Watching Syria from afar: some thoughts on reading the Crisis Group's report "Tentative Jihad"

Photo Freedom House via Flickr/Creative Commons

I've long been interested in the extremities of politics in all directions. In the last year I've followed some discussion on Syria and taken part in others and it has been fascinating to see how different groups on far right and left, have tried to deal with the complexity of the situation and arrive at a 'position' on it. It has been both bizarre and amusing to see how many who describe themselves as being of the radical- or anti-imperialist-left have ended up, defacto, supporting the Assad regime. Jess Hill in the Global Mail calls these predominantly Western leftists: Assad's Useful Idiots; it's a bracing read if you, like me, find it deeply creepy how unwilling some are to not learn the lessons of the 1920s and 30s, and the willful ignorance of some over Stalin's crimes

Following the Syrian regime's line, the "anti-imperialist left" claim the rebels in Syria are all foreign-sponsored al-Qaeda throat-cutters, who want to turn a supposedly progressive Socialist secular state into a Taliban-style Islamic one. There are many things deeply problematic about this claim; it is at its heart deeply patronising, even orientalist. The Arabs of the Middle East are given no agency, they are forever pawns in machinations of the West (i.e. the US). Not only does this deny them agency, it also takes away the moral responsibility for their acts: if a Syrian rebel group decides to use a suicide bomb, well it's just because "they're al-Qaeda" and "they're being controlled by the Saudis/CIA/Mossad/Biderberg group/etc.". In actual fact those rebels should be answering for their actions just as the Syrian government should be. To me the moral case for the rebellion seems pretty clear; the Syrian regime has become a neo-monarchy, power passed from father to son; power that was, of course, gained originally in a military coup and maintained over the decades via violence, fear, corruption and co-option. The revolution began peacefully like elsewhere in the Arab Spring - protesters on the streets. But people power was met with regime bullets, mass arrests and torture. The anti-imperialists have to cling to the idea that those tens of thousands of unarmed Syrians on the streets in early 2011 were all "al Qaeda" or American stooges because, if not, then Bashar al-Assad's resort to brutal repression would be the crime that most know it is.

Nevertheless violence begets violence and the regime's reaction led to civil war. From Our Own Correspondent this week has a haunting illustration of this. Ian Pannell interviews an Aleppo businessman turned rebel commander. He was turned by the horrific torture he experienced and saw happening to others after being arrested for peacefully protesting:

"Dr Raouf said that before they were arrested, the group had long discussions about whether they should get some sticks to defend themselves during protests. 'But when we were released, we decided to buy every weapon we could afford,' he said."

Homs. Photo Freedom House via Flickr/Creative Commons

The situation in Syria has changed - it is evolving or, perhaps better, it is mutating. The recently released Crisis Group report "Tentative Jihad: Syria’s Fundamentalist Opposition" I think is a very important document of this. It is (as so often with Crisis Group reports) a fine example of actually 'going and looking', and reporting back on what you actually see - not what fits your ideological persuasion. I won't try to sum up the report, beyond saying it is centrally about the role of Salafism amongst the armed opposition, a role that is becoming progressively more prominent as Salafi groups both fight more successfully than the more secular groups (generally grouped under the FSA banner) and as those secular fighters become attracted to Salafism (be that for purely instrumental reasons - attracting funding from the Gulf monarchies and Syrian exiles - or because it's austere simplicity becomes attractive to men facing death daily). The Crisis Group report is good at pointing out that the Salafi ideology on the rise differs in some ways from the more nihilistic Jihadism that we have come to expect from the various al Qaeda franchises around the world, and most clearly seen in the horrors of Iraqi civil war. For example, Crisis Group argue that the most prominent Salafi group, Jabhat al-Nusr, while being the most radical and sectarian and unapologetic for suicide bombing a regime intelligence installation in a Christian neighbourhood of Damascus that killed many civilians, still made it clear that they were not targeting Christians per se, they were 'collateral damage'. This differs from the intentional massacres so often seen in Iraq.

I've seen many on the aforementioned "anti-imperialist left" say that the US/NATO is just itching to intervene in Syria, like it did in Libya. This is another bizarre claim in the face of now over a year of 'the West' failing to really do anything helpful for the people of Syria. Many in Syria were imploring the West to save them a year ago but the US electoral calendar, military exhaustion and budget deficit was always going to make this unlikely. If the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia are the only people handing out money for guns, you can see why some Syrians will grow beards, shorten their trousers and take the cash, even if it is obvious to outsiders that only further darkness will come of this. Crisis Group leaves us with a horrible image for the future of the Syrian Civil War:

"As the number of internally displaced and refugees grows, and entire towns and neighbourhoods are damaged to the point of becoming uninhabitable, armed groups risk cutting themselves off further from their social base and coming to resemble combatants roaming in the rubble. As they eat, struggle and pray together, fighters increasingly form insular units detached from the cross-cutting popular movement from which they sprung, inhabiting their own world, so more prone to spin out of control. Their reportedly high attrition rate may empower second-generation leaders with less of a strategic vision, legitimacy or experience – lacunae for which they might seek to compensate with ever more radical beliefs and violence."

The obvious and frightening parallel is Syria's neighbour to the east; six or seven years ago as the US lost control and civil war flared. But as the armed groups amongst the Sunni Muslims sections of Syrian society differentiate themselves on religious grounds, or by allegiance to one area or one commander, and whilst Alawi communities radicalize in support of the rump regime, other communities like Christians and Kurds will end up either defending themselves with militias or fleeing. Syria's neighbour to west, Lebanon, and the horrors it saw from the 70s to the 90s in its vicious and multifaceted civil war, serve as another stark example of what Syria may still have to face.

The People's Mujahedin of Iran and their friends in the west

The BBC World Service has a remarkable documentary available currently on the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI). Most non-Iranians will have not heard of the group, but in short they were anti-the Shah and supported the revolution against him - it's important to remember that it's only really subsequently become labelled the 'Islamic Revolution'. At the time there was a considerable radical left-wing and secular dimension to the uprising alongside the later to be dominant Islamists. The Islamists under Khomeini subsequently turned on their previous leftist allies, including the PMOI, and the group went into exile in Iraq where they allied with Saddam Hussein against the regime in Tehran. The documentary does a pretty good job of explaining the general weirdness of the group, leaving aside their politics. It would appear to resemble a cult more than a political party now, with at least hard to dismiss claims of mistreating its members who wish to leave.

Nevertheless the most noteworthy dimension to the documentary is the reporting on the PMOI's lobbying within the United States. The group was listed as a terrorist organisation in the 1990s by the US government and remains so to today. In Europe it has been de-listed as a terrorist group, although its fund raising within Europe appears to be dubious to say the least. The BBC interviews numerous prominent Americans who are now part of the PMOI's campaign in the States to be taken off the terrorist group list; they include Republicans and Democrats, and many former senior officials and soldiers. It gives a fascinating insight into this world: some of those interviewed openly admit to not knowing anything about the PMOI before being approached to speak at their events in return for (considerable) payment. Nevertheless, these personalities seems to have taken their duties seriously and are openly pushing for the PMOI to be brought in from the cold - believing clearly that their position against the current regime in Iran* means their past sins (including involvement in the hostage taking of the American diplomats in Iran all those years ago) can be forgiven.

Perhaps the enthusiastic cynicism of some in the American political world should be no surprise to us, but it's always interesting to see how this sort of lobbying for non-domestic interests works. What is far more alarming is listening to the non-mercenary supporter of the PMOI - a former US colonel who dealt with them in Iraq when the US took over their camp there - who seems to be seriously suggesting that this exile group, who have not been in Iran for nearly 30 years and that has its own cultish leanings, could be the core of a future Iranian regime when the current leaders in Tehran fall or are deposed. I expect I'm not the only one for whom, on hearing this, the name Ahmed Chalabi immediately springs to mind. People really don't learn from their mistakes do they?

*Incidentally, some reporting links the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel via the PMOI. This has a certain attractive logic to it - if Israel is behind the assassinations as seems likely presumably they would need some sort of proxy in Iran, plus the PMOI has been responsible for bring to light some of Iran's secret nuclear facilities. Nevertheless, the PMOI has denied any linkages to Israel, there is little hard evidence linking Israel to the attacks so far, and the PMOI are far from being the only Iranian domestic insurgents/terrorist groups - there Baluch and Arab separatist groups in Iran for example as well.

When democracy protests become "sectarianism".

Earlier, I listened to Marc Lynch being interviewed on yesterday's Fresh Air about the Libyan situation. Lynch is always worth paying attention to, but it was actually his discussion of Al Jazeera's treatment of the Bahrain protests that really jumped out.

Al Jazeera has been a long-term whipping boy particularly of the American right for its perceived anti-American stance. Particularly once it had launched its English service, it became - partly in response to being bashed from the US right - lauded by many on the left; in Europe and America. It clearly does cover stories that don't get much coverage elsewhere and often shows 'the other side' of stories that are covered by western media. Nevertheless, like any other institutions, it exists in its own political context - in this case being in effect owned government/royal family of Qatar - and that brings distortions.

Lynch points out that whilst it al Jazeera's coverage of the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya has been extensive and central to raising the Arab public's conciousness across the region, it is dealing with the Bahraini protests differently. The Bahraini protesters are, it would seem, predominantly Shia, mainly because being Shia in Bahrain is to be given the shitty end of the stick in life and hence make you more likely to protest. But the protesters have been careful to make their claims in terms of nationalism and democracy - it is only the Bahraini government and its backers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that wants everyone to see it as sectarianism, with the obvious unspoken assumption that Iran must be lurking in the background. Lynch points out since Qatar and Saudi Arabia patched up their differences, al Jazeera has been more reticent about criticising Saudi policy, and the Saudis are the superpower of the GCC, an organization that sent troops into Bahrain in support of the regime there.

Lynch makes the argument in greater detail on his blog at Foreign Policy - it is well worth reading. As ever, context is everything.

The pharoah has gone - optimistic reflections on a revolution.

When Anwar Sadat was killed in 1981, his assasin, after running out of bullets, is said to have shouted "I have killed the pharaoh, and I do not fear death!". The use of the word pharaoh was deliberate because Khalid Islambouli - the assasin - was a Jihadist (although I don't think that word was in use back then) and wished to connect Sadat to the pre-Islamic history of Egypt. That pre-Islamic era was consider to be Jahiliyyah, classically used to be mean 'before God's guidance', but adapted and perhaps corrupted by radical ideologue Said Qutb, the inspiration behind Islambouli's violence, to mean un-Islamic and therefore without worth or indeed worthy of destruction.

Until 30 minutes ago, that was the last time leadership was transferred in Egypt; bloodily, violently and as a result of a radical, exclusionary reading of a religion. Now once again the Pharaoh has gone, but he is not dead. Instead Mubarak appears to be retiring to the seaside. His non-assasins - the democracy protestor -; men and women, young and old, secular and religious, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor; have shown day after day in Tahrir Square that, like Islambouli, they were not afraid to die, but unlike him they would not resort to violence except in self defence (against hired thugs in uniform or not). And again, unlike Islambouli, their motivation has been democracy, self respect, and human rights. The army should respect their sacrifices and their liberal sentiments and quickly give the Egyptian people the democracy they so richly deserve.

ABC's "Rear Vision" on Lockerbie

Rear Vision from ABC, the Australian national broadcaster, is a consistently excellent radio programme. It really is adult reporting at its best - find real experts on a subject, set the historical context, and let them talk.

Last week they re-ran their 2007 Lockerbie bombing programme with some updates reflect Megrahi's recent release. What comes out from the programme, particularly in the comments of Prof. Robert Black, was the systemic weaknesses in the set up of the Scottish legal process at Camp Zeist, and how that seems to have enabled outside parties - the US, UK and Libyan governments - to influence the trial. Whatever one thinks of both the conviction and release on compassionate grounds of Megrahi, it is well worth a listen. You can also subscribe to Rear Vision via iTunes.

On the same subject, also well worth reading is STRATFOR's piece on why the evidence for Megrahi's guilt is stronger than some suppose. Unfortunately Stratfor's writers specifically do not look at the reliability of Tony Gauci's evidence at the trial, questions about which are now central to those who have concerns over the safety of the conviction.

Scotland, and not recognising Kosovo

An odd thought occurred to me yesterday, we were chatting about the independence of Kosovo and its recognition by other states. So far only 22 out 27 EU states recognise Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state. The EU has a large mission in Kosovo, EULEX, where it has taken over from the UN and is basically partnering with the nascent institution of the Kosovar government, providing a parallel civil service. One of my colleagues has actually been seconded to the mission so is now living in Pristina. Anyway, because of the non-unanimous position within the EU, EULEX in Pristina can't use a list of words in any official documents that refer to independence, including the former Finnish president and nobel peace prize winner, Martti Ahtisaari, who negotiated the plan for Kosovo's independence and the plan is named after. Spain, Cyprus, Greece, Romania and Slovakia are the five EU members that won't recognise Kosovo. I'm not certain why Greece won't but it probably is connected to their long running (and to outsiders, rather pointless) fight with Macedonia over it's name. Romania and Slovakia both have I believe large Hungarian minorities and they fear separatism from those communities. Cyprus doesn't want Turkish North Cyprus to gain recognition as a sovereign state, and Spain is worried by Basque and Catalan separtism.

But if all these countries fear that recognition sets a precedent leading to other breakaway movements - why wasn't the UK in the slightest bit concerned that recognition could set a precedent for a Scottish unilateral declaration of independence? The UK strongly supported recognition from early on. I'm tempted to say it is because the UK is a mature and stable democracy and we (both Scots and and non-Scots) just don't do that sort of civil war mongering, but are we really that much more mature than the Spanish? So there must be another reason - is it something to do with the Scottish nationalism being more of the French-citizen type than the Germanic blood-and-soil type? Answers on a postcard please to the normal address (the comments box).

Trying to hold back the tide

Photos of the Mexican-US border by photographer María Teresa Fernández, from the exhibit, "Cerca de la Cerca - Near the Border Fence" being shown at USC Annenberg. See more of her pictures from the exhibition on the BBC website.



I have a bit of a thing about border fences, maybe it is coming from an island nation. Politics is ultimately just a series of mental acts, land is land and always will be, even when we're all gone. Trying to put our mental acts onto the land often turns out to be just plain weird, and that's what border fences are. Where borders meet the sea, it just illustrates the strangeness of the fence. Look at how they have tried to fence the sea. It's so half hearted, like they know it is ultimately futile.

The Gaza-Egypt border

A screen grab of the Rafah crossing from Google Earth. The Philipdelphi corridor is visible as the obvious straight line (click for a bigger version).

Of all the dimensions to the Gaza war of last month, I've always thought that one that was worst reported was the Egyptian - Gaza border, and hence the Egyptian Palestinian relationship. I became interested in how the 14 kms of the border between Gaza and Egypt worked a couple of years ago when looking into how the blockade worked. I couldn't figure out how the Israelis could blockade Gaza when only controlling three of the four sides of the territories. Whilst Israel occupied Gaza, the IDF maintained a few hundred metres wide strip along the Gazan side of the border, the Philadelphi corridor, meaning that in effect they control all sides of Gaza, but it was handed to the Egyptians in 2005 during the settlement evacuation. I'm not certain, but I don't think the Egyptians ever patrolled on the Gaza side, instead letting the PA take control until the Hamas coup kicked them out. The EU had a mission - EUBAM (I can't help think of Bam Bam of Flintstones fame...) - which was meant to neutrally run the Rafah crossing, but they had to get there from Israel into Gaza and the Israelis would block them getting into Gaza at one of the other crossing points when they wanted Rafah closed. EUBAM were still twiddling their thumbs in Askelon, waiting for someone to tell them to go back to Rafah last time I looked.

So they Egyptians have just built a bloody great wall along the border with Gaza, hence all the tunnels underneath it. Anyway, File on Four on BBC Radio 4 have done a pretty good programme looking at Egypt's role in the Gaza crisis (download the podcast whilst you can). It doesn't cover everything, like political instability in the Sinai, but it's a very good primer. It also shows the hypocrisy of many of the Arab regimes - they allow at times strident, ugly anti-Israel rhetoric as a pressure valve on their oppressed domestic constituency who have no real democratic say, whilst actually do very little to help the Palestinians.

American guns in Mexico

(Photo: ABC News) I reckon the drug war in Mexico was one of last years great non-stories in the media - always bubbling away in the background, some good journalism going on, but generally not getting huge attention. I had heard that most of the guns used by the criminals come from sales in the US, but I hadn't realised just in what huge amounts:

...the arms that cartels can and do buy from the open U.S. market -- completely illegally -- leave Mexico's police force and even its military outgunned. There are nearly 7,000 gun shops along the southern U.S. border, about three for every mile. They sell thousands of hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK-47s, and "cop killer" guns and bullets that cut through Kevlar body armor. The weapons quickly flow south, again with barely a nod from U.S. Border Patrol.

Can I just run that by any American readers - you can buy hand grenades and RPGs in gun shops? That is definitely a "WTF?" moment. The quote above comes from a very interesting piece at Foreign Policy.com. See this ABC News story as well.

I've just had another thought - watch John Stewart and fast forward to to 4.20.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Strip Maul

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Everyone is doing the "if missiles were being fired from (insert you neighbour here) into (insert your city here), wouldn't you respond?" The Israeli ambassador to Finland was saying this the other day for instance. It's a fair enough question - and maybe the answer is yes. But how does that look from the Mexican government's point of view? "If hand grenades and cop-killing high powered hand and machine guns were flowing into your country from suppliers across the border in your neighbour - wouldn't you respond?"

Looking on the brightside...

I can't take credit for this, rather that should go to Prof. Gary Sick of Columbia University, but as he said in a panel discussion I attended today - wouldn't it be funny if a result of the current financial crisis was a President Obama in the United States and no longer a President Ahmadinejad in Iran?

Where now for the Uighurs?

The absolutely ridiculous situation of the "Guantanamo Uighurs" is somehow darkly symbolic of the fag-end of an utterly failed Presidency. So a bunch of Chinese Uighurs get picked up in Afghanistan in 2001/2002 and dropped into the legal black hole of Guantanamo as suspected terrorists. Slowly the American judicial branch claws back authority from an executive drunk on powers and give habeus corpus rights to the inmates. At this point even the Bush the administration gives up on the pretense that these guys were anything other than innocent bystanders swept up in the invasion and agree that they have to be released. But they won't release them in the U.S. because that would just make them look silly, yet international conventions that the U.S. is party to won't allow them to hnad them back to China because of a reasonable fear that the Chinese authorities will... wait for it... torture them. So the Uighurs continue to rot in Guantanamo whilst the U.S. desperately tries and bribe some poor country to take them as refugees. Meanwhile Chinese diplomats chase around the world threatening and/or bribing any country that might consider it.

So the Bush administration, that has attempted to make torture part of U.S. law, won't release innocent men to China because they fear that they might be tortured. Roll on November 4. It's hard to imagine that even McCain/Palin could make any less sense than this lot.

“Inside Egypt” John R. Bradley.

“Inside Egypt” by John R. Bradley.

It’s too long since I’ve done a book review so I think I should mention John Bradley’s “Inside Egypt: the land of the Pharaohs on the brink of revolution”. I saw it sitting on a colleagues desk and asked if I could read, “yes” was the reply, “but do it quickly”. Well it has taken me two days so that says a lot for the readability of the book. I’ve not been to Egypt and this book unfortunately isn’t likely to make anyone go, unless of course you are a weird social scientist who is interested in political disasters. So, I’m more interested in going now than before.

Bradley paints a very bleak picture of a country failing. The regime has no ideology and stands for nothing except its own continuance, hence the Egyptian state is utterly corrupts and having no other way to rally the nation to its cause, uses violence to repress society instead. Bradley suspects this is unsustainable as, unlike say China, the regime is not bringing people out of poverty whilst denying them freedom. Actually it is doing the opposite, pushing the middle class into penury whilst ignoring the poverty stricken working and underclass.

He notes that Egyptian civil society is utterly beaten down, producing virtually no culture, despite the country’s immensely rich multi-ethnic and –religious heritage. Not even the corrupt super-rich are using their money to make anything beautiful or interesting: “In all but ethnically cleansed and culturally purged post-Nasser Egypt… even money has gone stale, producing for the rich only barren imitations of life elsewhere, and financing only the thugs’ indulgence in beating any individual expression to a pulp.” (p.55)

He argues that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the greatest beneficiary of this oppression, as Mubarak has crushed all secular opposition. His view of the MB is that its rise is indicative of the malaise in modern Egypt, where demonstrations of public piety cover private spitefulness and corruption of the spirit. Bradley believes that they would just be a minor force if real democracy was allowed – noting although they took 20% of the vote in 2005 parliamentary elections, only 25% of the electorate could be bothered to vote in the heavily rigged elections and mostly consisted of committed supporters of the Brothers and then the state employees forced or obliged to vote for Mubarak’s NDP. Hence that 20% probably greatly overestimates their support in the country. He believes that the MB is true to its word that it is a peaceful organisation, yet at the same time is a clerically-fascist, sucking all the joy and celebration out of Egyptian heritage, and spreading sectarianism amongst different groups in the countries.

He argues that American policy of support to Egypt, the second biggest recipient of US aid after Israel, in return for its “cold peace” with the Jewish state is part of the problem. American support for democratic reform was both half-arsed and half-baked, and was abandoned immediately once it became apparent elsewhere in the Middle East that Islamists groups would win free elections in the current geopolitical climate. He quotes Hisham Kassem, a human right activist who was awarded a Democracy Award from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy in 2007. Kassem got to meet President Bush as a result, and Bush’s bemusement at being told how the current situation is building the MB’s support is telling: “we give your country $2 billion a year in order to keep it stable and prevent it from turning into a theocracy” Bush replied looking dismayed.

The book is very readable and cracks along at a fair pace, but isn’t perfect. The chapter on the Bedouin of the Sinai is basically a discussion of the Crisis Group report on the area. Crisis Group reports are generally excellent, but the other chapters show Bradley’s original reporting and feel for the country much more. His chapter on “Lost Dignity” is basically about old European women and European gay men coming to Luxor to find young Egyptian “studs” to shag. It’s really depressing but perhaps verges on the salacious. Bradley makes a decent case that it is representative of wider issues in the country, but in comparison to his horrific chapter on the endemic torture and violence in what passes for Egypt’s criminal justice system it seems like something of a smaller issue that just attracts disproportionate media attention as it involves sex and westerners.

More good blogs to visit

Bored of the same old blogs? A couple of suggestions for those interested in news and thoughts on the more depressing parts of the world. Firstly, The Stupidest Man on Earth - subtitle "on war and stuff". It's written by Jari, a very well travelled Finnish journalist, a real old school hack (and I mean that in the nice sense); he probably even has one of those khaki vest with about a hundred little pockets on them used by genuine foreign correspondents for some secret purpose not revealed to the general public.

Next is the [My]State Failure Blog, I found this by following a link from The Stupidest Man on earth, only to realise that I met the guy who writes it, Péter, at the conference I was at in Stockholm last week. Small world eh? Péter was, unsurprisingly, giving a paper on state failure. It is more theoretical than Jari's blog, so will appeal to the IR and political science types out there, but still written in an approachable way if you are in to that sort of thing.

But I'm sure you're not bored with this blog of course... and just to tease you, I'm debating whether to include in the weekly climbing post a picture from last weekend of a man doing a climb whilst wearing a pink tutu, fishnet stockings and fairy wings on his helmet. But I'm sure the serious-minded readers of this blog wouldn't be interested in something so silly?

Sociology from the desert

I'm reading a bock at the moment called "Sex at the Margins"; it is not nearly as exciting as its sounds and is mainly a critical look at the connection between the sex industry and migration, and in particular people trafficking. The writer argues that migrant women are not nearly as naive as some in Europe and the west tend to think and on an individual level tend to see prostitution as an acceptable job in order to access the greater opportunities that richer countries offer. I'm currently agnostic on the issue, so far having not read far enough for the author, Laura Agustin, to have fully made her case. I have heard some pretty awful stories of abuse of migrant women, which I'm not fully ready to believe are the social construction of the "rescue industry" as Agustin terms it.

Anyways, I heard anecdotal support for a British sociologist's thesis from the most unlikely of place: a Tuareg tribesman of the Nigerien Sahara. BBC World Service is doing a series on the experience of African migrants crossing the great desert on their way to Europe. The Tuareg worked as a people trafficker, or travel agent depending on how you wish to look at it. When asked why he thought these people from countries far to the south make this dangerous journey, he quickly replied that it can't be because of poverty because many of them arrive in Northern Niger with lots of money. This might sound trite, considering migrants might borrow money or use family savings to get to Europe, the journey being viewed as an investment, but it might point towards the same point as Agustin is making - that when we look at social phenomenon like migration, or indeed terrorism that I research for my work, it is all too easy to ignore the individuals who make up the sociological event. And that does a disservice to the complexity of human motivation and experience.

The wrong lobby

Waltz and Mearsheimer have become internationally famous for their Israel Lobby article which has now been published as book. This ain't bad going for international relations (IR) professors, a job that whilst respected rarely catapults you stardom (Condoleezza Rice being an obvious exception). It's important to realise that within IR they are the big men of the Realist school of the thought - that countries have national interests and act in accordance to them. All classic power politics stuff. The problem is that they keep getting it wrong. They didn't see the end of the cold war coming, they didn't see the pacification of Europe, and its gradual union via the EU. Indeed in the early post-coldwar era Mearsheimer was recommending that Germany builds nuclear weapons to balance the threat from France! He felt that only if states had a balance of power would the system be stable. So wrong, wrong, then wrong again. How, then, were they to explain the U.S. picking on its own terms, on its own timetable, to invade Iraq and plunge the country into the biggest military crisis since Vietnam? Well they couldn't - because it is, particularly in retrospect, such a dumb thing for America to have done. So if the administration hadn't been acting in the U.S. national interest, why did they go into Iraq? Because they were tricked - by the Israel Lobby. This is essentially the core argument of the Israel Lobby.

You shouldn't throw the bath water out with the baby though: their essential point was wrong - that a domestic lobby for a foreign power could persuade the US to act against its own interests - but they make very many good points about the influence and power of the pro-Israel lobbies (plural being more accurate) in the US, and particularly the lack of debate in the US media on Israel. In fact if you want to hear all sides of the story, you would do much better following the vigorous and nuanced debate that takes place in Israel itself, rather than in America.

In the hue and cry that followed the articles publications one of the more interesting comments was made by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national-security adviser. He said that the Israel lobby does exist, and that it is influential in Washington, but it was only one of various successful national lobbies. Equal to the pro-Israel lobby was in his opinion the Cuban-American lobby and the Armenian lobby, with the Greek and Taiwanese groups not far behind.

It Waltz and Mearsheimer want an example of a national lobby exerting its influence in a way that is pushing the U.S. in a policy clearly at odd with its immediate interests, they should have taken the Armenians. The ongoing attempt to get both houses of the US Congress to condemn as genocide the Armenian massacres by Ottoman Turkey in 1915, is exactly that. The declaration might have a noble intent, but it will never be anything but symbolic. What is not in doubt is that the implications are that U.S.-Turkish relations are going down the pan.

Israeli politics briefing

Tel Aviv from the air

The domestic setting to Israeli foreign policy is often ignored internationally or at least underplayed. My PhD work is basically an argument that you can't separate domestic and international politics (although my case-study is Finland not Israel), particularly not in the globalised world, and this is as true of Israel as anywhere else. Hence what follows is my take on the discussions and briefings we had with policymakers, academics, journalists and others on my recent visit to Israel.

The Israeli economy is hugely successful with growth being driven by high-technology industries, in which the IDF has cleverly involved itself. But this is leading to what a number of speakers called the core-periphery issue (and this is clearly seen by both the left and right) in which certain sectors of Israeli society have missed the high-tech boat and are now being left ever further behind. The periphery has ethnic, religious and geographical aspects to it. A major distinction within Israel is "Ashkenazi" and "Sephardi". The Ashkenazi Jews are generally those of the European descent, whilst the Sephardi are the Jews who came to Israel from the Mid-East and North Africa. Israel was predominantly formed by Ashkenazi and all of the early leaders in the Labour Party (the ruling party until 1977) were of that background. The Sephardi generally arrived in Israel later, after being thrown out of the Muslim states in response to the founding of Israel. Sephardi have seen themselves as second class citizens ever since and remain on average poorer and less educated. The town of Sderot, infamous for being the target of Qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza strip, is a particularly working-class, Sephardi town. Many there say that if it was a rich, white suburb of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv getting rocketed daily, there is no way the government would put up with it. The mayor of Gush Etzion, the settlement we visited in the West Bank not far from Jerusalem, held very similar views saying that the security issues they faced were mishandled by the government because they don’t care about the poor and the rural. The other major ethnic distinction to economic marginalisation is the “Soviet” Jews who emigrated mainly after 1990, and now make up a sixth of the population. Integration has not been wholly successful - as the recent arrest of a “Nazi” gang, made up of Russian-Israeli youths, suggests.

The religious division in the economy affects firstly the Israeli Arabs who face many problems in the technology industries because they can’t get security clearances. This is partly said to be straight prejudice from some parts of the Jewish majority, and partly to do with many of them using the Arab exemption from military service. Secondly, the orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews do not take part in the standard state education system, and are also exempt from IDF service. The focus of their religious schools is on the Torah, with English, maths and sciences taking a back seat. This badly prepares orthodox children for taking part in the modern economy leading to economic marginalisation. Oddly, the argument has parallels to that over the Madrassas in Pakistan. At the same time the Orthodox Jews have large families, so this sector of society is becoming demographically more significant.

The political system is currently partially paralyzed, with increasingly unwieldy coalitions having to be formed as proportional representation produces an ever more diverse and fractured polity. The three biggest parties in the Knesset: Labour, Likud and Kadema still do not command a majority even if all vote together. So whilst the marginalized groups fail economically, they remain very influential politically as governments need them in coalitions. This makes the direction of Israeli politics very hard to predict. It also mean that the people of the Israel no longer wholly share its founding premises and experiences. For example the Holocaust was central to the creation of the Jewish state, but this was to a great extent an Ashkenazi experience. The Jews of Yemen or of Iran were little affected by it, yet they now are part of the state that came out of that tragedy. The rise of Likud in the late 1970s was directly related to the support of the Sephardi community, after the post-Independence hegemony of the Labour and the Ashkenazi community, and brought with it a different world-view.

Whilst these important questions of identity and political structure remain unresolved it is not clear what will happen next in the Middle East Peace Process. We were told that last year’s war was fought by Olmert with one eye on Lebanon and the other on the stock exchange - waiting for global markets to tell him when he had to stop because Israel could not handle a collapse in confidence in the economy. The Israelis have long said that they don’t have a partner to talk to with the Palestinians, but to me it isn’t completely apparent who the Israeli partner is either. Until there is a more stable governing-coalition that isn't forced into adopting lowest common denominator policies to pacify such disparate parties within it, the future is far from clear. The next prime minister is likely to be Netanyahu or Barak, both of whom are not likely to have radical new thinking from their first attempts at power in the 1990s. And beyond the peace process, no one really seemed to know what to do about Hezbollah, let alone Iran.

Burma: the dignity and bravery of normal people

Like many I can only look on the people of Burma with a mixture of awe and feelings of inadequacy. It ain't much, but we can offer them our solidarity if nothing else.

The social value of conscription

Conscription as integration? (photo from Helsingin Sanomat)

The seminar I attended last week was run by the Finnish National Defence University and was title "The Future of Armed Forces". There were some gradualist approaches to change put forward mainly by serving officers from various countries and some more radical approaches from the private and academic sectors. One speaker even suggested that in the modern world you don't really need armed forces, just a strong police and nuclear weapons - although his sentiment should be seen in the light of what happened forty years ago today: events that has left his country's military playing a quasi-policing role ever since and weakening them relative to their neighbours as a result.

But being in Finland, much discussion revolved around the value of conscription for modern armed forces. The Finnish defence establishment resolutely support the concept - at least in public - but I found the French experience far more convincing. If you want a modern, technologically advanced military, you need professionals, not kids doing six months before starting uni or college. France realised this after the first Gulf War where they had to sail their aircraft carrier to the Gulf with a skeleton crew after the president announced no conscript would be put in harms way, before promptly evacuating them from the ship as it headed south.

The argument is often put forward that conscription leads to social cohesion: Finnish President Halonen said exactly this yesterday at the Defence Forces parade through Helsinki, but reading her speech I had a wry smile remembering what I had heard from a French officer last week: "The French army decided that it was the job of the schools to make little Frenchmen not the military, our job is to kill people when the government tells us to."

Subversive thought for the day: "violence, ethics and community"

I'm home in bed with the flu and trying to use the time to catch up on some reading, so this afternoon I've been reading "British Muslims, multiculturalism and UK foreign policy: ‘integration’ and 'cohesion’ in and beyond the state" by Shane Brighton and published in the most recent edition of the journal International Affairs.

Brighton makes an interesting comparison between the "sanctimonious violence" of al Qaeda (building upon the work of Faisal Devji), and particularly of the unconnected, or only marginally connected, London bombers and the interventionism of British foreign policy under Blair. His point is not one moral equivalence at all, but rather how the two parallel in seeing action as a way of producing community.

For the terrorist the action is not just the destruction they cause, but their own "martyrdom" in the process. This ultimate demonstration of faith is to will the global community of believers, the Ummah, into being: their action will serve as a catalyst for this community. All very Nietzschean. This understanding comes from Devji's attempt to comprehend Jihadi violence that at times seems de-politicized (i.e. the US troops are out of Saudi Arabia but bin Laden doesn't appear to be giving up) and nihilistic. The acts of terror are not solely, or perhaps not at all, instrumental; so when a suicide bomber in Iraq fails to inflict serious casualties, this is not necessarily a "failure" in his eyes (wherever they landed) or in those of his masters, because they see the act of sacrifice as a political act of community building in itself, regardless of the reaction of the targeted. It might be sick and wrong, but it definitely isn't illogical.

On liberal interventionism, Blair outlined this long before 9/11 in his 'Chicago Speech' of 1999 made as NATO continued to bomb Serbia. He argued for an international community of values based on universal human rights and that this community would be evidenced by a willingness to intervene. Liberal interventionism is of course not a new idea, going back to arguably to Kant, but despite the first President Bush's optimism for a new world order of internationally guaranteed (enforced?) peace after the defeat of Saddam Hussein, much of the the 1990s saw a flight from the idea of intervention. Europe and the US stood aside to watch the Bosnian massacres, all haunted by different ghosts: for the British it was the ghosts of Northern Ireland, for the Americans its was the memory of dead soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, for the Germans its was WWII. The actors watched Bosnia writhe in agony for five years, only pausing briefly to consider how to resolutely do nothing about a shorter and even worse slaughter in a small African country that previously no one had heard of. At the same time only human rights and womens groups had much to say about the imposition of a medieval and externally funded theocracy on the people of Afghanistan.

It was against this background that Labour's foreign policy in waiting was formed ready for when they came power to in 1997. Did interventionism work in creating a community? Perhaps it did, and Britain was central to that. The Blair government rescued a failing UN mission and country in Sierra Leone by sending the Paras; Blair kept pushing Clinton to do more on Kosovo and this dragged the rest of the NATO allies along with them, a process that continues to this day with the NATO mission in Afghanistan; with the St. Malo accords Britain and France were central to creating some EU ability to exert military force as we have seen since in the Congo. Brighton discusses in the domestic setting the recreation of "secular liberalism as a 'fighting creed'" but it is in some ways also applicable to the international: the international support for Afghanistan, demonstrated most clearly in all the NATO allies except the USA trying to invoke Article V on mutual defence on September 12th, showed that this forward motion, the action of intervention, could promote a community. It carries on even today, post-Iraq, in ideas like the Canadian sponsored "the responsibility to protect".

But like all communities, the community of interventionism was not invulnerable. Indeed it was rather brittle and the war in Iraq has broken it. Of the many tragedies of Iraq, this is one of the greatest: that many will take away the lessen that to intervene is inherently misguided, and people in future wars or civil breakdowns will die because of this.

Is there really any similarity in these two seemingly diametrically opposed ideas of community? If there is, it isn't in that they both require action to come about; it is the specific form of that action - violence. Having been politicized in the 1990s - watching Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Kosovo, Zaire/Congo unfold - I remain sympathetic to concept of liberal interventionism in a way those just a few years younger than me politicized in this decade, basically post-9/11, tend not to be. But we shouldn't shy away from what interventionism means: it means the use of force - violence - one hopes in an effort to minimise a potentially worse wrong. There is an inherent brittleness in the support for that willingness to use force that comes from the danger that Kant saw, of the eternal liberal war for a better world. There is likewise, and fortunately, the same brittleness in the support that the Jihadis have in Muslim communities worldwide: when they are seen as a resistance fighting the oppressor all is well and good, but when violence steps over a certain line - Zarqawi's bombings of the hotels in Amman, the village massacres of the Algerian Civil War, the slaughter of foreign tourists in Luxor by al-Gamaa Islamyyia , sectarian car bombings in Baghdad - then their support also falls away. Perhaps there is a hopeful sign in there somewhere.

Why everyone should listen to "On The Media"

"On the Media" from WNYC and NPR - but available to us in the rest of the world via podcast - is the best and most consistently interesting current affairs radio programme I have ever listened to - and I listen to a lot of radio (too much if you ask my family). The podcast is available from Friday evenings (Finnish time) onwards and a I normally save it, hoarding it for the perfect moment when Brooke and Bob's dulcet tones and witty skewering of media sillyness (an aside; my browser is prompting me to spell that "silliness" but that really doesn't seem right does it?) will whisk me away into a world of intrigue and intellectual excitement to where we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel of media information overload, and grope towards a better understanding.

Normally I use OTM to distract me from horror of having to actually do physical exercise. Running bores me to tears within 20 minutes, but with OTM carrying me away to the White House briefing room or the control centre of al-Jazeera, suddenly 45 minutes of pounding the pavement doesn't seem so bad. Last week I tried out our local cross country skiing track for the first time and with a bright moon shining down through the 15 degrees of frost, I desperately tried to stay upright on the track's many steep downhills whilst listening to an explanation of the how the media in Venezuela that Chavez is trying to muzzle is just as dubious - just from another angle - as his own pet press. And as my pulse climbed toward 200 bpm as I desperately tried to keep some sort of skiing-style going as I slogged back uphill again I listened to Emily Bazelon (another media voice I've fallen in love with through the Slate Political Gabfest) try to dig herself out of the minor hole that she and her colleague David Plotz found themselves in after gabbing from Israel whilst on an AIPAC junket. From time to time OTM repeats an old story and instantly they transport me back to where I was when I first heard them: there are hills on the Helsinki cycle-path system that will be forever linked in my brain to some minutiae of the Plame affair, or views out across the city that remind me of mil-bloggers blogging from Baghdad - all because of OTM happily whiles away the 20 km cycle-ride home from work.

So this morning, I was standing at my bus stop waiting for the perennially late bus to work, listening to them discuss with Vali Nasr why virtually no Washington decision makers can explain the difference between Sunni and Sh'ia thinking - "I should blog about that". Then as the bus got toward downtown Helsinki there was the fascinating discussion on the history and mythology of spitting on returning soldiers. Or how about how the voracious appetite of 24 hr news turns a silly publicity stunt into yet more background noise promoting a fear of terrorism? By the time I was making the coffee in the office, they were explaining how - counter-intuitively - 9/11 has actually made the representation of Arabs in Hollywood films slightly better (see here for why only 'slightly').

So basically, just listen to the whole thing. You know you want to.