Archives: Articles

By Rene Wadlow

The first foreign visit of the new French President Emmanuel Macron, after a now habitual trip to Berlin, was to Gao in northern Mali as head of the French military. The visit was an attempt to be seen as paying attention to the efforts of French troops in operations in northern Mali and other states of the Sahel region of Africa.

In March 2012, the West African state of Mali was effectively divided into two roughly equal halves, each about the size of France. The northern half was under the control of two rival Touareg groups with additional non-Toureg fighters coming from other Sahel countries and northern Nigeria. The larger Toureg faction was the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). It was larger than its rivals but less well armed. Its main aim was to create an independent state, to be called Azawad, the name for the area in the Toureg language. The leaders of the MNLA quickly declared the political independence of the area.

One Touareg rival was the Ansar Dine “defenders of the faith” which said it wanted to apply Islamic law to all of Mali. In addition to Ansar Dine, there were at least two other Islamist groups, largely composed of non-Malians: Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (known by its initials in French, AQMI) and Mujao (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa). The complicated tribal politics of northern Mali and neighboring Sahel areas of southern Algeria, Chad, Niger, and Mauritania has made unity of action difficult.

On January 10, 2013, with outsized ambitions and poor calculations of international reactions, the Ansar Dine and some related allies decided to move toward Bamako, the capital of Mali. The Malian government cried for help. The French government, which has troops and war planes in neighboring states – all former French colonies – responded on January 11 of 2013 with planes destroying armed trucks, thus stopping the advance of the Islamists. French ground troops were flown to Bamako as a fighting, not only a training, force.

The well-trained and equipped French troops moved quickly to take over the cities and larger towns of northern Mali and much of the countryside. The Islamist groups had no desire to fight the more numerous French troops, to which were added Malian forces and small groups of soldiers from other West African countries. Thus, Islamist forces largely melted into the civilian population. Some of the Islamists who were better armed moved north into mountainous areas to live in caves and secluded regions.

The Islamists have integrated a northern Sahel area in which there is an active trade in drugs coming from Latin America. Since cargo and persons coming from Latin America directly to Europe are suspected by officials of being involved in the drug trade, an African stopover has become standard. Planes land in little used airports in Mali or other Sahel areas. The drug cargo is taken by road to ports and then shipped to Europe. Along the way, Malian civil administrators and military are paid to look the other way as the drugs go by. Since salaries are low and often paid late, not much additional pressure is needed to move the drugs. Along with drugs, there is an active trade in arms and in transporting people hoping to go to Europe to find work.

Looking to the north from Gao and Timbuktu to counter the drug and arms trade has left events to the south in Mali largely unnoticed, though trends there may have even more destabilizing consequences. Due in part to the consequences of drought over the last five years, there has been a push south of the Peuls. (Peul is the single person, Fulani is the correct plural, but putting an s on Peul has become common usage). The Peul, probably some 30 million strong are originally from the Sahel zone cutting across parts of Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and northern Nigeria. Due in part to the 1972-1983 drought, the Peuls started moving south into southern Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, all the way south to the Central African Republic. Since the Peuls are cattle herders, there have always been conflicts with settled farmers as to when the cattle could come into fields after harvest, the use of water, and so on. In areas where there has been long co-existence, rules have been worked out and dispute settlement mechanisms put into place. With the prolonged drought and new areas of occupation, the old rules and dispute-settlement mechanisms have not been able to cope. This is one of the factors in the armed conflict in Darfur, Sudan, although the Peuls are not directly there.

There seems to be an increasing Islamist current among the Peuls, creating insecurity and tensions both among the Peuls and between the Peuls and other ethnic groups. It is difficult to know from outside what is the place of ideological tensions and what are due to socio-economic tensions and how the two may overlap. Emmanuel Macron’s flash visit to northern Mali – more of a public relations effort than anything – may usefully draw attention to an ever-widening troubled area.

Rene Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

25 May 2017

By Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC)

Hassan Rouhani’s landslide victory in the Iranian presidential election on Friday, 17 May heralds a continuation on the country’s path towards global re-engagement, both on a popular level and in terms of economic and political cooperation. However, the intense campaign that preceded the election points to increasing tension between state institutions such as the presidency, and parallel institutions, including the Revolutionary Guard and parts of the clerical establishment, especially since presidents have previously frequently become more confrontational towards such institutions at the end of their tenures, as evidenced by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fallout with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2011.

With a turnout of nearly seventy-five per cent, Rouhani’s victory, by a margin of twenty per cent over his nearest competitor, principalist cleric Sayyed Ibrahim Raisi, suggests an evolutionary shift within the calculus of Iranians. Although many citizens had previously abstained from voting as it had been seen as endorsing the system, Iranians, in particular those from younger and urban backgrounds, are increasingly turning to the electoral process to shape the country’s politics. Further, most citizens prefer non-violent, incremental changes to Iran’s governance structures. Trita Parsi observes that in most Iranian elections the system outsider has had the most appeal – Khatami in 1997 and Ahmadinejad in 2005 are examples – because Iranian citizens see elections as the only means of altering the country’s political trajectory. Significantly, Khamenei tacitly supported Raisi, especially in the weeks preceding the poll through criticisms of the nuclear deal and of Rouhani’s ‘unwillingness’ and ‘inability’ to implement a ‘resistance economy’. He also publicly confronted the administration over its acceptance of a UNESCO-developed education curriculum, which some saw as undermining gender roles, although the programme had been endorsed, with little opposition, in 2015.

Rouhani’s victory also benefited from the successful conclusion of the nuclear deal in 2015 – despite the less-than-expected foreign investment that followed – and the growth of Iran’s economy by over 10 per cent in 2016, which caused the riyal to appreciate. Fears over a curb in social freedoms if a principalist candidate were to win also influenced the poll, especially since candidates such as Raisi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf had repressed dissent in the past.

Campaigning had been vigorous, and the candidates – especially Rouhani – crossed many ‘red lines’. The president blamed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for stunting the gains of the nuclear deal; the judiciary for its limits on freedoms; and the public news broadcaster for backing Raisi. He also offended the clergy by demanding that the largest Islamic charity organisation, Astan Quds Razavi, headed by Raisi, be subjected to tax compliance. He further accused the IRGC of crowding out private business. Raisi and Ghalibaf conversely pointed out the nuclear deal’s failings, corruption and recent increases in unemployment during Rouhani’s incumbency. This is typical of Iranian politics, where intense competition for positions increases openness, accountability and criticism, especially in electoral years. The system thus provides room for and tolerates a diversity of opinions, despite vigorous vetting of candidates.

Although most power in Iran remains vested in the Supreme Leader, the president is able to shape most domestic and economic policies through his ability to appoint staff to key institutions, and because of the power he wields in formulating these. Further, in most instances the Supreme Leader prefers to maintain an image of political insulation, and usually contours his political pronouncements in line with popular sentiment, opting to work through informal institutions to realise his preferences. Rouhani’s victory will require him to continue his attempts of increased cooperation globally. This is despite the fact that Khamenei has become disenchanted with this stance, fearing potential reforms, and will act to inhibit it. Further, although many of Rouhani’s criticisms of the IRGC, judiciary and clerical establishment in the regime were politicking, these direct and sharp criticisms and the tendency of Iranian presidents to seek to empower their office in the second term will escalate confrontation between these competing centres of power. This will especially be the case as Rouhani considers his legacy, which is important for Rouhani since seventy-eight-year-old Khamenei reportedly suffers from cancer, and it is reliably believed that Rouhani (and Raisi), wish to succeed him. Therefore, Rouhani tacitly criticised the IRGC and the judiciary in his victory speech, acknowledged his support for the popular reformist cleric and former president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), and promised to negotiate directly with the Trump administration for the removal of non-nuclear sanctions.

At a regional level, Rouhani’s victory will not drastically alter the Syrian and Yemeni conflicts, although the administration seems to prefer political solutions to both. Khamenei and the IRGC largely control foreign policy, particularly in this arena. The Iranian-Saudi cold war will likely endure, especially since the Saudi monarchy continues to replenish its military capacity, and because the Trump administration’s pronouncements have emboldened hawks on both sides. Rouhani’s victory will, however, guarantee the maintenance of the nuclear deal, and intensify the administration’s attempts to increase its economic benefits. This will be challenging, especially since the USA is unlikely to remove its ‘non-nuclear’ sanctions component, which has so far complicated efforts to invest in the country and caused its economy to remain sluggish. Rouhani will need to consider domestic measures, such as enhancing productivity and cracking down on corruption, to stimulate economic growth.

Despite Rouhani’s massive victory, he will face constraints both from Iran’s complex governance structure and regional ructions. Significantly, Raisi’s populist rhetoric, including pledges to increase subsidies and create jobs, attracted over 15 million votes (thirty-eight per cent). If Rouhani fails to fulfil his campaign promises, we will see a rise in opposition numbers, opening the doors to a principalist resurgence.

26 May 2017

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

Iranians just overwhelmingly voted to keep President Hassan Rouhani in power after a fiercely competitive and divisive election campaign. But while the president’s re-election was hailed by moderates as a rejection of isolation and populism, it is only the beginning of a much larger battle for the centrist leader ― one that will require Rouhani to make good on past promises while finding a way to compromise with those whom he now needs on his side.

Iran’s presidential election took place at a time when the country is witnessing its most sensitive political period since its 1979 revolution. There is unprecedented regional turmoil and a newly elected American president who, on his first overseas trip, openly advocated for overt confrontation with the Islamic republic. It is amidst such a backdrop that Rouhani’s resounding victory promises to be especially significant for the country as it defines its future ― and as the global community decides how to react to that future.

Rouhani beat out the other remaining candidates, some from the moderate camp and some from the principlist, or conservative, camp. His main rival, Ebrahim Raisi, took the second largest voting percentage at 38.5 percent. In Raisi was the potential for a more conservative Iran. This potential has, for now, been quelled.

“Rouhani faces a nation disillusioned in part by his promises of economic stability from the nuclear deal.

The Iranian electorate has spoken in its decision between two stark alternatives: strengthening civil society and engaging with the world, or turning inward with economic populism and combative foreign policy. In decisively voting for Rouhani, Iranians have endorsed diplomacy and moderation. And they have done so in direct contrast to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has called for increasing tensions with Iran and championed isolationist foreign policy.

The real test now is what comes next. The near-record voter turnout of over 40 million people, coupled with Rouhani’s strong electoral performance, is a move in the right direction. But the president also faces a divided nation disillusioned in part by the promises of increased domestic civil rights and economic stability from the nuclear deal that Rouhani ran on ― and that have yet to be fully realized. If Rouhani wants to be successful in his second term as president, he’s going to need to follow through on those promises, win over the loyalty of moderate principlists ― including those who tended to favor Raisi ― and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and convince them and foreign powers why the world must engage positively with Iran. But his past looms as he looks ahead.

How Rouhani Became Vulnerable

As president, Rouhani has political sway, but it is Ayatollah Khamenei who makes the top decisions and the moderate principlists, conservatives who are open to working with Rouhani but don’t necessarily support him, who serve as an influential power center in the country. Both have strongly criticized broader negotiations with the United States after the nuclear deal. Thus much of Rouhani’s ability to mandate reform this time around will be determined in part by how much credibility he’s able to regain within these domestic circles and by his willingness to appease key leaders.

During the nuclear negotiations, Rouhani had Ayatollah Khamenei’s blessing and a mostly united nation behind him. He reinforced this support by successfully bringing the country back from the brink of economic collapse, implementing policies that took Iran from a recession to an estimated 7 percent annual economic growth, reduced the inflation rate from 40 percent to single digits, rebounded oil exports to pre-sanctions levels and attracted roughly $12 billion in foreign investment.

But over the course of his first term, Rouhani gradually faced a more polarized public. And support from the supreme leader subsided as well as the eventual nuclear deal failed to produce expected dividends. This endorsement must be regained if Rouhani’s policy preferences are to sustainably implemented.

“Khamenei’s endorsement must be regained if Rouhani’s policy preferences are to be implemented.

In fact, Rouhani’s failure to produce on the nuclear deal proved to be a dark cloud over his other achievements ― the biggest challenge to his re-election bid was the state of the country’s economy nearly two years after those negotiations. Iranians are disappointed with the slow results of the landmark agreement made with the U.S. and other world powers. Rouhani’s signature foreign policy achievement ― the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA ― for many Iranians seems to have been oversold, largely due to the short span between the deal’s implementation and this election and U.S.-induced obstacles to proper sanctions relief.

Opponents of Rouhani capitalized on the president’s difficulty in delivering the fruits of the nuclear deal. They largely mocked his foreign policy strategy of diplomatic engagement with global powers, including direct high-level talks with the United States, labeling it as weak and lambasting him for catering to Western powers. Raisi, the judge who became Rouhani’s biggest rival in the election, accused Rouhani of pursuing “begging diplomacy.” And leading up to the vote, senior Iranian cleric Kazem Seddiqi was known to have accused the politically moderate camp of “being cowardly” when working with foreign, particularly Western, leaders.

Rouhani’s landslide victory represents a public rebuke to these criticisms, but the president will nonetheless have to continue striking a balance between pragmatic foreign policy and preservation of Iran’s rights and dignity. It is a nuance Rouhani didn’t shy away from in his victory speech, when he said that he wanted to engage with the world on the “basis of mutual respect and [Iran’s] national interests” but would not settle for “threats and humiliation.”

“Rouhani must strike a balance between pragmatic foreign policy and preservation of Iran’s rights and dignity.

One of the key ways this balance will be tested is in the way he chooses to approach Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia. The president’s willingness to mend tension with the kingdom under certain circumstances is a controversial view that ensued much debate during the campaign and similarly earned him the scorn of his principlist rival. Raisi reportedly claimed, during a presidential debate, that Saudi Arabia acts only in line with American strategic preferences, and characterized the Saudi government as a “cancerous tumor” in the region that seeks to sow division in the Islamic world. His comments stood out because they marked the first time in Iranian politics the “cancerous tumor” label, usually reserved for Israel, had been applied to Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Rouhani has denounced a 2016 attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and exercised inclusive and conciliatory rhetoric in domestic issues, especially in relation to Iranian minorities. And it seemed to work in his favor this election. For the first time, Iran’s Sunni minority coalesced around one candidate, with Iran’s Sunni spiritual leader Molavi Abdul Hamid endorsing Rouhani. This should be interpreted as a positive message by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states and inform their policies towards Iran.

A Challenging Path Forward: Trump And Saudi

What happens next remains to be seen, but if the Arab Islamic American Summit in Saudi Arabia with Donald Trump is any indication, Rouhani has many foreign policy challenges ahead. In fact, while Iranians went to the polls, those very Sunni Arab states who could have looked to Rouhani’s openness for diplomacy in a positive light, reacted with clenched fists. And so did Donald Trump.

Hours after Rouhani declared victory in Iran, Trump signed an over $100 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, further militarizing the region. The deal, according to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was designed to help Saudi Arabia counter “malign Iranian influence.” In a similar vein, the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia have indicated that they are taking steps to form an unprecedented anti-Iranian so-called “Arab NATO.” This anti-Iran collaboration was reinforced during the U.S. president’s stay in Saudi Arabia, where Trump declared in his keynote address that, “all nations of conscience must work together to isolate” Iran.

Trump’s apparent eagerness to increase Iran-Saudi tensions, contrary to former U.S. President Barack Obama’s belief that the two countries should “share” the region, will exacerbate regional instability and encourage Saudi Arabia to remain intransigent in response to Rouhani’s overtures. His call in Saudi Arabia for “all nations of conscience” to “isolate” Iran not only will surely fail and put the U.S. and Iran even deeper on the path to confrontation, but will also prove to be a lose-lose strategy for Washington, Tehran, Riyadh and the other regional nations.

“Trump’s apparent eagerness to increase Iran-Saudi tensions will encourage Saudi to remain intransigent in response to Rouhani’s overtures.

Further, the U.S. president’s decision to fight the nuclear deal will only disenfranchise the very Iranian people both he and King Salman of Saudi Arabia claimed to have great respect for. A JCPOA- violating sanctions bill is circulating in the U.S. Senate with significant Democratic support. The Trump administration, despite its recent renewal of JCPOA sanctions waivers, is still fundamentally critical of the deal, raising serious doubts about its sustainability. In the midst of all of this, Iran’s neighborhood is ridden with conflict, with no end in sight to the wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But there is hope. What stands out most about the Iranian election is its uniqueness in the region. Iran’s first experiment with democratic elections occurred over 100 years ago, but the energy and competitive atmosphere during this campaign was unparalleled. It bore far more resemblance to elections in the West than those of America’s regional allies, who are decades behind Iran in terms of democratic practice and mostly run along familial or tribal lines. People still chose the embattled Rouhani, even in spite of all the setbacks his domestic and foreign policies presented.

Now that he has an election mandate, perhaps Rouhani’s biggest fight beyond regaining support from the supreme leader and the public will be reacting to President Trump. Trump stands at a fork in the road as well. He can either accept the resounding call of the Iranian people for peaceful engagement, or he can return to the pre-Obama U.S. policy of unrelenting hostility towards Iran. If he chooses the former, he will find a receptive voice in Tehran. But if he chooses the latter, as his speech in Saudi seemed to indicate, the Iranian people and Rouhani will have to be united in resisting aggressive U.S. policies, as they did during Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran during the 1980s.

It looks like Trump and Rouhani both have a long road ahead of them.

Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University and a former chief of Iran’s National Security Council’s Foreign Relations Committee.

22 May 2017

By Yoginder Sikand

Who are we really—the real ‘I’? Is the real ‘I’ the body? Or the mind? Or a combination of both? Some people think that is just what we are—body and mind. But if the body is in a constant process of decay and we have to vacate it one day and if our minds are constantly swinging this way and that, can we, who intuitively feel that there is something about us that is permanent and everlasting, really be reduced to the temporary body or the ever-changing mind? If we reflect on our own selves deeply, we may discover deep down that our real ‘I’ is something else, something beyond our body and our mind.

Many religions tell us that the real ‘I’ is the soul, and that when the soul is manifested in this world, it is encased in a body-mind organism. Hence, while we are in this world, we human beings have three levels—the bodily or physical level, the mind or mental level, and the soul or spiritual level. Each of these levels has its own needs, the fulfilling of which is essential for our healthy functioning.

Our physical needs are the needs of our physical body, such as proper food, shelter, and clothing. Sexual needs are also a physical need (for most people, though not everyone).

Our mental needs are about cultivating our mind, including our thoughts and emotions, so as to ensure our healthy growth. Our mental needs can be fulfilled in different ways, such as through formal education, inter-personal interaction, exposure to various situations, access to written texts and other media, as well as personal reflection, contemplation and meditation.

Our spiritual needs are about the needs of our soul. These needs can be met by cultivating a personal relationship with God. This is something that is taught in different ways in various theistic religions.

A healthy human being is someone who enjoys good health at all three levels of our being—physical, mental and spiritual—with the needs of the body, mind and soul all provided for adequately and in a balanced manner. A good way to gauge our health, therefore, is to see if we are giving proper and balanced attention to the health of our body, of our mind and of our soul—to each of the levels of our being.

Going by this holistic definition of health, it should come as no surprise that a great many of us suffer from various degrees of ill-health, even if we don’t know it. One reason why this happens is if we ignore or do not adequately provide for the needs related to one or more of the three levels of our being. The same also happens if we fall prey to excess through over-indulgence at one or other level of our being—by having more of something than what we really need.

Take my own case, for example. For many years, I paid no attention to the needs of my soul. It was something I completely ignored—ironically, despite being considered by some people as a ‘scholar’ of religion! I was sunk deep, like in a pit of quick-sand, at the bodily plane. It was as if the only reason I was alive was to maximize sense gratification. Now, I’m not going to go into the details of all this—you’d be shocked if you knew! (Luckily, God places a curtain over many of our misdoings, and so they go with us to the grave, remaining as a secret only between God and us, never to be shared with anyone else.)

In my obsession with sense gratification, which I took to be the purpose of my life, I completely ignored the needs of my soul. Not once in all those many years did I think of God or care to turn to Him, even when I was really down in the dumps. It was hardly surprising, then, that very soon I turned into a psychological wreck.

This is precisely the sort of thing that happens when one ignores or fails to adequately meet the needs of each of the three levels of our being.

As was the case with me, many people are stuck at the physical or bodily level, believing that pandering to the demands and desires of the body is what a ‘good’ and ‘successful’ life is all about. ‘Good’ food, ‘good’ looks, ‘good’ music, ‘good’ clothes, a ‘good’ job, a ‘good’ house’, a ‘good’ car, a ‘good’ bank balance, ‘good’ sex, ‘good’ movies, ‘good’ holidays, and so on—all these, they think, is what human life is about and for.  Today, this tendency is actively promoted by all sorts of forces, including the mass media, the educational system, the advertising industry and corporate houses.

Ill-health can also result if you are too much in the mind, if you are living mainly at the mental level while ignoring the needs of the other levels. For instance, many people who fancy themselves as ‘intellectuals’ are hardened atheists. They take great pride in their denial of God, considering it to be the badge of ‘progressivism’. By turning their back on God, they completely ignore the needs of their soul (hardly surprising, given that they deny the very existence of the soul, claiming that all we are is one huge bundle of molecules). Inevitably, this leads to serious disease—physical, mental and spiritual—that is manifested in different ways.

Often, when we speak of health, what we really mean is physical health, the health of the body. When we ask someone how they are, what we really want to hear (if we aren’t asking this question just as a polite formality!) is whether they are fine physically. Generally, when we put this question to someone, we don’t mean to inquire how the person is mentally, emotionally or spiritually, even though these are vital components of human health.

Why is this so? Why is it that we have such a restricted understanding of health, confined just to the bodily level? This is because most of us operate essentially at the level of the body and its needs and desires. Because of this, we do not factor in the state of our mind and our soul into our understanding of health. And so, even if someone is emotionally sick (for instance, someone who compulsively thinks negatively or is easily prone to anger or irritability) or is spiritually diseased (which is a result of having no room for God in one’s life), as long as one appears physically fine we think that he is in the pink of health.

We can consider ourselves truly healthy not only if our body is free of physical ailments but also if our mind is sound (if we’ve trained ourselves to think positively, for instance, and are emotionally secure) and our soul is in good shape (which can only be when we have established a close relationship with God). True health is thus comprehensive, including all three levels of our being—bodily, mental as well as spiritual. Only by addressing, in a proper and balanced way, the various needs of all three levels—the needs of our body, the needs of our mind, and the needs of our soul—can we be truly healthy.

24 May 2017

By Richard Falk

In his first overseas trip since moving into the White House, Donald Trump is leaving behind the frustrations, allegations, rumors, and an increasing sense of implosion that seems to be dooming his presidency during its second hundred days. At the same time, a mixture of curiosity and apprehension awaits this new leader wherever he goes making his visit to the Middle East and Europe momentous occasions for the host governments, wide eyed public, and rapacious media. We need to remember that in this era of popular autocrats and surging right-wing populists, Trump is a ‘hero of our time.’

Even if all had gone smoothly for the new president in his home country, there should be expressions of deep concern about his travel itinerary. He visits first the two countries with which the United States has ‘special relationships’ in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Israel. What has long made them ‘special’ are a series of pre-Trump departures from realist and normative foreign policy orientations by successive American presidencies. These departures were motivated by oil geopolitics, arms sales and strategic alliances, hostility to Iran, and a disguised American sweet spot for foreign royalty. It is has long been obvious that uncritical deference to Israeli priorities has seriously undermined U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, which would have benefitted much more from policies designed to encourage peace and stability by refraining from regime-changing interventions, massive arms sales, and a diplomacy of respect for the politics of national self-determination.

Most remarkably, the U.S. Government has for decades winked at the billions of support given by Saudi members of the royal family to Wahhabism, that is, to promote fundamentalist Islam, throughout the Muslim world. The first words uttered by Trump on his arrival in Riyadh were that it ‘an honor’ to be visiting.

Then came signed deals adding up to US$110 billion in arms sales and the declaration of a common strategic vision, that is, a super-alliance, called an ‘Arab NATO’ in some circles, a dagger aimed at Iran’s heart. Why turn a blind eye toward the Saudi role in fanning the flames of jihadism while ramping up a military threat to relatively passive Iran that reelected Hassan Rouhani as its president, who has consistently championed moderation at home and normalization abroad.

How can we explain this? Trump has been critical of most aspects of the foreign policy agenda of his predecessors, but on the promotion of the special relationships he seems intent on doubling down on the most misguided aspects of earlier approaches to the region. The shape of his travel itinerary during his days confirms this impression. In this regard, Trump repudiates Obama’s hesitant, but in the end successful, efforts to bring Iran in from the cold, while trying to please Saudi Arabia by ignoring its extreme denial of human rights to its own people as well as its contributions to anti-Western terrorism.

If Trump was truly intent on putting America first, as he insistently asserts, then he could do so very directly and effectively by taking three major steps toward the protection of national interests: first, demand a firm commitment from the Saudi government to cease using private funds and public diplomacy to spread Wahhabism beyond its borders. Any credible public statement along these lines would weaken ISIS and other terrorist movements throughout the world far more than cascades of Tomahawk missiles dumped on a Syrian airfield. Such a challenge to Saudi policies also raises the possibility, however remote, of an endgame in the ‘war on terror.’ If such a reset of Saudi relations could be coupled with an indefinite freeze on arms sales to the Gulf countries that would have been even better, sending a signal throughout the region that America will no longer engage with the bloody conflicts that have brought so much suffering and devastation to the Middle East. This might give some belated meaning to ‘America first.’

The second step would have been even harder for an American president to take. It would require Trump to tell Mr. Netanyahu that no further military assistance for Israel would be authorized until an unconditional freeze on settlement expansion was in place and enforced, and the blockade of Gaza lifted once and for all.

It does not require a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies to appreciate that the establishment of a nuclear free zone in the region and the adoption of effective steps to minimize the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia Islam would improve future prospects for these horrendously disrupted political realities, at last reducing tensions and risks of wars. Nor does it require special knowledge to identify the obstacles such actions—the one government that already possesses nuclear weapons and the government that feels threatened by a challenge to its regional preeminence. Saudi Arabia and Israel both regard Iran as enemy number one, although it poses no existential threat to either one, and Israel will not even discuss giving up its nuclear arsenal despite being assured by Washington that its qualitative edge in conventional weaponry relative to its neighbors will be upheld.

The special relationships block even the consideration of enlightened initiatives; take them entirely off the table. This contrasts with the American proclivity for coercive diplomacy, which always assertively leaves the military option on the table. Without tension-reducing measures, a few false moves could easily give rise to a major war with Iran, which might bring smiles to leaders in Riyadh and Tel Aviv, but would be disastrous for the societies involved and for the United States, as well as for the region.

Given the leverage and militancy of pro-Israeli lobbies in the United States, more realistically pursuing American national interests toward Israel and the Middle East, seems tantamount to issuing invitations to Trump’s beheading, and despite his wildly gyrations of policy and mood, he has shown no disposition whatsoever to take on AIPAC, inc. Quite the contrary.

Of course, I am not so naïve to think that the advocacy of rationality in foreign policy will have the slightest echo in Washington in the course of Trump’s current diplomatic foray into uncharted territories. What I wish to point out is that this kind of foreign policy fantasy, however desirable if it were to be enacted, has become a species of political suicide. Any political leader who moved in more rational directions would be risking his own life, at least politically. The proposals mentioned above tells us what an American president should do if a rational and humane political system was in place and organized in such ways as to allow the pursuit of national interests, the realization of values associated with peace and human rights, and to attain the benefits of just and sustainable Israeli/Palestinian peace arrangements.

As long as these dysfunctional special relationships are relied upon to define American national interests in the Middle East, violent extremism and turmoil will persist, the authority of the United Nations and international law will suffer, and the credibility of American regional and global leadership will further erode. And maybe worst of all, the mounting ecological and nuclear challenges of global scope and apocalyptical risk will be remain unattended in what has become the greatest display of species indifference to its own survival throughout human history.

Mainstream advice on the Middle East being proffered to the Trump presidency by Beltway sharpshooters takes for granted the geopolitical status quo questioned above. The problems presented by the two special relationships are not even mentioned. Given these perspectives there are three broad kinds of approaches recommended for the region: (1) don’t aim too high, lower expectations, and don’t touch raw nerves in Israel or the Arab world (e.g. moving the American embassy to Jerusalem or telling Israel to dismantle the separation wall, stop expanding settlements, or handle the ongoing hunger strike humanely)[See Aaron David Miller, “From My Twenty Years of Failing at Middle East Peace,” Foreign Policy online, May 19, 2017]; (2) gang up on Iran, which will please both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and will have some positive resonance back in the United States [e.g. Michael Doran, “A Trump Plan for the Middle East,” NY Times, May 19, 2017]; (3) adopt the Israeli hard right view, now pushed within the United States, that the best road to ‘peace’ is to give Israel a green light to exert even greater pressure on the Palestinians to the point of their surrender. [a position repeatedly advocated by Daniel Pipes on the online listserv Middle East Forum and elsewhere, see Pipes, “The Way to Peace: Israeli Victory and Palestinian Defeat,” Commentary, Jan. 2017; Pipes boasts of his work with the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus that wants the U.S. Government to stop talking about ‘the two state solution,’ and support an Israeli shift from managing the status quo to launching a campaign to defeat Palestinians so decisively as to end the conflict.]

The first of these approaches is a cautionary warning to Trump the maker of grand deals not to exceed the boundaries of the feasible. The Israel/Palestine conflict is not ripe for resolution, Israel has no incentive or inclination to reach a fair compromise and even if it were, the Palestinians are currently too fragmented and poorly led to provide a reliable negotiating partner. The second geopolitically oriented approach makes matters worse, pushing the sectarian and secular divides in the direction of a regional confrontation, even combat. The third is geopolitically triumphalist, assuming that the Palestinians can be induced to give up their century old struggle, and go the way of other indigenous lost causes that have succumbed to predatory settler movements.

As Trump dominates the news by his visits to Saudi Arabia and Israel we should not be tricked into thinking that his ‘achievements’ are hopeful developments. The only true beacons of hope for the peoples of the Middle East are the contrarian affirmations of the Palestinian hunger strike, the Rouhani electoral victory, and the BDS Campaign. The fact that such developments are ignored or condemned by the dominant political forces in the West should at least alert us to gathering storm clouds in that tormented region and elsewhere.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.

22 May 2017

By Pepe Escobar

15 May 2017 – History will record the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing marked the juncture where the 21st century New Silk Roads assumed their full character of Globalization 2.0, or “inclusive globalization,” as defined by President Xi Jinping in Davos earlier this year.

I have dealt with the monumental stakes here and here. Terminology, of course, remains a minor problem. What was once defined as One Belt, One Road (OBOR) is now promoted as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Much is still somewhat lost in translation in English, what matters is that Xi has managed to imprint the myriad possibilities inbuilt in the concept especially across the Global South.

An amiable host, Xi in Beijing went ‘no holds barred’ extolling the inclusive integration merits of OBOR/BRI. It also helps that along the way, this being China, his spin doctors came up with a lovely metaphor to illustrate how OBOR/BRI should find its force as a common, pan-Eurasian effort; “Wild Swan geese [found across Asia but not in Europe] are able to fly far and safely through winds and storms because they move in flocks and help each other as a team.”

And arguably the key member of this flock of wild swan geese happens to be Russia.

Follow the geese

President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were guests of honor at the forum – alongside leaders such as Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev and Turkey’s Erdogan. At a business breakfast discussion, Xi seated Putin to his right and Lavrov to his left.

At a Leaders Roundtable summit on the second day of the forum – a sort of Silk Road United Nations, with the microphones open equally to all – Putin touched on a key point; the symbiosis, formalized since 2015, between OBOR/BRI and the Russia-driven Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), currently formed by Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia.

As Putin said, “some 50 European, Asian and Latin American states” are interested in cooperation with the EEU. While the EEU and China are discussing their own, wide-ranging trade/economic deal, the EEU is also consulting, among others, with Iran, India, Serbia, Singapore, and Egypt.

But it was during his speech at the inaugural session of the forum that Putin managed to distill what amounts to a concentrate of Russian foreign policy.

Here are the key topics.

– Through “integration formats like the EEU, OBOR, the SCO, and ASEAN, we can build the foundation for a larger Eurasian partnership.”

– There is now a “unique opportunity to create a common cooperation framework from the Atlantic to the Pacific – for the first time in history.”   Essentially, this is what Putin himself had once proposed – then shunned by EU/NATO – even before Xi announced OBOR in 2013.

– “Russia is not only willing to be a reliable trading partner but also seeks to invest in the creation of joint ventures and new production capacities in partnering states, to invest in industrial facilities, sales, and services.”

– Russia is investing in building “a system of modern and well-connected transport corridors,” “expanding the capacity of the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railway, investing significant resources into improvements to the Northeast Passage.”

– And then, looking at the Big Picture, “the infrastructure projects within the EEU and the One Belt, One Road initiative in conjunction with the Northeast Passage can completely reconfigure transportation on the Eurasian continent.”

– Putin expects “newly established financial institutions like the New Development Bank (BRICS Development Bank) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to offer a supporting hand to private investors.”

And then, the clincher, fully aligned with Xi’s vision; “Greater Eurasia is not an abstract geopolitical arrangement but, without exaggeration, a truly civilization-wide project looking toward the future.”

When in doubt, call the SCO

Compared with the depth and breadth of this shared vision, nothing could be more pedestrian than the official India attitude; not only sending a low-level delegation to Beijing, but imprinting on mainstream Indian media the notion that OBOR/BRI is “little more than a colonial enterprise [that would leave] debt and broken communities in its wake”.

The flock of wild swan geese flying toward Eurasia integration is now a fact of life. East Asian output, for that matter, will surpass North America’s during the Trump era. The future, rather, the dissolution of unipolar hegemony will be decided in Eurasia, particularly East Asia.

India may certainly harbor its own strategic agenda. But self-marginalization of the one and only integrated development project in the 21st century hardly qualifies as savvy diplomacy.

So it looks like Putin once again will have his work cut out for him. India, a historical partner of the former USSR, still maintains good trade relations with Russia. Iran, for its part, is as much a key Indian energy partner as China’s. So the road map ahead spells out Moscow, alongside Tehran, playing the go-betweens trying to sweeten India into the Eurasia integration path.

That could well take place within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which from now on will have a full plate not only trying to smooth out a feasible Afghan peace process but making sure India and Pakistan find a political entente cordiale.

It will be a bit like older brothers trying to instill some sense into younger ones – as Russia and China, as part of their strategic partnership, have already worked hard to manage the twin admission of India and Pakistan into the SCO.

Iran will also become a full member shortly. So we will soon have an active SCO from Southwest Asia all the way to South Asia, with a political-economic integration agenda expanding the initial drive to fight myriad manifestations of Salafi-jihadi terror.

This slowly but surely progressive convergence fits into the larger goals of the Russia-China strategic partnership, which once again, as demonstrated during the Beijing forum, is all about Eurasia integration.

The invisible story at the Beijing forum was that as much as Turkey is a key node of OBOR/BRI and Kazakhstan is a key node between OBOR/BRI and the EEU, it’s China and Russia that will truly advance the complex roadmap of this “civilization-wide project.”

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

22 May 2017

By Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC)

Since its inception, the Palestinian Authority security establishment has neither protected Palestinians from Israeli military occupation, nor empowered them to resist that occupation, argues Alaa Tartir. Instead, through its security coordination with Israel, the PA has contributed to the criminalising of the Palestinian liberation struggle.

To speak of Israeli-Palestinian ‘cooperation’…is to use no less than a misnomer. This is not, however, simply because ‘the outcome of cooperation between an elephant and a fly is not hard to predict’, as Chomsky so pithily writes…but because in the context of the Oslo peace process, ‘cooperation’ is often only minimally different from the occupation and domination that went before it. ‘Cooperation’, in this context, is above all an internationally pleasing and acceptable signifier which obscures rather than elucidates the nature of Israeli-Palestinian relations. – Jan Selby, 2003

I…applaud the Palestinian Authority’s continued security coordination with Israel. They get along unbelievably well. I had meetings, and at these meetings I was actually very impressed and somewhat surprised at how well they get along. They work together beautifully. – Donald Trump, 2017

Overview

From the outset, the Palestinian Authority (PA) security establishment has failed to protect Palestinians from the main source of their insecurity: the Israeli military occupation. Nor has it empowered Palestinians to resist that occupation. Instead, the PA has contributed to a situation in which the Palestinian struggle for freedom has itself been criminalised. Rather than recognise resistance as a natural response to institutionalised oppression, the PA, in tandem with Israel and the international community, characterises resistance as ‘insurgency’ or ‘instability’. Such rhetoric, which favours Israeli security at the expense of Palestinians, echoes discourse surrounding the ‘war on terror’ and criminalises all forms of resistance.

This dynamic can be traced back to the 1993 Oslo Accords, but it has been galvanised over the last decade through the PA’s evolution as a donor-driven state that espouses neoliberal policies. The donor-driven reform of the security sector has been the linchpin of the PA’s post-2007 state building project. The enhanced effectiveness of the PA’s security forces as a result of massive donor investment has in turn created additional ways of protecting the Israeli occupier, thus creating spaces that are ‘securitised’, within which the occupier can move freely in the execution of its colonial project.

Such a development could only have two outcomes: ‘better’ collaboration with the occupying power in a way that shored up the destructive status quo; and greater violation of Palestinians’ security and national rights by their own government and national security forces.

This policy brief analyses the evolution and ‘reform’ of the Palestinian security forces since the establishment of the PA, and examines Palestinian-Israeli security coordination and its deleterious effects on the Palestinian ability to resist Israel’s occupying forces as well on basic liberties. It focuses on the PA forces in the West Bank and not the situation in Gaza, which requires separate research and analysis. It concludes with policy recommendations to reinvent the PA security forces’ operations and overhaul their structures so that they may truly serve to protect their own people.

The Rise of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces

The evolution of the PA security forces can be categorised in three phases: the Oslo Accords (1993-1999), the Second Intifada (2000-2006), and the post-2007 PA state-building project.

The Oslo Accords were characterised by two parallel, yet conflicting, projects: state building and national liberation. The former implied constructing state-like institutions and a bureaucracy under occupation, while the latter meant pursuing the revolutionary programme for self-determination that had been adopted by the PLO. The tension between these ventures already manifested themselves under the late president Yasser Arafat’s rule. Arafat’s personalised style of governance and its resultant complex network of corruption and patronage meant that the evolution of the PA security forces was from its advent neither inclusive nor transparent. Rather, it was fraught with nepotism, and was used as a tool to address the threats posed by Oslo’s opponents and to stabilise the population. In turn, it also solidified the nascent ‘peace’ agreements. The 9 000 recruits in the ‘strong police force’ envisaged in the 1994 Cairo Agreement became nearly 50 000 security personnel by 1999.

This proliferation of the security forces – all spying on each other, as Edward Said once said – has had severe consequences for Palestinians. Arafat’s establishment of security-driven political structures nourished authoritarianism and blocked accountability mechanisms in the Palestinian political system. This resulted in a dearth of legitimacy and further insecurity for Palestinians. As the security establishment grew in numbers and institutions, Palestinians remained ill-protected, and corruption and patronage within the forces became endemic. The divide-to-rule approach paved the way for future Palestinian fragmentation.

During the Second Intifada, Israel destroyed the PA’s security infrastructure because PA security forces participated in the uprising. This created a security vacuum into which non-PA actors inserted themselves, with mixed results for Palestinians. This exacerbated intra-Palestinian competition and led external donors, the PA, and Israel to be even more concerned with building a strong and dominant security sector. In June 2002, the PA announced its 100-Day Reform Plan; in 2003 the Quartet Road Map demanded that a ‘rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus’ must confront ‘all those engaged in terror’ and dismantle ‘terrorist capabilities and infrastructure’. PA security structures were forced to combat terrorism; apprehend suspects; outlaw incitement; collect illegal weapons; provide Israel with a list of Palestinian police recruits; and report progress to the United States.

Accordingly, Palestinian security reform ‘remained…an externally-controlled process, driven by the national security interests of Israel and the United States, and characterized by very limited ownership on the part of Palestinian society.’ The international donor community led this reform in 2005 through the establishment of the European Union Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (EUPOL COPPS) and the US Security Coordinator (USSC). This situation persists in the form of a ‘one gun, one law, one authority’ strategy through which the PA’s monopoly on force and violence is ensured.

The post-2007 state-building project under the PA has aimed, mainly through EUPOL COPPS and USSC, to reinvent the PA security forces through technical means, including training and weapons procurement. It has also aimed to reinvent the forces politically by constraining Hamas and its armed wing, curbing Fatah-allied militants through co-optation and amnesty, cracking down on criminals, and conducting security campaigns, particularly in Nablus and Jenin. These forces became known as Dayton’s forces in reference to Keith Dayton, the US lieutenant general who led the PA military establishment’s ‘professionalization and modernization’ process. Local and international human rights organisations have accused these reformed forces of human rights violations and of suppressing freedoms.

The current phase has further entrenched the predominance of Israeli security interests at the expense of the Palestinians. Disarmament and criminalisation have impaired popular resistance against the occupation, including peaceful demonstrations and marches, advocacy against Israel’s violations of human rights, and student activism. Today, PA security forces largely protect the security of the occupier and not that of the occupied. In short, the security of Palestinians has been jeopardised because their own leadership has been subcontracted to repress them. The post-2007 security reform agenda has thwarted Palestinians’ national struggle, their resistance movement and their everyday security, and has subverted the very functioning of Palestinian politics.

Security Coordination as Domination

To understand the magnitude of the security coordination enterprise, it is useful to note that the Palestinian security sector employs around half of all civil servants, accounts for nearly $1 billion of the PA budget, and receives around 30 per cent of total international aid disbursed to the Palestinians. The security sector consumes more of the PA’s budget than the education, health, and agriculture sectors combined. The sector is currently comprised of 83 276 individuals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including 312 brigadier generals, of whom 232 report to the PA and 80 to Hamas. In comparison, the entire US Army has 410 brigadier generals. The ratio of security personnel to the population is as high as one to forty-eight – one of the highest in the world.

Security collaboration between Israel and the PA has fulfilled the Oslo Accords’ objectives of institutionalising security arrangements and launching a peace process that is tightly controlled by the security sector in order to enable Israel to fulfil its colonial ambitions while claiming to be pursuing peace. This process of ‘securitised peace’ is manifested in a number of ways, including the PA security forces’ arrest of Palestinian suspects wanted by Israel (as in the recent case of Basil Al-‘Araj, who was arrested and released by the PA only to be hunted and eventually assassinated by the Israelis); the suppression of Palestinian protests against Israeli soldiers and/or settlers; intelligence sharing between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the PA security forces; a revolving door between Israeli and PA jails through which Palestinian activists cycle for the same offences; and regular joint Israeli-Palestinian meetings, workshops, and training.

Though Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to suspend security coordination, he has at the same time declared it a ‘Palestinian national interest’ and a ‘sacred’ doctrine. PA security force activities and Abbas’s political manoeuvrings have created a deep gap in trust between the Palestinian people and the PA.

Indeed, multiple surveys over the years have shown that the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (between 60 and 80 per cent) oppose security coordination with Israel. In a March 2017 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey poll, two-thirds of respondents demanded Abbas’s resignation, with 73 per cent expressing the belief that Abbas was not serious in his threat to suspend security coordination with Israel. In a 2010 Maan News Agency poll, 78 per cent of respondents said they believed that the PA security forces were engaged in surveillance, monitoring activities, and intervening in people’s privacy. Finally, according to Visualizing Palestine, 67 per cent of West Bank Palestinians said they felt they were living in an undemocratic system that cracked down on freedoms in large part as a result of the security realm.

Negative public perceptions about security coordination are fuelled by lived experiences – from which elites are often spared – as well as by official rhetoric and the contents of the leaked Palestine Papers. For instance, Keith Dayton remarked in 2009 that senior IDF commanders had asked him, in regard to the Palestinian security forces he was training, ‘How many more of these new Palestinians can you generate, and how quickly?’ He also said a senior Palestinian official addressed a graduating class of these ‘new Palestinian men’ in Jordan, saying, ‘You were not sent here to learn how to fight Israel…you were rather sent here to learn how to keep law and order, respect the right of all of our citizens, and implement the rule of law so that we can live in peace and security with Israel.’ And in 2013, in a speech before the European Parliament, Israeli president Shimon Peres stated: ‘A Palestinian security force was formed. You and the Americans trained it. And now we work together to prevent terror and crime.’
While security coordination between Israel and the PA has been cemented since the Oslo Accords, the status quo is not a foregone conclusion. However, change will be difficult to achieve, as the system has created a segment of Palestinian society that will seek to maintain it. This segment is composed not only of security personnel in the West Bank and Gaza, but also of those Palestinians benefiting from institutional arrangements and a network of collaboration and domination. The status quo is beneficial for them, and ‘stability’ is their mantra. They are committed to an approach that privileges the political, economic and security elite, and they have no incentive to reverse the rules of the game.

Any attempt to halt security coordination would thus have real consequences for the PA and its leadership. Yet the perpetuation of the status quo is destructive for the majority of Palestinians living under Israel occupation and for the Palestinian people at large. With the crushing of the ability to correct political wrongdoing and hold elites accountable, business as usual will likely continue. Security coordination will remain a defining feature of the skewed reality that favours the occupier if action is not taken – soon.

Reinventing the PA’s security doctrine

The entrenchment of the PA security establishment requires policy interventions at multiple levels, from correcting biased rhetoric to establishing accountability mechanisms. The following recommendations, addressed to different stakeholders, propose an overhaul of the PA security forces’ operations and structures.

The Palestinian Authority
The PA must listen to Palestinian people and respect their wishes and aspirations, including in the security domain, otherwise the legitimacy and trust gap will grow larger. There has never been an inclusive Palestinian political system, but a more responsive, representative, and responsible leadership would ensure that the security of Palestinians, rather than that of their occupier and coloniser, is a core concern. An authentic security sector, as Tariq Dana has argued, would mean an end to the ‘focus on internal policing known as the “Dayton Doctrine”’ and ‘a program that demands accountability and justice be put in place’.

As Hani Al-Masri has elaborated, this would require gradual but firm steps to eventually freeze or suspend security coordination, including: ending Palestinian security apparatus intervention in political issues; reducing security allocations in the annual budget; disbanding parts of the security apparatus and restructuring the remainder, with an emphasis on professionalism, patriotism, and freedom from political nepotism; and instructing the security apparatus to resist raids by Israel in the West Bank’s Area A.

Although the PA still argues that the current security arrangements and division of labour serve the two-state solution, the relentless Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land means that the PA and its leadership must reassess their function. The looming threat of annexation should push the PA to take action before its role solidifies as a subcontractor to the Israeli occupation.

Palestinian Civil Society
Palestinian civil society organisations, especially human rights organisations, must form more effective coalitions and intensify their efforts to hold the PA and its political and security leadership accountable for their human rights’ violations. In the absence of institutions that perform checks and balances, pressure that goes beyond writing and publishing reports (though this in itself is an important act) is urgently needed. In other words, Palestinian civil society organisations need to develop practical actions that confront the PA’s continuous rights’ violations.

These civil society actors, including academic institutions, public intellectuals and think tanks, must also address the PA’s discourse in which Palestinian resistance is reframed as criminal insurgency or instability. Israeli and international actors who use this discourse should also be confronted. Civil society must embrace and operationalise resistance rather than see it criminalised, and view it as an all-encompassing way of living under occupation and in exile. Resistance as a way of life can help to reverse how the political and security elite currently portray it. Resistance can then ensure the restoration of the core values and ideas that enable Palestinians to engage collectively to realise their rights.

External actors, particularly security bodies EUPOL COPPS and USSC, need stringent scrutiny from civil society, both within Palestine and in their home countries. They cannot continue to dominate the security realm without accountability or transparency. By promoting the rule of law in an authoritarian context, these bodies contribute to the ‘professionalization’ of authoritarian practices by (ab)using a good governance framework. Their claim that their mandate is ‘technical’ enables them to evade the political results of their operations and interventions. After a decade of operation, it is time to conduct an independent Palestinian-led evaluation of these bodies and use that as an accountability mechanism to reform these erstwhile ‘reformers’ and decide on the way forward.

Donors and the Donor Industry
In a context highly dependent on aid, the supremacy assigned to securitisation and militarisation extends to the realm of development. Policymakers in donor states and Palestinians who facilitate donor programmes should address how ‘securitised aid’ has transformed a liberation movement into a subcontractor to the coloniser, and has resulted in authoritarian tendencies that favour the security establishment at the expense of sectors such as health, education, and agriculture, as well as at the expense of democracy.

Moreover, in Palestine, securitised aid and development have not only failed to address poverty, unemployment and empowerment, but have also created new insecurity and illegitimacy. Development planners must acknowledge that these patterns will never be reversed unless people, and not the security establishment, drive actions and are the constant reference point.

All these actions are the duty of the Palestinian people, especially when policymakers do not represent them and their aspirations. Palestinian society needs to confront the tools used to repress its mobilisation and organise in order to ensure the realisation of its fundamental rights. The non-factional youth-led initiative End Security Coordination that emerged in the aftermath of Basil Al-‘Araj’s assassination in March 2017 represents an example of such mobilization. In their call for action, the group stated:

‘Our people have struggled for too long for us to stand idle while repressive leaders barter our oppression and dispossession for their personal gain…We are approaching 30 years since the Oslo Accords that transformed what remained of our land into open air prisons administered by unrepresentative PA officials who have hired themselves out to be our colonizers’ first line of defense…The Oslo regime does not represent us. Now is the time for us to come together and rebuild our collective struggle for the liberation of all of Palestine.’

If such organized resistance can continue and increase, pressure from the people may be able to change the trajectory of PA-Israeli security coordination, rendering Palestinians better equipped to work toward self-determination and the attainment of human rights.

22 May 2017

By Professor Francis A Boyle

Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions.

Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and then the Democratic Obama administration and now the Trump administration are threatening to set off World War III.

By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa under the bogus pretexts of:

(1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or

(2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or

(3) the promotion of democracy; and/or

(4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention” or its avatar “responsibility to protect.”

Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas.

The Bush Jr./Obama administrations targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration established the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, exploit, and plunder both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. Libya and the Libyans became the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the Obama administration. They will not be the last.

Trump is just another White Racist Iron Fist for Judeo-Christian U.S. Imperialism and Capitalism all over the world. Trump forthrightly and proudly admitted that the United States is in the Middle East in order to steal their oil. At least he was honest about it. Unlike his predecessors who lied about it going back to President George Bush Sr. with his War for Oil against Iraq in 1991.

This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what my teacher, mentor and friend Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53):

“The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind…”

It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.

Professor Francis A. Boyle is an international law expert and served as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, as well as to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993, where he drafted the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement. His books include “ Palestine, Palestinians and International Law” (2003), and “ The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law” (2010).

22 May 2017

By Bill Van Auken

Riddled with hypocrisy, clichés and absurdities, President Donald Trump’s speech Sunday before an assembly of monarchs and despots in Saudi Arabia spelled out an agenda of escalating US militarism throughout the Middle East and a buildup in particular toward war with Iran.

Hailed by a fawning American media as “presidential”–supposedly eclipsing for the moment the crises and factional struggles engulfing the administration–the speech was reportedly drafted by Stephen Miller, the extreme right-wing ideologue credited with being the chief architect of Trump’s abortive executive order banning people from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the US.

Much in Trump’s half-hour address echoed the speech delivered by Barack Obama in Cairo eight years earlier. Both presidents declared their desire to reset US relations with the Middle East, while absurdly posturing as leaders of a pacifist nation seeking only good for the region and offering to head up a united struggle against “violent extremism.”

In what was meant as a rhetorical invocation to action against terrorism, Trump told his audience, “Drive them out. Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy land. And drive them out of this earth.”

Like Obama before him, Trump had no interest in dealing with who brought Al Qaeda and similar forces in, as the historical trail leads directly to the CIA in Afghanistan and US imperialism’s longstanding support for right-wing Islamist organizations and terrorist groups as a counterweight to left nationalist and socialist influence in the Arab and Islamic world. Jointly, the US and Saudi Arabia continue to fund and arm such forces in their drive for regime-change in Syria.

Both speeches were laced with flowery tributes to Islamic culture. Trump noted in particular how impressed he was with the “splendor” of Saudi Arabia and the “grandeur” of the palace in which the so-called Arab Islamic American Summit had been convened.

What separated the two addresses were the different shifts in strategy by Washington. While Obama sought to repair the damage done by the Bush administration’s criminal war in Iraq by offering a new face for US imperialism, Trump traveled to Saudi Arabia to make clear his administration’s break with his predecessor’s policy of seeking a rapprochement with Iran based on the 2015 nuclear deal. He adopted an openly confrontational stance toward Tehran.

“Above all, America seeks peace–not war,” Trump proclaimed, in what stood out as the most blatant of the many lies in his brief address. The reality is that US wars in the region have killed millions over the past decade-and-a-half. And the thrust of the US president’s visit to Saudi Arabia, his first stop in a nine-day foreign tour, is the preparation for new and even bloodier conflicts.

This was made plain by the principal agreements forged between Trump and the Saudi monarchy, which included a $110 billion arms deal that incorporates the option to purchase $350 billion worth of weapons over the next 10 years.

The arms agreement “supports the long-term security of Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf region,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, told reporters in Riyadh, “in particular in the face of the malign Iranian influence and Iranian-related threats which exist on Saudi Arabia’s borders on all sides.”

In his speech, Trump painted Iran as the principal state sponsor of terrorism, accusing Tehran of providing terrorists with “safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment,” and fueling “the fires of sectarian conflict and terror,” all charges that could be leveled, with justification, against his Saudi hosts.

He portrayed the US cruise missile attack on Syria last month–followed just last week by the US bombing of a pro-government militia in the southeastern part of the country–as part of a wider struggle against Iranian influence. He went on to call upon “all nations of conscience” to “isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve.” That he was speaking in Saudi Arabia, a brutally repressive absolute monarchy, just two days after more than 70 percent of Iranian voters participated in a sharply contested election, did nothing to blunt Trump’s call for regime-change.

He specifically praised Saudi Arabia and its allies for having “taken strong action against Houthi militants in Yemen.” The near-genocidal Saudi war has killed some 12,000 Yemenis, while destroying basic infrastructure in the Arab world’s poorest country, leaving over 7 million people on the brink of starvation and unleashing a cholera epidemic that threatens a massive death toll.

In March, US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis issued a memo calling for stepped-up US support for this criminal war, in which the Pentagon is already supplying intelligence and logistical backing to the Saudi bombing campaign.

Part of the weapons deal signed by Trump involves the shipment of precision-guided munitions that had been cut off in a highly limited gesture of disapproval of Saudi tactics in Yemen by the Obama administration, which itself concluded over $100 billion worth of weapons deals with Riyadh. Also included in the new deal are tanks, artillery, helicopters and other weaponry that can be directly funneled into the slaughter in Yemen.

In addition to his speech and the signing of arms and investment deals, Trump participated in a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Saudi-led coalition of Gulf oil sheikdoms. Trump administration officials have raised the objective of using the GCC as the foundation of a Sunni Arab version of NATO directed at military confrontation with Iran.

Beyond the drive to militarily confront Iran, a principal regional rival of US imperialism in the Middle East, and the huge profits that Saudi arms purchases reap for the US military industrial complex, there are broader strategic considerations in the US turn toward a closer alliance with Riyadh.

Some of these issues were outlined on the eve of Trump’s trip in a piece published by the influential Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies and authored by Anthony Cordesman, a longtime Pentagon adviser. First among them is, according to Cordesman, “the continued level of US dependence on Saudi help in securing the stable flow of Gulf oil.”

While US imports from the Gulf have fallen sharply over the past quarter-century, Cordesman cites “indirect dependence” in terms of the impact a disruption in oil exports would have on global energy prices and the world capitalist economy. In particular, he points to the dependence of Asian economies on Gulf petroleum exports.

If the United States failed in “providing power projection forces and arms” to the region, he writes, its principal global rival, China, might fill the void. “China may not yet be ready to try to assume the role, but the entire South China Sea crisis would pale to near insignificance if China became the de facto guarantor of Gulf stability.”

Cordesman continues: “The real-world nature of US influence and power in the Pacific would be cut massively, China’s leverage over other major Asian economies like Japan and South Korea would be sharply increased, and the potential rise in tension between China and India–and cut in India’s relative position–would have a massive impact on the balance of power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.”

In other words, the turn toward closer relations with Saudi Arabia and the related Gulf oil sheikdoms is bound up with US imperialism’s mounting conflict with China, which it has identified as the principal challenge to the drive for American global hegemony. Washington is determined to dominate Asia, including China, by maintaining the military power to choke off the region’s energy imports.

The fact that the sclerotic House of Saud, one of the world’s last absolute monarchies, has become a lynchpin of Washington’s imperialist strategy, not only in the Middle East but globally, is a measure of the crisis of American and world capitalism.

Oil revenues, which account for fully 90 percent of the kingdom’s export earnings, have been cut nearly in half since 2014. Last month, the government was forced to reverse itself on austerity measures that hit the military and public employees over fear that declining living standards and rising unemployment are creating the conditions for social revolt.

In the predominantly Shia Eastern Province, the center of the kingdom’s oil production, security forces laid siege to the town of Awamiyah, a center of resistance to the regime, during the week preceding Trump’s visit. Combined with the failure of the Saudi bid to topple the Assad regime in Syria by supporting Al Qaeda-linked militias and the regime’s inability to retake Yemen from the Houthi rebels, the deepening domestic crisis is creating the conditions for revolutionary upheavals against Washington’s principal ally in the Arab world.

22 May 2017

By Bill Van Auken

Donald Trump made clear from the moment of his arrival in Israel Monday that the purpose of his trip, promoted by the White House and the media as part of a quest for “Middle East peace,” is the consolidation of reactionary regional alliance in support of a US military buildup against Iran.

The US president flew to Tel Aviv directly from Saudi Arabia, where he delivered an inflammatory speech designed to consolidate a military alliance of Sunni oil monarchies and dictatorships against Iran. Portraying the struggle as one of “good against evil” and invoking “god” nine times, Trump made a clear appeal to sectarian divisions to promote what amounts to a holy war by the Sunni regimes against the predominantly Shia Iran.

While there was reportedly some disquiet in Israel over the US administration’s signing of arms deals with the Saudi monarchy that could total some $350 billion over the next decade, the speech and the turn by the Trump administration to an aggressively anti-Iranian policy went down well with the Zionist state, which, like Washington, sees Iran as the principal rival for regional hegemony.

Trump kept up his anti-Iranian rhetoric in statements made during meetings with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Speaking alongside Rivlin, Trump said, “There is growing realization among your Arab neighbors that they have common cause with you in the threat posted by Iran.

“Most importantly,” he added, “the United States and Israel can declare with one voice that Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon—never, ever—and must cease its deadly funding, training and equipping of terrorists and militias, and it must cease immediately.”

Appearing with Netanyahu, the American president denounced the nuclear agreement signed by his predecessor Barack Obama and the leaders of five other major powers with Iran in 2015 as a “terrible thing.”

“We not only gave them a lifeline,” he said. “we gave them wealth and prosperity, and we also gave them the ability to continue with terror.”

While Trump has yet to follow through on his vow to rip up the accord and has kept in place waivers on sanctions imposed in relation to Teheran’s nuclear program, the speech delivered in Riyadh and his remarks in Israel spell out a US policy of regime change in Iran that threatens to unleash an even more devastating war in the Middle East.

Trump’s statements have provoked expressions of unease, particularly in Europe, which has viewed the nuclear deal with Iran as an opening to new markets and sources of profit. The Financial Times of London published an editorial Monday titled “Trump of Arabia takes sides in sectarian conflict,” warning that “backing Sunni Arab autocrats against Shia Iran will not help the Middle East.”

The French daily Le Monde editorialized that Washington was pursuing a “Cold War”-style policy in the Middle East, dividing it between “two camps: Sunni Arabs, Israelis and Americans on one side; Iranians, their Syrian protege and Russia on the other,” warning that it would pave the way to the “continuation of the endless wars ravaging the region.”

The arrogance of Trump’s denunciations of Iran, which last week held a hotly contested presidential election, while praising Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s last absolute monarchies and the source of both the religious ideology and financial resources underpinning Al Qaeda, ISIS and similar Islamist groups, was denounced by the government in Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi Monday called upon Washington to abandon its “policy of warmongering, meddling, Iranophobia and sales of dangerous and useless weapons to the main sponsors of terrorism.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who was reelected with a wide margin of victory Friday after running on a program promoting rapprochement with the West, made an indirect reference to the Saudi connections to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington “You can’t resolve the issue of terrorism by giving money to super powers,” he said. “I don’t think people of America would trade the blood they gave on 9/11 in exchange for money raised in arms sales.”

Rouhani also pointed to the hypocrisy of Trump’s speech in Riyadh, coming in the wake of the Iranian election: “Mr. Trump visited the region at the time millions of our people went to the polls. He went to a country whose people haven’t even seen ballot boxes and elections don’t have any meaning for them. I hope one day Saudi Arabia also drives its national strength through elections. Power should not pass on through inheritance, but through elections.”

In what amounted to a pair of religiously themed photo ops, Trump, his wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner went to both the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Western Wall Monday. The visit was the first by any US president to the Old City of Jerusalem, which is regarded internationally as illegally occupied territory, seized by Israel 50 years ago.

Trump’s promotion of the charade of a US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian “peace” was a decidedly secondary element of his trip. He presented it almost entirely from the standpoint of a gesture needed to give cover to the reactionary Sunni Arab oil sheikdoms so that they can openly align themselves with Israel. “King Salman feels very strongly and, I can tell you, would love to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians,” he said after meeting with President Rivlin.

The Arab monarchies have dropped even their earlier demands for a “two-state solution” that would leave Palestinians trapped in a fragmented, Israeli-dominated mini-state, calling merely for minor concessions.

A discussion paper circulated among these regimes that was obtained by the Wall Street Journal indicated that, in the interests of forging an alliance against Iran, they are prepared to normalize relations with Israel in return for minimal concessions, such as the freezing of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the easing of trade restrictions on the Gaza Strip.

On the eve of Trump’s arrival, the Israeli cabinet approved a limited increase in the number of building permits issued to Palestinians living in “Area C” of the West Bank, which Israel controls directly and aims to eventually annex. It also extended the opening of the Allenby Bridge border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan to 24 hours a day and allowed for the development of some industrial zones in the occupied territory.

“This is a gesture for President Trump’s visit, which does not harm Israel’s interests,” an Israeli government official told the Israeli media.

To say that Trump is going through the motions in terms of seeking a resumption of peace talks would be an exaggeration. He is to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a trip Tuesday to the Occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem that is scheduled to last for all of one hour. While initially the US president was to squeeze in more religious tourism with a visit to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, this plan was scrapped when it emerged that he would have to pass a protest tent erected in support of the Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike.

Schools, public transit, banks and stores were shut down by a general strike in the occupied West Bank Monday in support of more than 1,300 Palestinian political prisoners who have been on hunger strike since April 17. In several demonstrations held in conjunction with the strike, Trump was burned in effigy.

More than 1,000 Palestinian demonstrators converged on the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah carrying placards bearing Trump’s image defaced with a red shoe print declaring, “American policies are a foot print of shame on humanity’s forehead.” Israeli troops attacked the demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.

A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot to death by border police at a checkpoint northeast of Bethlehem on Monday. An Israeli police spokesman claimed the youth had tried to stab Israeli border police, none of whom were injured in the alleged assault. Just two days earlier, 23-year-old Mutaz Hussien Hilal Bani Shamsa was shot dead by a Zionist settler who got out of his car and opened fire on a demonstration in support of the hunger strikers.

In contrast to the growing militancy of the Palestinian population, the corrupt Palestinian Authority led by Abbas, which is heavily dependent upon funding from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil sheikdoms, is moving to accommodate itself to Trump’s Mideast policy. Abbas was among those attending the US president’s anti-Iranian diatribe in Riyadh, and he is reportedly prepared to present a new proposal for “peace” negotiations that drops all references to Jerusalem and cedes to Israel three times as much land as the PA previously offered.

23 May 2017