As the Arabs furiously try to guilt Syria into curbing Hezb Allah’s activities and “rejoining” the Arab world, one cannot help but see an almost laughable, but certainly pathetic, last ditch attempt at salvaging what influence the Sunni Arab states have in the Middle East.

Ever since the American invasion of Iraq, the strong men of the Sunni Arab world have become less and less relevant in a region that has become increasingly polarized on various fronts. On the one hand, with the liberation of a mass of Iraqi Shias by a foreign behemoth the Sunnis have become much more timid than they were in the pre-invasion period of the 1990′s and early 2000′s. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly the Arabs have been in desperate fear of Iran, the region’s new Islamic superpower, and its influence over Iraq’s massive Shia Arab population. Whether it be losing ground militarily to the Persian giant, or face domestic instability among the Sunni ruled states of the Persian Gulf with large Shia populations of their own, the Arabs have realized the precariousness of the Sunni system when it rests upon the shoulders of repressed and resentful minorities. The latter realization is perhaps not new at all, all despots know this, but this issue has entered a new day as Shias have become more and more empowered by watching their Iraqi co-religionists take the lead in their country.

Secondly, the Arabs were already less than significant geopolitically in the region, with powers such as the United States and Israel occupying the leading roles in the Middle East militarily. As Iran rose (not to mention the past twenty or so years), the Arabs effectively forfeited their place in the region to Israel and Iran as they focused on domestic threats from Islamists and other opposition groups. The only Arab power of any military significance, imagined or otherwise, was Iraq, the barrel of the Arabs’ rifle. With Saddam and the Ba`ath removed from the political landscape of the region, the most important Sunni Arabs in the region became the Iraqi insurgents, whose only real purpose was to stop Shias from attaining relevance, there by thwarting Shia hopes for political ascendency. This mission has largely failed, however, mainly because the Shias of Iraq have formed their own militias and still occupy the most important offices in the Iraqi government and seem unshaken in that country. These tactics, which were not only encouraged but often financed by mainstream Sunni Arab forces and leaders, have failed as well because they did absolutely nothing to stop Iran from taking up the banner as the defender of the Palestinian national cause. Syria, an Arab actor which has since the 1970′s gone its own way (and usually outside the mainstream of Arab and regional policy), used this strategy only to try and irritate the American forces in Iraq, not so much to thwart Shia hopes of equality or dominance. Though the Americans and Arabs tried to convince Syria that its motives and actions were out of place (as the Arabs often did just the same) and detrimental to regional security, they were quickly ignored and drove Syria further into the arms of the region’s next big thing: Iran.
Today, Arabs across the region cheer on Hezb Allah against Israel, as they jeer their own leaders’ inaction. The Arabs’ leaders rush to the side of Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora as he desperately tries to convince the world to do anything to stop Israel’s onslaught and help the Lebanese state disarm Hezb Allah in the long term. The West and the Arab world scurry about trying to get Syria to disarm its Shia proxy in Lebanon, to no avail. What they do not realize is that Syria is not the one calling the shots on Hezb Allah, Iran is. The Arabs are still in fear of Iranian dominance, they have not quite yet come to terms with it though.

This recent Lebanon crisis may be the beginning of the Iranian era of Middle East politics. The last four weeks have shown just how irrelevant the Sunni Arab states have become. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and all the rest no longer matter. Through their Western alliances and domestic repression they have no credibility among the Arab masses. Hassan Nasrallah is the champion of Arabism, and Islamism today. No Arab state is. He can hit Tel Aviv, or so it is believed, King Abdullah couldn’t hit Dimona if he tried. The Arabs have been out done by a little Shia militia leader who hasn’t any of the sophisticated Western arms paid for by billion dollar aid packages, but only Iranian and Syrian made imitation rockets with little accuracy. Iran has made this possible. And Iran wields the power to end it.

Condoleezza Rice has called the Lebanon Crisis of 2006, the “birthing pains of a new Middle East”, referring to the transition to democracy there. But this is more likely the second contraction of a Middle Eastern pregnancy ready to give way to a baby named “Ajam”. The first contraction was the Iraq War, giving rise to what historian and political science Vali Nasr has called the “Shia revival”. Historically the Middle East has had a quad or tri-polar system, with the Arabs on the first side, the West and Israel on another, and still Iran on a third. This system is dying. The Arabs’ position is effectively gone, given that public opinion, though still viciously anti-Shia, has been able to so quickly turn against the Sunni Arab leaders and redirect itself positively towards a Shia-Iranian-backed Nasrallah. It should also be mentioned that this reorientation has taken place even as Sunni clerics, and even liberal Arabs (such as those at Al-Arabiyya , and other media outlets that initially took the anti-Hezb Allah line) holler on about the evils of supporting a Shia organization. The Arabs may like to pretend that holding their next summit in Mecca, or forcing the Syrian FM Walid Muallem to storm out of their meeting in Beirut this week, will guilt Syria into empowering the Sunni state system by stopping Hezb Allah and his intimidation of the Lebanese PM, but all of this merely serves Iran’s interest by dividing the Sunni Arabs from the Allawi ruled Syrians and thus its arm in the Middle East cookie jar. The Syrians have no reason to join the Arabs now, Iran fills most of their needs and provides it protection against the West and the rest. Though Syria’s role within Lebanon is clearly diminished, its influence over Hezb Allah is not. Though anti-Syrian demonstrators appeared outside Muallem’s hotel in Beirut, Hezb Allah is still deep in Syria and Iran’s pocket, and, increasingly, so is the Arab street. Syria has no desire to enter the mainstream of the Arab world, and it has no intention of moderating Hezb Allah’s activities (see here).

The new Middle East created by the invasion of Iraq is a bi-polar one with Iran and Israel (the West has less influence than it previously did, as demonstrated by the results of the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program and bringing about an end to the current fighting) at its helm. The Arabs will have no say in what goes on in their region until they come to terms with this situation. The crisis of today foreshadows a potentially ever more Iranian predicament in the Middle East, and its outcome will decide the severity of Iranian eminence. If Hezb Allah defeats Israel, the Arabs will become more irrelevant than they ever have been before in recent memory, they will be at the mercy of Iran and its agents in the region. If Hezb Allah is destroyed, Iran’s influence will be reduced, as will that of Syria, but it will be by no means gone. There is no turning back for the Syrian regime at this point, it has made a blood pact with Iran and it cannot return because doing so would undermine all that the Assads have built for themselves.

Short of a coup or some other sort of regime change, there is no way for the Arabs to take Syria for themselves. The methods by which the Arabs have tried to undermine Iran have all been sectarian in nature, by making public comments hostile towards Shias and sending the message, as one Lebanese blogger noted, that the Syrians may “side with us or the Persians”. Syria has estranged itself from the Arab world, and the Sunni Arabs have over the past year or so basically said “fine! Go!” at their own peril. What the Arabs could have embraced the Iraqi Shias after the invasion and taken a less hostile line on Iran and sectarian matters generally, while liberalizing their domestic policies, and discouraging, actively, their young men from traveling to Iraq for the jihad. They could have made their camp appealing, they could have recognized the changing face of their region, they could have coopted their Shias. This crisis is not solely the fault of Hezb Allah and the Syro-Iranian Axis. Responsibility lies in the lap of the Arab stats, going all the way back to the days before and immediately after the US invasion, when Arab rulers blamed the US for creating an evil Shia Crescent. The Arabs have refused to enter the new Middle East mentally, with the result being utter irrelevance. Now the Arab states work essentially on behalf of Israel, much to their peoples’ dismay. They can make no move in the region which would not displease their people or their Western patrons. They are stuck as much as Lebanon is. They cannot reform, because the elites would lose their power. They cannot side with Iran, because the West and Israel would pull the rug of aid out from under them. And they cannot side with Israel against Hezb Allah, because their people would rip them from their thrones. Lebanon cannot be saved until the Arabs save themselves.

The Arabs can only make things worse for themselves and the region. Anti-Hezb Allah posturing could bring the Arabs into a massive sectarian melee, and/or an Arab-Iranian war, with two fronts Iraq and Lebanon. A pro-Hezb Allah stance would bring them the ire of the West and Israel and make them like Syria, clients of Iran. The fear of a regional war which would tear down the existing state system in the Middle East is too great among comfortable Sunni Gulf Arabs and likely too unpopular among average Egyptians. The Arabs will be stuck in the limbo of existence in irrelevance so long as they refuse to adjust to the new Middle East. Resistance is not enough, they must become active, cutting down old sectarian barriers and embracing all of the Middle East, and helping in more than rhetoric to put an end to the militancy of the Palestinians and Hezb Allah. The Sunni Arabs must swallow their pride and recognize that the current system has failed, and its termination is long over due and it cannot manage itself in a region in which there is no dominant Arab power. It is no surprise that Jordan’s young monarch has admitted that he “can’t read the political map of the Middle East anymore”, and that it is time for the Arabs and Israelis to “declare a new future” for the region, countries in the region “will continually be sucked into the abyss.” He did not however articulate how that future would come about, or what it would look like.

The Arabs cannot counterbalance Iran in their current bigoted and sectarian frame of operating, they must make the leap into the 21st century by purging their governments of backwardness and creating among themselves a competitive and comparative advantage to Iran. Thus may begin the Arabo-Iranian Cold War, and with it the hope of winning back the adoration Arab public from Syro-Iranian-Hezb Allah. The Arabs ought not worry of Syria, they should worry about their own.

Nevertheless, as a predominantly Arab and Muslim country, Algeria’s politicized classes have their opinions and do voice them. This goes for wages, benefits, healthcare and international relations. Algerians have held a few protests against the Israeli assault on what seems to many to be all of Lebanon. While Israel and the United States may claim that the IDF is strictly attacking Hezb Allah “strongholds” and trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible, many Arabs, Algerians included, are not buying it. Aside from the numerous scenes of civilian carnage being reported to them daily by numerous television stations, there is a great suspicion of Israel’s motives that arises anytime Israel launches a military offensive. Add to this traditional Algerian cynicism and one finds that the hearts and minds of Algerians are hard to appease, regardless of who you are.

This weekend there will be protests in the nation’s capitol of Algiers. “American citizens are advised to avoid these demonstrations”, the words of India Daily, not mine. Algerian protests have been rowdy in the last few years, often resulting in the deaths of youths at the hands of the gendarmerie and mass riots. It was unclear from the report as to what groups exactly would be attending the protest, but I would not be surprised to find that it is made up mostly, if not almost entirely, of young unemployed men and male students.

Ali Belhadj: Fashadoo! Give Me Attention!There always seems to be a reason for Ali Belhadj to come out of his lair just briefly enough to show the world that uncivilized men do still exist. The last time was last summer to “congratulate the mujahedeen in Iraq,” for having kidnaped and murdered two Algerian diplomats in Iraq. As the nation mourned, Belhadj, true to his terrorist roots, pointed and laughed. He was jailed for a short time and then released.

Now he’s done it again. This time by showing his inner crack pot by standing outside the American embassy shouting anti-American/Zionist/war slogans. Lameen Souag at Jazairana summarizes:

Ali Belhadj got arrested for demonstrating in front of the American Embassy with banners saying “Oh rulers of the Arabs, close the embassies of Zionist terrorism” and “Stop the flow of oil to Bush’s bloodthirsty government, and kick the petrol companies out of the land of the 1.5 million martyrs.” He allegedly received a sympathetic reception from the police, who agreed with him on the Lebanon issue (his opinions are scarcely controversial on this point, after all!) but were legally required to prevent unauthorised demonstrations. He was released later that day, and placed under close security observation.

Belhadj sould be locked up for good. He shouldn’t have been released. What the police ought to have done is charge him with treason for the crimes against many, many Algerians over the years, that he has defended and encouraged, toss him into a cell and throw away the key.

But his opinions on this matter are not really all that much out there, they are rather common, popular and, as Lameen notes, not considered controversial by most Algerians. He did break the law though. If had done the same while shouting pro-American or anti-Bouteflika slogans, I’d have been thrown in the pen too, for not having a permit to protest.

Judging from newpaper headlines and the sentiments expressed to me by relatives in Algeria (via telephone and email), I don’t see a major difference in the way Algerians are regarding the conflict from the way that others in the Arab world are.

The major difference in opinion is among Imazighen, Berbers, from what I can tell. I talked to a friend of mine who hails from Tizi-Ouzou, earlier this week, who asked me “Why should Algeria care about the Arabs’ war with the Jews? What’s the point? Let them move to Lebanon if they want to be mad about it!”

Are these sentiments typical? Probably not, but they are widely held among a segment of the Algerian population, especially younger men that come from minority backgrounds. My experience does not lead me to believe that minorities are as involved in the battles of the Arabs. For instance, I have never met an Egyptian Copt who genuninely cared about Palestine, and I have never met an Amazigh man that was all that interested in pan-Arab causes fervently (I have met several women who were though). There is always the question, “What about our country?” There are no Imazighen in Palestine, save for the few Berber Jews that fled Algeria after independence. I think Chaouia Berbers are more likely to give a damn about the Middle East, having more connections to the Arab culture than the Kabyles (the other major Berber group in Algeria), mainly for Islamic reasons. I would expect a similar reaction of indifference from Iraqi Kurds and other non-Arab Middle Eastern minorities. What’s their beef with Israel? But whatever these sentiments, they are minority opinions, and dominated, like the minorities themselves, by more widely held Arab oriented sentiments.

She was very intelligent, she has one year to go until she achieves her degree in biology from a large school in California. But she was not quite to my liking in her national and religious sentiments. She asked me how I felt, “as an Arab” about the whole mess over in Lebanon and Palestine. I told her briefly that I believed that Hezb Allah had ruined something that could have been great, the Lebanese democratic project as it were. I told her I was irritated with Hezb Allah and with militant Islamic groups generally.

“The Palestinian ones?” she asked.

“Yes, them, but moreso Hezb Allah, and Syria, and the other groups that use Shias for cannon fodder. You know what I mean?” I didn’t want to say Iran, I was a guest after all. But she knew what I meant.

She was shocked.

“Nouri, you are Shia,” she told me. They are fighting to protect Shias, she said. “Nouri, Hezb Allah is not half as bad as Israel, and they are fighting for you. They are just trying to help Shias.”

I asked her who was trying to help Shias. “Iran and Syria, and you know Hezb Allah is the Shias, they deserve credit.” I said to her, “Fatma, nobody is just trying to help Shias, they are all trying to help themselves. How is what Hezb Allah doing helping Shias?”

She went on about how the Israelis were aggressive, and how the Shias needed to be protected from the Christians [!], and so on. I told her that before the recent fighting, Lebanon was at peace, the Shias could be at peace too if Hezb Allah put down its weapons and stopped acting on behalf of Syria and Iran. If it fell into the fold.

I said that Hezb Allah just did the bidding of Iran, and it wasn’t out to protect anybody, maybe before when they were occupied by the Isrealis, but what they started this time was not “protection”, it was Iranian political interest.

“So what if it is, Iran has interests, what’s wrong with that?” Before the conversation was more playful, but now it was a bit brash. Her hands were in the air. I was leaning on the side of a wide open door way. I was relaxed. I sat down, because I felt like I would appear condescending if I kept standing up when she was so emotional.

“You Arabs don’t like Israel anyway, if Iran has to fight them why not have people who want to fight them fight them?” I was sort of surprised.

“Because not all of them want to? Why should Lebanon get roughed up for somebody else’s sake?” She spun around in her swivel chair, smiling, and said something in Farsi. I laughed. Not at the Farsi, at the spinning.

“Don’t you think the way Iran is behaving is kind of, I don’t know, bully-ish?” I had always wanted to ask an Iranian about that. Iran called itself an empire for a long time. They had an “Imperial family”, I always thought of the whole Islamic revolution thing as an Islamized version of that mentality. Her family are monarchists, by the way. I had always gotten the feeling that such Iranians were opposed to the way the Islamic Republic tried to influence other countries. Perhaps?

“Bully? What? Israel is the bully!” She began to put her hair up in a pony tail. Appearently not.

“Imperialistic, then? Maybe?” I asked.

“Iran is a republic not an empire Nouri. Who do they want to take over? All they want is to be respected.” She was leaning back. I wiped my hand on my head, it was hot and I had been kind of sweating up there.

“I think it kind of acts like it wants to be an empire though, you know?” I was worried about saying that.

I say rude things to other Arabs about their governments, or countries I should say, all the time. I tell Moroccans and Jordanians I think that their kings are backward. I told a Moroccan lady that made falafels in New York that I thought King Hassan was an imperialist. She didn’t care. “I think he was a dick too. $2.50″. When I was in Saudi Arabia I had a conversation with a guy who told he hated life in KSA. “There’s nothing to do and we can’t even flirt in school”, we pretty much agreed the country kind of sucked. I am comfortable talking to Arabs about Arab governments; I don’t think anybody honestly believes that “our” [Arab] systems are really all that great. I’m not familiar with Iranians, or “Persians” as some here call themselves. I read Iranian newspapers and websites that seem absolute. Monarchists that don’t believe the royal family had anything wrong with it. Nationalistic young people that blame Arabs for anything wrong with the country. They seem touchy. Even arrogant.

I’ve only met and talked to a few Iranians. Never about politics. I date a half Iranian girl. I’ve met her father only a few times. He’s nice, but when you’re dating a girl and you’re in a situation where her father can decide whether or not she can see you, you don’t talk about politics (or other divisive issues).

I was worried about going to these peoples’ house because I didn’t know what kind of food Iranians ate or made and I had heard that they didn’t like Arabs. That sounds stupid, especially since these were family friends, but I had no idea what to expect.

“Iran is an empire, and always has been”, she said to me. “If it doesn’t do what it was made to, it will have another revolution, that could be good though!” She said with a laugh.

“So doesn’t that mean it shouldn’t help Hezb Allah?” I was confused. “If they don’t help Hezb Allah they’ll have a revolution!” I was kidding her.

“No, it needs to get Israel out of the way to grow, not destroy it, just make it weaker,” I still didn’t get how any of this power politiking was not imperial.

“Wait, so it is imperialist, right?” I asked.

“Yes, kind of, sort of…”

“And that’s not so much a bad thing?”

“Not really. Only if it, like, you know, makes America or Israel or somebody want to nuke them. They need Hezb Allah to keep Israel off their back.” She was dead serious. She had the most sincere expression on her face I had ever seen.

“What about Lebanon?!” I was lost. Why does it have to use Lebanon for this? Countries are so much better when they don’t have rockets falling all over the place. It’s just a better way to be.

“They can take it, it will only last a little while, the Israelis will get tired. Nouri, you like Lebanon a lot, huh?” She thought it was stupid to care so much about so little a country.

“I do, it’s the biggest party in the Middle East!” I don’t know if she got my point, that the Lebanese were as free as any Arabs would be, probably for most of my lifetime. If the Israeli offensive keeps going on, that will be gone. That liberty will get swallowed up in violence. My relatives still had yet to come back from Tyre at that point.

“I don’t like the mullahs but I think it is Iran’s interest to be a big player in the Middle East, what’s wrong with that?” she said. “Iran is friendly to Arabs too, like Syria, and Algeria you know, right? And the Palestinians. They are all Muslims. They [Iran] just have to free themselves. Iran used to be a superpower,” again, very sincere. I’ve only heard a few people tell me, “they/we’re all Muslims” and mean it while wearing shortshorts and eyeliner. Actually, maybe it was just her. I don’t even think she meant it. She told me earlier that she had met the son of the former shah and thought he’d be a great leader. She thinks the hijab is “for old people”. I think she was more of a pinko than a waver of the black flag.

Her mother called us for dinner.

Her family was probably the second most secular Muslim family I have ever encountered. They are the only family that I have met that hung a portrait of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in their front room.

I didn’t get to tell her why I thought that Iran becoming a “superpower” today (at least by the means that it is currently using) is a terrible sight on the horizon though. It will lead to conflict. Massive conflict, like what’s happening on the Lebanese-Israeli border, like what’s happening in Iraq, but on a much wider scale. As the Islamic Republic rises, so too will Shia self-assertion, powered by Iran, and therefore sectarian division and violence. States and communities will reposition to accomodate this. The Islamic Republic might buy off weaker states in the region, as other powers have, but now under increasingly repressive conditions, worse than those endured today. Iran will need to dislocate already established regional powers, like Israel, KSA, and possibly Egypt, and will ultimately clash with the United States in a way that it never has before. Henry Kissinger, that famed realist and “war criminal“, put it well in the Washington Post. When Iran focuses itself on altering the geopolitical map of the Middle East in the favor of the Islamic Revolution, and

If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.

Kissinger envisions an alternative scenario (which I think is sort of frazlepazle at this point), where

At the same time, an Iran concentrating on the development of the talents of its people and the resources of its country should have nothing to fear from the United States. Hard as it is to imagine that Iran, under its present president, will participate in an effort that would require it to abandon its terrorist activities or its support for such instruments as Hezbollah, the recognition of this fact should emerge from the process of negotiation rather than being the basis for a refusal to negotiate. Such an approach would imply the redefinition of the objective of regime change, providing an opportunity for a genuine change in direction by Iran, whoever is in power.

(This position is expressed by an Iranian woman in a recent piece in Time. Rejecting a government encouraged boycott of “Zionist” products, Parvin Heydari says that “Lebanon has nothing to do with us,” she says. “We should mind our own business and concentrate on policies that are good for our economy, and our kids.” I am inclined to agree.)

I think the rise of an imperial Islamic Republic is inevitable. I am a Shia, but I am not stupid. The Maghreb is rather safe for Shias, because there are few and few the farther west you go. But the Middle East should be expecting a diplomatic and sectarian revolution, in which Iran is the central actor, and an actor with impunity. Shia communal leaders are notoriously power hungry and eager to grab power (as are most others in the region); a little bit of power offered by Iran may be irresistable, especially to those with little experience in an Iranian influenced system. Some in Lebanon have consistently resisted Iranian revolutionary overtures, but most have sucumbed to it. This isn’t to say that the Shias are a fifth column, but I will say that the weakest link witin the Shia mass (which is not uniform) is its leadership and the group think that comes along with Middle Eastern communal politics. It’s not the mass that’s the problem, it’s those at the top. Sunnis need to reach out to Shia leaders where they can. The sectarian violence in Iraq does not help the situation at all, and cheering on jihadis that attack Shia shrines or communities only makes it worse. Anti-Shiism is on the rise, and this can only make Iran stronger.

The sentiments among Shia political leaders in an Iranian dominated Middle East might look something like those of a Hezb Allah village leader in the Gaurdian recently.

For Ali and his comrades, the latest conflict is a war of survival not only for Hizbullah but for the whole Shia community. It is not only as a war with Israel, their enemy for decades, but also with the Sunni community. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have all expressed fears of Iranian domination over the Middle East.

“If Israel comes out victorious from this conflict, this will be a victory for the Sunnis and they will take the Shia community back in history dozens of years to the time when we were only allowed to work as garbage collectors in this country. The Shia will all die before letting this happen again.”

And even when the battle with the Israelis is over, he adds menacingly, Hizbullah will have other battles to fight. “The real battle is after the end of this war. We will have to settle score with the Lebanese politicians. We also have the best security and intelligence apparatus in this country, and we can reach any of those people who are speaking against us now. Let’s finish with the Israelis and then we will settle scores later.”

I have previously expressed concern over the manner in which Sunni Arab leaders, especially Hosni Mubark, have made divisive comments about Shia minorities, about their supposed loyalty to Iran before their own nations. This mentality is as old as the divide between Shia and Sunni, and it is especially harmful to the Arab position within the Middle East and to the advance of democracy there. This sort of rhetoric and posturing only makes Iran more appealing to largely oppressed and alienated Shia masses. When Mr. Mubarak said, back in April, that “Most of the Shiites are loyal to Iran, and not the countries they are living in,” he might as well have invited Iran to become the vangaurd of the Shias. Today the region has three, possibly four, major powers: Israel, Iran and the United States (with the possible fourth being Turkey). Not one of these is an Arab country. The Arab leaders cannot blame George Bush and his radical democratic adventure in Iraq for their impotence; they have made the decision to be the Sunni Arab world. Commentators talk of bringing Syria back into the “Sunni Arab fold”, as if this fold meant anything, or that Syria was ever a part of it (this is explained well here, and here). By wishing to establish order under total Sunni domination at the obvious expense of the Middle Eastern Shia population, these commentators gravely miss the point.

The point is that a new Arab order needs to be created, a free one, a non-sectarian one and one that is capable of managing the rise of Iran. The Arab world must make itself safe for minorities, it must give to Shias and other groups what it gives to its largest majorities. The Shias must gaurd themselves, especially in places like Iraq, but cannot afford to join what amounts to the external mafia of the Syria-Iran Axis. The solution must not be based on dreams of regional or world domination, and it must be universal, non-sectarian and non-aunthoritarian. It must be done, and it must start now.

This conundrum was created by the bigotry and incompitent diplomacy of the Arab states. Only the Arabs can ammend their irrelevance. This can only be done by way of the existing regimes. It will never happen if the Middle East becomes the Persian Palace of Mahmoud Ahamdinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei.

Earlier this year the Syrian poet Ahmad Ali Sa’id said that the Arabs are extinct. In a region in which Iran is the biggest dog, the Arabs will surely wither into fossils. The Lebanon conflict could be as significant for young Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians — not to mention the American role in the Middle East — as the Suez Crisis of 1956 was for their fathers and grandfathers in their time. This time though, it will not be European colonialists rendered useless. Instead it will be the whole Arab world, groveling at the feet of whoever happens to be the Supreme Leader, and fighting wars of proxy at his behest.

The current Arab system is not perfect. Nor is it even desireable. But if one weighs in on the status quo and the alternative, the status quo, in my view wins by far. I would rather live in Egypt, Lebanon or Syria over Iran. I would rather live in a region in which there is the possiblity for real social and market liberalization, supported by the world’s superpower, than in one where such state and popular actions must first be run by the Supreme Leader in Tehran, or where foreign policy must be conducted to please a regional tyranny with few redeeming qualities outside of its historical architecture and food [Iran] instead of a country whose political system is to be envied and may be copied elsewhere [Israel]. The current Arab system is like an ugly woman. The Arab system when Iran is the regional superpower will be like an ugly woman on methemphetamines. It is easier to help and ugly woman become beautiful than a drugged out ugly woman.

There are many bad things about the Arab world today; its dependence on the West, its inablity to do what it often feels it should regarding Israel (it is debatable as to whether or not this is really negative), its economic impotence, and so on. As of now though, there is somewhat of a distain among many regimes and populations for the fanatical and the extremely religious. No Arab government truly wants to become an Islamic Republic, not even Iran’s puppies in Syria (though there is talk of a Shiitization of Syria as it becomes closer to Iran, but not so much at the governmental level). But this tune might change if Iran were to become more powerful. And do not forget that the Iranian regime, as it becomes stronger and bolder in the region and the world, will not need or want to liberate its own people in such a Middle Eastern system.

A new Persian Empire does not mean that all will be well for Arab Shias, the death of Israel, equity among nations and the stabilization of the region. It will mean wars, wars, sectarian rivalries, wars, competition between minor and major powers, and finally even bigger wars. Arabs must unify against sectarian divisions, orient themselves towards a position that will allow them to utilize both the United States and Iran for their own development (as Algeria is presently doing to some extent) and, most importantly, make their long over due peace with Israel and stop supporting groups like Hezb Allah as they participate in the destruction of hope for Arab progress. Israel must hold itself back in its Lebanon offensive and identify its true enemies, Hezb Allah, Syria and Iran and deal with them accordingly. The Lebanese are not who they need to be “punishing”. The United States needs to use whatever leverage it has over Israel to stop it from ripping apart a nation that could be so much bigger than itself if given an honest chance. If Lebanon is destroyed, by Israel and Hezb Allah (Iran)’s war, and Iran moves foward on its path to regional domination, there will be no hope, no precident for the rest of the Arab world to liberalize and democratize. Iran needs to be rolled back, starting in Lebanon. But Lebanon needs to be rolled forward as well. Israel cannot stablize the region on its own, and the only way that this can be done is with at least three semi-liberal and semi-pacific nations on its borders. It has Jordan and Egypt currently, and would do much better with Lebanon added to that list. I don’t mean recognition, and I don’t mean settlements. I mean a solid border, absent of Hezb Allah.

Think what you will of Hezb Allah and the Israelis, but I do not think it can be denied that a Lebanon without Hezb Allah would be a Lebanon safe for the Lebanese democracy, and safe for Israel. Without Hezb Allah, Lebanon would no longer be a potential battle ground for Syria and Iran’s war on Israel. The Arab world and Israel both need Lebanon. Israel’s folly will strengthen Iran and Hezb Allah (if one pays attention to chatter on Arabic television or gathering places, this is clearly the trend on the Arab street, even in Algeria, there is some interesting insite into this topic here as well), to the Arabs’, Israel’s, the Iranian people’s and the West’s own detriment socially, politically, culturally and democracitcally speaking. Lebanon is the symbol of and home to all that is Arab liberalism. Egypt may have spawned Arab liberalism initially, but it made its home in Lebanon and it has the most hope of surviving there. If the Lebanon this past year goes the way of Qana, so too will the hopes of Arab liberals, and the hope for Arab democracy and regional paucity. No, Lebanon was not and is not perfect, but it is the best thing the Arab world has as far as liberty goes. If Hezb Allah wins, Iran wins and what I described above will begin to take shape. If Hezb Allah is totally wiped out, at the expense of Lebanon, I see a bleak future for stability, let alone peace in the Middle East. If Hezb Allah is disarmed and Lebanon left mainly in tact, with wise rehabilitation assistance from the international community, I see a comparatively bright future, though not sunny. Simply and generally put, save Lebanon, save the Middle East.

I was set loose upon the capitol at 9:00 AM, Wednesday morning. I had three appointments, each with representatives from the State of Connecticut: one with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and two other with Senators Joseph Lieberman and Chris Dodd. My first appointment was with Mrs. DeLauro, in the Rayburn office building at 10:30. I stood in front of the capitol building and looked at my map of the Hill. Rayburn was just north of where I was standing and so I proceeded intently in that direction. I was expecting a long and arduous walk down a long city street; it was at least 95 degrees that day, with high humidity. But somewhat to my surprise, it didn’t take long to get there at all, and I was a full hour or more early for my appointment. The Rayburn building is a massive and imposing structure made of marble, with gold occasionally alluding to the grandeur of its occupants. Regal gargoyles and classically styled statues adorn its face. A sprawling staircase gives way to six massive pillars that make the building look at home on the Hill. Office workers, members of Congress, journalists and security personnel buzzed in and out of its doors, each on their own mission. Since I was early, and I was afraid to appear suspicious going through security and then just waiting around in the lobby or wandering the halls aimlessly, I decided to take a seat on a stone bench on the building’s landing.

I was sitting next to a messy grey-haired, middle aged man with an overflowing brown briefcase next to him, talking quickly on his cell phone. His voice was deep, and sounded familiar, like a newscaster’s. He carried a generic American accent, and I could not tell where he was from. I had nothing better to do, and so while I bided my time I began to listen to his conversation while reading a copy of Reason. He said that he had been informed, during a stop over in Amman on his way back to the States from some unidentified Middle Eastern country, that Hezb Allah had kidnaped two Israeli soldiers. I began to listen more closely.

“Yeah, it’s apparently gotten really bad, the Israelis are starting to move into Lebanon…I’m probably not going to be heading to Beirut anytime soon,” I kept listening as he told the other side that “It’s getting to be a huge mess”. He had a meeting, he said, hung up his phone and went into the building quickly.

I thought to myself, He sounds authoritative, he’s going into a meeting, maybe he knows what’s going on. I didn’t initially believe it. Why would Hezb Allah do anything like that now, and it would have been all over the news if Israel had done anything I Lebanon, it sounds like a rumor. Maybe he misunderstood. A limousine let out a batch of sharply dressed, Middle Eastern-looking men. Several other people walked into the building quickly at the same time, a set of three black women, a half-dozen white men. All of them walked quickly, it was almost ten o’clock. They wanted to be on time. The men from the limousine spoke in upper-class Levantine Arabic, with scowls on their faces, and sweat escaping onto their faces from their bald heads. I didn’t hear anything especially notable, and I did, it was unintelligible (they were rather far away from me). I decided from their accents that they had to be Palestinians or Jordanians, maybe some of them were Lebanese. I watched them go in. It was 9:55.

I thought about the plans my relatives had made for the summer. The Grand Canyon. Timgad. Summer camp. Summer school. Tyre. I was worried. My great-uncle, and his sons and their children had gone to Lebanon. He was from there, he had not been to his home city of Tyre since 1977. It was the ideal time to go, or at least it was. His grandchildren had yet to travel to Lebanon, and the only Arabic they knew were religious phrases. They must be terrified, I thought. Shit. I felt sweat gathering on my neck and forehead. Almost 100 degrees, and I just had to wear a business suit. Dress code.

I was very worried at this point, and, having been rebuffed for comment by several suits on their way to their meetings, and lacking any resources in the area code but one, I opened up my cell phone to try to find somebody I thought might watch the news. I looked at my school mate’s numbers, knowing that most of them either would not be up this early or did not watch the news, I decided to call Leila, who had emailed me her phone number a few days earlier in case I “needed anything”. I didn’t exactly need anything, but I wanted to know if the story was true or not, so I would know whether or not I needed to call my parents when I got back to my dormitory. So I dialed her up. She answered, I said, Hello, Leila? as any semi-rude teenager would. “Yes, who is this?” Nouri. “Oh, hi! What’s up?” I asked her if she had heard anything about this. She had not. She kindly flipped through the television news chanlels for me but could not find anything about Hezb Allah or Israel.

I wondered whether or not I should just go into the building, not least because I was afraid of being late and because I didn’t want my shirt to be uncomfortably wet from the heat. I spied a security guard taking a smoking break. I decided to ask him if going in early was wise, his and answer was affirmative. It’s viewed as being polite because it allows them to be more flexible with their schedule if you come early and the person in question is in the office, and they might not have been when your appointment was supposed to take place. I always make sure that I am at least 20 minutes early for any engagement, be it a meeting, a date, a trip, an interview, whatever. I am very rarely late, and if I am, it is usually because of somebody else, or because something is wrong.

So I headed in through security, which was surprisingly quick and light. I even set off the metal detector, with no questions asked. When I got through to the other side, I was set off to do as I pleased, there was no information or guard’s desk from what I could see.

I was struck briefly by how high the ceilings were, how wide the stairwells were, how white the marble was. It was truly a sight to see. I went up a large staircase and looked for a directory. I found two or three before actually finding the correct one that would lead me to Congresswoman DeLauro’s office. I found it, and made my way to the bronze colored elevators down the hall. I stepped in with an attractive blonde woman, who appeared to be an intern. I accidentally made eye contact with her, and she began to bite her lip. I leaned against the opposite side of the elevator and looked at my watch, 10:03 AM. She asked me my name. I said Nouri. “That’s an interesting name,” she said. This elevator ride will not be over. Her name was Holly. I straightened out my tie. She kept looking at me, up and down in a flattering way. I looked at the numbers on top of the door, we were approaching the third floor, where I planned to get off. The bell rang, the doors opened and I walked out. She followed, and it seemed as if every female in the Rayburn building was under thirty, hot and wearing a miniskirt. I walked quickly around the corner and found my way to my appointment.
The doors were open, the room was red, photographs of and awards from New Haven were all around. A young white man wearing a white shirt and black tie, holding two phones at the same time struggled frantically to take down messages and phone numbers behind a large wood reception desk. Another across from him was empty. I gave him my name and he told me to take a seat and that an aide would be with me momentarily.

I sat down on a large black leather couch and began reading a copy of a magazine with a picture of Vladimir Putin on the cover. Russian democracy, gas prices. I grew bored, and tired and began to rest my eyes. Just then, another young many popped out from a door next to me, hair parted down the middle, and black glasses. He was Rosa DeLauro’s chief aide. We would wait to see if she was able to come in, and if not he would show me around the office and answer any questions that I might have.

She didn’t show, and so he showed me her office, explained some pictures, and explained what her congressional peer rating meant. DeLauro is more liberal than something like 87% of her peers, based on her voting record, he said. He could not identify the former mayor of New Haven, with whom she was pictured on the wall, which I don’t fault him for, he was from New Britain, some ways down the coast. We talked about high school activities, he was just out of college, and so it was fresh in his memory. I took a look at her voting record, and she seemed to have voted “No” on most things I would have voted “Yes”, especially economic and foreign policy matters. Socially, I think we agreed.

I asked him if he had watched the news, and if he could verify whether or not the Hezb Allah story was true. He turned on a little Panasonic television set in her eclectic office. Nothing. He hurried into another room to check the net. A few minutes later, he emerged from the copy room, with two news stories. “We will turn the clock back 20 years on Lebanon”, Ehud Olmert. The story was so new that the accompanying photograph was from 1983, noting Israel’s previous Lebanese conflict.

I found my way to Senator Lieberman’s office, on the other side of the Hill, later on after lunch with another kid from Connecticut. All the kids from our state had the same appointment. We waited with the other four Nutmeggers for about forty-five minutes to meet the Senator. One of the kids from the program who lives in Greenwich seemed to have gone to school with, or to have gone to the same school as every aide or receptionist in the office. He was Jewish, but didn’t practice, and he was the richest of all us in the group. His school is among the best in the state, he wasn’t particularly bright, and somewhat taciturn, but he wasn’t stupid. His school seemed to dominate the conversation in waiting.

When it finally came time for the picture – there was no conversation or Q and A– I was positioned next to the Senator, along with a busty Ukranian-Jewish-American girl from Trumbull. Before the photo-op the Senator asked each of us our names, where we were from, where we went to school, and shook our hands. He remembered me from a fundraiser my parents had once attended. As soon as the flash was through, the Senator ran off to official business. My friend from Trumbull remarked that she had been positioned next to her Congressman Chris Shays as well. Of course it was because she was female, cute, and “ethnic” looking, she said. I concurred.
We didn’t meet Chris Dodd, again we met with the chief aide in a sprawling blue walled office, with model sailing ships and golf clubs in glass cases. Dodd inherited the office from his father, whose portrait hung over the fireplace in his conference room. His aide named politicians and diplomats framed on the blue walls. He, like the previous Senator, was a Jew, though not a member of Connecticut’s old Jewish community. He was born in the State of Georgia, and his accent revealed as much. He looked like the Debate Team captain that I had admired my sophomore year, Scott, but he was himself. A southern Jew whose parents had moved to Connecticut when he began studying at Brandies University in Massachusetts. He decided to work for Senator Dodd because he didn’t agree with his own representatives very Republican and very conservative views, and because he had taken up residency in the Constitution State for two years. He was highly knowledgeable and was seeking to enter academia, teaching and writing about political science and Congress. He was nervous though, as we all noticed. “I think he was really nervous because he could tell we all really wanted to meet Dodd, and he obviously wasn’t Dodd,” the Trumbullite said afterwards. “I don’t know, were you disappointed? I was disappointed”, she said. I won’t lie, I was, but just a little bit.

During all the time that I was in Washington D.C., I didn’t have many negative experiences with Jewish youths, or adults. The only ones that I found myself in disagreement with were those on television or in the newspapers, making cries of “anti-Semitism” to oppose any sympathy for innocent people in the worsening conflict. The other participants in the program came from all over the country, and the world. I met a Palestinian from Honduras; an Irish goat farmer; a Colombian from Greenwich; numerous South Asians from what appeared to be every region and state in the Union. I was the lone Arab, Arab, that is identifying myself primarily as Arab-Berber-Middle Eastern-etc. There were a few other Muslims, all of whom were South Asian, and a sizable number of African-Americans and American Latinos. I met a Venezuelan that lives in Guatemala.
The girl from Trumbull was one of my favorite people I met. She was funny, and talkative. When we would sit together at lectures and I would begin to fall asleep, she’d wake me up so I wouldn’t get in trouble, and we exchanged cross country experiences, and discussed her desire to set up a debate team at her school. We knew the same areas of Connecticut, and had similar interests and experiences (she immigrated to the US from the Ukraine around the same time I entered American schools and was also semi-trilingual, knowing about as much Russian as I know Arabic, speaking Ukrainian as I do Chaoui and mostly speaking English outside the home). We visited monuments together, and decided which were “bad ass” and which were honorable, but lame. The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials fall into the former category; the World War II monument into the latter.
I stood on the very same square at the Lincoln memorial that Martin Luther King Jr. did when he gave his “I have a dream” speech. It was a tremendous view. At the Jefferson memorial, I watched the presidential helicopter whiz by. Americans probably have more statues dedicated to liberty or the defense of liberty per capita than anybody else in the world.
I did meet one character, whose real name I never quite learned, because by the time I was introduced to his personage he had already been given the nickname “Screech“, who seemed intent on offending me and every other religious minority in the program.

Screech was from Pennsylvania (“somewhere in the middle of nowhere” was how he described his town) and his voice was shrill, his body awkwardly thin, his nose cartoonishly large, and his manner exceedingly squirrel-like. At every lecture we attended, he managed to ask some irrelevant or pointless question, seemingly just for the sake of asking questions. By the second day, when he rose to ask questions at the end of presentations, other students would snicker, say “Yo, it’s Screech!” and other juvenile things that young audiences often do.

I first met him one-on-one in the lobby of our dormitory. He, and another student from New York (Long Island), of Sephardic Uzbek Jewish descent, were looking over that days New York Times, which featured the latest pictures of the conflict in Lebanon. They were arguing over who was to fault. The New Yorker argued that Israel’s response was unfair and unjust, and tried to explain to Screech that Hezb Allah did not represent Lebanon and was not the Lebanese Army. Screech disagreed, stating that since Hezb Allah was Lebanese, Israel had the right to “destroy all of Lebanon! They need to be crippled! It must defend itself!” I had never heard such rhetoric used in public, let alone in person. It was frightening, the way he went on and on so frantically. I butted in briefly to explain that Hezb Allah was not part of the Lebanese Army, and that Lebanon is not totally controlled by Hezb Allah. He didn’t believe me, and began shouting about the evils of Muslims. This I had heard before, he obviously did not know I was Muslim, and so I decided that I would end my participation in this discussion and go to the lounge to socialize and relax.

Later on, I would be told by my friend from Trumbull, who was in his “caucus group” that he was a “religious nut”, and that he had verbally attacked a few Hindu students. He told one that Gandhi had “gone to Hell”, and that he too would burn in Hell for worshiping “Demons”. She said he had told her that her Judaism would lead her to a terrible fate. I decided to keep my distance from him. But one evening after dinner, I had come down stairs late. I got my dinner and finished after most people had already moved on to their rooms or to doing naughty things that young people do in co-educational environments. The last of us in the mess hall were myself, a Guamian student, Screech, the New Yorker, his roommate, and the Hindu who was “going to Hell”. I overheard the New Yorker and his roommate arguing with Screech over the idea of violence and the nature of the Crusades. It was rather mature, save for Screech’s banter. I heard several sentences I would deem “historically mature”, but it soon became a shouting match. That’s not how debates are supposed to be carried out, I decided. So I took a seat at their table and observed.

Judging by his arguments, I decided he was Catholic. He argued that the Crusades and the Crusaders were totally just and noble. They were needed to stave off “heathens”. It made me want to start speaking just to say “infidels”. I listened. Then I entered. I told him that historically the Crusaders, no matter how “noble” their cause, had not lived up to the myth he seemed to believe in. They pillaged Orthodox villages and churches, looted, massacred, and were generally not a benevolent bunch. “Liar!” he called me. I named massacres for, fresh in my mind from an article I had read a week or so before. He’d have none of it. The Orthodox and the Catholic Church have always been brothers! Right. Have you been to an Orthodox church? I asked. He’d not. If you talk to many Orthodox priests or historians they will often tell you about the evils (their words not mine) of the Crusaders, especially if this is a Middle Eastern Orthodox Church (which were most afflicted by the Crusades).

The New Yorker said the Crusades were comparable to jihad, after Screech told us that the Crusades were intended to retake the Holy Land from heathens. His comparison made sense, especially since he noted Bin Laden’s demand that non-Muslims be removed from the hold land of Islam. Screech screeched, “There is nothing comparable between Islam and Christianity, nothing!” I rolled my eyes. He then turned to me, finger wagging, “Does Israel have a right to exist?”

I responded with “Why?” Not because I didn’t and wanted to skirt the issue, I really wanted to know what that had to do with anything. He knew I was Muslim by now, so in his eyes, I suppose, I had lost much of my credibility and if I answered in the negative I would lose it all. He told me “it’s important.” So I said yes and asked him if Palestinians had a right to a state. He said no. I sighed and leaned back in my chair. The religious discussion resumed.

I am not a religious man, but I do believe in the Abrahamic God, and I do believe that there is wisdom in the holy books of most religions, even in the Kitab-e-Aqdass. I’m not a fanatic, and I’m not a religious expert. I believe in the basics, I don’t read hadiths (I was raised not to), I’ve been to Christian services (Orthodox and Quaker) and of course to mosque. I’ve visited Jewish temples on holidays and Shabbat, and I listen when Mormons try to convert me. I try not to judge other people’s religion when I don’t know everything about it. It isn’t my place. But Screech did. He quoted the Qur’an (not directly, but through paraphrasing and saying, “My friend said…”), and when I asked if he’d read it (knowing that he was not quoting it, but rather a dubious hadith), he said “I have read portions of it”, obviously out of context, and not the whole thing. Even if I hadn’t read it myself, I’d have known he hadn’t, because he charged that I “don’t believe Jesus is a prophet”. I was thoroughly irritated at this point, because most people who take a high and mighty stance have read the books of those they criticize and condemn. He’d not read any of the Hindu scriptures, and knew only that the religion praised multiple deities. Yet he had decided that it was impossible for a Hindu to be a “just person”. I have read the Torah, the Talmud, the Christian Bible, the Qur’an, Kitab-e-Aqdass, the Upanishads, and several other eastern religious texts. Even still, I don’t call Hindus demon worshipers as Screech called Kal (the Hindu) and myself. He asked me why I did not believe that Jews were humans but animals, and I informed him that the opposite was true. He would have none of it, he slammed his fist on the table, knocking over his plastic water cup. Snickers all around, I contained mine. I usually have a straight face; I’m told I’m a “serious” looking person.

Even though this lunatic continued shouting and slamming, every other Christian present, along with several Hindus and even atheistic students debunked him. Soon my caucus leader, a history teacher from Tennessee entered the fold. He honestly resembled Al Gore, partly because of his accent and his appearance. He asked him “Who did Jesus say had the right to judge?” after a lengthy treatise on the Council of Nicaea and other theological subjects that Screech had mischaracterized or misunderstood. He stammered out briefly, “Well, well…” before the Leader informed him that “God and God’s word may judge”. Screech shouted that “I can call a spade a spade and a demon a demon!” Which are you? You are neither. “He worships a demon and he worships millions!” he exclaimed pointing first at me and then at Kal. By now I was laughing along with Kal, because the whole scene really was comical. I began to think, I’m going to hurt somebody’s feelings if I stay here much longer laughing and so I removed myself to go prep for that night’s lecture.

I had never expected to see a Southerner “bitch out”, as Kal put it, a Northerner on a religious topic, especially on grounds of tolerance and simple respect. Washington D.C. is a lot like New York, though it struck me as being more tolerant and a hell of a lot cleaner. New York is not a terrible city. It is extremely diverse and filled with excitement. The downside is, however, that each of these different groups seems to hate another as much as it loves New York, and you can tell. Spend a week or two around Bangladeshis, Koreans, Chinese or Arabs in a black neighborhood in the Bronx, Brookline or Queens. D.C. has a much different feel to it. After my program was up, I stayed in a mostly Salvadorian and Ethiopian neighborhood, and there was not the kind of rudeness or hostility between these groups and blacks or even whites (I’ve noticed that in mostly or previously mostly black areas, white people and immigrants tend to become targets of bigotry or harassment). People were amiable and generally got along and minded their own business. What they said in their homes is a different matter, but things were very relaxed where I was. I doubt D.C. is perfect, but I think that it’s a lot different than most US cities. Most people don’t seem to have been born there, and those who are don’t seem to mind those who aren’t. Whenever I’ve been around Americans from across the country brought together they tend along and those who are divisive unnecessarily usually get put in their place. I met girls that wore rings that meant they were abstinent until marriage who were made to room with girls from Long Island that, in their own words, “Couldn’t get enough man”, and got along well, save for normal interpersonal/catty matters. Left to its own devises, I think most of America that I’ve seen would be a very odd place. Without transplants and immigrants, Americans would be hopelessly provincial. The more Americans from different places you get together, I think the better they balance out and the prettier the national face is. I like Americans.

77% Mauritanians turned out for the referendum, with 97% of them voting “yes” to the Constitution. According to Al Jazeera, Colonel Vall, the main ring leader of last summer’s coup that deposed former president Ouled Taya, has also proposed the prohibition of coup members from running in the upcoming presidential elections.

Congrats to the Mauritanians.

This is great news. It is nice to know that while the Algerian government is preparing to abuse its powers, by effectively making Bouteflika’s term in office perpetual, another Maghrebi country is moving taking steps to entrench the democratic process and the separation of powers in their country.

The leader of the FLN (and current Prime Minister) has expressed a desire to amend the Algerian Constitution to make it such that presidents may be elected as many times as the people wish, contrary to the current system in which one man may be elected twice to the presidency. Now, the president, the PM (and former PM Ouyahia), the FLN and NRD and their supporters want to:

* No limit to presidential mandates – the president will be able to be reelected indefinitely, rather than, as now, being limited to two terms. But he insists that “this isn’t a president-for-life”.

* A post of vice-president – named by the President.

* Prime minister to replace post of head of government – prime minister to be designated by the President.

* Various promises about the right to demonstrate, equality of chances, freedom of religion, etc. (via Lameen, linked above)

The first point is interesting, the promise that this proposal will not lead Algeria back down the path of a one party state. Why? Because it is coming from the mouth of the leader of the party that was once The Party, in Algeria in the 1984 sense of the phrase, told El Watan that (using Lameen’s translation), “the former single party wants to reinstall a long-overturned political system”! What is that long-overturned system? The one where the executive trumps all and the ruling party sits in the Presidential Palace for as long as it sees fit. The good old days!

This initiative has gotten support, as alluded to earlier, from some heavy hitters. Former PM Ouyahia told El Watan that he supports the initiative because the president does. How ever patriotic! President Bouteflika will announce that he supports this retrograde proposal on, of all days of the year, July 5, Algerian independence day. Too bad Revolution Day was not an option. Again, how ever patriotic.

Given Bouteflika’s record with referendums, it would be conventional to estimate that this one will get anywhere from 70-90-odd% of the voters’ approval. But perhaps Algerians will be attuned to this travesty, and will vote it down. Maybe Algerians will say Enough is enough Boutef, stop sucking up all the power you can! Stop trying to be Boumedienne and die in office! Maybe they will be like the Mauritanians. Maybe they will be bold and strike this horrible idea down. Maybe.

Rubin, a renowned scholar of Middle Eastern politics, has delivered to his readers a masterful account of the political culture in the Arab world.”Arab liberals,” following Rubin’s definition, are people who support “multiparty parliamentary democracy, human rights, women’s rights, a more tolerant interpretation of Islam, rapprochement with the West, and peace with Israel.” Rubin’s book uses the words of such individuals themselves to make the case that an uphill struggle against tyranny is being waged amongst Arab intellectuals and liberal politicians on the one hand, and the Arab regimes on the other, and that only the Arabs themselves can defeat the forces of stagnation and backwardness.

Rubin begins with a typical introduction; establishing purpose, and scope, and defining terms. He then traces the history of Arab liberalism from the middle to late-nineteenth century, when Arab intellectuals praised Western models of development, based mainly on French examples, to the 1950s when a backlash of militant, and often xenophobic, nationalism swept the region. It was at this point in time, Rubin tells his readers, that the closed and violent political culture of the most recent generations was born.

The Long War for Freedom illuminates for the Western audience the Arab tradition of liberalism, beginning with the French invasion of Egypt in 1799 and the rise of Muhammad Ali in the same land of the pyramids in 1805 up through the modern era. Rubin terms the 1920s and 1930s “the liberal age of Arab politics,” as the liberal Egyptian nationalist Wafd Party came to power, promulgating a liberal constitution, and “a number of great Arab intellectuals advocated major reforms through writing and participation in public life.” Qassem Amin, an Egyptian thinker authored The Emancipation of Women which told readers that the way to save Egypt and Islam was through making women “front line warriors in the war against ignorance,” few Arab thinkers in later years would dare make such an argument. Another Egyptian, Salama Moussa, authored in 1927 Freedom of Thought, which was a sort of set of profiles in courage of Arabs who had fought against ignorance and tyranny. This generation of Arab thinkers, in Rubin’s words, “declared themselves rationalists, patriots of their own countries rather than pan-Arab nationalists, part of a Mediterranean people whose history was rooted in all those who had lived on that soil and not just the Arabs or Muslims among them.” At this stage, Rubin’s main fault is not widening his scope to include other liberal movements in the Arab world during this period. The Lebanese political tradition, for example, with all its blemishes, leaves the people of Lebanon with perhaps the most fundamentally liberal inheritance of all the Arabs. It would do Rubin well to present the development of the Lebanese state, and its fragmentation; this would most clearly show the scope of Arab liberalism during the epoch in question, and the fate of liberalism in the Arab world more dynamically.

Rubin then takes the reader through the rise of pan-Arab nationalism. The blemishes of the liberal age provided fertile ground for demagogues and militants. The political life of the Arab world was undeniably dominated by the few and the foreign. As a result, the liberal (and often quasi-libertarian) modes of thought promoted by the Arab bourgeoisie became associated with foreign occupation, failure and by mid-century “would be as discredited in the Arab world as any political philosophy could be.” New ideologies, influenced heavily by European linguistic and ethnic nationalism, Marxism and fascism, came to dominate the lands of the Arabs. Arabs were told to place their loyalty in the Arab nation, not a fabricated Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi or Sudanese one. There was a vanguard awaiting them, sometime in the near future, who would unite them; in the mean time, it was the duty of the Arabs to fight any enemies that would impede upon this, both internally and externally. “A complex worldview and system,” as Rubin describes liberalism, with its emphasis on the individual and independent decision making, “had to compete against extremists wielding slogans offering fast, total solutions and who were ready to use violence.” Those who disagreed were disposed of as the nationalists were “quick to resort to violence and suppression of anyone who disagreed, labeling them as spies, traitors, and infidels.” And thus was born the modern Arab political culture; closed, intolerant, radical, and authoritarian, if not totalitarian.

This was triggered, as Rubin states, by the failure of the Arab states to smite the newly formed Jewish statelet that would become Israel in 1948. Like Russia and Germany before their respective communist and fascist revolutions, the Arabs had suffered a great calamity and sought retribution in political movements that made claims to “truth” with a capital “T”. Rubin goes on to describe the way in which the nationalists consolidated power in the Arab world; through coopting, locking up, and killing the opposition. As the nationalists’ policies failed through the 1960s and 1970s, they placed the blame on external factors; Israel, Zionism, the Mossad, the CIA, the United States, Britain, and less radical Arab regimes. This Rubin writes, is one of the great tragedies in the Arab world; the inability of its leadership to admit to and carefully and thoroughly examine its own failures. The Arabs have done nothing wrong, this line of thinking goes, their efforts have merely been subverted by the Jews, Zionists and colonialists. Arab liberals, now living in exile, in Europe and the United States have called the Arabs on their societal flaws and political blunders, only to be blocked by state censorship authorities or jamming signals. Those liberals who wished to stay in their native lands, like the famed Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, “remained self-consciously apolitical.” Those for whom the repression was too great to endure, followed the path of Abd al-Rahman Badawi, hopping back and forth between European universities and Middle Eastern ones, often finding that it was more wise to bide their time in Paris than Benghazi or Beirut.

Liberal political parties fared no better than dissident intellectuals. Rubin relates the story of the Egyptian Farag Fouda, who “wanted to re-create the pre-Nasser liberal movement” through the Wafd Party. But when Fouda joined the Party in 1978, “he saw, to his horror, the party’s leadership ally with the Muslim Brotherhood for the 1984 elections.” The contradictions that the Egyptian dictatorship had created had forced political movements that were mutually contradictory and hostile to one another to come together to exploit the little bit of freedom that was left in the country. How could a committed liberal join with the “thinkers of darkness” that made up the radical Islamist and authoritarian Muslim Brotherhood? Fouda attempted to form his own al-Mustaqbal party, but to no avail. “The Islamists’ numbers and their boldness were rising in Egypt,” Rubin writes, and few Egyptians had time to listen to lonely Farag Fouda and his “reactionary” platform.

Fouda and other liberals would be more effective through the use of the pen than the ballot however. Fouda wrote numerous articles criticizing the Islamists, making him a target of their rage. “Why, he asked, should the Arab model for social and political success be the seventh-century rule of Islam’s first four caliphs? After all, that was a time of incredible strife, three of those leaders were murdered as a result of conflicts, and the whole system fell apart within twenty-nine years.” Fouda’s debate with Islamist forces were ended abruptly, when he was gunned down with an AK-47. Liberals as bold as Fouda are present throughout The Long War for Freedom.

Rubin’s argument that the troubles facing the Arab world are largely self-inflicted is supported by his artful illustration of the way that Arab governments silence dissent and expert economic advice in order to maintain their grip on political power, and the promotion of female subjugation and the rejection of Western style rational education by Islamists. Rubin discusses the political viewpoint of the Tunisian al-Afif al-Akhdar (also spelled Lafif Lakhdar), that the Arabs suffer from a grave inferiority complex, “a sense of failure, self-hatred,” and humiliation that “can be purged only by blood, vengeance, and fire.” At the same time, Rubin quotes Lakhdar as saying, the Arabs hold a self image that is so grand it leads them to have “a sense of superiority at believing they are designated by God to lead humanity.” This leads them to reject the advice of non-Arabs and Arabs who have adopted “foreign” ideas, and causes leaders to regard their people with contempt and condescension (this sentiment is called el-hegreh or al-hogra in Algeria, for example). “By rejecting the West in general . . . Arab politics lost the chance to adapt such positive Western innovations as pragmatism in setting goals, strategy, and tactics; analyzing the balance of power in a detached manner; managing crises through negotiated compromises; and building a rational decision-making process.”

Far out numbered by Islamist organizations and sympathizers, Arab liberals face incredible odds. Rubin’s conclusion, that the Arabs must realize their faults and shortcomings, while coming up with solutions to the “thousand and one difficulties” facing the region, is not likely to please ideologues from the nationalist or Islamist camps. The Long War for Freedom answers the oft asked questions of “Why don’t Arabs and Muslims speak out against terrorism and aggression?” or “Where are the Arab Democrats?” by providing an abundance of clear and unequivocal examples, and presenting the arguments of Arab liberals in their own words. Prospects are bleak, but campaigners are committed and bold. Rubin’s book offers little hope as to the growth of liberal movements; that isn’t its point. It rather presents profiles in courage of brave Arabs who are working to put back in place the simplest foundations for democratization and liberalization in the Arab world. Rubin’s book is a must read for those concerned with or interested in Middle Eastern politics or history.