Who are the winners and losers in the Hamas-Israeli crisis?

Who are the winners and losers in the current Hamas-Israeli  crisis?  How has the crisis affected the distribution of power in the Middle East?  How will the crisis affect the regions' future?

An important proviso: Let me be clear that when I speak about "winners" and "losers," I am referring to the political classes that control the countries and movements which have a direct as well as indirect relationship to the crisis.  The real losers of the crisis are the civilian populations of Gaza and Israel - 134 Palestinians and 3 Israelis have been killed at the time of this writing and many more have been wounded.  The children on both sides of the battle lines have been traumatized and many will no doubt suffer psychological problems for the rest of their lives.

Who are the political winners?

As to actual players, Hamas is the clear winner thus far in the crisis.  Wars are not only won on the battlefield but in the court of political opinion as well.  Clearly the media images of the violence in Gaza have raised questions among viewers throughout the world as to why there is a struggle between Israel and the Palestinians.  Countless images of women, children, homes and schools being bombed in Gaza have created sympathy for the Palestinians among viewers outside the Middle East and certainly from viewers elsewhere in the Arab world and the larger region.

Hamas has shown that it is the only Palestinian organization that is willing to stand up to Israel. That action has attracted the admiration of many groups in the Middle East, especially among youth who constitute a large demographic in the region.  If Hamas is able to negotiate a ceasefire and end Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, then its political status and legitimacy will increase dramatically.

The fact that the Emir of Qatar, the Egyptian Prime Minister, and foreign ministers from Turkey and important Arab states have visited Gaza has ended Hamas' political isolation.  No longer will Hamas be limited to being dependent on Iran and Syria.  Further, Hamas is becoming the main spokesman of the Palestinian people and replacing the more moderate Palestine Liberation Movement which controls the Palestine National Authority (PNA) on the West Bank. 

The second big winner in the crisis is Iran.  At almost no political and economic cost, Iran has strengthened its credentials among  radical elements throughout the Middle East by arming and supplying Hamas.  It claims to have become the main protector of the region from "imperialist" and "Zionist" conspiracies.  As a predominantly Shiite nation, its ability to become the Godfather of a radical Sunni Islamist movement shows that it can cross the sectarian divide which politically separates many radical movements in the Middle East.

An indirect winner of the crisis is Syria and its Lebanese Shiite ally, the Hizballah movement.  The crisis in Gaza has removed the spotlight on the Ba'thist regime in Syria which continues to bomb and shell its civilian populace which has led to over 33,000 casualties.  While Syrian President Bashar al-Asad will ultimately fall, he can use the crisis to mobilize support from elements of his populace - at least in the short term - among Pan-Arabists, leftists and Palestinian refugees who live in Syria. As an enemy of Israel which has also resorted to force, such as in its July 2006 shelling of northern Israel, Hizballah's focus on asymmetric warfare is strengthened by Hamas' challenge to Israel's military might. 

Who are the main losers?

Israel is one of the main losers, especially its doctrine of the use of overwhelming force as a deterrent to military attacks.  Paralleling its reluctance in August 1982 to enter Beirut after invading Israel to eliminate Palestinian guerrilla bases, it is likewise hesitant to launch a ground invasion of the densely populated Gaza Strip.  While understandable that it seeks to stop rocket attacks on its civilian populace, Israeli attacks on Gaza help radical elements mobilize young Palestinians and youth throughout the Middle East.   Of course, the main casualty of the Hamas-Israeli violence is the politics of moderation.

Hamas has forced Israel into a political corner.  On the one hand, Israel cannot tolerate rocket attacks; on the other, Israel really can't engage in a ground offensive which would not solve its military problem with Hamas but rather would lead to a public relations disaster given the large number of civilian casualties which would result from such an offensive.

The United States is also a loser because it has been characterized, whether fairly or unfairly, as Israel's patron in the Middle East and unsympathetic to the Palestinian desire to create an independent Palestinian state.  Because the Bush and Obama administrations have not pressed Israel and the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table, the US is viewed as tacitly supporting Israeli actions, especially the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

For the first time, other political actors in the Middle East are playing a more central role than the United States in trying to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas.  Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar are in the center of indirect discussions between Hamas and Israel to end the violence.  That the United States is not the main player (although that may change now that Hilary Clinton has arrived in Jerusalem) is another indicator of its declining influence in the Arab world and larger Middle East.

Fatah, the main power in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and ruler of the PNA, has been forced to watch demonstrations in support of its rival Hamas in Ramallah, the PNA capital, and other West Bank cities.  President Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian moderate who is sincere about arriving at a peace treaty with Israel, who has renounced seeking to regain land Palestinians lost in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and who seeks to create a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would live in peace with Israel, has lost much of his stature.  Increasingly, Abbas seems to be marginal to  the ongoing crisis.

Who are the potential winners or losers?

Egypt is caught in an extremely difficult position.  On the one hand, Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood which currently rules Egypt.  President Muhammad Mursi has engaged in fiery rhetoric in support of Hamas.  Behind the scenes, however, Egypt is desperate to bring about a ceasefire.  It cannot jeopardize its peace treaty with Israel as that would lead to a greater radicalism in the Eastern Arab world and also jeopardize the large amount of foreign aid upon which Egypt depends from the United States, the European Union and international financial agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

If Egypt is able to broker a truce, its status in the region will be greatly enhanced, in the eyes of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who seek an end to the violence; in the eyes of Israel who will see it as committed to the peace treaty between the two countries; in the eyes of the United States who will see it as a force for moderation; and in the eyes its own populace which does not want to see Egypt drawn into an armed conflict between Hamas, other Palestinian radical elements, and Israel.  If Egypt fails to exert any significant influence, it will open itself up to criticism from the more radical Salafi Party of Light (Hizb al-Nur) which challenges the Muslim Brotherhood's credentials and argues that it has sold out to the West.

Qatar and Turkey can also improve their political status in the Middle East if they are able to play a key role in bringing Hamas to the negotiating table.  They too could see their regional positions decline if they are unable to affect the current crisis in any positive manner.  This already seems the case with Turkey which has lost its bargaining power with Israel by having sharply criticized its policies towards the Palestinians.

Jordan may also find that the crisis strengthens current calls for major political reforms in the Hashimite Kingdom.  Recent demonstrations have called for significant political concessions by King Abdallah which he has thus far refused.  If Palestinians, who comprise a large percentage of the Jordanian population, form coalitions with other elements of Jordanian society hostile to the king, including Islamists and secular leftists, then the Hashimite monarchy could face a serious challenge to its authority.

What does winning really mean in the current Hamas-Israeli crisis?

Winning means that peace-oriented political actors need to address in a comprehensive manner the ongoing problems in the Middle East.  First and foremost, an international coalition should be formed to pressure the Israelis and Palestinians to begin serious negotiations to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  As the "youth bulge" grows in the Middle East, jobs must be found for the increasing number of unemployed young people.

If these two problems are not addressed, and soon, the current violence between Hamas and Israel will pale in significance to new forms of violence that will develop in the future. The massive and indiscriminate violence of the current civil war in Syria is a portent of what is yet to come.  In the end, there are no military solutions to the problems of the Middle East.

The Obama Victory, the Arab Spring and Addressing the Spreading Crises in the Middle East

Barack Obama's victory in the 2012 presidential elections provides the opportunity for new openings and policy initiatives in the Middle East.  Given the region 's current instability - the most pronounced in modern times - the Obama administration faces the daunting task of addressing multiple crises.  What direction should US foreign policy take during President Obama's second term?  

The onset of the Arab Spring in Tunisia in December 2010 suggested that the region might be moving in a new positive, democratic direction.  While democratic governments have been elected in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, far from becoming more stable, the Middle East is currently facing an  unprecedented set of crises.

Israel and Iran stand on the brink of war; Syria is engulfed in a civil war that has produced an unprecedented level of violence, even by regional standards; Israel and Hamas are locked in a series of  attacks and counter-attacks which could not only lead to a major war, but jeopardize the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; Jordan is facing riots over rising food and gasoline prices that threaten to escalate into calls for the overthrow of the Hashimite monarchy; the Libyan government cannot control an increasingly lawless network of militias; sectarian tensions are on the rise in Iraq; and Turkey is facing an increasingly restive Kurdish population.

What is worse is the interactive or mutually reinforcing effect of these crises.  The Syrian civil war has spilled into Lebanon with fighting between Sunnis and Alawites in Tripoli and the assassination of the country's chief of national security.  In Iraq, Shiite fighters have gone to Syria to protect an important shrine in Damascus and support the Asad regime, while some Sunni Arabs have joined anti-Asad forces. Meanwhile, Iran is supplying Syria with weapons and military advisers.

Israel accuses Iran of supporting Hamas and views Gaza as the front line of Iran's effort to destroy it.  Egypt and Jordan face pressures from their respective populaces to support Hamas and adopt a harder line towards Israel.  If the Hamas rockets and Israeli attacks on Gaza continue, Hizballah could be drawn into the conflict with new rocket attacks of its own raining down on northern Israel.

Syria's civil war has led the Kurdish population in the northeast to effectively declare independence from the central government.  Syria's Kurds are largely supportive of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which is considered a terrorist organization by the Turkish government.  Many Syrian Kurds  have migrated to Iraqi Kurdistan where Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) president Masoud Barzani is supplying them with training and arms.  The Arab Spring has emboldened the Kurds to push for autonomy if not a Pan-Kurdish state that would unite Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi Kurds.

Because PKK attacks have risen dramatically recently, Ankara has indicated that it reserves the right to attack Kurds inside Syria if they give support to Kurdish guerrilla forces.  Thus the conflict in Syria threatens to draw Turkey into the regional conflict.  Of course, Turkey has been a supporter of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) which is fighting the Asad regime.  However, many Syrian Kurds are suspicious of the FSA because it is overwhelmingly an Arab force and because the Syrian opposition has not indicated that it would give the Kurds greater autonomy in a post-Asad Syria.

Where does this highly dangerous state of affairs leave US foreign policy?  As the debates over the impending "fiscal cliff" indicate, the US is no longer the global power that it once was.   Budgetary constraints, a weak economy and our continued military presence in Afghanistan prevent the US from becoming involved in an protracted military conflict in the Middle East.  After Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans have no appetite for a new war.

Clearly, the Obama administration needs to push for an international approach to solving the problems of the Middle East.  First, the US should address the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  With Palestine National Authority (PNA) president Mahmoud Abbas having stated unequivocally that he supports a two-state solution within the borders that resulted from the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, now is the time to put pressure on both sides to come to the bargaining table.

Such an effort would be strengthened if the European Union, Turkey, and Egypt were actively involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.  Egypt and Turkey need to convince Hamas not to act as a "spoiler" to any forward movement on an Israeli-Palestinian accord.  Is not the recent violence that Hamas initiated partially a response to Abbas' recently stated willingness to recognize Israel's right to exist within its pre-1967 borders?

The US and EU need to pressure the Netanyahu government to sit down with the PNA to negotiate a serious agreement.  This would entail an immediate halt to the construction of new Israeli settlements on the West Bank, a commitment by the PNA to continue its prevention of attacks on Israel, an agreement to allow East Jerusalem to become the capital of a new Palestinian state, security guarantees which would include a PNA commitment to having the new Palestinian state be de-militarized, and land swaps which would allow Israel to keep settlements that ring Jerusalem but which would compensate the Palestinians with land from other parts of Israel, probably from the Negev Desert in the south.

The settlement issue is the most difficult to resolve in any Israeli-Palestinian deal. However, a process which has already begun by former settlers to purchase the homes and property of settlers and convince them move back to Israel, i.e., within its pre-1967 borders, could be expanded with funds from the US and the EU.  Here US allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states could help by providing funding for this effort.  Clearly, resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which will promote regional stability, is in their interests as well.

For Egypt's help in constraining Hamas, the US should pressure Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states to give the new Muhammad Mursi government funds that could be used to generate new economic development and jobs for Egyptian youth.  The US and EU should offer Turkey assistance in solving its problems with its rapidly growing Kurdish population by pressuring Masoud Barzani and the KRG not to support any effort to create a Pan-Kurdish state.  Instead the KRG should commit to improving the lot of the Kurds in Turkey and Syria but within federally designated regions such as the Iraqi Kurds currently enjoy within a federal Iraq.

Russia and China need to be assured that US efforts to resolve the Israel-Palestine dispute and to develop closer ties with Egypt and Turkey are not intended to marginalize them in the Middle East. Expanded bi-lateral contacts, and perhaps a NATO-Russian summit and a US-EU-China meeting as well, could be used to better determine what constructive role these two powers would like to play in the Middle East in the near and long-term.

The US will need to continue to hold together the international sanctions regime on Iran so long as it does not commit to allowing inspections of what it calls its nuclear energy program.  While the sanctions should remain stringent, following Farid Zakaria's suggestion, "carrots" and not just "sticks" should be offered to entice the Iranian regime to forego efforts to develop nuclear weapons.  Not only would such weapons threaten Israel, they would lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, further undermining the region's stability 

Working with the EU, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, Brazil, India, and Indonesia, the US should develop a Middle East Development Fund, akin to the Marshall Plan developed after WW II.  Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states could provide some of its funding.  The fund could provide technical human resources to help promote new investment and economic development.  One outcome would be to provide jobs for the large youth demographic which populates all states in the MENA region, thereby undermining support for radical political organizations.

The Obama administration should launch an all out public diplomacy offensive.  Organizing a series of high profile conferences that would bring together religious leaders from the Arab world, Turkey, Israel, the EU and the US, who emphasize the positive and moderating role religion can play in the Middle East, would go a long way towards demonstrating the West's concern for the region's well being.

Similar conferences held in the Middle East, Europe and the US could bring together a wide range of NGOs, including youth groups, women's organizations, civil society associations and conflict resolution organizations.   Such conferences could focus on developing long-term plans designed to offset the appeals of radical groups in the MENA region, especially among youth.

The Obama administration needs to base its post-election foreign policy in the Middle East on two criteria:  bold initiatives, on the one hand, and internationalizing our efforts in the region, on the other.  Bold initiatives is another way of saying that US foreign policy must view the crises of the MENA region as interrelated parts of a larger and complex problem.  Internationalizing US foreign policy means bringing out national interests in the region as much a possible in line with those of existing and potential allies.  Our successful efforts in overthrowing the Qaddafi regime Libya provides an example of how an internationally based foreign policy in the Middle East should become the new normal.

The spread of Islamism throughout the MENA region should not be viewed as a threat to US interests but rather as a challenge that could enhance the interests both of the US and the peoples of the region. A democratic Islamism is far more beneficial to the Middle East and the West, than the authoritarian regimes that ruled Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.  In the end democracy, the core goal of the Arab Spring, is key to transforming the Middle East from the most unstable region in the world into one that can achieve its great but as yet untapped potential.

The Breakup of the Middle East State System - Fact or Fiction?

While I have a high regard for Fareed Zakaria, his recent comment on CNN suggesting that we are seeing the breakup of the Middle East state system raises  a serious question. Is this process in fact occurring?  Or is this a form of hyperbole by Western analysts?

The assertion that the Middle East state system is unraveling is based on a number of faulty assumptions.  The driver behind this analysis is, of course, the current civil war in Syria.  Because this conflict has increasingly taken on a sectarian quality, it is assumed that the crisis will spill over Syria's borders and undermine the stability of neighboring states.

The units of analysis here are nation-state and ethnoconfessional groups (ethnic groups and religious confessions).  These groups are conceived as "unitary actors."  However, this idea of a "confessional mind (reminding us of two highly flawed books, Raphael Patai's, The Arab Mind, and Charles Glass' Tribes With Flags) ignores a wide variety of cross-cutting cleavages.

First, no distinction is made between ruling elites and mass publics.  Everyone knows that Bashar al-Asad's regime has consciously sought to turn the struggle for democracy and social justice in Syria into a sectarian conflict.  The Syrian Ba'th assumes that raising the threat of an unstable Syria and the possible coming to power of sectarian Sunni Islamists will erode foreign support for the uprising.

In other words, much of what is described as sectarian identities in the Middle East is often the result of elite efforts to "divide and conquer" by manipulating one ethnoconfessional group against another.  In Syria, the al-Asad regime has attempted to set the Alawite minority, which is the ruling elites' social base, wealthy Sunni merchants who benefit from ties to the state, and the minority Christian community, on the one hand, against the Sunni Muslim community from central, eastern and southern Syria, and the small Kurdish community from the northeast, both of which have not benefited from the regime's economic policies, on the other.

As the political cleavages in Syria suggest, another division is social class.  There are wealthy Sunni Arabs and some prosperous Damascene Kurds who support the Ba'thist regime.  Education, generation, ideology, and political experiences also divide Syria along lines which do not accord with sectarianism.  In short, the notion of the "communal mind" is highly problematic as a predictor of political attitudes and behavior.

Objectively, there are only two states which face the prospect of collapse, Syria and Yemen.  There are two other states which face the prospect of a potential breakup and they are Iraq and Libya.  In Iraq, the Kurds might declare an independent state and Libya's eastern Cyrenaica province might decide  to seek greater autonomy.  Neither of these outcomes would threaten the region's state system.

Sometime in the near future, we could also envision Turkey facing increasing instability if more concessions aren't made to its Kurdish citizens. A future scenario might involve efforts by Kurds in Syria and Turkey to form either an autonomous region or even a breakaway state with aid from Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). 

In North Africa, aside from Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are quite stable.  In the Arab Mashriq, Jordan is facing increasing unrest, but this is largely due to the King's refusal to establish an electoral system which allows citizens who are not pawns of the monarchy to gain seats in parliament.  Israel and the US will make every effort to assure the survival of the Hashimite monarchy.  In the Arabian Peninsula, there are serious rumblings of discontent.  But aside from Yemen, no state faces any serious opposition, let alone the prospect of collapse.

Iran is experiencing severe economic problems as a result of international sanctions aimed at stopping its nuclear weapons program.  But, like Egypt, the nation is based in an ancient civilization and is highly likely to remain a unified state, discontent among ethnic minorities such as the Kurds notwithstanding.

Clearly the current strife in Syria has negatively affected Lebanon.  Violent clashes between Sunnis and Alawites have rocked the northern city of Tripoli.  The recent assassination of Brigadier Wissam al-Hasan, the Sunni head of Lebanon's intelligence service has infuriated the Sunni community and all segments of Lebanese society who detest Syrian attempts to dominate their country.

However, as Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut convincingly argues in "Lebanon's Fragile Peace will hold despite blow" (http://carnegie-mec.org/publications/?fa=49768&lang=en), while pro-Asad forces have struck a blow against the Sunni-Saudi-Western alliance, the country will remain stable.  Certainly Lebanon has and will remain the political battleground for a wide variety of regional powers, including Iran, Syria, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.  It has survived the Israeli invasion of 1982, the Syrian occupation from 1976 until 2005, and will survive the current Syrian civil war as well.

What Lebanon lacks by way of a strong economy is made up by its education system, including several first rate institutions of higher learning, and a robust civil society.  While its political institutions have severe shortcomings, Lebanon remains one of the freest countries in the Middle East. It remains the book publishing capital of the Arab world. None of its citizenry wants to return to the civil war of 1975-1990.

Rather than continuing to view the Middle East's instability as a spectator sport, and blaming all its ills on sectarian identities, forces which seek to promote a stable Middle East, including the Arab League, Egypt, Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, should mobilize an international coalition which would bring pressure to bear, including international economic sanctions, to force authoritarian elites, such as Syria's rulers, to engage in serious political reforms.

This international coalition should likewise mobilize  a massive effort to provide education to the large cohort of youth in the region - the "youth bulge" - many of whom are poor, unemployed and without hope in the future.  It is from this stratum that authoritarian regimes recruit their repressive forces, such as Bashar al-Asad's thugs (al-shabiha), Saddam Husayn's now defunct Fadayin Saddam (Those who would sacrifice  for Saddam), or the Iranian regime's Revolutionary Guards.

The use of education by offering courses in local languages via the Internet, paralleling the  international efforts underway by Western universities, such as Harvard and MIT, to offer the global community a wide variety of online courses is one way to address the "education deficit" which currently afflicts the Middle East.  Providing scholarships for Middle Eastern youth  to study in Europe, the United States, Turkey, India and other foreign countries, would be another.  Few students in the region have access to courses in the humanities and the social sciences and thus are largely unable to develop critical thinking skills.

Ultimately, corruption and nepotism must be addressed by the peoples of the Middle East.  Economic resources must be directed at providing employment for the next generation of Middle Eastern youth.  Apart from the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, few Western analysts have directed their efforts at suggesting ways to solve the problems of the Middle East.

Continuing the emphasis on sectarianism only distracts attention away from the real sources of conflict in the Middle East.   Focusing on the potential collapse of the Middle East's state system does not offer a palliative for the region's ills.  It only draws attention to the short sighted and narrow view that Western countries have of their national interests in the Middle East.

The sociopolitical and economic forces that engendered the Syrian civil war cry out for bold new thinking - not caricatures of the region's peoples or short term "fixes."  Only in this manner can the Middle East's complex and growing problems be addressed in a meaningful way.

Gender equality and democracy in Iraq

The recent attempted assassination of 14 year old Malala Yousufzai in Pakistan, merely because she advocated the right of women to receive an education, underscores the lack of gender equality in the Middle East (and indeed most parts of the world).  Of all the countries of the Middle East, Iraq can boast a legacy of being in the vanguard of countries which have tried to improve the status of women.  What is their status in Iraqi society today and how have they fared since the 2003 invasion which toppled Saddam Husayn's Ba'thist regime?

In January 1959, under the regime of Gen. 'Abd al-Karim Qasim, Iraq passed one of the most progressive personal status laws in the Middle East. Law 188 set the legal age of marriage at 18.  Women at age 15 were allowed to to marry if the judge considered it "an urgent necessity" and the woman had reached the "attainment of legal puberty" and "physical ability"  The consent of her legal guardian was also required  No women under the age of 15 could be forced to marry. Marriage was a legal contract which had to be agreed upon by both parties.

This personal status law retained some elements of Shari'a, such as women not receiving the same inheritance as men.  However, the law allowed women as well as men to initiate divorce and specified 8 conditions under which a woman had the right to divorce her husband. What was revolutionary about this law was its specificity, meaning that it defined very clearly the rights of all parties in the marriage contract, the conditions under which divorce was permissible, child custody, the requirements of the male to support his wife and family, inheritance and other matters related to male-female relations within the family.

Th 1959 Personal Status Law was attacked by clerics at the time as "anti-Islamic."  Nor were they pleased when Qasim indicated his support for women's rights by appointing the first woman minister in the Arab world, Naziha al-Dulaymi, as Minister of Municipalities, and expanded the opportunity for Iraqi women to receive a college education.

Women made progress under the Ba'thist regime.  That progress, however, had nothing to do with wanting to see women gain more rights.  Rather it reflected two goals.  First, the Ba'thist regime sought to reduce the power of the husband and by extension the family as a potential agent of political opposition.  Second, Saddam wanted to promote Iraqi industrialization and increase the size of the state bureaucracy.  He needed white collar and blue collar women workers to expand the labor pool.

To offset what he saw as possible opposition to his policies towards women, especially in the factory setting, Saddam imposed stringent sexual harassment laws.  Led by Manal Yunis, Saddam established the General Union of Iraqi Women which, while enforcing the Ba'thist regime's policies, was only an appendage of the state.

Because women were not allowed to form independent political organizations under Ba'th Party rule, the rights which they given in the 1970s were taken away in the 1990s following Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War of January 1991.  Once Iraq was subject to the most stringent UN sanctions regime ever imposed on a country in 1991, women were forced to leave their employment as the national economy collapsed. Seeking to prop up his regime through garnering male support, Saddam imposed conservative policies which stripped women of their rights.

While Iraq had received an award from UNESCO in 1989 for the rapid improvement in female literacy (even in remote rural villages which I visited during the 1980s women were forced to attend literacy centers), few Iraqi women in the 1990s received a meaningful education as the national education system collapsed as well.  Ironically, a mother raised in the 1980s could be fully literate while her daughter raised in the 1990s might be semi- or even illiterate.

After Saddam Husayn's overthrow, efforts were made to repeal the law by the US appointed Iraqi Governing Council in December 2003.  As many Iraqi women have commented to me, Iraq's male politicians can't agree on anything except stripping women of their rights.

One of the legacies of the US occupation of Iraq was a stipulation in its new constitution written and adopted in 2004 and 2005, that women must have at least 25% representation in the Council of Deputies (national parliament).   All the major political parties attempted to circumvent this rule by pushing for a "closed list" ballot system.  This system would prevent voters from voting for individual candidates and would hide the fact that female candidates were relatives or those who would support the dictates of the of the party in question's male leadership.

Iraqi women are a tough lot.  Now female members of parliament are speaking out against the complete male domination of the supposedly democratic system put in place after parliamentary elections in 2005.  In an article entitled, "Iraq's female parliamentarians complain about male domination (of politics)" (al-Bayan, Sept. 26), women politicians are working to force the Council of Delegates leadership to appoint a woman to the ninth (and final) seat on the newly appointed High Electoral Commission which oversees national elections.

These women argue that all of Iraq's main ethnoconfessional groups are represented as well as some of Iraq's minorities (either a Christian or Turkmen has been slated to receive the 9th seat).  With women constituting 65% of Iraq's population (reflecting the continued violence since 1980 with the onset of the 8 year Iran-Iraq War, the 1991 Gulf war, the March 1991 uprising (Intifada), and the sectarian violence of 2003-2008), female parliamentarians point out that is is shameful that women are not better represented in Iraq's current political structure and institutions.

Many Iraqi families are headed by women who are single parents and many do not have the skills to find gainful employment.  Thus the struggle being fought by Iraqi women in parliament has ramifications for Iraqi women nationally.

Independent parliament member Sufia Suhayl points out that women are not represented in Iraq's executive, legislative and judicial branches (even though the first female judge in Iraq was appointed in 1967).  She and other female parliamentarians argue that even women who do hold office face a process of marginalization (tahmish) which runs counter to Iraq's constitution which stipulates that "women should participate in all aspects of Iraq's political process."  The political pressure being exerted by female members of parliament has led some male parliamentarians to propose that a female Turkmen should become the 9th member of the High Electoral Commission.

We may criticize the current government of Nuri al-Maliki for failing to implement the democratic agenda which he promised when he retained his position as prime minister after the March 2010 national parliament elections.  Despite Iraq's current democracy deficit, women at present are certainly in a better position politically than they were in the 1990s under Ba'thist rule.

Women in Iraq today can organize and have opportunities to make their discontent known to the Iraqi populace at large whether through the print media, television, or the Internet.  It would have been unheard of for women to threaten to boycott parliament and take their complaints to court under Saddam Husayn's regime.  While their new freedoms don't guarantee that they will be successful in their goals, they are sending a very important message to the women of their generation and to young Iraqi women as well.

That message is that power is never freely given.  The core component of any democracy is contestation.  Organization and (peaceful) struggle are keys to success in any democracy. That Iraqi women are using the institutions of government to press forward their agenda of gender equality is a sign that Iraq's democracy movement is still struggling against one of the core components of authoritarianism, namely patriarchal rule.

The "bottom line" is that no country which excludes over 50% of its population (in Iraq women are closer to 65% of the population) can refer to itself as a democracy. 

The Islamization of Iraqi society?

The recent government effort to destroy Baghdad's traditional book market located in al-Mutanabbi Street, named after one of Iraq's most famous poets, is disturbing (see al-Hayat, Sept. 21).  The government wants to limit book sellers to sell books on Friday like other markets confined to Fridays which sell dogs and birds.  This attack is part of a growing effort to curtail the activities of Western oriented sectors of Iraqi society, particularly urban youth and women who choose not to wear traditional clothing.  Do they efforts indicate an effort by the state to Islamize Iraq?

Although few Iraqis want to return to Ba'thist rule, one of the few things that many miss from that era was the greater tolerance for personal lifestyles.  Under Saddam Husayn's regime, no one needed to worry if they drank alcohol.  Homosexuality was not suppressed.  Women and youth did not have to worry about wearing Western style clothing. Indeed the killing of 14 youth earlier this year for following "emo" styles of dress and music has never occurred during Iraq's entire history since it became an independent state in 1921 (see The New Middle East, March 13, 2012).

Following the overthrow of the Ba'thist regime in 2003, a new Islamist trend began to appear in Iraq. One of the first indicators of this new trend were signs on the walls of Baghdad University and other institutions of higher learning throughout Iraq which warned women not to come to campus in Western dress.

In 2004, a shadowy organization which called itself the Monotheistic Movement for Jihad, which many say included members of the newly formed Mahdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr, began to threaten merchants who sold alcohol, invariably Christian or Yazidi, who traditionally have dominated this business.  These merchants were told that they would be killed if they did not end such sales.   These threats were followed by the bombing of liquor stores in Baghdad's largely Christian al-Ghabir district.

In 2010, the Sadrists successfully lobbied the Baghdad City Council to ban the sale of alcohol in restaurants and social clubs.  The ban led to a strong reaction by intellectuals and secular forces which fought the proposed ban.  Iraq's writers, artists, and filmmakers argued that this was really an attack on freedom of expression since all Iraq's social clubs where intellectuals meet serve alcohol.

The Iraqi newspaper, al-Mada, took the lead in posting billboards around Baghdad which said "Liberty first: Baghdad will not become Qandahar," referring to puritanical Taliban rule in Afghanistan.  The Baghdad City Council ban, which was supported by the federal government under Nuri al-Maliki, was so unpopular that it was withdrawn, although the Council said it might be reimposed in the future.

Now the focus at keeping Iraq a "traditional" society has been directed at the dress of Iraqi youth which often imitates Western clothing styles.  Members of the police department who support the views of conservative clerics, angered by Western clothing and music, have become known as the "fashion police."  Police officers have been reported as warning women in Karbala', al-Diwaniya and Baghdad's Kathimiya district, where Sadrists wield strong influence, that they need to wear a headscarf and even the traditional head to toe black abaya.  Advertisements showing women wearing trousers have had red crosses painted on them.

Iraqi youth comprise a large percentage of the population (65% of those under the age of 25).  Many youth are attracted to Western culture as is evident from even a superficial overview of YouTube videos on Iraqi youth.  The 2007 HBO film, Baghdad High, produced by four Baghdadi youth, one Shiite, one Sunni, one Kurd and one Christian, demonstrates very clearly this inclination, as does the 2006 CBS news video, Iraq's Youth Revolution.

Iraqi women argue that Iraq's male political elite cannot decide on any of the policies which the country desperately needs, such as improving employment opportunities for youth, building more housing, especially in large cities such as Baghdad, providing greater support for Iraq's farmers, expanding health care facilities, and providing more electricity to Iraqi homes.  However, these women point out, the one thing that Iraqi male politicians can agree upon is restricting women's rights.

The US appointed Iraqi Governing Council 's effort in December 2003 to rescind Iraq's Personal Status Law, passed under the rule of General 'Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, is just one of many recent efforts to place constraints on Iraqi women.  This law, which prevents women under the age of 15 from being forcibly married and assures women equal inheritance with men, is one of the most progressive personal status laws in terms of women's rights in the Middle East.

Most recently, Iraqi nightclubs have been invaded by the police and their patrons forced to leave, even beaten.  Many nightclubs have been told to no longer sell alcohol and others have been closed.   Because these nightclubs mostly cater to youth, young Iraqis view these actions by the police as another effort to restrict their freedoms.

The recent actions by the Iraqi state and police do not represent the proper manner in which to protect the country's traditions and heritage.  Iraq's citizens - youth and women in particular - should not be forced to wear clothing or behave in ways which are entirely personal but that contradict their individual values.  Any country which claims to be a democracy must respect individual rights, including the choice to dress as one pleases.

The Maliki government's efforts should be directed at delivering better social services to the Iraqi people and ending the extensive corruption and nepotism which characterize the government bureaucracy, rather than worrying about how young people dress and restricting women's rights.  Indeed, Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, who just returned to Iraq after three months of medical treatment in Germany, has called for a serious effort to end government corruption and provide Iraqis, both Arabs and Kurds, with the services they need (see al-Sharq al-Awsat, Sept. 22).  Attempts to protect "tradition," when it is really only an effort to cover up the state's failures, is not the type of governance the Iraqi people need or  deserve.

The need for more US public diplomacy in the Middle East

The tragic deaths of Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and members of his security detail, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, have led to calls for greater disengagement from the Middle East.  I would argue that the current unrest in the region calls for more not less engagement. What form should this engagement take?

The US needs a much more robust public diplomacy program in the Middle East. The very fact that most of the youth who are currently demonstrating against the United States have a complete lack of knowledge of the manner in which our democracy functions underscores the need for a stronger public diplomacy program.  Many Middle Easterners believe that the US government could have prevented the distribution of the offensive film, "The Innocence of Muslims," not realizing that neither the Obama administration nor any other American administration has the power to prevent freedom of expression, however repugnant.

What is called for is a greater effort to bring the reality of the US to the peoples of the Middle East, especially youth, who constitute an excessively large percentage of the region's population.  Indeed, demographers refer to a "youth bulge" in the Middle East because in many countries over 70% of the populace is under the age of 30.

A large percentage of Middle Eastern youth is educated but lacks employment.  Given stagnant economies and extensive corruption and nepotism within the state, they have little hope for the future.  Most see any meaningful career as beyond their reach.  This hopelessness by no means excuses their violent behavior, but it should place the anger many youth in the region feel in context.

Education systems in the Middle East do not promote critical thinking, unless one attends an elite private school which is usually reserved for the wealthy.  Courses in the social sciences and humanities where such thinking could be promoted are limited.  Memorization is more highly valued than developing one's ability to think for oneself. Much greater emphasis is placed on "useful" curricula, such as computer science, and the natural sciences.

As part of a more robust public diplomacy initiative, one strategy to offset lack of knowledge of the American political system and institutions is to offer more scholarships for students from the region to study in the US.  I was struck when conducting research in Iraq while Saddam Husayn was still in power how many Iraqis had been positively influenced by their study in the US.

Interviewing Ba'th Party and government officials usually produced a lengthy tirade against US imperialism in the Middle East.  How often I would be surprised when, after this tirade, the official would suddenly burst into a big smile and tell me how much he (and it was invariably a male) enjoyed his time at one or another American university.  Clearly their experiences in the US had had a positive impact.

We currently have a large contingent of Iraqi students pursuing advanced degrees at my university.  They are enjoying their stay here immensely and are impressed by the high quality of education and the warmth with which they have been received by the university community.  Fortunately, these students are recipients of government fellowships which cover their tuition and all their expenses.

Despite our current economic crisis, a small portion of the funds spent on sophisticated weapons systems might be better spent on supporting scholarships for students from the Middle East to study in the US.  How many scholarships could be provided, for example, by one stealth bomber which costs $4.5 billion to build. While providing education for students from the Middle East would not guarantee a positive outcome in all cases, the vast majority of students would return to their countries with positive attitudes towards American culture and society.  These attitudes would pay dividends for the US far into the future.

Another initiative should entail offering educational opportunities for those students who cannot come to study in the US.  Education offered through video conferencing and Internet based education provides another means by which youth in the Middle East could be made aware of the tremendous benefits of an American university education while giving them exposure to our values and open political culture.

Still another initiative should engage the clerical community of the three Abrahamic religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  The Obama administration should form a Committee of Religious Engagement which would include prominent clerics in the US drawn from theses three major faiths.  That committee should hold high profile meetings in the US, the Middle East and elsewhere which would emphasize the shared values of all 3 faiths and their commitment to tolerance, non-violence and religious pluralism.

Muslims in the US often face discrimination.  However, for the most part, they enjoy great freedom of religion.  Many Muslims have told me that they have greater freedom to express their religious beliefs here in the US than they would were they back in the country from which they emigrated.  That the US is a country built on religious tolerance is a message which the peoples of the Middle East need to better understand.  

Creating bonds between the US and the peoples of the Middle East can be promoted through establishing more "sister cities."  Such relationships already exist but could be dramatically increased.  This process could not only create more communication between American citizens and peoples in the Middle East, but towns and cities in the US could use such ties to provide communities in the Middle East with needed materials, such as educational resources, medicines and state of the art technology.

Once such relationships were established, municipal officials from the Middle East could be invited by their counterparts and the citizens of the sister cities to come to the US.  Such visits would allow these officials to see the level of civic commitment and engagement that citizens of American towns and cities enjoy and then convey that knowledge back to their own communities in the Middle East.

These efforts would not entail considerable costs.  The US State Department should ask the Congress to allocate funds so that these efforts could bear fruition.  While the term has been overused, the need to win "hearts and minds" in the Middle East - especially in light of the growing instability in the region - is more important than ever.  Time is of the essence.  The Obama administration should begin immediately to expand its use of public diplomacy as a central tool of our foreign policy in the Middle East.

The Syrian uprising and its implications for Iraq

F-16 fighter jet

 al-Hayat August 26th headlines scream: "The Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirms 'its responsibility' to protect the al-Asad Regime."  How is this statement linked to US policy in Iraq and what dangers does it suggest for the future?

Many Western policy-makers continue to argue that democracy promotion in the Middle East is a luxury that neither the West nor the region can afford.  The US is now seeing the folly of its decision following Iraq's March 2010 parliament elections in not supporting a democratic outcome.

The victor in the election was Iyad Allawi and his al-'Iraqiya Coalition which won 91 seats, the most of any Iraqi political party.  In supporting Nuri al-Maliki,who came in second with 89 seats, the US is now seeing the chickens come home to roost, especially in terms of the ongoing conflict in Syria.
  
The Maliki government continues to maintain close ties with the Islamic Republic.  This is totally reasonable given that Iraq and Iran are neighbors.  However, the crisis in Syria has cast a new light on this relationship, one that could create serious domestic problems for Iraq and increase sectarian tensions in the Arab Mashriq.  It also threatens to further weaken US influence in Iraq.

The Iranian regime is loathe to lose its main Arab supporter in Syria and its ability to supply its surrogate forces in Lebanon, particularly Hizballah.  Iraq is now central to the ability of the Iranian regime's ability to continue its military and material support of Bashar al-Asad's increasingly tenuous hold on power.  The introduction of Revolutionary Guard forces to prevent the toppling of the Ba'thist regime would dramatically raise the stakes  in the crisis.  In this equation, Iraq assumes a particularly strategic position.

No one argues that, had it taken office, the al-Iraqiya Coalition would have provided Iraq with excellence  governance.  Nevertheless, by supporting al-Iraqiya, the US would not only have underscored the message of the Iraqi electorate that democracy had prevailed in the elections but would have brought to power a less sectarian coalition, certainly one less prone to accommodate Iranian regional interests.

Had the US supported Iyad Allawi's legitimate claim to be considered the first political leader to be called upon to form a new Iraqi government in the spring of 2010, Maliki  probably would not be in control of the Iraqi state today.  Apart from his neo-authoritarian tendencies which I documented in several postings on The New Middle East, Maliki is pursuing a dangerous balancing act pitting Iran against the United States.  Maliki has refused to follow the Arab League's lead in condemning the Asad regime's brutal policies of bombing its own citizenry (a striking parallel with Saddam Husayn's regime in Halabja in March, 1988, and during the March 1991 Intifada).

Already the US had accused the Maliki government of helping Iran circumvent the international sanctions which have been imposed on it due to its refusal to allow international monitoring of its atomic energy program which most analysts actually believe is desgined to develop nuclear weapons.  Iraq has denied the charges (see al-Hayat, Aug. 21).

Complicating matters still further is the imbroglio which has recently developed over arms sales to Iraq, a problem compounded by the Maliki government's close ties with Iran.  The US is now requiring assurnaces from Iraq that F-16 fighter planes provided to Iraq only be allowed to fly a limited number of hours each month.  It also wants assurances that none of these weapons will be used against Iraqi citizens (read the Kurds) or used in any regional conflict (read Syria).

The Security and Defense Committee in the Iraqi Council of Deputies is angry over the constraints which the US has imposed on the use of new weapons systems. Of particular concern is the condition that F-16 fighters not be flown more than 15 hours per month (see al-Hayat, Aug 26), and that they not be used in any combat with Israel.  The limits on flying time will make it difficult to properly train Iraqi pilots. The Committee is also angry that the delivery of the first aircraft which was scheduled for March 2013 has now been postponed by a year and a half until September 2014.

In this process, the US seems to have alienated the entire spectrum of Iraq's Arab political elite.  Salah al-Mutlak, the hard core Sunni Arab Vice-President, has accused the US of not being sensitive to Iraq's security needs (al-Hayat, Sept. 3).  The deputy head of the Security and Defense Committee Iskander Watout, accused the US of breaking the terms of the original agreement regarding Iraq's use of American weapons systems (al-Hayat, Aug 26)  Likewise, committee member, Qasim al-'Araji, said the US' main concern in placing these constraints was is to protect Israel rather than meet Iraq's security needs.

The US is now in the awkward position of having to alter the original security arrangements which were made before the withdrawal of American troops.  The current situation appears to many Iraqis as a form of American "bullying," rather than trying to assist Iraq meet its legitimate security concerns, especially during a time of increased instability in neighboring Syria.  Rather than coming across as the friend it says it wants to be, the US has contributed towards increasing its negative image in Iraq.

Although democracy is, as Winston Churchill famously pointed out, "the worst form of government except all others that have been tried," it is the only course which the countries of the region can pursue and hope to promote tolerance and political pluralism, as well address the problems of corruption, nepotism and lack of economic development.  The US should have learned the lessons of the Arab Spring by now.  The peoples of the region, especially youth, are demanding change.  Continuing the same old American policy of supporting the authoritarian leader of the month - even if that brings temporary stability - is no longer an option in the Middle East.