Turabi Released

Sudan has released Hasan al-Turabi after two months in prison. Turabi, Sudan's best known theorist of political Islam and, originally, the intellectual force behind the 1989 military coup that brought ‘Umar al-Bashir to power, had called for Bashir to turn himself over to the International Criminal Court, which recently issued a warrant for the President's arrest.

Turabi is certainly one of the more interesting figures in the world of political Islam. Trained in London and Paris, well-connected in Sudanese politics (longtime Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi is his wife's brother, though it was Mahdi who was overthrown in the 1989 coup), he blends some elements of a modern Islamic thinker with progressive social and religious ideas, with other elements usually associated with rather hidebound forms of political Islam. His National Islamic Front was at one time the ruling party, and some of the arguments attacking President Bashir on the Darfur situation still refer to the government as the "National Islamic Front government" though the ruling party today is Bashir's National Congress Party. Bashir and Turabi fell out in the 1999-2000 period and Turabi has been in various forms of prison or house arrest on and off ever since. He is still outspoken, however, and is already criticizing Bashir in his first day out of prison.

Releasing Turabi may, however, be an indication that Bashir is trying to broaden his own base in the face of the ICC warrant, and hopes to appeal to Turabi's followers by releasing him. So far, Bashir has been consistently defiant of the West, and much of the Arab world has been critical of the warrant as possibly making things even worse in Darfur, since Khartoum has moved to expel relief organizations — a certain amount of political ferment may be anticipated.

. . . and Purim

And as Mawlid al-Nabi ends and the sun begins to set, let me with my Jewish readers a happy Purim. Interesting the holidays are so close together this year.

Mawlid al-Nabi

For my Muslim readers, please accept my greetings on the occasion of the Prophet's birthday.

The Morocco-Iran Diplomatic Break

Morocco's decision to cut diplomatic ties with Iran seems to have caught Tehran off guard, and the explanations remain rather vague, at least officially. Morocco cited the recent quarrel between Iran and Bahrain, which I discussed last month; but Iran and Bahrain have since patched things up. Morocco was upset when Iran protested its open support for Bahrain, and recalled its charge d'affaires fromTehran in February to protest that, but the Moroccan announcement breaking relatins also spoke of Iranian attempts to "alter the religious fundamentals of the kingdom, to attack the roots of the Moroccan people's ancestral identity." Iran called the charges baseless, but it seems the Moroccans are alleging direct interference with their internal affairs.

Morocco has complained in the past that the Iranian Embassy in Rabat was seeking to spread Shi'ism in the Sunni Kingdom, where the King also claims religious leadership and the title Amir al-Mu'minin or Commander of the Faithful. Morocco seems to be reviving that claim as well as protesting being singled out for criticism by Tehran for its support for Bahrain, when most Arab countries similarly rallied to Bahrain's side.

Coming as it does after Saudi Foreign Minister Sa'ud al-Faisal urged Arab unity in the face of an "Iranian challenge," the Moroccan move -- which seems to be a case of Morocco deliberately picking a fight -- is part of a growing concern about Iran by pro-Western, conservative Arab states. It will be interesting to see if Morocco offers more substantive evidence of its claims of Iranian interference in its internal affairs.

Mukhabarat 2.0?

For a little pre-weekend amusement I should call your attention to this post at The Arabist. Somebody has registered a Twitter account called "statesecurity" and now there's one in the name of Habib al-Adly, complete with a picture of Egypt's powerful Minister of the Interior. "ElAdly" and "statesecurity" are commenting to each other. And "ElAdly's" Twitter page even links to the actual Ministry of the Interior website.

I think this shows (as The Arabist's post title "Web 2.0 silliness" indicates) that young, Web-savvy Egyptians retain the national ability to make fun of their government, even its security apparatus. I hardly think State Security Investigations, Egypt's powerful internal security agency, will start to tweet on Twitter, since their whole modus operandi is keeping you in the dark about what they're doing. Egyptians have always been willing to make fun of their government institutions (and clever and genuinely funny about it at times).

And "statesecurity" is apparently now identified. If any of these links don't work in a day or two it will be because Twitter caught on, but meanwhile, Bravo. Of course, given the fact that a couple of Egyptian bloggers have actually been arrested in the past year, I hope the clever folks behind these sites watch themselves.

Will Ehud Barak Split his Labor Party?

I already commented briefly here about the curious decision of Israeli Labor Party leader Ehud Barak to press for joining in a coalition with Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu needs Labor, certainly, to avoid having an exclusively right-wing government (much of it well to the right of his own Likud) which might sour relations with the US and Europe. But why does Barak need Netanyahu? And is he really ready to split the Labor Party, which has already dropped to fourth in seats in the Knesset after Likud, Kadima, and Yisrael Beiteinu? And if he splits the party and only he and a few colleagues join the coalition, does that actually give Netanyahu a leftish figleaf to present as a broad coalition?

It's still unclear to me, and it appears that much of the rest of the Labor Party shares my befuddlement. Immediately after the elections, Barak said the proper role for Labor was to rebuild in opposition. That's precisely what Tzipi Livni plans to do with Kadima. Or as Ophir Pines-Paz, a senior Labor figure who quit the Olmert government when Avigdor Lieberman joined, put it in the Jerusalem Post article just cited:

Have we gone mad?" Paz-Pines [sic] asked the crowd. "Why are we arguing over something so elementary and basic? When you win an election, you go to the government. When you lose, you serve the people in the opposition. How complicated is that?

I'd say that's the question. Labor's own Secretary General, Eitan Cabel, has criticized Barak's negotiations with Netanyahu. This op-ed by Avirama Golan in the reliably liberal Haaretz is pretty scathing, essentially urging Labor to drop Barak and move to a more reliably left-wing stance. If Barak cuts a deal that leaves him in the Defense Ministry but he doesn't bring the Labor Party with him, he may be a lot less useful to Netanyahu, who I think really is looking for some protective coloring from the center and left so that a hard right Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu-National Union-Shas-HaBayit HaYehudi (the last is basically the old National Religious Party) is what he's left with. But while Barak is calling bringing Labor into the Cabinet a "national unity government," it would be an unusual one (by most people's definition of unity), since it wouldn't include the Party with the most seats in the Knesset, Kadima.

Much of Labor's centrist blog hived off and joined Kadima (including patriarch Shimon Peres); much of the left seems about to reject Barak's plans to enter the government. That would probably assure that Kadima becomes Israel's centrist party, though just a few years ago many skeptics thought it could not survive the loss of Ariel Sharon.

Mauritania Suspends Israeli Ties

It looks like I'm going to lose the opportunity to pose one of my favorite trivia questions: besides Egypt and Jordan, what other Arab state has full diplomatic relations with Israel?

The answer, Mauritania, may now be in doubt: in January they withdrew their own Ambassador from Israel to protest its actions in Gaza, and now they have asked the Israeli Ambassador in Nouakchott to leave.

The present Mauritanian regime, which took power in 2008, and its predecessors have been uncomfortable with the Israeli tie, which was formed back in 1999 when the peace process seemed a lot closer to achieving something than it does now, and when the long-ruling Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya was still in power in Mauritania.

Billboards of Ahmadinejad Removed by Qalibaf?

Here's an interesting story worth watching. Giant billboards to celebrate the centennial of the Iranian oil industry (and showing a picture of President Ahmadinejad) have reportedly been removed by the Tehran Municipality -- where the Mayor, Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, may be a candidate for President against Ahmadinejad (who is himself a former Mayor). Some may say that since the source is Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, this may be a case of the US making a mountain out of a molehill, and that may be so, but its seemed worth noting.

I suspect we may see more little dramas such as this in the Iranian Presidential campaign. There is enough hostiity toward/resentment of Ahmadinejad from some key figures in the Iranian leadership that I do not think his re-election is automatically assured. Especially now that the US is actually sending signals that it is open to discussions with Iran on Afghanistan, and other issues: it will be interesting to see if the non-Ahmadinejad elements in the leadership are encouraged (though of course to openly embrace the US gestures would be politically fatal). The fact that the economy is in shambles even as the global economy is contracting at record speed may also work against Ahmadinejad, who has been seen by many as posturing on nuclear energy and Israel while the economy tanked. So once again, "it's the economy, stupid" could be the theme of an insurgent political campaign. A lot, though, will depend on whether the opposition can come together behind a strong candidate. While former President Mohammed Khatami has gotten most of the Western attention, Qalibaf is reportedly quite popular, at least in Tehran.

And Hashemi-Rafsanjani reportedly met in Najaf with Ayatollah Sistani: another interesting signal.

Parliament Dissoluton in Kuwait Would Add to Already Interesting Election Season

Media reports are indicating that the Kuwaiti Amir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad, is likely to dissolve Parliament imminently, with electiohs to be called perhaps in May. The reason appears to be a frequent one for Kuwaiti dissolutions: Parliament is seeking to question the Prime Minister, who is a member of the ruling family, on alleged improprieties. Often when Parliament is seeking to question a member of the Sabah famly, the Amir simply goes to the country for a new Parliament. If so, there will be two interesting Parliamentary campaigns this spring, Kuwait's in May and Lebanon's in June. And the Iranian Presidential election is also fast approaching, also in June, so it will be an interesting seasonof genuinely contested elections. (I omit the Algerian Presidential election, the outcome of which is not in doubt.)

Yemen also had Parliamentary elections due in April, but Parliament is in the process of extending its term by two years, postponing the vote.

An Aside on Israel's "Chinese" Admiral

I mentioned in passing a couple of days ago the current scandal in Israel over the Navy Commander, Admiral Eli Marom, who is under fire for visiting a strip club and then (the coverup as usual being the real issue) claiming he only visited it once when apparently he is a regular patron. As I indicated there, this seems a rather silly diversion for a country that just fought a war, has no government in place, etc. etc.

But it offers an opportunity to note one unusual thing about Marom: he's Chinese.

Actually only a quarter Chinese; his father was a German Jew who fled to China during WWII; his mother the daughter of a Chinese man and a Russian emigre Jewish woman. The photo on his IDF profile shows that he is visibly Asian, however, and he's apparently known as "Chiney" in the service. (And, given his present problems, probably wishing he wasn't photographed with a wine glass in hand.)

It's also a reminder of the diversity of Israel's population, where in addition to the predictable European and Middle Eastern stocks you also find Ethiopians, Indians and others.

The Navy is very much the junior service in Israel, where the Air Force are the elite and the Army has near-universal service (though Orthodox religious exemptions are growing rapidly). It has very few flag officers and apparently there's some uncertainty who would move up if Marom had to resign.

An interesting note for the linguists out there: the Navy Commander's rank is Aluf, which in the Army is usually translated as "Major General," that is, in US terms, two-star rank. Normally a Naval officer of that rank would be translated as Rear Admiral, but I note the IDF here translates it as "Vice Admiral," which in US usage would be the three-star rank. Normally, the only three-star (Rav-Aluf) active duty officer in Israel is the Chief of Staff. (I say "normally" because there has been one exception when a former Chief of Staff, Haim Bar-Lev I think, was recalled from retirement during the 1973 war as a corps commander, so there were briefly two active-duty three stars.)

I suspect the decision to use "Vice Admiral" rather than "Rear Admiral" is essentially one of making it sound like a higher rank, and the fact that most people would address him as Admiral in English anyway. Aluf comes from the Semitic root for 1,000, and is a Biblical term by origin.

UPDATE: According to this article, he's authorized to call himself Vice Admiral when meeting foreign officers, under a system initiated over a decade ago, and only for the Navy Commander for some reason. I guess it's like the reason the US added the rank of five-star general during World War II: Eisenhower, with four stars, was commanding Field Marshal Montgomery, who as a Field Marshal theoretically outranked him, so they created a new rank, which however hasn't been used since shortly after the end of World War II.

Turbulence at Al-Ahram

An interesting post at The Arabist on some turbulence at Al-Ahram. The fate of newspapers worldwide is a matter of some interest, given the potential of new media, but the Egyptian media scene is particularly complex, dominated as it is by the big government dailies, but with an increasing voice for independent papers as well. Complicating matters is the fact that Al-Ahram's Center for Political and Strategic Studies is a think tank, and its senior fellows are more comparable to scholars at any other think tank than to newspaper employees, though this post certainly suggests they too are under pressure from the parent paper to avoid outside work.

Will the Bashir Warrant Backfire?

The decision by the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President 'Umar al-Bashir was welcome news to those who deplore the events in Darfur, but I'm wondering if there is a potential for the move backfiring and undercutting the fragile efforts that have been under way to bring peace in Sudan.

So far, it looks as if the main reaction in Khartoum has been defiance; it is at least possible that the regime will react by undercutting UN and African Union operations in Darfur. Yes, that would make Sudan a pariah state, but to a large extent it already is to most of the West.

Bashir has relatively few friends in the Arab world, but he seems to be gaining some support in Arab public opinion, where it is fashionable to see a double standard between the world's reactions to Israel's siege of Gaza and to Sudan's actions in Darfur. The Egyptian press has cautioned that the indictment of Bashir may backfire, and I suspect they may be right. It also looks as if Bashir will attend the Arab summit due to take place in Doha, in order to show that he can still travel outside Sudan. Turning over a fellow head of state attending a summit meeting would be an unthinkable breach of Arab international etiquette, whatever one may think of Bashir, or the wisdom of the warrant.

Make no mistake: I believe there is a strong case to be made for punishing heads of state who violate international norms and commit crimes against humanity. But if the head of state is an incumbent, attempts to execute the warrant are unlikely to succeed. Then the question becomes one of whether issuing the warrant was a tactical blunder, if in fact it produces negative results for the people of Darfur.

Huffington Post on the Bars of Cairo? Actually, Worth a Read and it Reminds Me of a Story...

Since I noted in my earlier post that today's news wasn't very inspiring, a little social commentary may be in order. Thanks to a link from The Arabist, I was led to this interesting piece over at The Huffington Post, of all places, about the decline of Cairo's non-elite downtown bars.

This is actually a good story, and what gives it away is that the authors were not just going to middle class bars but to the baladi bars in "popular" working-class neighborhoods like Bulaq. I know the Bar Massoud in Bulaq, which they mention, among others. It was a true baladi bar (that is, "of the country," "native,") working-class bar. The equivalent of a blue-collar bar in a steel-belt city, only it would be a white-galabiyya bar where the locals worked as vendors, doormen (bawabin), cab-drivers, laborers and such. If I remember Massoud correctly it was one of the biggest in Bulaq, which then had six or seven, and it may even have had Western-movie style swinging doors. One of the Bulaq bars did. I don't know many Westerners who ever went to them, and it wasn't a regular hangout, but it was a real glimpse of an Egypt even the Egyptian middle class never sees.

And it evokes a somewhat dormant area of my scholarly research product . . .

During a post-doctoral research year in Egypt in the late 1970s (1977-78 for the record, the year Sadat went to Jersualem), several fellow scholars (who have achieved some level of professional success and might not want me to identify them by name) and I actually wrote up a little underground guide to the baladi bars of Cairo. There were, as the article notes, a lot more of them then; the 1980s and 1990s were devastating to the baladi bar scene as religious pressures closed a lot of the bars lower-class Egyptians could afford, even while more five-star hotel bars were sprouting for the tourists and the nouveau riche. We explored the old, declining bars of the downtown and its outliers, described in the article I've linked to, as well as such areas as Shubra, Bulaq, Faggala -- mostly neighborhoods with minority or (Faggala) majority Christian populations,which meant they were a little less vulnerable to Islamist pressures as most of the bars were owned by Copts -- as well as such really down-market places as the makers of the ancient African fermented wheat drink known in Egypt as buza (a true speakeasy sort of place, but with families and, I'm sure, no sort of government license whatsoever). We disdained the big hotels and the upmarket areas such as Zamalek and Heliopolis. Our guidebook, typed up in the days before personal computers and circulated as a xeroxed samizdat, is pretty much gone with the wind (I may have a copy in a storage room somewhere, and a few mid-to-late-1980s updates on a 5 1/4" disc), but the memories endure, and are rather like those evoked by this story. [Readers: If you have an original complete copy post a comment and let me know.] Most of the bars we explored are gone now; some of those we patronized were known to Naguib Mahfouz and others of the literati, but most were holes-in-the-wall where foreigners were a decided oddity, and the Egyptian middle classes rarely showed up unless slumming. (And of course, one had to speak the language.) You do not want to know about the sanitary facilities.

Perhaps this article will remind other old Cairo hands of a different era in Cairo, before Islamist pressures closed the bars in the "popular quarters." I understand the bar scene today is one of wealthy young Egyptians with their cell-phones and text messages, not the baladi bars of old men in galabiyyas drinking Egyptian brandy, evoked in the article linked to.

There's a secondary class of bar worth remembering: the mid-level colonial bar. The old Bar Cecil on Midan Tawfiqiyya (Urabi) was a stupendous one: once a hangout of the British officer class, but not the senior ranks who hung out at Shepheard's, it was glorious for its big windows on the circle, its brass rails, and so much more, but it died, became a branch of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), itself of later scandalous infamy, and is forgotten. Another mid-level British officers' bar survives I think (last I heard) in the Barrel Bar of the Hotel Windsor, which was an overflow for the original Shepheards burned in 1952. But the old colonial bars have their own fan clubs, and this post is really aimed at remembering the baladi spots.

And, to try to give some additional "redeeming social value" to this post, let me add a comment that spins off the word baladi in its sense of local, down-market, working class. It's still sometimes a bit of a pejorative "a baladi neighborhood," the baladi loaf of bread is the heaviest barley round, not the nice white bread of the middle clases, etc. But it also can mean "everyman": In the era of the monarchy the standard "Egyptian public" figure in Egyptian political cartoons -- the equivalent of the old "John Q. Public" in US cartoons of a certain era -- was a dapper gent in a tarbush (fez) called Misri Effendi, roughly "Mister Egyptian" using an honorific not used for the working classes. After the 1952 Revolution (and we can talk another time about whether it deserves the name of a Revolution), the standard character in political cartoons became Ibn al-Balad, "son of the country," usually a fellow in a white galabiyya and a skullcap. Middle-class types still appeared in cartoons where appropriate, but the national personification became Ibn al-Balad. Of course, the real Ibn al-Balad types didn't read political cartoons in Roz al-Yusuf or the big dailies, but at least they replaced Misri Effendi as a stereotypical cartoon icon.

More Settlements? More Deja Vu All Over the Region

I'm having trouble getting inspired today, in part because of a sense of deja vu. So many of today's headlines seem like headlines I've seen before, over a great many years. Examples:

• Of course Hillary Clinton's on her inaugural tour of the region as Secretary of State, supporting a two-state solution and meeting with Israeli and Egyptian leaders; but somehow most of the stories seem to be the same old story rehashed. I think the sense we've been down this road before is underscored by this report of plans for significant new construction in the settlements, although the Peace Now report has been dismissed by the government.
• There are six official candidates for President in Algeria. As expected, the only one most non-Algerians have ever heard of is Abdelaziz Bouteflika. I was rather proud of myself for having heard of Louisa Hanoune and Moussa Touati, vaguely. Hanoune is a veteran leftist female candidate; Touati I think I've encountered before. The others are new to me. No suspense here: all the major opposition parties are boycotting. Bouteflika gets a third term by a bigger margin than the first two. I hope he's healthy, despite the rumors which the Algerian media recently blamed on (who else?) Mossad and other evil influences. Didn't we have this election before?
  
• Oh, and the Iraqis have condemned 'Ali Hasan al-Majid to death again. Al-Jazeera says this is his third death sentence. It actually seems like more. It gives the media more opportunity to refer to "Chemical 'Ali," but does it bring anyone -- Iraqis, Iraqi Kurds, the rest of the world -- closer to closure? I'm not sure what fate I would choose for him, but never hearing about him again would be a part of it. Those days, inshallah, are gone for good, if Iraq is lucky. Show trials have a place, but three death sentences?
  
• The US is warning about violence against US citizens in Egypt. The fact is that the Khan al-Khalili incident was aimed at tourists generally and killed a French tourist; there was a minor incident in the Khan a few days later in which an American was cut in the face by one man with a knife, but that seems to have been an isolated incident. This account is the first I've heard of some incident on the Cairo metro.
  
• Israel, which one might think has other problems to attend to, seeing as how it has no government, no clear winner of the elections, just fought a war, and is hosting the new US Secretary of State, has a new scandal: the Navy Commander went to a strip club. Glad we're keeping our priorities straight.
  
• And I won't even report on violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is all too familiar.
  

To be honest, it's hard to come up with compelling commentary when so much of the day's events are deja vu. I'll post more later if inspiration strikes.

General Aoun vs. Cardinal Sfeir, Continued: Thinking about the Lebanese Elections

Remember my posting last month about the feuding between General Michel Aoun and Maronite Patriarch Boutros Cardinal Sfeir in Lebanon? It's still simmering along; the Bishop of Jbeil (Byblos) gave a sermon saying critics of the Cardinal could be excommunicated, and now General Aoun says they must be talking about somebody else, he's a good Maronite himself and follows the rules.

The Lebanese Parliamentary elections are nearing (June 7, though there are still some urging they be held over several days instead of just one), and I suspect that I'll be posting more on Lebanon as we get closer. The Aoun-Sfeir feud strikes many in the West as strange since they remember when Aoun was isolated and fighting Syria almost alone, and can't understand why he's now allied with Syria and Hizbullah.

But I think one clue for thinking about Lebanon is to remember that the country works best when all parties work together to achieve some kind of consensus: the National Pact of 1943, the Ta'if Accords of 1989 . . . and works least well when things divide along a binary government versus opposition model. What works in the US or Western Europe is not the best model for Lebanon, where it tends to create a zero-sum, if you win I lose, confrontational politics that tends to degenerate into conflict. There is a natural, knee-jerk tendency in the US to want to exclude certain parties (particularly Hizbullah and other surrogates of Syria) from the Lebanese government, but in fact a polarized government-vs.-opposition model failed in 1958 and again rather specatacularly from 1975 to 1991. It has been polarizing again since the Hariri assassination. That, I think, may be a point to keep in mind as the elections approach, the rhetoric escalates, and a new US Administration tries to find its footing in the confused mosaic of Lebanon.

Clinton at Sharm al-Sheikh: Three Takes at Marc Lynch's Blog

Marc Lynch's Blog at Foreign Policy has an interesting conversation among Lynch, Tamara Wittes and Nathan Brown about Secretary of State Clinton's speech at Sharm al-Sheikh today. Each has a slightly different take, and while I really have no insights of my own to add, I'd say that anyone with an interest in the subject will find some thoughtful points from three people who pay very close attention to Palestinian issues on a regular basis here in town.

Oh, and on the same subject, The Arabist chimes in.

Al-Masry Al-Youm Gets its Own Printing Plant

This won't seem like much to most Westerners but it's very interesting from an Egyptian perspective: the independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (their preferred transliteration, not mine) is getting its own printing plant and is expressing gratitude to Al-Ahram for having printed it for the past several years. For years, the independent press in Egypt has been dependent on the government press for printing, paper supply, and distribution, so that a vigorous independent press has always been to some extent at the mercy of the government. The papers of the various opposition parties were often susceptible to seizure, and control of the presses generally gave an added layer of government supervision. I haven't read Al-Masry al-Youm daily, but it does seem to be doing a pretty good job of providing a balanced coverage not directly in the government's pocket and not specifically the mouthpiece of an opposition party, either. Their main website is here in Arabic; English (not always well translated) is here.

Acquiring their own print shop should be an important step forward for the independent press in Egypt. It will be interesting to see if it shows.

Barak Wants to Join Netanyahu?

Okay, this strikes me as a very strange development. Since the election Ehud Barak has been insisting that the way to rebuild Labor is in opposition, but now that Kadima is likely to lead the opposition, he may be urging Labor to join in a coalition with Likud? It's late right now and this strikes me as very odd indeed, and I'll post more on it.

Let me add that as of right now (a little after midnight Sunday/Monday Washington time) neither the Haaretz nor Ynet (Yediot Aharonot) websites seem to have this story; it's a Jerusalem Post exclusive at least for now.

We've got a snowstorm tonight and the schools will be closed tomorrow so I'll likely be working from home, which may actually give me a bit more time to blog. We'll see.

Ambassador Chas Freeman and the NIC

There's been a brief flap over the past few days over the appointment of Ambassador Charles W. (Chas) Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council; supporters of Israel have denounced him as too pro-Arab and pro-Saudi. From what I've seen, the debate has been full of misinformation and possibly downright disinformation.

First of all, I need to note that I have some biases of my own here: I'm on the Advisory Board of the Middle East Policy Council (unpaid, before you ask), and, while some consider their journal Middle East Policy as a rival of The Middle East Journal, I've always felt they have independent identities, filling separate niches, and have myself published a number of times in Middle East Policy. I know Ambassador Freeman and have worked with him, and served on panels he chaired, though I haven't known him as well as I knew his predecessor, George McGovern. Here's his biography at the MEPC website. As you'll see, he's also an old China hand, and a combination of China and the Middle East would seem useful qualifications for the Chairman of the NIC these days, I would think. His opponents are using his China views against him as well, but I think the real complaint is his links to the Arab world.

Ambassador Freeman did serve as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), but the idea that the Middle East Policy Council is somehow a Saudi creation is simply untrue. In fact it was McGovern who changed the name of the journal from American-Arab Affairs to Middle East Policy to give it more balance. Similar allegations have been made about the Middle East Institute, even when our President was a former Ambassador to Israel, Ned Walker. They're par for the course in Washington, I suppose, but that doesn't make them true. (I get just as many complaints that we have too many Israeli authors in the Journal as that we're too pro-Arab. If both sides think you're biased, you're probably doing something right. If we're bought and owned by the Saudis, I'm not getting my fair share.)

This is not a Washington inside-the-Beltway type of blog that's going to spend a lot of time talking about Washington personalities and issues that don't matter anywhere but here, but some of the stuff I've seen on the Internet about Chas Freeman just isn't true. After all, Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is a clearly pro-Israeli organization, has also been called back by this Administration. There were some complaints about that in Arab circles, of course, but Ross' history of diplomacy in the region justifies his appointment (and his new beat is SW Asia and the Gulf, mostly meaning Iran). And so does Ambassador Freeman's. And George Mitchell's. I'd rather we suspend judgment until we see what they do, but I'm still convinced that the critique of Chas Freeman is undeserved.

And as always, the Middle East Institute does not take positions on policy issues; the opinions here are my own.

UPDATED: The Saturday Washington Post has this piece by Jon Chait of The New Republic on its op-ed page. No surprise, since Martin Peretz at The New Republic had already led the charge on Chas Freeman. None of this changes anything I've said, but gives you an idea of the drumroll that has been building up. There are actually a lot worse attacks from sites I'd rather not link to, and that are far to the right of The New Republic. Have any of these people actually met Chas Freeman? Chait at least presents him as an ultra-realist, while Peretz outright calls him a bigot. I suppose this is where we are now in Middle Eastern policy polemic, but I wanted to raise my still rather unread voice to say that it is misguided.

Early Thoughts on the Iraq Drawdown

President Obama's announcement of details of the Iraq drawdown at Camp Lejeune today didn't add much to what had already leaked during the week, but a few comments may be in order:

• First, a residual force of 35,000 to 50,000, remaining in the country from August of 2010 until the deadline spelled out in the status of forces agreement, the end of 2011, keeps a significant force in Iraq for more than an additional year: up to a third of the total in Iraq at its peak.
• The Administration insists these are not combat troops but will be there in a training and advisory capacity. Those of us of a certain age remember the casualties our advisors took in Vietnam before we sent the first combat troops in; as General Petraeus at CENTCOM is well aware (having literally written the book, or rather the Field Manual, on Counterinsurgency), and as General Odierno, designer of the surge, is also well aware, in a counterinsurgency there are no front lines. In the age of the IED, everyone is a combat soldier. Our advisors will presumably include some assigned to Iraqi combat units. So what we are really looking at is a drawdown of deployed forces by two-thirds between now and next August, and reports indicate only about two brigades will be withdrawn before the end of this year.
• I think it is pretty well understood in Washington that Gates has wanted to draw down in Iraq since early in his term at the Pentagon; and let's remember that it was the Bush Administration that negotiated the Status of Forces Agreement setting a 2011 date for full departure, so the drawdown is really not a very radical one. But it does make it clear that the US plans to leave, and that may help defuse some of the fury in the Arab world about the US as an occupying power.
  

The Gaza Negotiations Mess

Haaretz' Akiva Eldar hears Egyptian complaints about Israel's sudden linkage of a ceasefire to the Gilad Shalit exchange. I noted earlier that this sudden shift, combined with suspending chief negotiator Amos Gilad for criticizing it, jeopardized the whole negotitations. (And to complicate things further, Gen. Gilad is now reappointed to his job.)

Now the Egyptians are complaining, and if Eldar is right in this article, Netanyahu may be prepared to carry through on the exchange deal that Olmert seems to have backed off from.

I think it's already fairly clear that Ehud Olmert isn't going to be remembered as Israel's greatest Prime Minister, but this negotiation foulup almost makes it look as if he's trying to salvage a legacy as Israel's most incompetent. The relationship with Egypt, rocky as it often is, is still the fact upon which the entire peace process has been laboriously constructed over 30 years. Egypt has been providing its good offices as a go-between with Hamas (which is hardly Egypt's preferred Palestinian interlocutor anyway) and had what looked like a workable deal in place, only to see Olmert shift the terms at the last minute. (Technically I gather it was the security cabinet that changed the deal, but Olmert is going to get the blame.)

The Shalit exchange, at least as portrayed by press reports, was going to be a prisoner exchange contemporary with but independent of the ceasefire. By linking the release of Shalit to the ceasefire instead of to the release of Palestinian prisoners, the whole thing is much more explicitly a defeat for Hamas, and Egypt's role as intermediary is undercut.

Since it looks increasingly like Netanyahu will form a narrow government on the right, prospects for progress are slim enough; but what could have been a last triumph for Olmert seems to have been squandered.

A Few Short Notices

I'm pretty busy with the Journal today, but a few short comments and links on the news of the day:

• The Kuwaiti Foreign Minister visits Baghdad on the 19th anniversary of the liberation of Kuwait. This follows restoration of an Embassy last fall. One issue is the question of continuing reparations; it does seem that, with Saddam in his grave and Iraq trying to rebuild, Kuwait might be a bit lenient on the reparations issue, but I know the resentments run deep, too.
  
• The US seems serious about an opening to Syria. Interesting that this led the website of Al-Jazeera Middle East in English (though the Palestinian talks in Cairo led the Arabic page) and The Jerusalem Post both. Admittedly, a meeting between the Ambassador and the Assistant Secretary of State isn't all that high-level, but it does mark an end to the cold shoulder we've been giving Damascus since the Hariri assassination.

More later if I get creative.

Egypt: A Small, Freelance Group?

The Egyptian authorities are now saying that the bomb on Sunday was a nail bomb, apparently made with black powder, presumably planted by a small Islamist cell. Assuming this proves to be true, it would be another indication that the major challenge for counterterror operations in the future may not be well-organized networks like al-Qa'ida, but rather small, freelance operations of a handful of people with unsophisticated technologies. A black powder nail bomb may be limited in its lethality, but by striking at the crucial tourist sector, it can have a decidedly asymmetric impact.

Of course, since so far as public announcements indicate the actual perpetrators remain unknown, one assumes these conclusions (which Al-Ahram attributes to "security agencies") are based on the nature of the bomb rather than actually knowing the identities of the bombmakers.

More here, suggesting someone could identify the pereptrators.

More on Egyptian Bombing

There's still not much clear about the people behind the Egyptian bombing. The first three people arrested have now been released; apparently two of them were women wearing hijab, which makes one wonder if that was the reason they were hauled in. Certainly men in beards have been rounded up in the past with little more evidence of wrongdoing than that they dress like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now 11 -- or is it 14? -- others are in custody but it isn't clear whether they're suspects or material witnesses. Al-'Arabiyya has reported that among thse being questioned are an Iranian and three Pakistanis; this follows a Member of Parliament's suggestion that Iran was behind the bombing.

I doubt that very much. Iran knows more about bombmaking than whoever put together the makeshift device that detonated at al-Hussein, and no Shi'ite is likely to plant a bomb outside the shrine of the Prophet's grandson Hussein, who is the fourth imam to the Shi'a. (The original foundation of the Hussein mosque was in Fatimid times, when Egypt itself was under Isma'ili Sh'i rule.) Iran and Egypt have had a very public feud going on for some time, and trading insults was common, but I'd wager this bombing will prove to be home-grown.

Jordanian Cabinet Reshuffle

Jordan has reshuffled its Cabinet, bringing in a new Foreign Minister. Nasir Joudeh, among other changes. Marc Lynch has a very good assessment of the changes, so unless I think of something to add, I'll simply refer you to his analysis.

Hizbullah Strongly Denies Rocket Firings: So Who?

Is some freelance group firing Katyushas at Israel? Hizbullah seemed particularly insistent that it didn't fire two rockets at northern Israel on Saturday. One landed in Maalot, the other fell within Lebanon. Clearly Hizbullah isn't eager to come under Israeli retaliatory fire (and Israel seems to have carried out some kind of minor operation along the Shebaa Farms occupation line), but this raises the question of who, if not Hizbullah, can fire Katyushas from somewhere south of Tyre.

Several answers spring to mind. In Lebanon's Wild South a rogue Hizbullah commander, some stray Palestinian radicals, or any of several splinter groups might be responsible. But it's the same problem we face in Gaza: even if the main resistance group (Hizbullah or Hamas) is standing down its rockets, anybody with a rocket launcher can disrupt a truce and bring down retribution, especially given Israel's rather quick retributive trigger finger. "Anybody with a rocket launcher" may seem a limited universe in many countries, but not in southern Lebanon.

It's also the problem that occurs when political weakness coincides with a proliferation of arms. You start down the spectrum that eventually leads to Somalia, to every man his own militia. I remember an old Lebanese hand telling me back during the civil war how he was driving on a road on Mount Lebanon one day and found himself behind an M-113 armored personnel carrier. APCs were pretty ubiquitous in those days (most of them stolen from the Lebanese Army), but they generally had the emblem of one of the militias on them. This one was unmarked. A private APC? Maybe there are private Katyusha launchers too though that particular anecdote dates from the civil war years.

So far, Israel's response to the rocket fire has been restrained. Hizbullah's quick disavowal is also rather interesting, since it comes at a time when (in a Lebanese political context) Hizbullah has been rather assertive. I think they want to do well in the upcoming elections, not provoke Israel and a new retaliation.

Can a Fallen Government Come Apart?

Israelis sometimes joke that if there were only two Israelis, there would be three Israeli political parties. At the moment, Ehud Olmert's caretaker government, which technically fell last year and is now just serving ad interim until Netanyahu forms a government, is managing to come apart in a feud between Olmert and outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak over Olmert's firing of General Amos Gilad, a Barak ally who was the chief negotiator on Gaza and who criticized Olmert for unnecessarily insulting Egypt.

Olmert seems to have had valid reasons for the firing, but this probably puts a prisoner exchange deal on hold for at least the moment, which means a ceasefire is also still on hold, which means that (depending on how long Netanyahu takes) the whole process might have to be revisited. It seems like another case of one-step-forward, two-steps-back.

UPDATE: One of the two people replacing Gilad as negotiator is Yuval Diskin, the head of Shin Bet (General Security Service, the internal security agency). Maybe I'm bring pessimistic (there have been worse Shin Bet heads than Diskin, for certain), but I'm not sure that's going to facilitate things for a lame duck government.

Abu Dhabi Bailing Out Dubai?

Dubai has been struggling due to the international real estate bubble's bursting, and from the sound of this Wall Street Journal article, it's been thrown a line by its rival Abu Dhabi. (When the WSJ headline says that the "UAE" is bailing out Dubai, it effectively means Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi has usually held the balance of power in the federation but Dubai has always managed to maintain its own autonomous policies (even its own defense forces) and has, of course, lately been the boom town of the Gulf. If Dubai becomes more beholden to its neighbor and rival for its economic survival, it will be interesting to see if there is a shift in the overall political relationships within the federation as well. I'll leave commentary on the bailout details to those who have been following the specifics of Dubai's problems, but thought I would note the political aspects of the rescue.

Update: Iran Hopes to Persuade Bahrain to Continue Gas Talks

It sounds as if Iran is trying hard to persuade Bahrain to come back to the table over the big natural gas deal that was put on hold over Ayatollah 'Ali Nateq-Nuri's remarks about Bahrain being a province of Iran. Certainly Iran needs the money from the gas deal, and the Foreign Ministry has done its best to calm the troubled waters created by the remarks. The fact that pretty much the same thing happened two years ago -- that time, the Iranian President actually visited Bahrain to patch things up -- suggests the level of suspicion about Iran's intentions that lies just below the surface in the Gulf.

Further Thoughts on the Cairo Bombing

A day after the Hussein bombing we don't know much more: three people have been arrested, but this may be a reflexive "round up the usual suspects" reaction; there is still some confusion about whether the explosive was thrown or planted, and some reports suggest it might have been a hand grenade or other small explosive.

Although there were quite a few wounded, the fact that there was only one fatality suggests this was a small explosive; the photos I've seen show little damage to structures. This may have been, like the 2005 bombing in the Khan al-Khalili, a fairly unsophisticated, even amateurish, operation, perhaps a one or two person operation. It definitely sounds like it was aimed at hurting tourism. But it's a much more limited attack than the Sinai bombings in 2005 and 2006, closer to the 2005 attacks near the Egyptian museum and in the Khan.

I noted yesterday that I don't give credence to the conspiracy theorists' idea that the government might have done this to gain support for the anti-terrorism bill, which is supposed to replace the state of emergency. I still don't, in part because the Egyptian Parliament will pass the bill easily anyway and hardly needs to rally support given its overwhelming majority for the ruling party, but we can probably count on the government to use the bombing as a reason for institutionalizing broad counterterrorist powers.

More as things develop -- unless, as sometimes happens in these cases, the whole thing goes down the memory hole and we never hear any details of the three people supposedly arrested.

UPDATE: Juan Cole's commentary on the bombings, including his reverie on old times in the Khan al-Khalili. Certainly all of us who lived in Cairo have memories of the locale of this bombing; as a young medieval historian back in the 1970s I spent a lot of time in the medieval buildings that may still be found along the winding streets of the area.