest failed state to become a haven for elements of the Sunni global jihad. Like Afghanistan and Sudan before it, Yemen is becoming a key regional base for al-Qaida.

Unlike in the other two countries, in Yemen this has come about not because of an agreement reached between the jihadis and the authorities; rather, the inability of the Yemeni authorities to impose their rule throughout their country, coupled with the close proximity of Yemen to Saudi Arabia – a key target for al-Qaida – has made the country a tempting prospect for the terrorists.

Al-Qaida is not the only major problem facing Yemen. In fact, it could be argued that the country manages to encapsulate in acute form the three main causes of political turmoil in the Middle East: a dictatorial government, vulnerability to Iranian subversion through local jihadis and the presence and activity of the Sunni global jihad.

Last January, the hitherto little-heard-of Yemeni franchise of al-Qaida merged with the Saudi franchise to form the so-called “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” (AQAP). The Saudi jihadis were facing an increasingly effective counter terror campaign by the Saudi authorities, and therefore decided to shift focus to lightly-governed Yemen, where proper security fails to extend much beyond the capital city of San’a.

Through its organizing of the failed attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, AQAP has now entered the major leagues of the global jihad. Fears of an imminent second strike led to temporary closure of the US, British and French embassies in San’a over the last week.

Yemen is currently host to no less than three separate insurgencies. Each resembles one another in that they are being conducted by forces committed to some form of political Islam. There, however, the similarities end.

Probably the most politically and militarily significant of the three Islamist insurgencies is that of the Houthi rebels in the Saada district in the north. The Zaidi Shi’ite rebels of the al-Houthi clan have been engaged in an insurgency against the Yemeni authorities since 2004. Quelling the uprising has proved quite beyond the capabilities of the government of Ali Abdalla Saleh.

In the past few months, the Shi’ite Houthis have extended their activities across the border to Saudi Arabia. Their close proximity to the Saudi border makes them a useful tool for Iran to pressure Riyadh. Responding to rebel attacks in November, the Saudis struck back with aircraft and helicopter gunships, killing around 40 Houthis. Regardless, Iran is sending regular arms shipments to the Houthis, continuing to stoke the flames of the rebellion. The real possibility of further deterioration remains.

The second insurgency faced by the hapless Yemeni regime is a separatist campaign in the south. Yemen was only reunified in 1990, and has since suffered a brief civil war in 1994. The separatist insurgency, led by Islamist tribal leader Tareq al-Fadhli, again grew in intensity during 2009, with a number of stormy demonstrations and armed confrontations leading to deaths on both sides.

As if fighting insurgencies on two separate fronts was not enough, Yemen is also being hit hard by economic woes. The country’s steadily depleting oil reserves are unable to generate sufficient income for the government to maintain the tribal patronage system on which it depends. Gas exports are failing to make up the shortfall. And Yemen’s water supplies are also dwindling.

Like a parasite that spots, enters and exploits a weakening body, AQAP has now added its own particular brand of Islamist insurgency to this volatile situation.

The close proximity of Yemen to Saudi Arabia and to international shipping lanes makes the country’s instability a factor which the US and the West cannot afford to ignore.

This, however, raises a dilemma. The regime of President Ali Saleh is autocratic, inefficient and largely ineffectual. Its economic policies have failed to develop the country, leaving the regime sitting precariously on top of a boiling cauldron of poverty, illiteracy, extremism and discontent. To remain on its perch, the regime is now asking for ever larger contributions of US funding and assistance to counter the terror.

Since Yemen’s government rules in name only in large parts of the country, increasing the US commitment to combating al-Qaida in the country raises the possibility of US ground forces in Yemen. President Barack Obama can ill afford yet another Middle East war, with its inevitable cost in American lives. Yet he also cannot afford to stand back and allow Yemen to play the role for al-Qaida that Afghanistan played in the late 1990s.

There are no simple answers. Washington may prefer to adopt the counter terror tactic of helping the Yemenis strike al-Qaida sites from the air, to avoid the sight of US soldiers deployed in a country so close to the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

But whichever option the US chooses, the real “root cause” of the proliferating insurgencies in Yemen, and the inability of the regime to adequately deal with them, is the ongoing dysfunctionality of the region’s political culture. All across the Middle East, failing, autocratic regimes face off against popular Islamist movements committed to a murderous and ultimately sterile political program.

Yemen offers an example of this situation in a particularly virulent form.

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Arab World: Ahmadinejad’s Recipe for Success

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jonathanspyer

22/10/2010

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now safely back in Teheran, his triumphal tour of Lebanon concluded. The internal Lebanese political crisis which underlay his visit, however, is far from over and has almost certainly not yet reached its height. His visit served to cast a sharp light on the Lebanese reality. It revealed a country whose people may be divided between supporters of the Iran-led regional axis, and hostages of that axis.

This is a grave situation. The fact that Iran and its proxies have been able to reach this ascendant position in Lebanon is a testimony to the failure of Western regional policy over the last half decade.

Ahmadinejad’s visit was a justified triumphal procession by a representative of a regime which, despite economic and internal difficulties, is succeeding in its goal of advancing Iranian power and political influence across the region.

The Iranians have found openly authoritarian structures in the Arab world hard to penetrate. In Egypt and in Saudi Arabia, their efforts at internal subversion have largely run aground. However, in weaker states in which something like an electoral system exists, Teheran has developed a very Middle Eastern mixture of patronage, paramilitary muscle and exploitation of genuine grievances which is delivering the regime a string of successes.

This “recipe” has enabled the Iranians to split the Palestinian national movement and make their half of it (the Hamas enclave in Gaza) the most dynamic element. It has enabled Teheran to emerge as the kingmaker in Iraq, via their support for the movement of Moqtada al-Sadr. And last and very much not least, this political-paramilitary “system” has brought the Islamic Republic the effective ownership of Lebanon, through the long development of its proxy, Hizbullah.

Ahmadinejad’s visit was an acknowledgment of Iranian success and Western failure. It had the virtue, nevertheless, of helping to dispel some of the more obvious falsehoods asserted by supporters and fellow travelers of the Iran-led bloc, and of presenting this troubling reality in clearer focus before the world.

Supporters and fellow travelers of Hizbullah have long sought to downplay the movement’s status as an Iranian franchise. Hizbullah leaders seek to present themselves as Lebanese patriots, leading a national “resistance” to Israel. Their Western admirers in Beirut and elsewhere eagerly repeat these claims. The assertion of Hizbullah’s independent Lebanese nature looked rather more threadbare after the Ahmadinejad visit.

The Iranian president addressed a cheering crowd of 14,000 overwhelmingly Shi’ite Lebanese in Bint Jbeil, who reacted to the mention of the name of Prime Minister Saad Hariri with loud boos. He made his promised trip to the border area and delivered a ranting call for Israel’s destruction from it. All around were Iranian flags and slogans praising Teheran’s system of government.

This was no mere visit by a foreign politician to a neighboring state. The rebuilt infrastructure – military and civil – south of the Litani River is entirely the product of Iranian largesse. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who preferred discretion to valor and greeted the guest from his place of hiding, looked for all the world like what he is – a client. Ahmadinejad was the patron, inspecting his investment.

Western leaders have not been slow to notice this, nor to respond.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman reportedly warned Lebanese officials that the US would “not tolerate” an Iranian foothold on the Mediterranean.

One of the immediate practical effects of Ahmadinejad’s visit has been to lend added weight to voices in the US Congress calling for an end to military aid to Lebanon. Some $100 million in military and security aid has been frozen by the US Congress since August of this year.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a former House Subcommittee chairwoman, this week said that “Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon” and its illustration of the “increasing dominance of Iran and its allies,” raised the question of whether such aid should continue.

Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his 12th semi-annual report on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, noted that Hizbullah is now stronger than the Lebanese Armed Forces. He said that Hizbullah’s military ascendancy “creates an atmosphere of intimidation and poses a key challenge to the safety of Lebanese civilians and to the government.”

FURTHER INDICATIONS of just who is in control in Lebanon appear to be imminent. Tensions are currently high throughout the country in the buildup to the possible issuing of indictments against Hizbullah members suspected of involvement in the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Members of the Hizbullah-dominated March 8 movement are calling for the tribunal to be abolished. The movement has made clear that it has no intention of handing over suspects. There is a wider fear that the issuing of indictments could trigger a wider, violent reaction from Hizbullah.

There is also widespread speculation as to what exactly will be the response of the official government of Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri to a Hizbullah ultimatum for the abolition of the tribunal. Hariri, after all, has already undergone the humiliation of being forced to declare his sincere friendship to the Assad regime in Syria – which almost certainly had a hand in the killing of his father.

How much more will he be willing to swallow is the question now being asked. It is testimony to the current balance of power in the country that the only option available to Hariri other than further capitulation is probably resignation. Saudi-Syrian efforts are under way to try to find a way out of the crisis.

But whatever the outcome of the latest set-to over the Hariri tribunal, the balance of forces in Lebanon was made plain in the starkest terms during Ahmadinejad’s visit.

Western neglect and the evident inability to find the will and determination to stand firm against Iranian sponsoring and activating of political-military proxies has led to the establishing of an Iranian enclave on the Mediterranean. Ahmadinejad may be reviled and ridiculed at home. The Iranian economy may be reeling under the impact of sanctions. But when it comes to playing power games in the less stable parts of the region, it is increasingly obvious that the Iranian recipe for militarized politics is paying dividends.

 

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Lebanon and the limits of protest

Posted on February 16, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 16/02/2011

Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri’s declaration this week that his March 14 movement will enter the opposition serves to clarify the situation in Lebanon.

The country is today openly under the control of a coalition of pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian forces.

The seemingly permanent Lebanese political crisis is today overshadowed by more dramatic events under way in Egypt and Iran.

The state of affairs in tiny Lebanon may nevertheless offer some clues as to the likely direction of events further afield.

Hariri listed three elements as underlying his decision.

These were: March 14’s commitment to the Lebanese constitution, its support for the Special Tribunal on Lebanon (investigating the murder of Rafik Hariri) and its opposition to ‘the predominance of weapons’ (code for Hezbollah’s private military capacity, held without seeking the consent of other Lebanese sects).

These have been the basis of the March 14 project since its inception.

Hariri’s decision is therefore an acknowledgement of political defeat. This defeat has come despite his movement’s narrow electoral victory in 2009.

In his speech, the former prime minister offered ironic congratulations to the Hezbollah-led forces which have bested him.

“We congratulate them on a majority that was hijacked by the intimidation of weapons,” he said. “And we congratulate them on a power that was stolen from the will of the voters.”

This is a fairly accurate summary of the situation.

The independence intifada, or Cedar Revolution of 2005, was supposed to husband a new age of representative and constitutional politics in Lebanon. Of this ambition, there remains the Hariri Tribunal. It remains only because it is internationally constituted, and therefore cannot simply be intimidated out of existence by the arms of Iranian or Syrian proxies.

The now near-forgotten Cedar Revolution was in many ways a prototype of the two uprisings just witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt: A youthful, technologically savvy stratum of the population was at the center of the events.

(Or at least prominently involved in the events, and favored by the Western media in its coverage of them.) The demand of the demonstrators seemed to set them apart from the familiar currents of politics in the Arab world.

They presented themselves as neither Islamist, nor old-style Arab nationalist. Indeed in essence their demand seemed to be precisely for their country to move beyond these narrow definitions, and to embrace the trans-national possibilities of the 21st century.

The Cedar Revolution enjoyed its brief moment of triumph in the spring of 2005, with the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.

Iran, Syria and their allies then spent the subsequent halfdecade patiently working to destroy any chances for the March 14 project to succeed.

The methods employed to ensure this were somewhat oldschool: proxy political-military organizations and a campaign of terror.

These methods succeeded.

Hariri’s announcement this week was an acknowledgement of this.

Still, the defeat of the March 14 movement by Iran, Hezbollah, Syria et al was not simply the defeat of the new world by the old. It wasn’t just Twitter and Facebook versus the clanking, brutal methods of the mid-20th century.

On the contrary, Hezbollah and its allies also know about popular mobilization and social media, and are masters at messaging and propaganda.

In this, they resemble their March 14 rivals – and differ sharply from the old-world Arab dictators just laid low in Tunisia and Egypt. Yet their ability to tell a story goes hand-in-hand with, and complements, their readiness to kill.

March 14 only had the former.

This absence proved their undoing.

Mubarak, of course, only had the latter, and when his patrons refused to let him use it, that was the end of him.

Which brings us to the present.

As of now, the current wave of unrest has brought down two old-fashioned, pro-Western Arab leaders.

It cannot be predicted which forces will rise in these countries in the months ahead. But from a strategic point of view – again as of now – the net result has been the weakening of the pro-Western regional camp, and hence by default the strengthening of the pro-Iranian and Islamist alliance.

Unrest has now broken out in Iran, the mother-ship which made possible the victory of Hezbollah et al in Lebanon.

In the past – as the microcosm of Lebanon and March 14, and the Iranian demonstrations of 2009 show – the methods of the Islamic Republic and its proxies have been sufficient to see-off the dreams of young, secular, Western-oriented demonstrators.

The meaning of the current wave of regional unrest will thus be decisively defined on the streets of Tehran.

If, as past experience in Lebanon and Iran suggests is most likely, the regime succeeds in suppressing the dissent, this will mean that the pro-Iranian camp can continue to happily observe pro-US regimes in the region tear themselves apart.

They can rest easy in the knowledge that they themselves have developed a version of brutal, authoritarian, ideological rule which can trump any card the protestors can play.

The resultant collapse of confidence in the US as a guarantor will play directly into their hands.

If not, then the March 14 precedent does not apply, and we will be entering a new era in the region.

The game’s afoot. Let’s wait and see. For what it’s worth, my money’s on the former.

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The Birth of Hizballahstan

Posted on January 26, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Gloria Center- 27/01/2011

Events have moved fast in Lebanon. The country now faces the prospect of a government controlled by Hizbullah and consisting solely of the movement and its allies.

Parts of Lebanon looked in danger of slipping into chaos on Tuesday, as angry Sunnis took to the streets for a “Day of Rage” in protest of what they called Hizbullah’s “coup.”

They were responding to the securing of a parliamentary majority for Hizbullah’s preferred prime ministerial candidate, Najib Mikati. Mikati received the backing of 65 members of the 128-member parliament earlier this week, clearing the way for his appointment as prime minister.

But the protesters’ rage was insufficient to prevent Mikati’s accession. He received the official presidential decree confirming his appointment on Tuesday, even as protesters blocked the Beirut-Saida road and shots were fired in the Sunni stronghold of Tripoli.

This is because the real, currently silent capacity for violence in Lebanon is on Mikati’s side, not that of the demonstrators.

Mikati, 55, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon, tried to present himself as a compromise Sunni candidate (Lebanon’s constitution requires that the prime minister hail from the Sunni sect). The candidacy of a previous pro- Hizbullah Sunni, Omar Karami, had been withdrawn because of his too-obvious ties to Syria.

The new prime minister-designate even called on supporters of the March 14 alliance and its leader, incumbent Prime Minister Saad Hariri, to remember his uneventful record as prime minister for a short period following theassassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005.

March 14 wasn’t buying. It pointed to Mikati’s close links with Damascus. More importantly, it is clear to all sides that Mikati would never have been put forward by Hizbullah and its allies as a candidate for the premiership were he not fully in line with the movement’s plan to neuter or dismantle the UN tribunal investigating Rafik Hariri’s murder.

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah also tried to sound conciliatory this week. He said the new prime minister would form a new unity government in which “everyone participates.”

Nasrallah’s and Mikati’s words were rendered particularly hollow by the means that engineered the parliamentary majority securing Mikati’s nomination.

March 14’s parliamentary majority was removed following the defection of Druse leader Walid Jumblatt’s 11-man faction. This defection, according to Lebanese sources, was obtained by crude and extremely credible threats of violence against Jumblatt personally and against his family and community.

Saad Hariri, meanwhile, has made clear that Mikati is the candidate of the Hizbullah-led camp, while he remains the candidate of March 14. As such, his movement is refusing to join a government led by Mikati. This has led to the very real possibility that a government will be formed under direct Hizbullah domination.

The response of March 14 supporters has been, for the first time in half a decade, to take to the streets.

The demonstrators seen in recent days are not the wellbehaved, idealistic protesters of the period following Hariri’s assassination. This crowd has the unmistakable whiff of sectarian rage about it.

Angry Sunnis in their northern heartland of Tripoli smashed reporters’ cameras. In Tripoli’s Nour Square, the offices of Muhammad Safadi, the MP who proposed Mikati’s candidacy, were burned. Protesters also targeted a transmission van belonging to Al-Jazeera, which they associated with Qatar and support for Hizbullah. The frightened journalists had to be rescued by members of the Lebanese Armed Forces.

The protests look set to continue.

But for all their rage, the Sunnis of northern Lebanon are helpless to prevent the rise of a government openly dominated by the Shi’ite Islamists of Hizbullah and their Iranian creators and backers. And it appears unlikely that the “international community” will be anywhere around to assist them.

The real story behind the coup now under way is that of Iran.

Since 1982, Iran has been engaged in establishing a political and military instrument in Lebanon designed to wage war with Israel. That instrument is Hizbullah. Since late 2006, the movement has been engaged in an ever-more-overt assertion of its political power.

It now looks set to move toward open domination of the government.

This may have profound effects on the way Lebanon is viewed by the world. Certainly, if a new government were openly to impede the work of the tribunal, isolation and even sanctions might follow.

Capital could withdraw from the country.

Hizbullah’s rise to power is the latest victory for the Iranian model of combined political militancy and paramilitary strategy that has also enabled Teheran to split the Palestinian national movement and become the kingmaker in Iraq.

Israel now faces the prospect of two Iran-backed, Islamist entities to its north and south.

From an Israeli point of view, Hizbullah’s move into plain view may also bring advantages. For a long period, the non-Hizbullah “government” of Lebanon functioned for the Shi’ite Islamists as part cloak, part human shield.

The emerging situation looks set to have the virtue, by contrast, of clarity. This would raise the possibility of the next clash between Israel and Hizbullah taking on the unfamiliar dimensions of a state to- state conflict.

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Death in Urumiya

Posted on January 22, 2011 by jonathanspyer

In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 15 in the isolated and overcrowded Urumiya prison in western Iran, the authorities hanged one of their opponents.

Hossein Khazri, an alleged activist with the Party for Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), was 29. He had been in custody since early 2009. His crime, of which he was convicted on July 11, 2009, was that of being an “enemy of God” in the eyes of the Islamic Republic.

Khazri’s specific activities against the deity worshiped by the rulers of Iran appear to have consisted of political agitation for democracy and federalism in the country of his birth.

In the course of his incarceration, in prisons administered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Intelligence Ministry, Khazri had been severely tortured, according to human rights organizations. His hanging was the latest in a wave of executions of Kurdish activists and other opponents of the regime carried out in recent weeks. Fourteen other Kurdish activists are currently on death row, condemned for their political activities.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran this week described the authorities as on an “execution binge,” orchestrated by the intelligence and security agencies.

The hanging of Khazri brings the number of people executed by Iran since the beginning of the year to 47.

A spokesman for ICHRI said that the “execution of Kurdish activists, without fair trials and following torture, increasingly appears as a systematic, politically motivated process.” The roundups and executions of Kurdish activists are part of an ongoing, brutal and little-reported war waged by the Revolutionary Guards against a separatist insurgency in the predominantly Kurdish areas of western Iran. Urumiya jail, which was built to house 150, is currently teeming with 300 inmates, as a result of recent crackdowns on independent political activity.

PJAK HAS been fighting the Iranian authorities since 2004. It defines its fight not in ethnic nationalist terms.

Rather, it claims to be fighting for “federalism and secular democracy” in Iran.

Based in the Qandil mountain range on the Iraqi border, the movement engages in periodic raids into Iran. Since February 2009, it has been designated a terrorist organization by the US. PJAK is an offshoot of the Turkish-Kurdish PKK, and belongs to the same umbrella organization.

It lacks the deep roots among the Kurds of Iran which the PKK possesses among the Turkish Kurds, however.

Unverified media reports have suggested that despite the terrorist designation, the group has received US support, as part of a larger effort to foment unrest and instability in Iran. There have also been rumors of Israeli contacts with the organization. These supposed Western links feature prominently in the propaganda of the Iranian authorities against PJAK.

But whatever the particular provenance of PJAK, it is clear that the people in whose name it wishes to speak, the Kurds of Iran, currently endure something much less than a free life. The movement’s potential for growth is thus considerable.

The repression of it by the regime is correspondingly harsh.

THE IRANIAN system is dominated by ethnic Persians, but the Islamic Republic does not define itself officially according to ethnic identity. Rather, it rules in the name of religion. As such, the regime constitutionally recognizes the Kurdish language. In practice, however, discrimination against Kurds and other minority ethnic and religious communities is widespread and of long standing.

Around 5 million Kurds live in Iran, concentrated in the provinces of West Azerbaijan, Ilam and Kurdistan. Separatist sentiment is particularly strong among Sunni Muslim Kurds, who constitute just over half the total. In the earliest days of the regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared a jihad against Kurdish separatism, and 10,000 Kurds were killed as the Revolutionary Guards fought to establish regime control in these areas.

After the unrest following the rigged presidential elections of July 2009, the Islamist authorities’ repression in Kurdish areas of the country has once more sharply increased. Last May, the authorities began a crackdown as the anniversary of the elections approached. Four Kurdish activists, one a woman, were convicted of membership in PJAK and executed following severe torture.

None was given access to lawyers. PJAK denied any links with the four. All were convicted, like Hossein Khazri, of the crime of war against God.

The incidents led to widespread demonstrations and further bloody suppression.

And this is where things remain. The period since the successful repression of the countrywide dissent that followed the elections of July 2009 has seen the consolidation of an Islamist counterreaction within the regime.

The power of the intelligence and security apparatuses has grown. This is reflecting itself in the brutal repression of dissent taking place in the Kurdishspeaking areas along the border with Iraq. Khazri was the latest victim of this repression. He was almost certainly not the last.

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