In-fighting in Iran

          Iran’s élite are at loggerheads. Situation normal, one might say, except that the in-fighting is becoming more vicious by the day, exacerbated by the forthcoming elections. As Iran prepares for the vote, scheduled for February 26, the power struggle between the hardliners on the one hand, and the moderates and reformists – the pro-Rouhanis – on the other, is intensifying.

          Everything is not black and white in Iran’s body politic. There are two main political camps – Reformists and Principlists (conservative supporters of the Supreme Leader dedicated to protecting the ideological principles of the Islamic Revolution). The respected Speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, is nominally a Principlist, but he has supported Hassan Rouhani from the moment he became president. In fact, his support has been so strong that it has angered many hard-liners in parliament. In particular, opponents of the nuclear deal were furious with the way Larijani, as Speaker, ushered through parliament’s ratification of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which marked the successful outcome of Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the P5+1 (US, UK, France. Russia, China and Germany). Whispers began to circulate that he was about to join the Reformists in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. In the event, on registration day Larijani announced that he was entering the fray as an independent.

          Larijani is far from alone, and the fact that many moderate Principlist figures strongly support the Rouhani administration has created internal tensions. Asadollah Badamchian, a respected member of the group, recently said, “We are working hard to unify the Principlist movement…for the parliamentary elections." They are inviting prominent politicians such as the Supreme Leader’s foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati, Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Ali Larijani himself to form an advisory council tasked with bringing unity to the movement. But with Larijani standing as an independent, some political observers believe that after the elections the Reform Movement might approach him to join them, or at least to enter into some form of cooperation, with the aim of continuing their support for Rouhani’s liberalizing programme.

          Tensions have existed in the top echelons of Iran’s regime for decades, but Rouhani’s victory in the 2013 presidential election have given them a sharper edge. As he began to implement the change in approach to the West that had obviously been agreed well in advance with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, hardliners in the top echelons pitched a rearguard action against every phase of the nuclear deal as it was hammered out.

          The end of international sanctions, far from being greeted on all sides, is only intensifying the in-fighting among Iran’s faction-ridden élite. Fundamentalists believe the price demanded was too high in terms of the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and are determined that Iran will renege on the conditions whenever it suits.

          Since taking over as Supreme Leader in 1989, Khamenei has always made sure that no individual or group, including among his own hard-line allies, gains enough power to challenge his authority. So Rouhani cannot count on his political support, either in respect of the nuclear deal, or on domestic policy, before the elections for the Majlis, Iran’s parliament.

          According to the Islamic Republic’s constitution the election of the Majlis must be monitored by the body known as the Guardian Council, a hard-line group controlled by Khamenei. The world gets to hear very little about the long-running dispute between senior hard-liners in the administration and Rouhani and his supporters about how much power the Guardian Council has, or should have, in vetting electoral candidates.

          Based on past practice, the Guardian Council could engage in mass disqualifications of candidates and eliminate entire political groups. On January 16, 2016 Iranian television carried a statement from the Guardian Council to the effect that more than half of the record number of 12,000 candidates to register in the forthcoming parliamentary elections were unqualified to run. Many of the disqualified candidates came from the Reformist and moderate camps, groups that would have been allied with the president in creating a more open political climate in the country.

          During a press conference the next day Rouhani said he would use all his powers to address the disqualifications, and hoped the Supreme Leader’s comments about having lively elections would be fulfilled. On January 18, Elham Aminzadeh, legal deputy to the president, announced that Rouhani was “negotiating with the Guardian Council over the disqualification of candidates.” If a mistake had been made, she said, they would seek to restore a candidate’s registration.

          It appeared that parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani was also in talks with the Guardian Council over the disqualifications. Mohammad Reza Tabesh, a member of parliament, said that Larijani was seeking to create a work group with members of the Guardian Council so that candidates who were disqualified could have a special hearing to present their complaints in person.

          "Rouhani has gained even more popularity compared to 2013 because of his nuclear success,” said a senior Iranian official. “People know that Rouhani's policy ended Iran's isolation and their economic hardship. He is their hero."

          Rouhani's increasing popularity might not be to the Supreme Leader’s liking. Khamenei depends less on popular acclaim than on the support of the hard-line element within Iran’s internal power structure. To retain it he might feel obliged to cut his president down to size. This is why political analysts within Iran examine the entrails of every move that Khamenei makes.

          For example, his unshakeable rooted opposition to the US – the “Great Satan” – cannot but be music to the ears of his fundamentalist supporters. In a succession of speeches Khamenei has made it very clear that the nuclear deal (Iran’s “victory” he dubs it) affects Iran’s basic enmity with the US not one jot. “I reiterate the need to be vigilant about the deceit and treachery of arrogant countries, especially the United States,” he said, on January 19, 2016.

          The truth is that however popular Rouhani might have become, without Khamenei's blessing his supporters could get nowhere in the 2016 elections. So the big question is how much leeway can the Supreme Leader allow Rouhani and his supporters, and still retain the balance of power in the body politic that he regards as essential to his own survival?

 
          In short, will Khamenei bow to popular pressure and give his blessing to Rouhani’s bid to fulfil his liberalising pledges to the electorate, or will the internal fundamentalist pressures prove too strong?

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 2 February 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/In-fighting-in-Iran-443488

Published in the Eurasia Review, 2 February 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/02022016-in-fighting-in-iran-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 2 February 2015:
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2016/02/02/in-fighting-in-iran/

Syria - preparing the end game

          On January 11, 2016 you could scour the internet to your heart’s content, but nowhere would you find a single reference to the start of ceasefire talks between the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the forces rebelling against him.

          Yet on December 11, 2015, after nearly five years of war that had killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2254, in which the Secretary General was asked to convene formal negotiations “on an urgent basis” between representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition on a political transition process. He was given a target of “early January” – taken by most media to mean one month – to have the talks up and running.

          That the timetable for this first stage of the international agreement has slipped does not augur well for the other two, namely the establishment of a “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian” government in Damascus within six months, and free and fair elections and a new constitution within eighteen.

          Yet the fact that the Security Council agreed on an international road map for a peace process in Syria is by no means insignificant – it demonstrated a rare, but welcome, unanimity among Council members on a political strategy to end the Syrian conflict, and it saw both the US and Russia endorsing the resolution.

          “This council,” said US Secretary of State John Kerry, ”is sending a clear message to all concerned that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria and lay the groundwork for a government that the long-suffering people of that battered land can support.”

          Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov added: “This is a clear response to attempts to impose a solution from the outside on Syrians on any issues, including those regarding its president.” His reference to the president is significant. The future of President Assad was, and remains, a bone of contention. It is the one major issue conspicuous by its absence from Resolution 2254. The result is rather like mounting a production of Hamlet without the prince.

          As far back as September 2015, Mark Galeotti, a professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, was speculating that, despite the longstanding relationship between the Syrian regime and Russia, Moscow was envisioning a future without the Assad regime in power.

          "Russians are already thinking about post-Assad Damascus,” said Galeotti. ”The Russians have a tradition of offering sanctuary to dictators who flee their country. So, I'm sure there's some cosy dacha outside of Moscow, if Assad does need to flee."

          He may be correct, although at present Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is keeping his cards close to his chest on the issue, ruling nothing in and nothing out. When asked outright during an interview with the German daily Bild, published on January 12, if he would shelter Assad, Putin said it was premature to discuss the issue but threw in, as an aside, that Russia had granted asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden, "which was far more difficult than to do the same for Mr Assad.”

          Having said that, Putin backtracked somewhat. Moscow, he said, was advocating a constitutional reform in Syria, to be followed by presidential and parliamentary elections. And if those elections were democratic, "Assad won't have to go anywhere, no matter if he is elected president or not."

         Russia, and perhaps the US, appears to envisage presidential elections in Syria in which Assad could be a candidate. Such a scenario is flatly opposed by France and the UK. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius maintains that the negotiations would succeed only with credible guarantees about Assad’s departure. “How could this man unite a people that he has in part massacred?” said Fabius. “The idea that he could once again stand for election is unacceptable to us.”

          Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, has been equally unambiguous – Assad can have no future in a post-civil war Syria. “It’s not just my view that you can’t end up with Assad having a role in Syria. The Syrian people wouldn’t accept it. What you need to do is find a government that can appeal to Alawites, Kurds, Sunnis and Christians, and if you don’t have someone who can do that you won’t have a Syria that works.”

          Russia’s rather equivocal approach to the issue, especially as it appears to have the backing of US Secretary of State John Kerry, is infuriating Syria's opposition coordinator Riad Hijab. Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister, was chosen in December as co-ordinator of the opposition negotiating body to lead future Syria talks. He believes the US has reneged on its anti-Assad position, softening its stance to accommodate Russia. This, he maintained, would make it difficult for the opposition to attend the delayed peace talks, which had by then been re-scheduled for January 25 in Geneva.

          The path leading towards them is rocky. Syrian rebel groups had declared that they would not take part unless humanitarian provision in the latest UN resolution on Syria were implemented. These call for humanitarian access to all in need and the cessation of attacks on civilians. In order to facilitate the Geneva talks, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, met representatives of the US, Russia and other major powers and, on January 11, Assad granted access to the government-besieged town of Madaya, and food and first aid was delivered to its starving civilians.

          This is not the only obstacle being placed in the way of the talks by the opposition council. They have told de Mistura that the Assad regime would have to take goodwill steps, including a prisoner release, before they would go to negotiations. It is not clear, however, whether this is a “make or break” pre-condition.

          Nor are the opposition the only party voicing objections. Assad has long labelled as “terrorists” all the various groups opposing him. Russia is not going as far, but is insisting that the international powers produce an agreed list of terrorist groups, presumably so that they can be excluded from the approved opposition council. Assistant US Secretary of State Anne Patterson has said the United States and Russia were working "very assiduously" on the question of defining terrorist groups.

 
             With all these hurdles to overcome, it would have been a minor triumph in itself if the peace talks scheduled for January 25 had gone ahead on time.  But the scheduled start date could not be met because of international disagreement over who should be invited from the opposition, while rebel group stuck to their demands for an end to air strikes and government sieges of territory they hold, and the release of detainees.

           Nevertheless, the international desire to end the horror in Syria is real enough and, as the old saying has it, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 26 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Syria-preparing-the-end-game-442745

Published in the Eurasia Review, 27 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/27012016-syria-preparing-the-end-game-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 26 January 2016
in English :
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2016/01/26/syria-preparing-the-end-game/
in Arabic:
http://mpc-journal.org/arabic/blog/2016/01/31/سوريا-التحضير-لنهاية-اللعبة/

Saudi Arabia or Iran - a choice must be made

          Some would claim that there is nothing to choose between Saudi Arabia and Iran, that they are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Both, it is argued, are authoritarian, dictatorial regimes, espousing their own extreme interpretation of sharia law – albeit one from a Sunni and the other from a Shi’ite perspective. Both persist in judicial beheadings, amputations, and whippings, while persecuting gays, imposing restrictions on women, and bearing down heavily on any dissenting voices. Now that the two rival bastions of Islamism are at daggers drawn, some might say a plague on both their houses.

          Such an argument is simplistic. For whereas the Saudis over many years proved themselves staunch supporters of US policies. and are today still cooperating closely with the West on security and intelligence issues while maintaining the flow of vital oil supplies, Iran has consistently denounced America and Western democracies, pursued policies aimed at disrupting their governments, and sponsored numerous, and often horrific, terror attacks against the US and the West.

          The Saudis’ decision at the start of 2016 to execute the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, as well as 46 other prisoners convicted on terrorism charges, has provoked a major crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The schism has long been brewing. In Yemen, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have spent most of the past year fighting attempts by Iranian-backed Houthis to seize control of the country. In Syria, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its puppet organization, Hezbollah, are fighting to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Saudis are backing groups committed to overthrowing him – in line with the policy of the US and the West, who are convinced that there is no future for Syria while Assad remains in power.

          So as between Saudi Arabia and Iran it should be a clear-cut no-option choice, but a major complicating factor is the long-term strategic objective of the Obama administration in the Middle East. President Obama came into office feeling guilty about America’s strength. He began his presidency by declaring as often as he could that he believed much was wrong with America. His apology tour began on April 3, 2009 in Strasbourg. Throughout the nation’s existence, he said, “America has shown arrogance and been dismissive even derisive” of others. If the power of the US could be reduced, then America would have the “moral authority” to bring murderous regimes such as Iran into the “community of nations”. So, claim some, he set about reducing America’s strength and authority in the world.

          It is significant that he mentioned Iran at that early stage in his presidency. A widely-held view among political analysts is that the “signature issue of Obama’s diplomacy”, as political scientist Amiel Unghar puts it, has been transforming US-Iranian relations.

          Ungar traces this policy back to the 2006 Iraq Study Group headed by former US Secretary of State, James Baker, and former Democratic representative Lee Hamilton. The great struggle of the time was against al-Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist terror organization that had been responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and was then totally disrupting American attempts to reconstruct Iraq. Baker and Hamilton dreamed up the clever-clever notion that a working relationship between America and the two major Shia powers, Iran and Syria, would encourage them to fight Sunni al-Qaeda for their own sake, thus incidentally assisting America’s struggle. Additionally, the group expected Iran ‘to use its influence, especially over Shia groups in Iraq, to encourage national reconciliation’.

          Ungar believes that this recklessly flawed analysis is what has been behind Obama’s willingness to accommodate Iran on the political front, and to offer it major concessions on the nuclear issue. When the Obama administration came into office, its overt aim seemed to be to eliminate Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons. But was it in fact working to a different and secret agenda?

          During 2014 it emerged that in secret correspondence with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Obama actually attempted to engage Iran in the anti-Islamic State conflict. In November the Wall Street Journal reported that Obama had written to Ayatollah Khamanei concerning the shared interest of the US and Iran in fighting IS militants.

          “The October letter,” asserted the Wall Street Journal, “marked at least the fourth time Mr Obama has written Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since taking office in 2009, and pledging to engage with Tehran’s Islamist government.”

           By 2016 it had become clear that in the process of facilitating Iran’s journey out of the cold and into the comity of nations, the Obama administration had boosted Iran’s efforts to extend its influence across the Middle East, and in consequence had lost the confidence, and much of the respect, of its erstwhile allies such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Egypt, all of whom had good reason to regard Iran as their prime antagonist.

          Did Obama’s placatory approach result in any softening of Iran’s visceral hatred of the “Great Satan”? Not one jot. “The slogans ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America’, “ proclaimed Ayatollah Khamenei just after the nuclear deal was announced, “have resounded throughout the country.... Even after this deal, our policy towards the arrogant US will not change.”

          So much for the assumptions and vain hopes of the 2006 Iraq Study Group, and for the policy of appeasement. Taking every concession offered in the nuclear deal talks, and subsequently reneging in several vital respects on the final agreement, Iran’s leaders have not budged an inch on their ultimate ambitions, namely to become the dominant political and religious power in the Middle East, to sweep aside all Western-style democracies, and to impose their own Shi’ite version of Islam on the whole world.

          And yet, while the Saudis have time and again demonstrated the value of their alliance with the West, influential voices in the US and the UK are still arguing that since Iran has agreed a deal over its nuclear programme, the West’s long-term interests may be better served by building closer relations with Tehran.

          Iran’s revolutionary regime is not, and never could be, an ally of the West. Its aim, like that of Islamic State, is to disrupt and eventually to dominate the democratic world. It has established a firm grip on the Iranian people and ruthlessly crushes all opposition – though the opposition exists, and one day may succeed in genuinely restoring Iran and its people to the community of nations. But as matters stand, between a staunch ally and a declared enemy, one might well wonder why there is any question of which to support. That the question even arises speaks volumes about the misconceived policies that have dominated Washington’s thinking for the past seven years.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Saudi-Arabia-or-Iran-a-choice-must-be-made-441759

Published in the Eurasia Review, 19 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/19012016-saudi-arabia-or-iran-a-choice-must-be-made-oped/

Is Islamic State in retreat?

          "The dawn of 2016," wrote veteran Middle East observer, Con Coughlin, on December 30, 2015, “finds Islamic State (IS) very much on the defensive in both Iraq and Syria.” A good rule of thumb is not to count your chickens before they are hatched, but Coughlin produces evidence to justify his assessment. Does it stand up to close scrutiny?

          In May 2015, when IS fighters overwhelmed a far stronger and better equipped Iraqi army to capture Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western province of Anbar, the jihadi organization seemed unstoppable. IS’s progress towards a complete takeover of Iraq, and after it Syria, appeared almost inevitable. After all, Ramadi was only 60 miles from Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, and it seemed but a matter of time before Baghdad, too, would be in IS hands. But at the end of December, after days of fierce fighting, Iraqi security forces had gained control of central Ramadi. By the last day of 2015, a mop-up operation seemed all that was needed to recapture the city. IS resistance was stubborn, however, and pockets of fighters continued to hold out, frustrating coalition attempts to restore Ramadi to normality.

          The defeat back in May of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) defending Ramadi, and its capture by IS, seems to have acted as a wake-up call to the US-led coalition. Indeed after the Ramadi loss US Defense Secretary, Ash Carter, is on the record as saying, rather hurtfully, that the Iraqi army had “no will to fight.” Clearly an essential preliminary to future successful operations against IS was to revitalize and re-energize the ISF.

          This realization gave birth to what has been dubbed the coalition’s “Iraq First” policy. American and British military advisers concentrated on rebuilding the strength of the ISF to the point where it could provide the capable ground component, to be backed by coalition air cover, recognized by all as essential to reclaiming control of the country from Islamist extremists. The success at Ramadi seemed to demonstrate its effectiveness.

          The government has designated the mostly Sunni city of Mosul, Iraq’s second city some 250 miles north of Baghdad, as the next target for Iraq's armed forces. But with a population of around 1.5 million, Mosul presents a far more challenging target than Ramadi. Coalition commanders fear that the battle to recapture the city will involve intense street-to-street fighting. In any case, field commanders wonder whether it is worth attempting that operation before Falluja, lying between Ramadi and Baghdad, has been wrested from IS’s hands.

          Falluja presents problems of its own. It is a religious and spiritual centre of Sunni Islam in Iraq, and the discrimination against Sunni Muslims exercised by former prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has left a bitter anti-government taste in some mouths. During the Maliki years some sort of deal was struck between Sunni militants in the city and IS, and in assaulting Falluja coalition forces might find themselves fighting not only IS, but local militants.

          So the way forward is far from clear. In fact, the recapture of Ramadi may have raised expectations unrealistically. Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, speaking shortly after Ramadi had largely fallen into coalition hands, promised that by the end of 2016 all of Iraq would have been brought under the control of the country’s democratically elected government. A tall order, but doing just that – even if it cannot be achieved within a twelvemonth – is deemed essential if the US-led coalition is to stand any chance of defeating IS on the ground in neighbouring Syria, where the situation is immensely more complex.

          A good start has been made. On Christmas Day 2015, as one stage in the coalition's march on IS-held areas in northern Syria, the US-backed coalition of rebels, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), captured the key Tishrin dam on the Euphrates River from IS. The Tishrin supplies much of northern Syria with electricity. The SDF’s plan of campaign is to cut supply lines between IS strongholds in the north, in particular those between IS's main city of Raqqa and its stronghold of Manbij.

          The US military estimates that in the last six weeks of 2015 the SDF, bolstered by coalition air strikes, captured around 1,000 square kilometers of terrain from IS. In addition, coalition air strikes on the IS leadership had notched up a number of successes. One notable achievement was the strike that killed Charaffe al-Mouadan, a Syria-based IS member directly linked to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, believed to be the mastermind behind the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris on November 13 which killed 130 people.

          Mouadan is one of ten or more leading IS figures killed by targeted air strikes towards the end of 2015, among them so-called “Jihadi John”, the figure with the British accent who featured in the horrific “snuff” videos released by IS of the beheading of a succession of Western hostages.

          On January 4, 2016, IS released a video on social media featuring a new masked gunman with a British accent. He directed the shooting at point-blank range of five men accused of spying for the UK, each shown “confessing”, before being killed. The Daily Telegraph revealed that an internal IS opposition movement – a group called “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” (RBSS) – had been undermining IS operations and providing information that led to the targeting and death of IS leaders by airstrikes, including Jihadi John. RBSS is an alliance of journalists and activists from Raqqa, the Syrian town that is IS’s de facto capital, and their mere existence demonstrates the internal dissensions that develop when an organization is under pressure or failing.

          So obviously the ratcheting up of the coalition’s military action, its continuous pounding of IS positions from the air, its successes on the battlefield, the targeted assassination of IS’s leadership, the cutting of IS’s vital oil flows and its consequent loss of revenue – all are having an effect on the morale and the appeal of Islamic State. But, as US army Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the US-led coalition against the Islamic State, observed about IS: “It still has fangs.”

          Perhaps the most apt assessment of the state of play at the start of 2016 are the words of Winston Churchill, uttered back in 1942, following the British success at El Alamein:

          “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 12 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Is-Islamic-State-in-retreat-441037

Published in the Eurasia Review, 12 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/12012016-is-islamic-state-in-retreat-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 14 January 2016:
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2016/01/13/is-islamic-state-in-retreat/

India and Israel: strengthening the bonds

          What on earth, one might legitimately wonder, could India have in common with Israel? Wildly at variance in size (India’s population tops 1.25 billion; Israel’s struggles to reach 8 million), they are at least both alumni of Britain’s one-time imperial college, each with somewhat equivocal feelings towards their alma mater, and struggling free of their colonial bonds within a few months of each other in 1947-48. Even so, for a long time the connection between New Delhi and Jerusalem was far from close. It took forty years for India to overcome the fear that close relations with the Jewish State might somehow radicalize its Muslim citizens – who number over 100 million – and hurt its relations with the Arab world.
       

          It was, perhaps, the disintegration in 1991 of the Soviet Union – long a bulwark of the Arab Middle East – that encouraged India to overcome those misgivings. Its main Muslim neighbor on the sub-continent, Pakistan, has never recognized Israel, but India has conducted an on-off armed struggle with Pakistan since its foundation, so any scruples about hurting its feelings probably did not weigh very heavily in India’s consideration. Perhaps both India and Israel saw themselves as isolated democracies threatened by neighbours that train, finance and encourage terrorism. Whatever the rationale, in 1992 India established full diplomatic relations with Israel, and since then economic, social and security collaboration between the two nations has burgeoned, and India has become one of Israel’s largest trading partners.

           In 2014 Indo-Israeli bilateral trade, excluding defence, reached $4.52 billion, a 3.8 percent increase on the previous year. But it is defence and security that lie at the heart of the ever-closer ties between India and Israel, with the effective countering of terrorism as the prime objective. Israel has sold radar and surveillance systems for military aircraft and has provided India with training in counter-terrorism. In November 2011, India's élite Cobra Commando unit bought more than 1,000 Israeli X-95 assault rifles for counter-insurgency operations, and placed orders for four advanced Israeli Phalcon planes equipped with airborne warning and control systems (AWACS). Further orders for advanced counter-terrorism military hardware followed, backed by a joint intelligence-sharing agreement between the two nations aimed at fighting radical Islamic extremism.

          The blossoming collaboration was endorsed when, for the first time in over a decade, the prime ministers of Israel and India met in September 2014 in New York. Extreme cordiality seems to have marked the encounter between Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian prime minister Narenda Modi. They met again in November, on the sidelines of the climate change conference in Paris, just as Israel Aerospace Industries successfully tested a jointly developed Indian-Israeli Barak 8 air and naval defense missile system – "an important milestone in the cooperation between India and Israel", according to a top advisor to India's defence minister.

          All of which both provides the background to, and perhaps explains, the first-ever official visit by an Indian head of state to Israel a year later. In October 2015 President Pranab Mukherjee arrived in Jerusalem, to a rumbling background of media reservations, despite the fact that Mukherjee visited both Jordan and the Palestinian territories ahead of his visit to Israel, and expressed India’s solid support for a “sovereign, independent, viable and united State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognized borders, side by side at peace with Israel as endorsed in the Quartet Roadmap and relevant UNSC Resolutions.”

          Hosted by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, Mukherjee, in his own words, “reviewed our multidimensional relations and explored ways and means to enhance them for the mutual benefit of our two countries.”

          The fact that mutual benefit is indeed being derived from this ever-closer Indo-Israeli relationship is undisputed. India is one of the world’s two most rapidly developing economies (China is the other), and represents a huge potential market for Israel’s defence, aerospace, and high-tech industries – a market already being exploited, but one with unimaginably vast possibilities still to be explored. “The sky’s the limit”, said Netanyahu recently, referring to the potential for strengthening bilateral Indo-Israel co-operation in a wide variety of fields.

          For India, Israel offers access to the most advanced technologies available in the world, across a range of areas – defense, security, computer science, cyber forensics, agricultural techniques, micro-irrigation, urban water systems. In 2013, Israel announced a scheme to help India diversify and raise the yield of its fruit and vegetable crops. By March 2014, 10 Centres of Excellence were operating throughout India, offering free training sessions for farmers in efficient agricultural techniques using Israeli technology and know-how, including vertical farming, drip irrigation and soil solarisation. A year later, no less than 29 such Centres were in operation.

          As for the field of defence, in 2015 Israel Aerospace Industries and the Indian state-owned Defence Research and Development Organization began collaborating on a jointly developed surface-to-air missile system for the Indian Army. India uses Israel-made unmanned drones for surveilance and military purposes, and during 2015 ordered 16 drones and well as buying 321 launchers and 8,356 missiles from the Israeli military.

          That India’s stance vis-a-vis Israel has shifted became evident when India took to abstaining, rather than vote against Israel in a succession of UN votes. The most notable occasion was in July 2015, when India abstained on the vote to adopt the UN Human Rights Council’s report on Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s action against Hamas’s rocket attacks the previous year. It was the first time in decades that India had abstained from a decision against Israel in an international forum. India has long been a key player in the Non-Aligned Movement - a body of states that would automatically vote for the Palestinians and against Israel.

          It may also explain why India’s foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, will be visiting Israel from January 16-19. Swaraj, who served from 2006 to 2009 as chair of the Indo-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group, last came to the country in 2008. Her forthcoming tour may herald an official visit later in 2016 by Indian prime minister Modi – the first by an Indian prime minister, announced back in June 2015, but which has so far failed to materialize. Given the huge and developing level of cooperation between the two nations, Modi’s trip to Israel cannot be long delayed.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 4 January 2016:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/India-and-Israel-strengthening-the-bonds-439427

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 January 2016:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09012016-india-and-israel-strengthening-the-bonds-oped/

Turkey-Israel normalization - why ever not?

          “Normalization” is a dirty word among Palestinian leaders, of both Fatah and Hamas persuasions. It implies acceptance of Israel’s right to exist and, by some perverse logic, a downgrading of Palestinian rights.

          It must have come as something of a shock, therefore, to read the remarks of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on December 13 about Turkey’s future relations with Israel: "I have already said that once the compensation and the embargo problems were resolved, the normalization process may start. This normalization process would be good for us, Israel, Palestine and the entire region.”

          To be honest, there really is no fundamental reason for relations between Turkey and Israel to be anything but cordial. Indeed for fifty years following the founding of the state of Israel, cordiality was the keynote. In March 1949 Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize the new state. Subsequently, despite occasional differences of opinion following the Six-Day War and its consequences, cooperation between the two countries on a variety of fronts was not only close, but deep. By the end of the 1990s a succession of Turkey’s prime ministers had visited Israel, and then-Israeli president, Ezer Weizman had visited Turkey on three occasions to sign agreements aimed at fostering cooperation in the fields of art, culture, education, science, and sports. This was followed by a series of security agreements designed to ensure the closest cooperation between the two countries on intelligence and military matters. Meanwhile 200,000 Israelis flocked to Turkish beaches and casinos each year, and under a Turkish-Israeli free trade agreement trade between the two countries boomed.

          This happy state of affairs received its set-back with Erdogan’s rise to prominence in Turkey’s political arena. Erdogan came from an Islamist background and, whatever lip-service he may have paid to the Turkey’s secularist tradition introduced by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s, he was inherently opposed to it. Early in his career he joined the Islamist Welfare Party (IWP), and rose to become a member of parliament. Barred from taking his seat on a technicality, in 1994 he was elected mayor of Istanbul, where he antagonised secularists by banning alcohol in the city's cafés.

           Erdogan then helped form the Justice and Development Party (the AKP) which proved wildly popular and won the parliamentary election in 2002. He took office as prime minister in May, 2003.

          Despite a state visit to Israel in 2005, Erdogan’s accession soon marked a sharp deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations. Rooted in hard-line Islamism, Erdogan’s priority was soon revealed as courting favour with the Muslim world. Support for the extremist terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah began to dominate Turkey’s approach to foreign affairs. Vehement in his condemnation of Israel’s incursion into Gaza in 2008-9 to counter Hamas’s rocket attacks, he had a memorable public spat with Israel’s then-President Shimon Peres at the Davos conference in 2009, and stormed out of the meeting. Then came the notorious Mavi Marmara affair, when an AKP-inspired plan to provoke an incident with Israel on the high seas succeeded only too well, leading to the death of nine Turkish citizens.

          Despite all this, a community of interests between Turkey and Israel persisted and, in the way of foreign relations, imposed its own imperatives. Between 2009 and 2014 two-way trade between Turkey and Israel positively mushroomed. From some $2.6 billion in 2009, by 2014 it had exceeded $5.6 billion – which perhaps explains why negotiating teams charged with restoring ties between Turkey and Israel had begun meeting as early as April 2013. Quite separately, discussions had also begun on the extent of the financial compensation to be paid by Israel to the families of the Turkish citizens killed on board the Mavi Marmara.

          Russia’s incursion into Syria brought a sudden shake-up of the political pattern. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, side by side with Shi’ite Iran, entered the conflict in support of his long-time ally, President Bashar Assad; Erdogan, profoundly Sunni, was directing some of his fire at Assad’s troops – although he was equally interested in pounding Kurdish forces.

          Then on November 24 came Turkey’s downing of a Russian SU-24 fighter jet along the Syrian border. The result was a crisis in Turco-Russian relations. Turkey imports most of its natural gas from Russia, and for some time the two sides had been discussing a possible natural gas pipeline beneath the Black Sea to channel gas from Russia to Turkey and beyond. Two days after the Russian aircraft was shot down, Russia cancelled the project. Suddenly Turkey’s future energy supplies seemed in jeopardy, and Turkish politicians, energy companies, and others began calling for talks with Israel about future natural gas imports.

          On November 30 Erdogan remarked to reporters in Paris that he believed he was “able to fix ties” with Israel. On December 13 he said: "This normalization process would be good for us, Israel, Palestine and the entire region,,, We need to consider the interests of the people of the region and introduce peace." By December 15 it had become clear that talks between Turkey and Israel to heal the diplomatic rift were gaining momentum. Reports indicated that a key element in establishing “normalized relations” would be Turkey’s ability to import natural gas from the vast reserves that have been discovered in Israel’s sovereign waters much of which is still waiting to be exploited.

          Erdogan is insisting on his three preconditions for re-establishing normal relations with Israel – an apology for the deaths of the Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara; agreed compensation for the victims’ families, and an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The apology has already been given by Netanyahu; compensation terms appear to have been agreed; and the so-called blockade of Gaza has been attenuated to such a degree that only the most obviously military materiel is now prohibited.

          But Turkey is not getting things all its own way. As part of the deal Turkey has agreed to expel Saleh al-Aruri, a senior member of Hamas's military wing. Aruri has been directing terrorist operatives in the West Bank from his base in Istanbul. Moreover, shortly after the Turkey deal was concluded, Israel announced a three-way summit to take place in January between prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, and Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades. Joint exploitation of the huge Mediterranean gas reserves will doubtless feature largely on the agenda. Israel is in effect telling Cyprus and Greece that any normalization of ties with Turkey will not come at their expense. It is also sending a message to Turkey that Israel has other options in the region.

          Perhaps, also, the sight of Israel and an erstwhile enemy normalizing their relations will send a message to the implacable opponents of normalization in the Palestinian camp. Deals to the advantage of both parties can be hammered out, even where Israel is involved. It can be done.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 29 December 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/TurkeyIsrael-normalization-why-ever-not-438722

Published in the Eurasia Review, 31 December 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/31122015-turkey-israel-normalization-why-ever-not-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 10 January 2016:
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2016/01/10/turkey-israel-normalization-why-ever-not/

How fares Islamic State?

          “Now let's make two things clear,” said US President Barack Obama, in an address to the nation on September 10, 2014, “ISIL is not ‘Islamic’ …and ISIL is certainly not a state.”

          Depending on how one defines “Islamic” and “state” he may be right, but what is certain is that Islamic State (IS) – or “Daesh” as many now prefer to dub it – aspires to be both.

          As for the Islamic element, the organization’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claims to be "the caliph and leader for Muslims everywhere". The caliph is historically supposed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad's Quraysh tribe in Arabia. Since becoming leader, Baghdadi has been claiming precisely that lineage – a claim widely disputed. His definition of “Muslim” is also open to question – he defines any person who does not subscribe to his own extreme version of Sunni Islam as an infidel, and as such worthy of an ignominious death – but all the beheadings, crucifixions, amputations, mass killings and terror attacks that have characterised the rise of IS, unjustified though they undoubtedly are, have been carried out in the name of Islam.

          The caliphate that he professes to be recreating harks back to the idea of an Islamic republic led by one leader, regardless of national boundaries. The caliphate concept persisted within the Ottoman empire until 1924, when Kemal Ataturk abolished it, but Muslim extremists have long dreamed of recreating the Islamic state that, at various times during the course of Islam's 1,400-year history, ruled over the Middle East, much of North Africa and large parts of Europe.

          As regards IS’s intention to do just that, it was as recent as December 7 that the UK’s Guardian newspaper revealed the contents of a leaked internal IS manual showing how the terrorist group had been setting about building a state in Iraq and Syria complete with government departments, a treasury and an economic programme for self-sufficiency.

          The 24-page document, entitled “Principles in the administration of the Islamic State”, sets out a blueprint for establishing foreign relations, a fully-fledged propaganda operation, and centralised control over oil, gas and the other vital parts of the economy. It builds up a picture of a group, according to the Guardian that, “although sworn to a founding principle of brutal violence, is equally set on more mundane matters such as health, education, commerce, communications and jobs. In short, it is building a state.”

          Charlie Winter, a senior researcher for Georgia State University, believes that “IS is a deeply calculating political organisation with an extremely complex, well-planned infrastructure behind it.”

          How have IS’s fortunes fluctuated in the past year or so?

          There have been four major areas of territorial change: IS losses near Baghdad, in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, and along the Turkish border with Syria, and IS gains in and around Palmyra.

          According to John Ford of the US Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps, a clear pattern explains these changes. IS has been able to thrive in areas with a majority Arab Sunni population, but has failed to take hold in areas where Sunni Arabs are the minority or where effective rival ground forces oppose them.

          In northern Iraq and Syria, IS was pushed back by Kurdish militias who had the advantage of fighting on their home turf. IS was not able to take Baghdad, home to the largest Shi’ite population of any Iraqi city. Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias came to the government’s rescue in its defense.

          By contrast, in the area around Palmyra, IS expanded – central Syria is predominately Sunni and lacks militant groups that can rival IS. Now, though, IS positions around Palmyra are coming under heavy fire from Russian airstrikes, and it is far from certain that IS will be able to maintain its stranglehold on that ancient city and continue its wanton destruction of some of the world’s most valued antiquities.

         At its peak in 2014, IS had seized about a third of Iraqi territory. It has subsequently lost a good proportion of that. After more than a year of hard fighting, October 2015 saw pro-government forces wrest control of the oil refinery of Baiji. In Ramadi, Iraqi security forces have steadily progressed in recent months and, according to Iraqi commanders, have encircled the city.

          Across the border, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are preparing for an attack on the town of al-Hawl, while a US-led coalition air operation, dubbed Tidal Wave II, has targeted the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure, disrupting the group’s ability to fund its operations.

          General Ismail, commander of Special Forces in Al Anbar province, believes that IS mounted its terrorist attack in Paris on November 13 “in order to keep up the morale of their fighters and distract from their losses in Syria and Iraq.” If so, it may well be that, on this occasion, IS miscalculated badly and actually shot itself in the foot. It is unlikely that IS’s strategic planners could have foreseen the extent to which Paris acted as a wake-up call to the global community, nor the consequent degree of co-ordinated determination, matched by action, to see an end to IS.

          Evidence of this was forthcoming on December 15, when Saudi Arabia unexpectedly announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, with a joint operations centre based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations. The countries involved include not only Arab states such as Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, but other Islamic countries like Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan.

         The announcement cited "a duty to protect the Islamic nation from the evils of all terrorist groups and organizations whatever their sect and name which wreak death and corruption on earth and aim to terrorize the innocent."

          Significantly Sunni Saudi Arabia's arch rival for influence in the Arab world, Shi'ite Iran, is not included in the alliance, and by implication is lumped together with Islamic State as among the “terrorist groups and organizations.”

          Saudi’s deputy crown prince and defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, said that the campaign would coordinate efforts to fight terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. "There will be international coordination with major powers,” he said.

          On December 2 the UK’s House of Commons voted decisively to extend its anti-IS air strikes from Iraq to Syria. When it emerged that Muslim MP, Nusrat Ghani, had voted in favor of doing so, she received a torrent of abuse and threats. In response, she declared that military success was a key factor in enabling IS to recruit more people to their evil cause,

          “Daesh are an embryonic state,” she said, “and their power comes from taking territory. Their ideology is based on them having territory. To be able to challenge and remove Daesh we have to take back territory.”

          She spoke for the consensus of the civilized world’s opinion.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 22 December 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/How-fares-Islamic-State-438053

Published in the Eurasia Review, 23 December 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/23122015-how-fares-islamic-state-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 12 December 2015:

http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2015/12/25/how-fares-islamic-state/

Can the anti-Assad coalition produce the goods in Syria?

          The US-led coalition in Syria hopes to reach its long-term goal by way of twin-track tactics.

          The goal? To impose a crushing military defeat on Islamic State (IS), to liberate the territory it has occupied in Iraq and Syria, and to re-establish a sovereign state of Syria within its previous borders.

          The twin-track tactics? To degrade Islamic State’s infrastructure and fighting capacity as far as possible, while at the same time to deploy every possible diplomatic and political means to bring the Syrian civil war to an end, thus releasing the forces currently engaged in fighting President Bashar Assad and each other, and turning them on IS.

          A great deal depends on those boots on the ground in Syria. One lesson the West has learned is that fighting on Arab soil is usually a recipe for disaster, generating more opposition than it quells. So the coalition, exercising a self-denying ordinance, is restricting its mainstream activities to providing sophisticated air support for indigenous fighting units. 

          Military experts appear to believe that at least 70,000 such troops would be needed to mount an effective co-ordinated campaign that could defeat IS in Syria – and that this number of non-extremist fighters actually exists within Syrian territory. At the moment, though, they are dispersed, lack a unified command structure, and many are engaged in fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army in the long-lasting civil war.

          That is why it is necessary to take a cold, hard look at the alternative – Assad, and his army.

          Syria’s military is a hardened and disciplined fighting force of some 200,000 regular troops and a further 100,000 irregulars. Recently, under the cover of Russian air support, the regime has been making progress. It is currently taking back large parts of Homs and is only a few miles from Palmyra – the fabled pink-stoned city of monuments, where IS decapitated the 82-year-old curator, Khaled Al‑Assad, before beginning an orgy of cultural destruction.

          To support the Assad regime and the Russians in their effort to recapture that amazing site is not to endorse the idea of keeping Assad in power indefinitely. But bringing an end to Syria’s civil conflict is an urgent priority – and is being treated as such by an impressive collection of 17 world powers plus the EU and the UN, now known as the International Syria Support Group (ISSG).

          When they met in Vienna on November 14, the ISSG agreed that by January 1, 2016 political negotiations should take place between representatives of Assad’s government and the forces opposed to him, to be followed by an immediate UN-monitored cease-fire. The group allotted six months for Syria to form an interim unity government, and wanted free and fair elections to be held in Syria within 18 months.

          To facilitate the cease-fire, the powers agreed that once negotiations were under way, they would stop all support and supplies to “various belligerents” on both sides of the Syrian civil war.

          However in the room where the ISSG spent six hours in close consultation behind locked doors, an elephant, which all parties did their best to ignore, wandered about. Pinned to its forehead was the question: “What part is Bashar al-Assad to play in the battle against IS?”

          In short, should Assad remain in power, if only on sufferance, and deploy his army, still loyal to him, against IS, or would his best contribution to the restoration of order to Syria be to leave the scene? The international community remains deeply divided over Assad’s fate. Believing the Syrian leader to be largely responsible for the conflict, the US, many European countries, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, call for his departure. US Secretary of State John Kerry has said the conflict will never end until Assad leaves.

          Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, however, flatly disagrees. “We have reiterated that Syria’s future will be decided by the Syrian people alone,” he has said, including “the future of Assad.” Russia and Iran believe that as the legitimate head of government, Assad must be involved in the anti-IS effort and the future of the country.

          The thought of collaborating with Russia’s gung-ho president, Vladimir Putin, in fighting IS probably sticks in the craw of many world leaders. Putin’s efforts to re-establish Russia as a global super-power have seen him seize and annex Crimea, while his proxy army has been trying to carve out a Russian-dominated enclave in eastern Ukraine. His incursion into the Middle East, and his massive military and air build-up in Syria, was clearly an effort both to enhance his influence on the international stage and, by supporting Assad, to sustain Russia’s long-standing military and commercial interests in Syria.

          The US has charged Putin with concentrating his fire on Assad’s opponents rather than on IS. However true this may have been at the start of Putin’s air-strike campaign, the downing in mid-air of the Russian passenger jet on October 31, with the loss of all 224 people on board – a terrorist outrage claimed by IS – changed his priorities. Russia is now as committed as the rest of the world to defeating IS and liberating the 10 million people currently subjected to its brutalised and bloodthirsty rule.

          France, currently leading the free world in its determined opposition to IS and all its works, seems under no illusion. “I was in Paris at the end of last week,” wrote MP Boris Johnson. London’s mayor, on December 7, “and the Russian leader’s face glowered sulkily from every billboard. “Poutin”, said the headline, “notre nouvel ami”. Many French people think the time has come to do a deal with their new friends the Russians – and I think that they are broadly right.”

          It is all a question of priorities. What is the prime concrete objective? To remove IS and the threat it poses to the whole world. Everything else should be secondary. We need to end their hideous Islamist rule, with its beheadings, amputations and crucifixions. We need them out of Palmyra and put a stop to their philistine destruction of some of the world’s greatest antiquities.

          The best hope for the future of Syria, and indeed of Iraq, lies in the recent agreement by ISSG to defeat and destroy IS, together with a plan for a new Syrian government. This really should embody the end of the Assad regime and his departure in one way or another, sooner or later. If it has to be done in such a way – perhaps through the ballot box – that neither Putin nor Assad lose face, so be it.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 15 December 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Can-the-anti-Assad-coalition-produce-the-goods-in-Syria-437321

Published in the Eurasia Review, 15 December 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/15122015-can-the-anti-assad-coalition-produce-the-goods-in-syria-oped/

Lebanon in limbo

          Something is rotten in the state of Lebanon. Back in August a group of young activists took to the streets of Beirut to launch the “You Stink” campaign. Precipitated by the huge mounds of uncollected garbage polluting streets around the country, “You Stink” refers not only to the foul smell that pervades urban areas in Lebanon, but also to the rampant corruption of the Lebanese political system. The movement’s demands range from indicting the minister of environment for failing to manage the rubbish crisis, to conducting new parliamentary elections.

          That was in August. A move to remedy matters in September broke down, and by early November the situation had deteriorated. Lebanon's Daily Star described swarms of flies covering trash on the street "like sesame seeds." Abou Saleh, a resident of Karantina, a lower-income section of Beirut, said: “And it's not just flies. The rats enter our homes. My daughter was bitten by a rat on her chin a month ago."

          Unfortunately. corruption is ripe in Lebanon, compounded by the fact that the presidency has been vacant for more than eighteen months, and the parliament has been self-perpetuating itself for as long. Effectively, the rubbish crisis lies at the heart of the way that the state was redesigned in 1990 in post-civil war Lebanon. Ever since, the country's leading figures have insisted that the state institutions charged with providing public utility services are weak and incapable. Using this as an excuse, some of them began supporting and promoting private utility services, turning them into personal patronage networks. Services like garbage collection, household electricity, water, waste management and reconstruction became fronts for funnelling money to leaders' friends and political allies.

          Over time, asserts Jamil Mouawad, a research associate at the Institut Français du Proche Orient, these practices hollowed out state public institutions, and lined the pockets of private suppliers. "Private utility service providers directly associated with the ruling elite have taken advantage of the shortage of public services."

          The garbage crisis erupted when the government did not renew the contract of Sukleen, the private company responsible for waste collection and street sweeping in greater Beirut and Mount Lebanon. The reality of piles of foul-smelling garbage on the streets brought the Lebanese face to face with the failure of their government. They could feel it and smell it.

          The paralysis in effective government is exemplified by the fact that Lebanon has held no parliamentary elections since 2009 even though, according to the constitution, elections are supposed to be held every 4 years. The trouble is that the constitution requires parliament to elect a president every 6 years for a single term in office, but when President Michel Suleiman’s term ended in April 2014, parliament was unable to agree on a new candidate – and has been unable to do so for the past eighteen months. While the wheeling and dealing process wound its tortuous course, parliament has been renewing its own mandate, and MPs have not had to face re-election.

          In point of fact the parliamentary Speaker, Nabih Berri, has called at least 30 sessions for the purpose of electing a new president, but on each occasion parliament has been unable to reach a quorum because MPs from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, and its ally Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc, have boycotted the sessions.

          Effective governance in Lebanon is bedevilled by two contradictory factors – on the one hand, the constitutional sectarian power-sharing system; on the other the fact that the Iranian-inspired and backed terrorist organization, Hezbollah, has managed to infiltrate itself into the body politic so effectively that it has become a state within a state.

          In August Lebanon was favoured with a visit from Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Iran has been blamed for the impasse by many Middle East observers. They believe that Iran does not want a president in Lebanon for the time being, and is working behind the scenes to abolish the 1989 Taif accord, adopted after the Lebanese civil war. Taif adjusted the traditional balance of power in Lebanon, but still required the president to be from the Maronite Christian community, the prime minister to be Sunni Muslim, the parliamentary speaker Shia, and the deputy speaker and deputy prime minister to be Greek Orthodox. Such an arrangement hardly accords with the underlying religious aims of the Iranian Islamic Republic or its Supreme Leader.

          Nevertheless, the latest indications are that a compromise candidate may indeed be emerging. Suleiman Franjieh, who heads the Christian Marada party, is an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and therefore has the backing of Iran and Hezbollah. But Franjieh is also expected to win the endorsement of Saad al-Hariri, whose Future Movement is backed by Iran's regional rival, Saudi Arabia. The two men are reported to have met in Paris recently. The delicacy of such arrangements is exemplified by the fact that Hariri’s father, Rafik, was assassinated on the streets of Beirut in 2005, and although the investigation into his death is still on-going, it is widely believed that Hezbollah terrorists, backed by Syrian President Assad, were responsible.

          Meanwhile on November 20, journalist Nayla Tueni, one of the few female members of parliament in Lebanon, bemoaned the fact that Lebanon was still suffering from a presidential vacuum as it marked its 72nd Independence Day on November 22.

          “The country is like an old man,” she wrote, “no longer capable of keeping up with ordinary life. State institutions’ work is almost at a standstill.”

          Like Saad Hariri, Nayla Tueni endured the assassination of her father, Gebran. A fierce critic of the Syrian government and its policies in Lebanon, he too was killed by a car bomb in Beirut, just ten months after Rafik Hariri. It took seven years for two Syrian officers to be indicted, in October 2012, accused of Tueni’s murder.

          ”Electing a president will not protect us from terrorism,” writes Nayla Tueni, a week after a double suicide bombing in south Beirut left 43 people dead and 239 wounded in the Shia-majority district of Burj al-Barajneh. But she believes that electing a president would restore regularity to the work of institutions that have lost citizens’ trust.

          “The cabinet has failed to resolve the trash crisis due to sectarian divisions,” she writes. “One party names a candidate, another vetoes him. It is all a waste of time, and a violation of the constitution as long as someone obstructs electing a president and boycotts parliamentary sessions on the matter. The collapse of the country will hurt everyone.”

         And indeed Lebanon stands on the brink of collapse.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 8 December 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Lebanon-in-limbo-436662

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 December 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09122015-lebanon-in-limbo-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 12 December 2015
in English:
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2015/12/16/lebanon-in-limbo/

Published in the MPC Journal, 1 January 2016
in Arabic:

http://mpc-journal.org/arabic/blog/2016/01/01/لبنان-في-عالم-النسيان/

France: the new leader of the free world?

        “Nature abhors a vacuum” observed the Greek philosopher Aristotle – a remark that, demonstrably valid, has entered into common parlance. Given US President Barack Obama’s self-evident abdication of America’s role as defender of Western values in the turbulent Middle East, a new leader is indeed emerging.

        “This administration,” said US Senator John McCain, on October 1, “has confused our friends, encouraged our enemies, mistaken an excess of caution for prudence, and replaced the risks of action with the perils of inaction.”

        He was reacting to Russia’s surprising entry into the Syrian civil conflict, a campaign in strength which seemed destined to put America’s so-far ineffective intervention in the shade. At that point it appeared as though Russian President Vladimir Putin might become the global symbol – so needed, but so lacking – of determined opposition to jihadist terrorism. It soon became obvious that Putin’s real agenda was to sustain Bashar al-Assad in power as Syria’s president, support Iran in their struggle against Assad’s enemies, and enhance his own bid for super-power leadership.

        Putin’s priorities suffered a severe shock on October 31, when a Russian Airbus A321, on a flight from Egypt to St Petersburg, was blown out of the sky, killing all 224 people on board, including 17 children. Islamic State (IS) immediately claimed responsibility, and it was soon established that a bomb had been smuggled aboard the aircraft and detonated at 30,000 feet. Putin responded by shifting the focus of the Russian attack in Syria and Iraq to IS.

         No sooner had the world absorbed the fact that over 200 innocent air passengers had been subjected to mass murder, than the global media were filled with another horrendous demonstration of bloodlust – the co-ordinated massacre in Paris of 130 people on the night of November 13. Again IS claimed that it was responsible. Just one week later, 170 people were held hostage, and 27 slaughtered, in a hotel in Mali. It is no coincidence that the Malian capital, Bamako, had been a logistics hub for French forces ever since they intervened in 2013 to help Mali’s government defeat an Islamist attempt to take over the country. At the time France’s unilateral intervention – disapproved of by Germany and a swathe of Arab states – seemed to confirm the willingness of recently-elected President François Hollande to be a force opposing terrorism on the world stage.

        Following the November 13 outrage, as the French capital and the world reeled at the enormity of the brutal onslaught on innocent civilians, his dignified presence in Paris, and his calm and appropriate reaction aroused admiration for him, sympathy for the people of France, and solidarity with them in their shock and grief.

        At the time of the Paris slaughter President Obama happened to be in Turkey, and he gave what could only be described as a lacklustre news conference. He expressed solidarity with France, listed some modest successes in pushing back IS forces in Iraq and Syria, pledged to maintain humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees, “and we’ll continue to stand with leaders in Muslim communities, including faith leaders, who are the best voices to discredit ISIL’s warped ideology.” Scarcely a rousing call to arms.

        President Hollande, on the other hand, responded vigorously to the assault on his country. He immediately instituted an intensified anti-IS air campaign in Iraq and Syria, authorised hundreds of raids on suspected domestic terrorists, declared a 3-month state of emergency, and proposed changes in the constitution to make France less hospitable to jihad. He then sponsored UN Security Council Resolution 2249, drafted by French officials and approved by all 15 members, calling on member states to take “all necessary measures” against IS, a group it described as “a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security”. Countries were urged to step up sanctions and improve efforts to cut off the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria.

        In commenting on the Resolution, France's UN ambassador, Francois Delattre, told the Council that France intended to "scale up its efforts so as to galvanize the international community as a whole, to vanquish our shared enemy." And that is clearly France’s post-Paris strategy – to rally the irresolute, the uncertain, the doubtful, the indecisive, among which, regretfully, must be numbered not only the US, but also the UK, a goodly proportion of EU members, Turkey and, most obviously, many of the stable and moderate Arab states who stand on the side-lines and, for their own complex reasons, refrain from entering the fray.

        Hollande is determined to follow up this series of initiatives by personal persuasion. Two months ago France became the only European country to join US-led strikes in Syria, and the UK government is hovering on the brink of seeking a parliamentary mandate to do the same. However prime minister David Cameron is determined not to repeat the mistake of losing the vote in the House of Commons, a humiliation experienced back in August 2013 when he sought agreement to bomb Assad for employing chemical weapons against his own people.

       So on November 23 Hollande hosted a meeting with Cameron in Paris, in part, no doubt, to strengthen the British prime minister’s case by enabling him to claim he has France’s backing. Hollande then flew to Washington where he met Obama to discuss beefing up the US-led “Operation Inherent Resolve” strikes against IS targets in Iraq and Syria. From there he flew on to Moscow to discuss with Putin how their countries' militaries might work together in an effective anti-IS campaign.

        Clearly it is the French president who is taking the proactive lead in rallying a global campaign against the brutal, bloodthirsty and philistine IS organization. Only when IS has been utterly crushed and defeated, and chased out of Iraq and Syria, can its malign appeal to vulnerable Muslim youth the world over be finally snuffed out. To achieve this objective, an increasing number of voices in the US, the UK and elsewhere are arguing that the strategy of “no boots on the ground” will have to be reversed.

        Peter R Mansoor is a retired US Army colonel who was executive officer to General David Petraeus in Iraq, and who played a key role in the US counter-insurgency strategy in that war. He is now an Ohio State University military history professor.

        “The president says the goal is to degrade and ultimately destroy IS” he said on 17 November, “and yet the amount of resources that he’s applied, and the strategy that he’s fashioned, is not sufficient to get the job done…We need to get serious about actually destroying IS in its homeland in Syria and Iraq, and to put US and European troops on the ground if it’s necessary to accomplish that goal…This administration just isn’t serious about the war in the Middle East.”

        It seems pretty clear that France’s President François Hollande leads an administration that is.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 2 December 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/France-the-new-leader-of-the-free-world-435947

Published in the Eurasia Review, 2 December 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/02122015-france-the-new-leader-of-the-free-world-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 7 December 2015:

http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2015/12/07/france-the-new-leader-of-the-free-world/