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Thursday 21 April 2011

 

Last week, Barack Obama announced that he wants to cut $400 billion in military spending and said he would work Sec. of Defense Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs on a “fundamental review” of US “military missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world” before making a decision.

Spokesman Geoff Morrell responded [3] by hinting that Gates was displeased with having to cut that much from his spending plan. Gates “has been clear that further significant defense cuts cannot be accomplished without future cuts in force structure and military capability,” said Morrell, who volunteered that the secretary had not been informed about the Obama decision until the day before.

But it is difficult to believe that open display of tension between Obama and Gates was not scripted. In the background of those moves is a larger political maneuver, on which the two of them have been collaborating since last year, in which they gave the Pentagon a huge increase in funding for the next decade and then started to take credit for small or nonexistent reductions from that increase.

The original Obama-Gates base military spending plan – spending excluding the costs of the current wars – for fiscal year 2011 through 2020 called for spending $5.8 trillion, or $580 billion annually, as former Pentagon official Lawrence Korb noted [4] last January. That would have represented a 25 percent real increase over the average annual level of military spending, excluding war costs, by the George W. Bush administration.

Even more dramatic, the Obama-Gates plan was 45 percent higher than the annual average of military spending level in the 1992-2001 decade, as reflected in official Department of Defense (DoD) data [5].

The Obama fiscal year 2012 budget submission reduced the total increase only slightly – by $162 billion over the four years from 2017 to 2020, according to the careful research of the Project on Defense Alternatives [6] (PDA). That left an annual average base military spending level of $564 billion – 23 percent higher than Bush’s annual average and 40 percent above the level of the 1990’s.

Central to last week’s chapter in the larger game was Obama’s assertion that Gates had already saved $400 billion in his administration. “Over the last two years,” he said, “Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.”

The $400 billion figure is based primarily on the $330 billion Gates claimed he had saved by stopping, reducing or otherwise changing plans for 31 weapons programs. But contrary to the impression left by Obama, that figure does not reflect any cut in projected DoD spending. All of it was used to increase spending on operations and investment in the military budget.

The figure was concocted, moreover, by using tricky accounting methods verging on chicanery. It was based on arbitrary assumptions about how much all 31 programs would have cost over their entire lifetimes, stretching decades into the future, assuming they would all reach completion. That methodology offered endless possibilities for inflated claims of savings.

The PDA points out [6]that yet another $100 billion that Gates announced in January as cost-cutting by the military services was also used to increase spending on operations and new weapons programs that the services wanted. That leaves another $78 billion in cuts over five years, also announced by Gates in January, but most of that may have been added to the military budget for “overseas contingency operations” rather than contributed to deficit reduction, according to the PDA [6].

Even if the $400 billion in ostensible cuts that Obama is seeking were genuine, the Pentagon would still be sitting on a total projected increase of 14 percent above the profligate level of military spending of the Bush administration. Last week’s White House fact sheet [7] on deficit reduction acknowledged that Obama has the “goal of holding the growth in base security spending below inflation.”

The “fundamental review” that Obama says will be carried out with the Pentagon and military bureaucracies will be yet another chapter in this larger maneuver. It’s a safe bet that, in the end, Gates will reach into his bag of accounting tricks again for most of the desired total.

Despite the inherently deceptive character of Obama’s call for the review, it has a positive side: it gives critics of the national security state an opportunity to point out that such a review should be carried out by a panel of independent military budget analysts who have no financial stake in the outcome – unlike the officials of the national security state.

Such an independent panel could come up with a list of all the military missions and capabilities that don’t make the American people more secure or even make them less secure, as well as those for which funding should be reduced substantially because of technological and other changes. It could also estimate how much overall projected military spending should be reduced, without regard to what would be acceptable to the Pentagon or a majority in Congress.

The panel would not require White House or Congressional approval. It could be convened by a private organization or, better yet, by a group of concerned members of Congress. They could use its data and conclusions as the basis for creating a legislative alternative to existing US national security policy, perhaps in the form of a joint resolution. That would give millions of Americans, who now feel that nothing can be done about endless US wars and the national security state’s grip on budgetary resources, something to rally behind.

Three convergent political forces are contributing to the eventual weakening of the national security state: the growing popular opposition to a failed war, public support for shifting spending priorities from the national security sector to the domestic economy, and pressure for deficit and debt reduction. But in the absence of concerted citizen action, it could take several years to see decisive results. Seizing the opportunity for an independent review of military missions and spending would certainly speed up that process.

 

Posted: 04/21/11 02:52 PM ET

Helene Cooper of the New York Times has published a great what’s up story on the new behind the scenes scramble by the Obama administration, Prime Minister Netanyahu and various Palestinian officials to act as if they have some plan to move the peace process forward — when in fact, most of it is insincere posturing and speechifying designed to pour concrete on what has thus far been failure.

Brookings’ Martin Indyk is quoted calling out all this public flapping in the Cooper piece:

“Instead of focusing on peace-making, everybody seems to be focused on speech-making,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and a former United States ambassador to Israel. “And unless the speeches generate peace negotiations, making speeches will not generate peace.”

But the reality is that the president of the United States knows that he can’t “do nothing” on Israel/Palestine. As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice warned in her powerful comments today at the United Nations, violence is heating up. She accused Hamas and others of targeting innocent civilians — and called for calm. But there is little likelihood that the component pieces of the Israel-Palestine puzzle will willingly accept the status quo, particularly one in which Israel keeps expanding its settlements in Occupied territories.

Daniel Levy, my colleague who directs the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force, also said to Cooper, Netanyahu and Obama are both in competition to control the frame surrounding Israel/Palestine issues — they feel the need to rush forward, but neither seems willing to do what needs to be done to achieve real negotiations and a fundamental breakthrough.

Cooper reports from Daniel Levy:

“People seem to think that whoever goes first gets the upper hand,” said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and a director at the New America Foundation. Using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, he said: “If Bibi went first and didn’t lay out a bold peace plan, it would be harder for Obama to say, actually, despite what you said to Congress and their applause, this is what I think you should do.”

The political gamesmanship between the two men illustrates how the calculation in the Middle East has changed for a variety of reasons, including the political upheaval in the Arab world. But it also shows the lack of trust and what some officials say is personal animosity between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice at a Security Council debate this morning reiterated that the U.S. remained committed to a two-state solution, did not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, and said that it is in the interest of both parties in the conflict and the world to negotiate. Rice outlined America’s support for the efforts of the Palestinian government, and the unmentioned Salam Fayyad, to lay the foundations for a future Palestinian state — building public institutions, enhancing their capacity and laying the groundwork for quality economic growth.

She condemned the death of innocent civilians recently and the escalation of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza.

But this speech by Rice, while important, falls short of a plan.

What is missing is President Obama’s vision for what needs to be done to achieve a stable equilibrium between Palestine and Israel — not full details, but at least an outline of expectations and goals.

Obama seems unwilling to make his own weather in the Middle East, and his team and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seem to cling to the bizarre notion that, after so many examples when both Israeli and Palestinian leaders have failed to mature and act responsibly about their long-term mutual interests, they would all of a sudden begin to do so. Israel’s short-term interests and long-term interests are different — and thus in the short term, with a party that Israel fundamentally does not trust, it is hard for Israel to make the jump to do a deal that secures its long-term survival and interests in the region.

Israel’s government, even under Netanyahu, probably doesn’t have the legs to do a real peace deal at this point — and the Palestinian Authority is in the same boat, though with more leaky holes springing water and sinking.

What will move the process forward is American and Quartet leadership that doesn’t make the conflict one just between these two parties. Their failure has become globally consequential and reinforces an impression of American foreign policy impotence.

It’s important for the president of the United States to kick forward a serious plan laying out his expectations — and then a subsequent plan embraced by regional and global stakeholders to actualize it.

Otherwise, Indyk is completely right that what we are hearing from all quarters are meaningless speeches achieving nothing.

Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons

 

April 23, 2011

 

 

 

AMRAM MITZNA is a nice guy. He is modest and radiates credibility. He reminds one of the late Lova Eliav, the Secretary General of the Labor party who quit the party in disgust. Like Eliav, he has a lot of practical achievements to his credit – Eliav built the Lakhish area villages in South-Central Israel, Mitzna volunteered to administer the remote town of Yerucham deep in the Negev.

 

“Buji” Hertzog is also a good guy. He is a scion of a genuine Jewish aristocratic family, in the positive sense of the word; his grandfather was a Chief Rabbi, his father the President of Israel. A person whose deeds as Minister for Welfare speak for themselves – even though he has an unfortunate habit of running – after every action – to tell his (American) friends, as the Wikileak papers disclose. (This is an allusion to a classic Israeli joke: “Why do Israeli men finish so quickly? Because they can’t wait to run and tell their friends.”)

 

Amir Peretz is an interesting character. His life story as an immigrant from Morocco is impressive. He made the mistake of his life when he demanded the post of Minister of Defense and made a mess of it – but people can learn from their mistakes.

 

Shelly Yacimovich is an assertive woman, a convinced feminist. The social misery of the destitute and downtrodden is burning in her bones, as we say in Hebrew. She believes that it is possible to have a party devoted entirely to these matters, forgetting for the time being unpopular and troublesome problems like peace. That is a mistake – he (or she) who runs away from the Palestinian question, the Palestinian question will run after him (or her). But she will learn.

 

All these are candidates for the leadership of the Labor Party. Any of them can, perhaps, arrest its deterioration and keep the votes it got at the last elections, and perhaps-perhaps even add two or three seats.

 

So what?

 

 

THE PITY is that this would change almost nothing. Power would remain in the hands of the Right. The balance between the blocs – Right and Left – would not be any different.

 

Those who once put their faith in the ascent of Kadima have by now learned that Kadima is not a leftist party, nor even a center party – unless the center has shifted far to the right. Kadima is Likud B, pure and simple, led by a woman who grew up in a Likud home and is lacking, so it seems, any political instincts. Her party includes, besides parliamentary zeroes, several racists whose proper place is between Likud and Lieberman, and some fugitives from Labor, whose proper place is nowhere.

 

The Labor Party can be rehabilitated. Some parties resemble the phoenix and can return from the grave. But Labor is an old bird without any feathers. For most of its long life it was the ruling party, and it has never recovered from that. Even in opposition it behaves and talks like a governing party from which the government has been stolen. It has no strength left to renew, rebel, storm ahead. It was and remains a federation of professional functionaries. Such a party does not make revolutions.

 

Under the leadership of any of these candidates, it will not fill the huge gap in the Israeli political system. It will not inspire the Israeli Tahrir Square. It will not start the revolution, without which Israel will continue to march in lockstep towards the abyss.

 

 

THE PEOPLE who gathered in Tahrir Square were not the remnants of the old parties. Sure, they were there too – the Wafdists, the last of the Nasserists, the Communists, the Muslim Brothers. But they did not provide the ardor, they did not light the flame which is brightening the sky above the entire Arab world.

 

In the square, completely new forces appeared out of nowhere. To this very day they have no name, except the date of the original event – January 25. But everyone knows where they came from and what they look like. For lack of a better label , they are called “the Young Generation”. They are a cluster of hopes and aspirations touching all spheres of life. They are the resolve to create “another Egypt”, entirely different from the Egypt of only yesterday.

 

 

THERE IS, of course, almost no similarity between Egypt and Israel. The Egyptian uprising can serve us, at most, as a metaphor, a symbol. But the principle is the same: the longing for “another Israel”, for the Second Israeli Republic.

 

The setting up of a new political movement is an act of creation. There is no recipe for it, like “Take 2 Oriental Jews, 1 Russian, half a rabbi, stir well…” It doesn’t work that way. Neither will something like “Take the remnants of the Labor Party, add a spoonful of Meretz, mix with half a glass of Kadima…”. Won’t work.

 

A new movement of the sort that is needed has to come from nowhere. From the vision and determination of a group of young leaders with a new world-view that suits the needs of Israel’s future. A group that thinks in a new way, sees things in a new light, speaks a new language.

 

That happens once in a generation, if at all. When it does, it is visible from afar.

 

 

AT THIS moment, there are at least half a dozen groups in Israel which are planning this revolution. Perhaps one of them will succeed. Perhaps not, and the spark does not catch till some later date. As the young Jewish rabbi from Nazareth said: “You will know them by their fruit.”

 

For any group to bring about this miracle, several things seem to me to be absolutely essential:

 

The new world-view must embrace all spheres of public life. Welfare without peace is nonsense, without a basic change of values peace will not come about, the immortal ideals of freedom, justice, equality and democracy must apply to everybody, in all spheres of life.

 

Many “pragmatists” assert that the opposite is true. God forbid mixing things. If you talk about peace, the advocates of welfare will leave. If you champion the rights of minorities, say goodbye to the people of the majority. That is true if you think about the next elections, not if you think about the next generations.

 

Anyone who sets out with the aim of winning the most seats in the coming elections will not make history. Sprinters will not bring back the medal we need. This demands Marathon  runners. (Menachem Begin, it may be remembered, lost nine elections before he achieved the Big Change of 1977. What did Yigael Yadin or Tommy Lapid achieve with their ephemeral little triumphs.)

 

A movement that appears out of nowhere, a movement that carries the future in its womb, cannot speak the language of yesterday. It must bring with it a new language – a new terminology, new slogans. Such a language is not born in a public relations agency. Those who copy the language of their predecessors are condemned to continue on the path of their predecessors.

 

The new language must touch the minds – and, more importantly, the hearts – of all citizens. Another new Ashkenazi party will not do. The new movement must touch the depths of the soul of Jews and Arabs, Orientals and “Russians”, secular and religious (at least some of them), old-timers and new arrivals, the well-established and the poor. Anyone who gives up in advance on any of these communities is courting failure.

 

 

MANY CLEVER and experienced people will smile condescendingly. That’s utopian, they will say. Nice dreams. Won’t happen. There are no such people, no such visions, no fire in the bones. At most, good people with an eye on a seat in the next Knesset.

 

They may be right. But these same people would have smiled if somebody had told them, some five years ago, that American voters would elect an African-American president whose middle name is Hussein. That would have sounded wildly absurd. A black president? White voters? In the USA?

 

The very same people would have burst out laughing if somebody had told them, just a year ago, that a million Egyptians would gather in the central square of Cairo and change the face of their country. What? Egyptians? This lazy and passive people? A country which in all its 6000 years of recorded history has not made even half a dozen revolutions? Ridiculous!

 

Well, there are surprises in history. Sometimes, when the need arises, peoples can surprise themselves. It can happen here. If it does, it will not surprise those of us who believe in our people.

 

True, Rabin Square is not Tahrir Square. But then, neither was it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25 April, 2011

The Guardian

Innocent people interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts • Children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held • 172 prisoners remain, some with no prospect of trial or release

More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America’s controversial prison camp in Cuba.

The US military dossiers, obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian, reveal how, alongside the so-called “worst of the worst”, many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment.

The 759 Guantánamo files, classified “secret”, cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there.

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

The old man was transported to Cuba to interrogate him about “suspicious phone numbers” found in his compound. The 14-year-old was shipped out merely because of “his possible knowledge of Taliban…local leaders”

The documents also reveal:

• US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.

Interrogators were told to regard links to any of these as an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity.

• Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantánamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide.

• A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members. One Briton, Jamal al-Harith, was rendered to Guantánamo simply because he had been held in a Taliban prison and was thought to have knowledge of their interrogation techniques. The US military tried to hang on to another Briton, Binyam Mohamed, even after charges had been dropped and evidence emerged he had been tortured.

• US authorities relied heavily on information obtained from a small number of detainees under torture. They continued to maintain this testimony was reliable even after admitting that the prisoners who provided it had been mistreated.

The files also show that a large number of the detainees who have left Guantanamo were designated “high risk” by the camp authorities before their release or transfer to other countries.

The leaked files include guidance for US interrogators on how to decide whether to hold or release detainees, and how to spot al-Qaida cover stories. One warns interrogators: “Travel to Afghanistan for any reason after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 is likely a total fabrication with the true intentions being to support Usama Bin Laden through direct hostilities against the US forces.”

Another 17-page file, titled “GTMO matrix of threat indicators for enemy combatants”, advises interrogators to look out for signs of terrorist activity ranging from links to a number of mosques around the world, including two in London, to ownership of a particular model of Casio watch.

“The Casio was known to be given to the students at al-Qaida bombmaking training courses in Afghanistan,” it states.

The inclusion of association with the ISI as a “threat indicator” in this document is likely to pour fuel on the flames of Washington’s already strained relationship with its key regional ally. A number of the detainee files also contain references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting al-Qaida.

Obama’s inability to shut Guantánamo has been one of the White House’s most internationally embarrassing policy failures. The files offer an insight into why the administration has been unable to transfer many of the 172 existing prisoners from the island prison where they remain outside the protection of the US courts or the prisoner-of-war provisions of the Geneva conventions.

The range of those still held captive includes detainees who have been admittedly tortured so badly they can never be successfully tried, informers who must be protected from reprisals, and a group of Chinese Muslims from the Uighur minority who have nowhere to go.

One of those officially admitted to have been so maltreated that it amounted to torture is prisoner No 63, Maad al-Qahtani. He was captured more than nine years ago, fleeing from the site of Osama bin Laden’s last stand in the mountain caves of Tora Bora in 2001. The report says Qahtani, allegedly one of the “Dirty 30” who were Bin Laden’s bodyguards, must not be released: “HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” The report’s military authors admit his admissions were obtained by what they call “harsh interrogation techniques in the early stages of detention”. But otherwise the files make little mention of the widely-condemned techniques that were employed to obtain “intelligence” and “confessions” from detainees such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and prolonged exposure to cold and loud music.

The files also detail how many innocents or marginal figures swept up by the Guantánamo dragnet because US forces thought they might be of some intelligence value.

One man was transferred to the facility “because he was a mullah, who led prayers at Manu mosque in Kandahar province, Afghanistan … which placed him in a position to have special knowledge of the Taliban”. US authorities eventually released him after more than a year’s captivity, deciding he had no intelligence value.

Another prisoner was shipped to the base “because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver”.

The files also reveal that an al-Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years, partly in order to be interrogated about the Arabic news network.

His dossier states that one of the reasons was “to provide information on … the al-Jazeera news network’s training programme, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including the network’s acquisition of a video of UBL [Osama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with UBL”.

The Guantánamo files are among hundreds of thousands of documents US soldier Bradley Manning is accused of having turned over to the WikiLeaks website more than a year ago.

The documents were obtained by the New York Times and shared with the Guardian and National Public Radio, which is publishing extracts, having redacted information which might identify informants.

A Pentagon spokesperson said: “Naturally we would prefer that no legitimately classified information be released into the public domain, as by definition it can be expected to cause damage to US national security. The situation with the Guantánamo detention facility is exceptionally complex and releasing any records will further complicate ongoing actions.”

 

24 April, 2011

The Guardian

Long after the political uprisings in the Middle East have subsided, many underlying challenges that are not now in the news will remain. Prominent among these are rapid population growth, spreading water shortages, and growing food insecurity.

In some countries grain production is now falling as aquifers – underground water-bearing rocks – are depleted. After the Arab oil-export embargo of the 1970s, the Saudis realised that since they were heavily dependent on imported grain, they were vulnerable to a grain counter-embargo. Using oil-drilling technology, they tapped into an aquifer far below the desert to produce irrigated wheat. In a matter of years, Saudi Arabia was self-sufficient in its principal food staple.

But after more than 20 years of wheat self-sufficiency, the Saudis announced in January 2008 that this aquifer was largely depleted and they would be phasing out wheat production. Between 2007 and 2010, the harvest of nearly 3m tonnes dropped by more than two-thirds. At this rate the Saudis could harvest their last wheat crop in 2012 and then be totally dependent on imported grain to feed their population of nearly 30 million.

The unusually rapid phaseout of wheat farming in Saudi Arabia is due to two factors. First, in this arid country there is little farming without irrigation. Second, irrigation depends almost entirely on a fossil aquifer – which, unlike most aquifers, does not recharge naturally from rainfall. And the desalted sea water the country uses to supply its cities is far too costly for irrigation use – even for the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia’s growing food insecurity has led it to buy or lease land in several other countries, including two of the world’s hungriest, Ethiopia and Sudan. In effect, the Saudis are planning to produce food for themselves with the land and water resources of other countries to augment their fast-growing imports.

In neighbouring Yemen, replenishable aquifers are being pumped well beyond the rate of recharge, and the deeper fossil aquifers are also being rapidly depleted. Water tables are falling throughout Yemen by about two metres per year. In the capital, Sana’a – home to 2 million people – tap water is available only once every four days. In Taiz, a smaller city to the south, it is once every 20 days.

Yemen, with one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, is becoming a hydrological basket case. With water tables falling, the grain harvest has shrunk by one-third over the last 40 years, while demand has continued its steady rise. As a result the Yemenis import more than 80% of their grain. With its meagre oil exports falling, with no industry to speak of, and with nearly 60% of its children physically stunted and chronically undernourished, this poorest of the Arab countries is facing a bleak and potentially turbulent future.

The likely result of the depletion of Yemen’s aquifers – which will lead to further shrinkage of its harvest and spreading hunger and thirst – is social collapse. Already a failing state, it may well devolve into a group of tribal fiefdoms, warring over whatever meagre water resources remain. Yemen’s internal conflicts could spill over its long, unguarded border with Saudi Arabia.

Syria and Iraq – the other two populous countries in the region – have water troubles, too. Some of these arise from the reduced flows of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, which they depend on for irrigation water. Turkey, which controls the headwaters of these rivers, is in the midst of a massive dam building program that is reducing downstream flows. Although all three countries are party to water-sharing arrangements, Turkey’s plans to expand hydropower generation and its area of irrigation are being fulfilled partly at the expense of its two downstream neighbours.

Given the future uncertainty of river water supplies, farmers in Syria and Iraq are drilling more wells for irrigation. This is leading to overpumping in both countries. Syria’s grain harvest has fallen by one-fifth since peaking at roughly 7m tons in 2001. In Iraq, the grain harvest has fallen by a quarter since peaking at 4.5m tons in 2002.

Jordan, with 6 million people, is also on the ropes agriculturally. Forty or so years ago, it was producing more than 300,000 tons of grain per year. Today it produces only 60,000 tons and thus must import over 90% of its grain. In this region, only Lebanon has avoided a decline in grain production.

Thus in the Arab Middle East, where populations are growing fast, the world is seeing the first collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For the first time in history, grain production is dropping in a region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Because of the failure of governments to mesh population and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed, and less irrigation water with which to feed them.

© 2011 Guardian/UK

Lester R Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute and the author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

 

 

 

 

 

, Saturday 23 Apr 2011

The opening out of democracy will prove a greater challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood than repression

The post-revolutionary Muslim Brotherhood is facing unprecedented challenges. The movement has been excluded from the legal polity for decades, and has been subject to cycles of partial toleration and periodic repression, causing both organisational and intellectual distortions.

It responded to repression through constructing a broad and vague intellectual formula that guaranteed wide social support, reflecting a decision to compromise ideological clarity for the sake of organizational existence.

Over the course of history, four different schools of thought came to coexist within the Muslim Brotherhood. First is the founder’s school; a relatively modernist school of thought that existed on the margins of Al-Azhar in the early 20th century and was championed by Muhammad Abduh. It rejects the authority of turath (accumulated heritage of Islamic sciences), and calls for the return to Quran and Sunnah and practicing ijtihad (innovation in Islamic jurisprudence) whilst being only guided by ideas in turath.

Second is the traditionalist school, championed by Al-Azhar’s long history of scholarship. It is characterised by heavy reliance on turath and acceptance of the full authenticity of the four main Sunni schools of jurisprudence. The school also promotes the notion of “balanced identity”, arguing that each individual belongs to different circles of affiliation, including mazhab (school of jurisprudence), tariqa (Sufi order), theological school, hometown, profession, guild, family and others. Sophisticated and interlinked affiliations created societal harmony and diversity, and led Islamists to seek gradual customisable reform that responds to societal diversity and does not provide a blueprint, one-size-fits-all manifesto for (re)Islamisation.

Named after the infamous Sayyid Qutb, Qutbism, the third school, is characterised by its highly politicised and revolutionary interpretation of Quran that divides peoples into those who belong to/support Islam/Islamism, and those who oppose it. It relies on historical incidents from the prophet’s biography (mainly conflicts between Muslims and pagans) to construct a framework for managing the relation between Islamists and their societal counterparts, and between the Muslim world and other civilisations. The school emphasises the necessity of developing a detached vanguard that focuses on recruitment and empowering the organisation while postponing all intellectual questions. While hardcore Qutbism opens doors for political violence, Muslim Brotherhood Qutbis follow a demilitarised version of the ideology, clearly distancing themselves from notions of takfir (disbelief) and violence.

The Salafi/Wahabi school made its way to the Muslim Brotherhood (and to the broader Egyptian society) in the 1970s. It is a modernist Islamist ideology that has minimal respect for turath, and is characterised by a conservative, rigid, and rather materialist understanding of Sharia law, low levels of tolerance and the focus on superficial/external components of religion.

Salafi and Qutbi acceptance of notions like democracy and diversity are minimal, and they believe in a strong, broad central state that plays a major role in public morality.

With a wide ideological formula, only four principles keep the Muslim Brotherhood united as an organisation; namely, a belief that Islam is an all-encompassing system; rejecting violence as a means for political change; accepting democracy; and accepting political pluralism. It is noteworthy that while accepted in principle, these notions mean different things for different members.

Organisationally, the Muslim Brotherhood responded to repression primarily through centralising decision-making and decentralising decision execution —both designed to sustain unity. The former component was intended to keep disputes contained in limited domains, and capitalise on leadership’s historical legacy to dictate compromises whenever necessary, while the latter was intended to overcome possible consequences of security crackdowns, to create a sense of belonging and empowerment amongst members, and to develop members’ executive capabilities.

As the revolution opened wide doors for the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood into the polity, the group will move from identity to reform politics. The construction of a political programme requires moving beyond areas of organisational consensus to others of diversity and dispute. With Islam being understood as a value system and a limited set of legislation pertaining to the public sphere, different political programmes could be drafted from the group’s ideology, with different tendencies and political orientations. Some Muslim Brotherhood members are starting to realise the inevitability of political disputes as a real polity emerges and serious political challenges arise.

The Brotherhood has already announced it will establish the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), a declaration met with scepticism from intellectuals and Brotherhood reformers alike. They argue that limiting the broad school of thought to a single political manifestation will inevitably fail, and is harmful for the religious cause the group was founded to serve. Instead, they call for the group’s retreat from the political to civic domain, and allowing the emergence of various political manifestations instead.

So far, the Muslim Brotherhood leadership is rejecting these calls. The group’s chief declared a ban on joining political parties other the FJP. Rather short sighted, the decision will fail to silence emerging diversities from within the group, as diversity is an essential product of freedom. Different organisational measures currently employed to discourage members from leaving the group are failing, as numerous dissidents are already challenging the leadership’s decision and joining other existing parties or establishing their own. As new political questions emerge, the numbers will inevitably increase, and it will be the leadership’s decision to either dismiss dissidents or accept political diversity. Either way, the FJP will cease to act as the sole manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood, even if it retains monopoly over organisational representation.

With a legacy of diverse ideological orientations and strategic inconsistencies, the Muslim Brotherhood is currently faced by questions more threatening to its very existence than was oppression. The context of freedom will undermine dominant organisational rhetoric calling for unity at the cost of diversity. As the emergence of various political manifestations seems inevitable, the Brotherhood’s leadership will decide to either allow diversity through a flexible organisation, or disallow it though a rigid one, leading to numerous splits. Either way, continued political inclusion and freedom will lead to transcending the phenomenon of political Islamism as it currently exists, and its re-emergence in more sophisticated and more diverse forms.

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