Friday, May 20, 2005
Hypocrisy Most Holy
Muslims should show some respect to others' religions.
BY ALI AL-AHMEDFriday, May 20, 2005 12:01 a.m.
With the revelation that a copy of the Quran may have been desecrated by U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Muslims and their governments--including that of Saudi Arabia--reacted angrily. This anger would have been understandable if the U.S. government's adopted policy was to desecrate our Quran. But even before the Newsweek report was discredited, that was never part of the allegations.
As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia--where I come from--are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.
Soon after Newsweek published an account, later retracted, of an American soldier flushing a copy of the Quran down the toilet, the Saudi government voiced its strenuous disapproval. More specifically, the Saudi Embassy in Washington expressed "great concern" and urged the U.S. to "conduct a quick investigation."
Although considered as holy in Islam and mentioned in the Quran dozens of times, the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia. This would seem curious to most people because of the fact that to most Muslims, the Bible is a holy book. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia we are not talking about most Muslims, but a tiny minority of hard-liners who constitute the Wahhabi Sect.
The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible. The State Department's annual human rights reports detail the arrest and deportation of many Christian worshipers every year. Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah met President Bush last month, two Christian gatherings were stormed in Riyadh. Bibles and crosses were confiscated, and will be incinerated. (The Saudi government does not even spare the Quran from desecration. On Oct. 14, 2004, dozens of Saudi men and women carried copies of the Quran as they protested in support of reformers in the capital, Riyadh. Although they carried the Qurans in part to protect themselves from assault by police, they were charged by hundreds of riot police, who stepped on the books with their shoes, according to one of the protesters.)
As Muslims, we have not been as generous as our Christian and Jewish counterparts in respecting others' holy books and religious symbols. Saudi Arabia bans the importation or the display of crosses, Stars of David or any other religious symbols not approved by the Wahhabi establishment. TV programs that show Christian clergymen, crosses or Stars of David are censored.
The desecration of religious texts and symbols and intolerance of varying religious viewpoints and beliefs have been issues of some controversy inside Saudi Arabia. Ruled by a Wahhabi theocracy, the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia have made it difficult for Christians, Jews, Hindus and others, as well as dissenting sects of Islam, to visibly coexist inside the kingdom.
Another way in which religious and cultural issues are becoming more divisive is the Saudi treatment of Americans who are living in that country: Around 30,000 live and work in various parts of Saudi Arabia. These people are not allowed to celebrate their religious or even secular holidays. These include Christmas and Easter, but also Thanksgiving. All other Gulf states allow non-Islamic holidays to be celebrated.
The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries--especially the U.S.--provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.
The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.
Mr. al-Ahmed is director of the Saudi Institute in Washington.
Muslims should show some respect to others' religions.
BY ALI AL-AHMEDFriday, May 20, 2005 12:01 a.m.
With the revelation that a copy of the Quran may have been desecrated by U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Muslims and their governments--including that of Saudi Arabia--reacted angrily. This anger would have been understandable if the U.S. government's adopted policy was to desecrate our Quran. But even before the Newsweek report was discredited, that was never part of the allegations.
As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia--where I come from--are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.
Soon after Newsweek published an account, later retracted, of an American soldier flushing a copy of the Quran down the toilet, the Saudi government voiced its strenuous disapproval. More specifically, the Saudi Embassy in Washington expressed "great concern" and urged the U.S. to "conduct a quick investigation."
Although considered as holy in Islam and mentioned in the Quran dozens of times, the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia. This would seem curious to most people because of the fact that to most Muslims, the Bible is a holy book. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia we are not talking about most Muslims, but a tiny minority of hard-liners who constitute the Wahhabi Sect.
The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible. The State Department's annual human rights reports detail the arrest and deportation of many Christian worshipers every year. Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah met President Bush last month, two Christian gatherings were stormed in Riyadh. Bibles and crosses were confiscated, and will be incinerated. (The Saudi government does not even spare the Quran from desecration. On Oct. 14, 2004, dozens of Saudi men and women carried copies of the Quran as they protested in support of reformers in the capital, Riyadh. Although they carried the Qurans in part to protect themselves from assault by police, they were charged by hundreds of riot police, who stepped on the books with their shoes, according to one of the protesters.)
As Muslims, we have not been as generous as our Christian and Jewish counterparts in respecting others' holy books and religious symbols. Saudi Arabia bans the importation or the display of crosses, Stars of David or any other religious symbols not approved by the Wahhabi establishment. TV programs that show Christian clergymen, crosses or Stars of David are censored.
The desecration of religious texts and symbols and intolerance of varying religious viewpoints and beliefs have been issues of some controversy inside Saudi Arabia. Ruled by a Wahhabi theocracy, the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia have made it difficult for Christians, Jews, Hindus and others, as well as dissenting sects of Islam, to visibly coexist inside the kingdom.
Another way in which religious and cultural issues are becoming more divisive is the Saudi treatment of Americans who are living in that country: Around 30,000 live and work in various parts of Saudi Arabia. These people are not allowed to celebrate their religious or even secular holidays. These include Christmas and Easter, but also Thanksgiving. All other Gulf states allow non-Islamic holidays to be celebrated.
The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries--especially the U.S.--provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.
The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.
Mr. al-Ahmed is director of the Saudi Institute in Washington.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Mubarak, Let Your People Go
Max Boot May 19, 2005
Hosni Mubarak must think that George W. Bush is a chump. The Egyptian pharaoh apparently realizes that the U.S. president is serious about spreading freedom and democracy to the Middle East, but he still thinks he can get away with cosmetic changes that do nothing to seriously change the ugly nature of his regime. Mubarak grandly proclaims that in this fall's presidential election other candidates will be allowed to challenge him for the first time. But then his handpicked parliamentarians pass electoral rules that make a genuine contest virtually impossible. To qualify for the ballot, candidates who don't belong to one of the officially approved parties will have to get the support of hundreds of Mubarak's yes men in parliament and the provincial councils. This prevents the leader of the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood from running. The liberal Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party has won official recognition, but its leader, Ayman Nour, may not be able to run because of bogus criminal charges that he forged signatures on a petition. The trumped-up case against Nour is only one sign that repression is intensifying in Egypt. Members of the Kifaya (Enough) movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, the most notable anti-government groups, have seen their peaceful public demonstrations broken up by riot police. Protesters have been arrested and roughed up.There is little hope that Mubarak will give opposition candidates equal access to state-owned TV stations and newspapers, which regularly extol his virtues with embarrassing exaggeration. Nor can he be trusted to hold a fair vote. A group representing Egyptian judges has refused to supervise the balloting because, as one judge put it, they "won't participate in fraud." Even Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazief, on a charm tour of the United States this week, has to admit that Egypt won't see a truly contested election until 2011 at the earliest. Nazief justifies this go-slow approach with soothing talk about how "democracy is an evolutionary process," and you can't go too fast lest Islamic extremists take control. But that's what the shah of Iran said in the 1970s. It turned out that his opposition to democratic reform made an Islamist takeover more, not less, likely. Same with Egypt: The less access that fed-up people have to the political process, the more likely they are to be seduced by the hard-line mullahs' siren song. Bush shouldn't sit still for Mubarak's obstructionism, which breeds greater hostility not only against the regime in Cairo but also against its backers in Washington. The U.S. should cut or eliminate its annual $2-billion subsidy to Egypt until Mubarak gets serious about liberal reform.Even the mere threat of an aid cutoff would cause a tizzy throughout the Arab world. After I made that very proposal on this page in February, Jihad Khazen, former editor in chief of the influential London-based, Saudi-owned daily Al Hayat, published a lengthy column of vitriol directed at ye olde columnist. I was labeled a "Likudist Goebbels … who is overfilled with hatred towards the Arabs and Muslims."According to Khazen, Mubarak isn't really a dictator because he has "led his country about a quarter of a century without getting involved in wars or regional disputes" — a novel definition of "dictator" that would rule out Kim Jong Il and Robert Mugabe too. He suggests that instead of pressuring Egypt, the U.S. should fight "Israeli terrorism as it fights [Al Qaeda's] terrorism." (Should the U.S. try to kill Ariel Sharon?) This sort of claptrap, reminiscent of Nazi or communist doublespeak, has been standard fare throughout the Middle East for decades. Anti-American and anti-Semitic hate-mongering has been stoked by ostensibly pro-American regimes in Riyadh, Cairo and elsewhere that have found it convenient to direct their people's frustration outward.But lately the dictators' survival strategy has been breaking down. Free elections have been held by Afghanistan, Iraq and, arguably, the Palestinian Authority. Syrian occupiers have been run out of Lebanon by popular pressure. The latest sign of democratic ferment sweeping the region is Kuwait's decision to grant political rights to women.The tyrants are terrified. Like Europe's ancien regimes facing the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, they are doing whatever they can to contain this unrest before it sweeps them out of their palaces. The land of Washington and Lincoln should stand with the people against their oppressors. Keep the pressure on Mubarak.
Max Boot May 19, 2005
Hosni Mubarak must think that George W. Bush is a chump. The Egyptian pharaoh apparently realizes that the U.S. president is serious about spreading freedom and democracy to the Middle East, but he still thinks he can get away with cosmetic changes that do nothing to seriously change the ugly nature of his regime. Mubarak grandly proclaims that in this fall's presidential election other candidates will be allowed to challenge him for the first time. But then his handpicked parliamentarians pass electoral rules that make a genuine contest virtually impossible. To qualify for the ballot, candidates who don't belong to one of the officially approved parties will have to get the support of hundreds of Mubarak's yes men in parliament and the provincial councils. This prevents the leader of the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood from running. The liberal Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party has won official recognition, but its leader, Ayman Nour, may not be able to run because of bogus criminal charges that he forged signatures on a petition. The trumped-up case against Nour is only one sign that repression is intensifying in Egypt. Members of the Kifaya (Enough) movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, the most notable anti-government groups, have seen their peaceful public demonstrations broken up by riot police. Protesters have been arrested and roughed up.There is little hope that Mubarak will give opposition candidates equal access to state-owned TV stations and newspapers, which regularly extol his virtues with embarrassing exaggeration. Nor can he be trusted to hold a fair vote. A group representing Egyptian judges has refused to supervise the balloting because, as one judge put it, they "won't participate in fraud." Even Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazief, on a charm tour of the United States this week, has to admit that Egypt won't see a truly contested election until 2011 at the earliest. Nazief justifies this go-slow approach with soothing talk about how "democracy is an evolutionary process," and you can't go too fast lest Islamic extremists take control. But that's what the shah of Iran said in the 1970s. It turned out that his opposition to democratic reform made an Islamist takeover more, not less, likely. Same with Egypt: The less access that fed-up people have to the political process, the more likely they are to be seduced by the hard-line mullahs' siren song. Bush shouldn't sit still for Mubarak's obstructionism, which breeds greater hostility not only against the regime in Cairo but also against its backers in Washington. The U.S. should cut or eliminate its annual $2-billion subsidy to Egypt until Mubarak gets serious about liberal reform.Even the mere threat of an aid cutoff would cause a tizzy throughout the Arab world. After I made that very proposal on this page in February, Jihad Khazen, former editor in chief of the influential London-based, Saudi-owned daily Al Hayat, published a lengthy column of vitriol directed at ye olde columnist. I was labeled a "Likudist Goebbels … who is overfilled with hatred towards the Arabs and Muslims."According to Khazen, Mubarak isn't really a dictator because he has "led his country about a quarter of a century without getting involved in wars or regional disputes" — a novel definition of "dictator" that would rule out Kim Jong Il and Robert Mugabe too. He suggests that instead of pressuring Egypt, the U.S. should fight "Israeli terrorism as it fights [Al Qaeda's] terrorism." (Should the U.S. try to kill Ariel Sharon?) This sort of claptrap, reminiscent of Nazi or communist doublespeak, has been standard fare throughout the Middle East for decades. Anti-American and anti-Semitic hate-mongering has been stoked by ostensibly pro-American regimes in Riyadh, Cairo and elsewhere that have found it convenient to direct their people's frustration outward.But lately the dictators' survival strategy has been breaking down. Free elections have been held by Afghanistan, Iraq and, arguably, the Palestinian Authority. Syrian occupiers have been run out of Lebanon by popular pressure. The latest sign of democratic ferment sweeping the region is Kuwait's decision to grant political rights to women.The tyrants are terrified. Like Europe's ancien regimes facing the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, they are doing whatever they can to contain this unrest before it sweeps them out of their palaces. The land of Washington and Lincoln should stand with the people against their oppressors. Keep the pressure on Mubarak.
History and Mystery
Why does the New York Times insist on calling jihadists "insurgents"?
By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, May 16, 2005, at 10:09 AM PT
When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair. A doozy classic led the "Week in Review" section on Sunday. Portentously headed "The Mystery of the Insurgency," the article rubbed its eyes at the sheer lunacy and sadism of the Iraqi car bombers and random murderers. At a time when new mass graves are being filled, and old ones are still being dug up, writer James Bennet practically pleaded with the authors of both to come up with an intelligible (or defensible?) reason for his paper to go on calling them "insurgents."
I don't think the New York Times ever referred to those who devastated its hometown's downtown as "insurgents." But it does employ this title every day for the gang headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. With pedantic exactitude, and unless anyone should miss the point, this man has named his organization "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia" and sought (and apparently received) Osama Bin Laden's permission for the franchise. Did al-Qaida show "interest in winning hearts and minds … in building international legitimacy … in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology," or any of the other things plaintively mentioned as lacking by Mr. Bennet?
The answer, if we remember our ABC, is yes and no, with yes at least to the third part of the question. The Bin Ladenists did have a sort of "governing program," expressed in part by their Taliban allies and patrons. This in turn reflected a "unified ideology." It can be quite easily summarized: the return of the Ottoman Empire under a caliphate and a return to the desert religious purity of the seventh century (not quite the same things, but that's not our fault). In the meantime, anyway, war to the end against Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and Shiites. None of the "experts" quoted in the article appeared to have remembered these essentials of the al-Qaida program, but had they done so, they might not be so astounded at the promiscuous way in which the Iraqi gangsters pump out toxic anti-Semitism, slaughter Nepalese and other Asian guest-workers on video and gloat over the death of Hindus, burn out and blow up the Iraqi Christian minority, kidnap any Westerner who catches their eye, and regularly inflict massacres and bombings on Shiite mosques, funerals, and assemblies.
A letter from Zarqawi to Bin Laden more than a year ago, intercepted by Kurdish intelligence and since then well-authenticated, spoke of Shiism as a repulsive heresy and the ignition of a Sunni-Shiite civil war as the best and easiest way to thwart the Crusader-Zionist coalition. The actions since then have precisely followed the design, but the design has been forgotten by the journal of record. The Bin Laden and Zarqawi organizations, and their co-thinkers in other countries, have gone to great pains to announce, on several occasions, that they will win because they love death, while their enemies are so soft and degenerate that they prefer life. Are we supposed to think that they were just boasting when they said this? Their actions demonstrate it every day, and there are burned-out school buses and clinics and hospitals to prove it, as well as mosques (the incineration of which one might think to be a better subject for Islamic protest than a possibly desecrated Quran, in a prison where every inmate is automatically issued with one.)
Then we might find a little space for the small question of democracy. The Baath Party's opinion of this can be easily gauged, not just from its record in power but from the rancid prose of its founding fascist fathers. As for the Bin Ladenists, they have taken extraordinary pains to say, through the direct statements of Osama and of Zarqawi, that democracy is a vile heresy, a Greek fabrication, and a source of profanity. For the last several weeks, however, the Times has been opining every day that the latest hysterical murder campaign is a result of the time it has taken the newly elected Iraqi Assembly to come up with a representative government. The corollary of this mush-headed coverage must be that, if a more representative government were available in these terrible conditions (conditions supplied by the gangsters themselves), the homicide and sabotage would thereby decline. Is there a serious person in the known world who can be brought to believe such self-evident rubbish?
On many occasions, the jihadists in Iraq have been very specific as well as very general. When they murdered Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brilliant and brave U.N. representative assigned to Baghdad by Kofi Annan, the terrorists' communiqué hailed the death of the man who had so criminally helped Christian East Timor to become independent of Muslim Indonesia. (This was also among the "reasons" given for the bombing of the bar in Bali.) I think I begin to sense the "frustration" of the "insurgents." They keep telling us what they are like and what they want. But do we ever listen? Nah. For them, it must be like talking to the wall. Bennet even complains that it's difficult for reporters to get close to the "insurgents": He forgets that his own paper has published a conversation with one of them, in which the man praises the invasion of Kuwait, supports the cleansing of the Kurds, and says that "we cannot accept to live with infidels."
Ah, but why would the "secular" former Baathists join in such theocratic mayhem? Let me see if I can guess. Leaving aside the formation of another well-named group—the Fedayeen Saddam—to perform state-sponsored jihad before the intervention, how did the Baath Party actually rule? Yes, it's coming back to me. By putting every Iraqi citizen in daily fear of his or her life, by random and capricious torture and murder, and by cynical divide-and-rule among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Does this remind you of anything?
That's not to say that the paper doesn't have a long memory. Having once read in high school that violence is produced by underlying social conditions, the author of this appalling article refers in lenient terms to "the goal of ridding Iraq of an American presence, a goal that may find sympathy among Iraqis angry about poor electricity and water service and high unemployment." Bet you hadn't thought of that: The water and power are intermittent, so let's go and blow up the generating stations and the oil pipelines. No job? Shoot up the people waiting to register for employment. To the insult of flattering the psychopaths, Bennet adds his condescension to the suffering of ordinary Iraqis, who are murdered every day while trying to keep essential services running. (Baathism, by the way, comes in very handy in crippling these, because the secret police of the old regime know how things operate, as well as where everybody lives. Or perhaps you think that the attacks are so "deadly" because the bombers get lucky seven days a week?)
This campaign of horror began before Baghdad fell, with the execution and mutilation of those who dared to greet American and British troops. It continued with the looting of the Baghdad museum and other sites, long before there could have been any complaint about the failure to restore power or security. It is an attempt to put Iraqi Arabs and Kurds, many of them still traumatized by decades of well-founded fear, back under the heel of the Baath Party or under a home-grown Taliban, or the combination of both that would also have been the Odai/Qusai final solution. Half-conceding the usefulness of chaos and misery in bringing this about, Bennet in his closing paragraph compares jihadism to 19th-century anarchism, which shows that he hasn't read Proudhon or Bakunin or Kropotkin either.
In my ears, "insurgent" is a bit like "rebel" or even "revolutionary." There's nothing axiomatically pejorative about it, and some passages of history have made it a term of honor. At a minimum, though, it must mean "rising up." These fascists and hirelings are not rising up, they are stamping back down. It's time for respectable outlets to drop the word, to call things by their right names (Baathist or Bin Ladenist or jihadist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist.
Why does the New York Times insist on calling jihadists "insurgents"?
By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, May 16, 2005, at 10:09 AM PT
When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair. A doozy classic led the "Week in Review" section on Sunday. Portentously headed "The Mystery of the Insurgency," the article rubbed its eyes at the sheer lunacy and sadism of the Iraqi car bombers and random murderers. At a time when new mass graves are being filled, and old ones are still being dug up, writer James Bennet practically pleaded with the authors of both to come up with an intelligible (or defensible?) reason for his paper to go on calling them "insurgents."
I don't think the New York Times ever referred to those who devastated its hometown's downtown as "insurgents." But it does employ this title every day for the gang headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. With pedantic exactitude, and unless anyone should miss the point, this man has named his organization "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia" and sought (and apparently received) Osama Bin Laden's permission for the franchise. Did al-Qaida show "interest in winning hearts and minds … in building international legitimacy … in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology," or any of the other things plaintively mentioned as lacking by Mr. Bennet?
The answer, if we remember our ABC, is yes and no, with yes at least to the third part of the question. The Bin Ladenists did have a sort of "governing program," expressed in part by their Taliban allies and patrons. This in turn reflected a "unified ideology." It can be quite easily summarized: the return of the Ottoman Empire under a caliphate and a return to the desert religious purity of the seventh century (not quite the same things, but that's not our fault). In the meantime, anyway, war to the end against Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and Shiites. None of the "experts" quoted in the article appeared to have remembered these essentials of the al-Qaida program, but had they done so, they might not be so astounded at the promiscuous way in which the Iraqi gangsters pump out toxic anti-Semitism, slaughter Nepalese and other Asian guest-workers on video and gloat over the death of Hindus, burn out and blow up the Iraqi Christian minority, kidnap any Westerner who catches their eye, and regularly inflict massacres and bombings on Shiite mosques, funerals, and assemblies.
A letter from Zarqawi to Bin Laden more than a year ago, intercepted by Kurdish intelligence and since then well-authenticated, spoke of Shiism as a repulsive heresy and the ignition of a Sunni-Shiite civil war as the best and easiest way to thwart the Crusader-Zionist coalition. The actions since then have precisely followed the design, but the design has been forgotten by the journal of record. The Bin Laden and Zarqawi organizations, and their co-thinkers in other countries, have gone to great pains to announce, on several occasions, that they will win because they love death, while their enemies are so soft and degenerate that they prefer life. Are we supposed to think that they were just boasting when they said this? Their actions demonstrate it every day, and there are burned-out school buses and clinics and hospitals to prove it, as well as mosques (the incineration of which one might think to be a better subject for Islamic protest than a possibly desecrated Quran, in a prison where every inmate is automatically issued with one.)
Then we might find a little space for the small question of democracy. The Baath Party's opinion of this can be easily gauged, not just from its record in power but from the rancid prose of its founding fascist fathers. As for the Bin Ladenists, they have taken extraordinary pains to say, through the direct statements of Osama and of Zarqawi, that democracy is a vile heresy, a Greek fabrication, and a source of profanity. For the last several weeks, however, the Times has been opining every day that the latest hysterical murder campaign is a result of the time it has taken the newly elected Iraqi Assembly to come up with a representative government. The corollary of this mush-headed coverage must be that, if a more representative government were available in these terrible conditions (conditions supplied by the gangsters themselves), the homicide and sabotage would thereby decline. Is there a serious person in the known world who can be brought to believe such self-evident rubbish?
On many occasions, the jihadists in Iraq have been very specific as well as very general. When they murdered Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brilliant and brave U.N. representative assigned to Baghdad by Kofi Annan, the terrorists' communiqué hailed the death of the man who had so criminally helped Christian East Timor to become independent of Muslim Indonesia. (This was also among the "reasons" given for the bombing of the bar in Bali.) I think I begin to sense the "frustration" of the "insurgents." They keep telling us what they are like and what they want. But do we ever listen? Nah. For them, it must be like talking to the wall. Bennet even complains that it's difficult for reporters to get close to the "insurgents": He forgets that his own paper has published a conversation with one of them, in which the man praises the invasion of Kuwait, supports the cleansing of the Kurds, and says that "we cannot accept to live with infidels."
Ah, but why would the "secular" former Baathists join in such theocratic mayhem? Let me see if I can guess. Leaving aside the formation of another well-named group—the Fedayeen Saddam—to perform state-sponsored jihad before the intervention, how did the Baath Party actually rule? Yes, it's coming back to me. By putting every Iraqi citizen in daily fear of his or her life, by random and capricious torture and murder, and by cynical divide-and-rule among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Does this remind you of anything?
That's not to say that the paper doesn't have a long memory. Having once read in high school that violence is produced by underlying social conditions, the author of this appalling article refers in lenient terms to "the goal of ridding Iraq of an American presence, a goal that may find sympathy among Iraqis angry about poor electricity and water service and high unemployment." Bet you hadn't thought of that: The water and power are intermittent, so let's go and blow up the generating stations and the oil pipelines. No job? Shoot up the people waiting to register for employment. To the insult of flattering the psychopaths, Bennet adds his condescension to the suffering of ordinary Iraqis, who are murdered every day while trying to keep essential services running. (Baathism, by the way, comes in very handy in crippling these, because the secret police of the old regime know how things operate, as well as where everybody lives. Or perhaps you think that the attacks are so "deadly" because the bombers get lucky seven days a week?)
This campaign of horror began before Baghdad fell, with the execution and mutilation of those who dared to greet American and British troops. It continued with the looting of the Baghdad museum and other sites, long before there could have been any complaint about the failure to restore power or security. It is an attempt to put Iraqi Arabs and Kurds, many of them still traumatized by decades of well-founded fear, back under the heel of the Baath Party or under a home-grown Taliban, or the combination of both that would also have been the Odai/Qusai final solution. Half-conceding the usefulness of chaos and misery in bringing this about, Bennet in his closing paragraph compares jihadism to 19th-century anarchism, which shows that he hasn't read Proudhon or Bakunin or Kropotkin either.
In my ears, "insurgent" is a bit like "rebel" or even "revolutionary." There's nothing axiomatically pejorative about it, and some passages of history have made it a term of honor. At a minimum, though, it must mean "rising up." These fascists and hirelings are not rising up, they are stamping back down. It's time for respectable outlets to drop the word, to call things by their right names (Baathist or Bin Ladenist or jihadist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Outrage and Silence
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.
That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.
Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.
The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward.
The challenge we face in Iraq is so steep precisely because the power shift the U.S. and its allies are trying to engineer there is so profound - in both religious and political terms.
Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are indifferent to their brutalization.
At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually sanitized as "resistance" to occupation.
Salama Na'mat, the Washington bureau chief for the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat, wrote the other day: "What is the responsibility of the [Arab] regimes and the official and semiofficial media in the countries bordering Iraq in legitimizing the operations that murder Iraqis? ... Isn't their goal to thwart [the emergence of] the newborn democracy in Iraq so that it won't spread in the region?" (Translation by Memri.)
In identifying the problem, though, Mr. Na'mat also identifies the solution. If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority. It is what the community, what the village, deems shameful. That is what restrains people. So how do we get the Sunni Arab village to delegitimize suicide bombers?
Inside Iraq, obviously, credible Sunnis have to be brought into the political process and constitution-drafting, as long as they do not have blood on their hands from Saddam's days. And outside Iraq, the Bush team needs to be forcefully demanding that Saudi Arabia and other key Arab allies use their media, government and religious systems to denounce and delegitimize the despicable murder of Muslims by Muslims in Iraq.
If the Arab world, its media and its spiritual leaders, came out and forcefully and repeatedly condemned those who mount these suicide attacks, and if credible Sunnis were given their fair share in the Iraqi government, I am certain a lot of this suicide bombing would stop, as happened with the Palestinians. Iraqi Sunnis would pass on the intelligence needed to prevent these attacks, and they would deny the suicide bombers the safe houses they need to succeed.
That is the only way it stops, because we don't know who is who. It takes the village - and right now the Sunni Arab village needs to be pressured and induced to restrain those among them who are engaging in these suicidal murders of innocents.
The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and compassion that it propagates.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.
That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.
Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.
The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward.
The challenge we face in Iraq is so steep precisely because the power shift the U.S. and its allies are trying to engineer there is so profound - in both religious and political terms.
Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are indifferent to their brutalization.
At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually sanitized as "resistance" to occupation.
Salama Na'mat, the Washington bureau chief for the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat, wrote the other day: "What is the responsibility of the [Arab] regimes and the official and semiofficial media in the countries bordering Iraq in legitimizing the operations that murder Iraqis? ... Isn't their goal to thwart [the emergence of] the newborn democracy in Iraq so that it won't spread in the region?" (Translation by Memri.)
In identifying the problem, though, Mr. Na'mat also identifies the solution. If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority. It is what the community, what the village, deems shameful. That is what restrains people. So how do we get the Sunni Arab village to delegitimize suicide bombers?
Inside Iraq, obviously, credible Sunnis have to be brought into the political process and constitution-drafting, as long as they do not have blood on their hands from Saddam's days. And outside Iraq, the Bush team needs to be forcefully demanding that Saudi Arabia and other key Arab allies use their media, government and religious systems to denounce and delegitimize the despicable murder of Muslims by Muslims in Iraq.
If the Arab world, its media and its spiritual leaders, came out and forcefully and repeatedly condemned those who mount these suicide attacks, and if credible Sunnis were given their fair share in the Iraqi government, I am certain a lot of this suicide bombing would stop, as happened with the Palestinians. Iraqi Sunnis would pass on the intelligence needed to prevent these attacks, and they would deny the suicide bombers the safe houses they need to succeed.
That is the only way it stops, because we don't know who is who. It takes the village - and right now the Sunni Arab village needs to be pressured and induced to restrain those among them who are engaging in these suicidal murders of innocents.
The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and compassion that it propagates.
Monday, May 16, 2005
Arafat Inc.
The search for money once controlled by the dead Palestinian leader leads to a Manhattan bowling alley, an African coffee plantation - and possibly to terrorist accounts
By DAVID BALLINGRUD, Times Staff WriterPublished May 15, 2005
Was he the visionary father of a new nation? Or was he the Palestinian godfather, boss of bosses over terrorists and thieves, a corrupter who stole billions and used the money to buy the loyalty of his supporters and line his own pockets while his people suffered?
Or was he some of both?
Yasser Arafat is dead, and the Middle East peace process has made headway in his absence. For a man whose name dominated headlines for as long as his did, Arafat disappeared without a trace, leaving most of the world guessing at what caused his death in a Paris hospital last November.
But some people are trying to answer what may be an even more important question: What became of his money?
Near the end of his life, Arafat controlled an estimated billion dollars, at least, in a tangle of secret accounts around the world. He used a holding company called PCSC, the Palestine Commercial Services Co., to buy interests in profit-seeking endeavors - from almost $300-million in the Egyptian mobile phone company Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, to almost $30-million in private holdings in the United States.
According to Bloomberg News, Arafat's U.S. holdings included $3.2-million in Virginia-based Simplexity Inc., which makes electronic commerce software, $2.1-million in New York- and Boston-based Vaultus Inc., which makes software for wireless computers, and $1.3-million in New York-based Strike Holdings LLC, which owns the Bowlmor Lanes bowling alley in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.
Arafat was 75 when he died Nov. 11, surrounded by aides, government officials and his wife, Suha, who did her best to keep the others at a distance. Suha, who lived comfortably in Paris with the couple's daughter, accused the official Palestinian entourage of trying to gain control of money that belonged to her husband, and therefore to her, when he died. After Arafat died, it was widely rumored that Suha was paid to keep quiet and disappear.
So what did happen to the money? Has it been returned to the Palestinian people, many of whom have lived for years in the squalor of refugee camps? Or is much of it still hidden in secret accounts throughout the world, controlled by militants in Arafat's inner circle, available to buy guns and bombs?The money hunt
With the Palestinian people badly in need of housing, schools and hospitals, and with money available from donor governments around the world, Arafat and his money men instead rolled the dice on a long list of venture capital gambits. They invested mostly through Ramallah-based PCSC, which Arafat controlled through his financial adviser, Mohamed Rashid.
The investments were made with tax money diverted from the Palestinian Finance Ministry, according to auditors and a report by the International Monetary Fund.
U.S. auditors, hired by the Palestinian Authority, have located and returned to the government the money in about 200 of Arafat's secret accounts. "That's about 90 percent of them," said Jim Prince of the Democracy Council, the California nonprofit hired by the PA to track down the money. Prince is president and founder of the Democracy Council and serves as director of the council's financial "transparency" project in the Middle East.
So far, so good. But the auditors have not been able to examine the accounts of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, the political organization that was, until the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians' de facto government. That's important because Arafat was the head of both bodies and maintained tightfisted control over the funds of both.
When Prince and his team got inside the PA books, they found they could separate the 200 or so accounts into categories. "Many were carryovers from the old PLO days, when they were a subnational (quasi-governmental) organization and there was a reason for secrecy," he said.
"Another group of accounts were plainly corrupt, or were used to support militant activities," he said. "And the last group was personal money for Arafat, his friends and his wife."
How detailed were the books? Not very.
Until 2002, when donors began demanding more accountability, the Palestinian Authority's budget just referred to "outside accounts," said Prince. "The people who were responsible for them said to us "we told the head guy (Arafat) everything.' I blame the (international) donors for giving money when there wasn't even a treasury to put the money into."
Prince said about 90 percent of the PA's commercial assets "have been "captured.' That means located, identified and legally taken over."
But there remain the assets controlled by the PLO. Its accounts have not been examined. "I'd love to go look at the PLO accounts," Prince said, "but I doubt there is very much interest on their part to have us do that."
Despite his curiosity about PLO finances, Prince said he thinks it is probably a "threadbare" organization these days. "It still has so-called embassies around the world, and it still owns businesses and charges membership dues," he said, "but I'd be surprised if their assets were large."
But not everyone agrees. "I know well-informed people who still believe the PLO has billions hidden around the world," Prince said. He identified Dennis Ross, former special Middle East coordinator and now director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as one of those people. Ross declined to comment.Is the money in the right pockets?
For years, the world's donor nations - including the United States and the European Union - have given much to ease the difficult conditions of the Palestinian people. But they fretted about Arafat's secretive handling of the money. In 2002, to ensure the money would not be used to fund terrorism, the donors finally demanded more accountability. The result was the Palestinian Investment Fund, set up to take money from the frequently corrupt government ministries and use it to stimulate economic growth.
It made Palestinian finances more transparent. It did not outflank Arafat, however.
DEBKAfile, an Internet publication devoted to analysis of Middle East political and military issues, reports that Arafat soon maneuvered around this little obstacle by appointing two chums to important PIF committees. Investments thus remained largely in the hands of this group of three.
The French government recently opened a tax and money-laundering investigation into the deposit of about 11.5-million euros (about $15-million) into the accounts of Mrs. Arafat between July 2002 and July 2003 - about the time the PIF was getting off the ground.
Auditors later found PIF money in companies in Guinea-Bissau's national airline and a coffee plantation in Zimbabwe, to name just two investments. The PIF, however, gradually has come more and more under the steady hand of Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, a respected former official of the International Monetary Fund, chosen under pressure from the United States and EU.
That did not end the worry over missing money, however.
Edward S. Walker Jr. is president of the Middle East Institute. He previously served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, as U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt and as deputy permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations.
Last November, Walker warned there was a struggle being played out behind the scenes to control billions of dollars Arafat had stashed away in private accounts.
"Arafat ran the finances of his main political faction, Fatah, as a personal bank account. . . . (He) rewarded his allies and bought the loyalty of his opponents," Walker wrote on the Middle East Institute's Web site.
"In the mid 1980s, Arafat was estimated to control some $7-billion in numerous secret bank accounts and in widespread commercial investments. By 2003, the estimate had been lowered to about $1.3-billion. Even at that level, the funds could feed the Palestinian population for over a year and leave a considerable amount left over for social welfare projects.
"The money that was used by Arafat to corrupt and bypass the system and to sustain the conflict is now up for grabs. In the wrong hands, these secret funds will continue to support terrorism and will be used to undercut any effort to moderate the Palestinian position."
In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times a few months later, Walker said his concern has eased somewhat. "It would be very surprising to me if the PLO did not have some resources we don't know about," he said, "but it would also surprise me if they had been able to hide a lot. A lot of the new, younger members are insisting on more transparency in the organization's finances.
"It's a new game there. Abu Mazen (Arafat's replacement as PA chairman, also known as Mahmoud Abbas) can't afford to have a lot of secret accounts, or anything that could be used to accuse him of corruption. I'm feeling pretty positive. There is nobody in the position that Arafat was in - able to manipulate both people and money."A would-be godfather
Arafat may have controlled more than $1-billion, but he didn't use it to live well. In his final years, he remained holed up in his bombed-out compound in Ramallah, his life frequently threatened by his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon.
"This was not about personal greed," said Nathan Brown, an expert on Palestinian politics at the Carnegie Endowment. "He did not live in comfortable settings, he did not frequent the haberdasher."
Arafat's interest was in power more than money, Brown said. "He was the Palestinian godfather," he said. "If you needed medical treatment, or housing or whatever, you went to PLO headquarters and asked for help. Most often you would get help. Maybe it wouldn't be as much as you hoped for, but you got something. He also loved to give expensive gifts to friends and their families."
His wife, Suha, was another story, Brown said. "She lived in Paris until recently and did have interest in the finer things in life. There have been a lot of rumors, but rumors with firm foundations, that she has been given a handsome allowance so she would go away." Israeli officials have said Suha received $100,000 a month before her husband's death.
Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East scholar from the London-based Chatham House, formerly the Royal Institute of International Affairs, likened Arafat's survival skills to the winner of a children's game. "In England we call it "pass the parcel,' " he said. "I believe it is called "hot potato' in the U.S.
"The parcel is passed from one to the other, and the one who gets it when the music stops loses. This was the case in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunis and finally Palestine. Wherever Arafat went, there was trouble. He had to be devious to survive having so many enemies. I think money was an instrument for him, not the object."
"Was Arafat a thief? Absolutely," said Prince, who audited the Arafat accounts. "But not in the manner of other despots like Saddam Hussein, who had palaces built for himself and set up personal bank accounts. People who say Arafat did that kind of thing are simply wrong. He stole, but not for his personal benefit."
What killed the Palestinian leader may remain a secret for a long time. French doctors have said he was not poisoned, at least by any poison they are aware of. Meanwhile, Suha has reportedly taken the 558-page medical file with her to Tunis.
As with many things in the Middle East, the issue is clouded by "thousands of rumors, dozens of facts," said Brown.
The search for money once controlled by the dead Palestinian leader leads to a Manhattan bowling alley, an African coffee plantation - and possibly to terrorist accounts
By DAVID BALLINGRUD, Times Staff WriterPublished May 15, 2005
Was he the visionary father of a new nation? Or was he the Palestinian godfather, boss of bosses over terrorists and thieves, a corrupter who stole billions and used the money to buy the loyalty of his supporters and line his own pockets while his people suffered?
Or was he some of both?
Yasser Arafat is dead, and the Middle East peace process has made headway in his absence. For a man whose name dominated headlines for as long as his did, Arafat disappeared without a trace, leaving most of the world guessing at what caused his death in a Paris hospital last November.
But some people are trying to answer what may be an even more important question: What became of his money?
Near the end of his life, Arafat controlled an estimated billion dollars, at least, in a tangle of secret accounts around the world. He used a holding company called PCSC, the Palestine Commercial Services Co., to buy interests in profit-seeking endeavors - from almost $300-million in the Egyptian mobile phone company Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, to almost $30-million in private holdings in the United States.
According to Bloomberg News, Arafat's U.S. holdings included $3.2-million in Virginia-based Simplexity Inc., which makes electronic commerce software, $2.1-million in New York- and Boston-based Vaultus Inc., which makes software for wireless computers, and $1.3-million in New York-based Strike Holdings LLC, which owns the Bowlmor Lanes bowling alley in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.
Arafat was 75 when he died Nov. 11, surrounded by aides, government officials and his wife, Suha, who did her best to keep the others at a distance. Suha, who lived comfortably in Paris with the couple's daughter, accused the official Palestinian entourage of trying to gain control of money that belonged to her husband, and therefore to her, when he died. After Arafat died, it was widely rumored that Suha was paid to keep quiet and disappear.
So what did happen to the money? Has it been returned to the Palestinian people, many of whom have lived for years in the squalor of refugee camps? Or is much of it still hidden in secret accounts throughout the world, controlled by militants in Arafat's inner circle, available to buy guns and bombs?The money hunt
With the Palestinian people badly in need of housing, schools and hospitals, and with money available from donor governments around the world, Arafat and his money men instead rolled the dice on a long list of venture capital gambits. They invested mostly through Ramallah-based PCSC, which Arafat controlled through his financial adviser, Mohamed Rashid.
The investments were made with tax money diverted from the Palestinian Finance Ministry, according to auditors and a report by the International Monetary Fund.
U.S. auditors, hired by the Palestinian Authority, have located and returned to the government the money in about 200 of Arafat's secret accounts. "That's about 90 percent of them," said Jim Prince of the Democracy Council, the California nonprofit hired by the PA to track down the money. Prince is president and founder of the Democracy Council and serves as director of the council's financial "transparency" project in the Middle East.
So far, so good. But the auditors have not been able to examine the accounts of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, the political organization that was, until the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians' de facto government. That's important because Arafat was the head of both bodies and maintained tightfisted control over the funds of both.
When Prince and his team got inside the PA books, they found they could separate the 200 or so accounts into categories. "Many were carryovers from the old PLO days, when they were a subnational (quasi-governmental) organization and there was a reason for secrecy," he said.
"Another group of accounts were plainly corrupt, or were used to support militant activities," he said. "And the last group was personal money for Arafat, his friends and his wife."
How detailed were the books? Not very.
Until 2002, when donors began demanding more accountability, the Palestinian Authority's budget just referred to "outside accounts," said Prince. "The people who were responsible for them said to us "we told the head guy (Arafat) everything.' I blame the (international) donors for giving money when there wasn't even a treasury to put the money into."
Prince said about 90 percent of the PA's commercial assets "have been "captured.' That means located, identified and legally taken over."
But there remain the assets controlled by the PLO. Its accounts have not been examined. "I'd love to go look at the PLO accounts," Prince said, "but I doubt there is very much interest on their part to have us do that."
Despite his curiosity about PLO finances, Prince said he thinks it is probably a "threadbare" organization these days. "It still has so-called embassies around the world, and it still owns businesses and charges membership dues," he said, "but I'd be surprised if their assets were large."
But not everyone agrees. "I know well-informed people who still believe the PLO has billions hidden around the world," Prince said. He identified Dennis Ross, former special Middle East coordinator and now director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as one of those people. Ross declined to comment.Is the money in the right pockets?
For years, the world's donor nations - including the United States and the European Union - have given much to ease the difficult conditions of the Palestinian people. But they fretted about Arafat's secretive handling of the money. In 2002, to ensure the money would not be used to fund terrorism, the donors finally demanded more accountability. The result was the Palestinian Investment Fund, set up to take money from the frequently corrupt government ministries and use it to stimulate economic growth.
It made Palestinian finances more transparent. It did not outflank Arafat, however.
DEBKAfile, an Internet publication devoted to analysis of Middle East political and military issues, reports that Arafat soon maneuvered around this little obstacle by appointing two chums to important PIF committees. Investments thus remained largely in the hands of this group of three.
The French government recently opened a tax and money-laundering investigation into the deposit of about 11.5-million euros (about $15-million) into the accounts of Mrs. Arafat between July 2002 and July 2003 - about the time the PIF was getting off the ground.
Auditors later found PIF money in companies in Guinea-Bissau's national airline and a coffee plantation in Zimbabwe, to name just two investments. The PIF, however, gradually has come more and more under the steady hand of Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, a respected former official of the International Monetary Fund, chosen under pressure from the United States and EU.
That did not end the worry over missing money, however.
Edward S. Walker Jr. is president of the Middle East Institute. He previously served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, as U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt and as deputy permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations.
Last November, Walker warned there was a struggle being played out behind the scenes to control billions of dollars Arafat had stashed away in private accounts.
"Arafat ran the finances of his main political faction, Fatah, as a personal bank account. . . . (He) rewarded his allies and bought the loyalty of his opponents," Walker wrote on the Middle East Institute's Web site.
"In the mid 1980s, Arafat was estimated to control some $7-billion in numerous secret bank accounts and in widespread commercial investments. By 2003, the estimate had been lowered to about $1.3-billion. Even at that level, the funds could feed the Palestinian population for over a year and leave a considerable amount left over for social welfare projects.
"The money that was used by Arafat to corrupt and bypass the system and to sustain the conflict is now up for grabs. In the wrong hands, these secret funds will continue to support terrorism and will be used to undercut any effort to moderate the Palestinian position."
In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times a few months later, Walker said his concern has eased somewhat. "It would be very surprising to me if the PLO did not have some resources we don't know about," he said, "but it would also surprise me if they had been able to hide a lot. A lot of the new, younger members are insisting on more transparency in the organization's finances.
"It's a new game there. Abu Mazen (Arafat's replacement as PA chairman, also known as Mahmoud Abbas) can't afford to have a lot of secret accounts, or anything that could be used to accuse him of corruption. I'm feeling pretty positive. There is nobody in the position that Arafat was in - able to manipulate both people and money."A would-be godfather
Arafat may have controlled more than $1-billion, but he didn't use it to live well. In his final years, he remained holed up in his bombed-out compound in Ramallah, his life frequently threatened by his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon.
"This was not about personal greed," said Nathan Brown, an expert on Palestinian politics at the Carnegie Endowment. "He did not live in comfortable settings, he did not frequent the haberdasher."
Arafat's interest was in power more than money, Brown said. "He was the Palestinian godfather," he said. "If you needed medical treatment, or housing or whatever, you went to PLO headquarters and asked for help. Most often you would get help. Maybe it wouldn't be as much as you hoped for, but you got something. He also loved to give expensive gifts to friends and their families."
His wife, Suha, was another story, Brown said. "She lived in Paris until recently and did have interest in the finer things in life. There have been a lot of rumors, but rumors with firm foundations, that she has been given a handsome allowance so she would go away." Israeli officials have said Suha received $100,000 a month before her husband's death.
Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East scholar from the London-based Chatham House, formerly the Royal Institute of International Affairs, likened Arafat's survival skills to the winner of a children's game. "In England we call it "pass the parcel,' " he said. "I believe it is called "hot potato' in the U.S.
"The parcel is passed from one to the other, and the one who gets it when the music stops loses. This was the case in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunis and finally Palestine. Wherever Arafat went, there was trouble. He had to be devious to survive having so many enemies. I think money was an instrument for him, not the object."
"Was Arafat a thief? Absolutely," said Prince, who audited the Arafat accounts. "But not in the manner of other despots like Saddam Hussein, who had palaces built for himself and set up personal bank accounts. People who say Arafat did that kind of thing are simply wrong. He stole, but not for his personal benefit."
What killed the Palestinian leader may remain a secret for a long time. French doctors have said he was not poisoned, at least by any poison they are aware of. Meanwhile, Suha has reportedly taken the 558-page medical file with her to Tunis.
As with many things in the Middle East, the issue is clouded by "thousands of rumors, dozens of facts," said Brown.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
The Illusion of 'Managing' China
By Robert KaganPostSunday, May 15, 2005; B07
There has been much disc ussion recently about how to "manage the rise of China." The phrase itself is soothing, implying gradualism, predictability and time. Time enough to think and prepare, to take measurements of China's trajectory and adjust as necessary. If China eventually emerges as a clear threat, there will be time to react. But meanwhile there is time enough not to overreact, to be watchful but patient and not to create self-fulfilling prophecies. If we prematurely treat China as an enemy, it is said, it will become an enemy.
The idea that we can manage China's rise is comforting because it gives us a sense of control and mastery, and of paternalistic superiority. With proper piloting and steady nerves on our part, the massive Chinese ship can be brought safely into harbor and put at anchor. It can be "integrated" into the international system and thereby tamed and made safe for civilized existence in the postmodern world. Wisely "managed," China can be a friend. Badly managed, it can become a very dangerous power indeed. But at least the choice seems to be ours.
The history of rising powers, however, and their attempted "management" by established powers provides little reason for confidence or comfort. Rarely have rising powers risen without sparking a major war that reshaped the international system to reflect new realities of power. The most successful "management" of a rising power in the modern era was Britain's appeasement of the United States in the late 19th century, when the British effectively ceded the entire Western Hemisphere (except Canada) to the expansive Americans. The fact that both powers shared a common liberal, democratic ideology, and thus roughly consonant ideas of international order, greatly lessened the risk of accommodation from the British point of view.
Other examples are less encouraging. Germany's rise after 1870, and Europe's reaction to it, eventually produced World War I. Even the masterly Bismarck, after a decade of successful German self-management, had a difficult time steering Europe away from collision. The British tried containment, appeasement and even offers of alliance, but never fully comprehended Kaiser Wilhelm's need to challenge the British supremacy he both admired and envied. Right up until the eve of war, highly regarded observers of the European scene believed commercial ties among the leading powers made war between them unlikely, if not impossible.
Japan's rise after 1868 produced two rounds of warfare -- first with China and Russia at the turn of the century, and later with the United States and Britain in World War II. The initial Anglo-American response to Japan's growing power was actually quite accommodating. Meiji Japan had chosen the path of modernization and even Westernization, or so it seemed, and Americans welcomed its ascendancy over backward China and despotic Russia. Then, too, there was the paternalistic hope of assisting Japan's entry into the international system, which was to say the Western system. "The Japs have played our game," Theodore Roosevelt believed, and only occasionally did he wonder whether "the Japanese down at bottom did not lump Russians, English, Americans, Germans, all of us, simply as white devils inferior to themselves . . . and to be treated politely only so long as would enable the Japanese to take advantage of our national jealousies, and beat us in turn."
Today we look back at those failures and ruminate on the mistakes made with the usual condescension that the present has for the past. But there is no reason to believe we are any smarter today than the policymakers who "mismanaged" the rise of Germany and Japan. The majority of today's policymakers and thinkers hold much the same general view of global affairs as their forebears: namely, that commercial ties between China and the other powers, especially with Japan and the United States, and also with Taiwan, will act as a buffer against aggressive impulses and ultimately ease China's "integration" into the international system without war. Once again we see an Asian power modernizing and believe this should be a force for peace. And we add to this the conviction, also common throughout history, that if we do nothing to provoke China, then it will be peaceful, without realizing that it may be the existing international system that the Chinese find provocative.
The security structures of East Asia, the Western liberal values that so dominate our thinking, the "liberal world order" we favor -- this is the "international system" into which we would "integrate" China. But isn't it possible that China does not want to be integrated into a political and security system that it had no part in shaping and that conforms neither to its ambitions nor to its own autocratic and hierarchical principles of rule? Might not China, like all rising powers of the past, including the United States, want to reshape the international system to suit its own purposes, commensurate with its new power, and to make the world safe for its autocracy? Yes, the Chinese want the prosperity that comes from integration in the global economy, but might they believe, as the Japanese did a century ago, that the purpose of getting rich is not to join the international system but to change it?
We may not know the answers to these questions. But we need to understand that the nature of China's rise will be determined largely by the Chinese and not by us. The Chinese leadership may already believe the United States is its enemy, for instance, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Partly this is due to our actions -- such as the strengthening of the U.S.-Japanese military alliance, which began during the Clinton administration, and our recent efforts to enhance strategic ties with India. Partly it is due to our different forms of government, since autocratic rulers naturally feel threatened by a democratic superpower and its democratic allies around their periphery. Partly it is due to the nature of the situation in East Asia. It used to be an article of faith among Sinologists that the Chinese did not want to drive the United States out of the region. Today many are not so sure. It would not be unusual if an increasingly powerful China wanted to become the dominant power in its own region, and dominant not just economically but in all other respects, as well.
When one contemplates how to "manage" that, however, comforting notions of gradualness, predictability and time begin to fade. The obvious choices would seem to lie between ceding American predominance in the region and taking steps to contain China's understandable ambitions. Not many Americans favor the former course, and for sound political, moral and strategic reasons. But let's not kid ourselves. It will be hard to pursue the latter course without treating China as at least a prospective enemy, and not just 20 years from now, but now. Nor, if that is the choice, can Chinese leaders be expected to wait patiently while the web of containment is strengthened around them. More likely, they will periodically want to challenge both the United States and its allies in the region to back off. Crises could come sooner than expected, and without much warning, requiring difficult judgments about the risks and rewards of both action and inaction.
That is likely what the future holds. The United States may not be able to avoid a policy of containing China; we are, in fact, already doing so. This is a sufficiently unsettling prospect, however, that we are doing all we can to avoid thinking about it. We conjure hopeful images of a modernizing China that seeks only economic growth and would do nothing to threaten commercial ties with us -- unless provoked -- even as we watch nervously the small but steady Chinese military buildup, the periodic eruptions of popular nationalism, the signs of Chinese confidence intermingled with feelings of historical injustice and the desire to right old wrongs.
Which China is it? A 21st-century power that wants to be integrated into a liberal international order, which would mean both a transformation of its own polity and a limitation of its strategic ambitions? Or a 19th-century power that wants to preserve its rule at home and expand its reach abroad? It is a worthy subject for debate, because the answer will determine the future as much as or more than anything we do. But it is unlikely we will have a definitive answer in time to adjust, to "manage" China's "rise," any more than our predecessors did. As in the past, we will have to peer into the fog and make prudent judgments, informed by the many tragic lessons of history.
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
By Robert KaganPostSunday, May 15, 2005; B07
There has been much disc ussion recently about how to "manage the rise of China." The phrase itself is soothing, implying gradualism, predictability and time. Time enough to think and prepare, to take measurements of China's trajectory and adjust as necessary. If China eventually emerges as a clear threat, there will be time to react. But meanwhile there is time enough not to overreact, to be watchful but patient and not to create self-fulfilling prophecies. If we prematurely treat China as an enemy, it is said, it will become an enemy.
The idea that we can manage China's rise is comforting because it gives us a sense of control and mastery, and of paternalistic superiority. With proper piloting and steady nerves on our part, the massive Chinese ship can be brought safely into harbor and put at anchor. It can be "integrated" into the international system and thereby tamed and made safe for civilized existence in the postmodern world. Wisely "managed," China can be a friend. Badly managed, it can become a very dangerous power indeed. But at least the choice seems to be ours.
The history of rising powers, however, and their attempted "management" by established powers provides little reason for confidence or comfort. Rarely have rising powers risen without sparking a major war that reshaped the international system to reflect new realities of power. The most successful "management" of a rising power in the modern era was Britain's appeasement of the United States in the late 19th century, when the British effectively ceded the entire Western Hemisphere (except Canada) to the expansive Americans. The fact that both powers shared a common liberal, democratic ideology, and thus roughly consonant ideas of international order, greatly lessened the risk of accommodation from the British point of view.
Other examples are less encouraging. Germany's rise after 1870, and Europe's reaction to it, eventually produced World War I. Even the masterly Bismarck, after a decade of successful German self-management, had a difficult time steering Europe away from collision. The British tried containment, appeasement and even offers of alliance, but never fully comprehended Kaiser Wilhelm's need to challenge the British supremacy he both admired and envied. Right up until the eve of war, highly regarded observers of the European scene believed commercial ties among the leading powers made war between them unlikely, if not impossible.
Japan's rise after 1868 produced two rounds of warfare -- first with China and Russia at the turn of the century, and later with the United States and Britain in World War II. The initial Anglo-American response to Japan's growing power was actually quite accommodating. Meiji Japan had chosen the path of modernization and even Westernization, or so it seemed, and Americans welcomed its ascendancy over backward China and despotic Russia. Then, too, there was the paternalistic hope of assisting Japan's entry into the international system, which was to say the Western system. "The Japs have played our game," Theodore Roosevelt believed, and only occasionally did he wonder whether "the Japanese down at bottom did not lump Russians, English, Americans, Germans, all of us, simply as white devils inferior to themselves . . . and to be treated politely only so long as would enable the Japanese to take advantage of our national jealousies, and beat us in turn."
Today we look back at those failures and ruminate on the mistakes made with the usual condescension that the present has for the past. But there is no reason to believe we are any smarter today than the policymakers who "mismanaged" the rise of Germany and Japan. The majority of today's policymakers and thinkers hold much the same general view of global affairs as their forebears: namely, that commercial ties between China and the other powers, especially with Japan and the United States, and also with Taiwan, will act as a buffer against aggressive impulses and ultimately ease China's "integration" into the international system without war. Once again we see an Asian power modernizing and believe this should be a force for peace. And we add to this the conviction, also common throughout history, that if we do nothing to provoke China, then it will be peaceful, without realizing that it may be the existing international system that the Chinese find provocative.
The security structures of East Asia, the Western liberal values that so dominate our thinking, the "liberal world order" we favor -- this is the "international system" into which we would "integrate" China. But isn't it possible that China does not want to be integrated into a political and security system that it had no part in shaping and that conforms neither to its ambitions nor to its own autocratic and hierarchical principles of rule? Might not China, like all rising powers of the past, including the United States, want to reshape the international system to suit its own purposes, commensurate with its new power, and to make the world safe for its autocracy? Yes, the Chinese want the prosperity that comes from integration in the global economy, but might they believe, as the Japanese did a century ago, that the purpose of getting rich is not to join the international system but to change it?
We may not know the answers to these questions. But we need to understand that the nature of China's rise will be determined largely by the Chinese and not by us. The Chinese leadership may already believe the United States is its enemy, for instance, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Partly this is due to our actions -- such as the strengthening of the U.S.-Japanese military alliance, which began during the Clinton administration, and our recent efforts to enhance strategic ties with India. Partly it is due to our different forms of government, since autocratic rulers naturally feel threatened by a democratic superpower and its democratic allies around their periphery. Partly it is due to the nature of the situation in East Asia. It used to be an article of faith among Sinologists that the Chinese did not want to drive the United States out of the region. Today many are not so sure. It would not be unusual if an increasingly powerful China wanted to become the dominant power in its own region, and dominant not just economically but in all other respects, as well.
When one contemplates how to "manage" that, however, comforting notions of gradualness, predictability and time begin to fade. The obvious choices would seem to lie between ceding American predominance in the region and taking steps to contain China's understandable ambitions. Not many Americans favor the former course, and for sound political, moral and strategic reasons. But let's not kid ourselves. It will be hard to pursue the latter course without treating China as at least a prospective enemy, and not just 20 years from now, but now. Nor, if that is the choice, can Chinese leaders be expected to wait patiently while the web of containment is strengthened around them. More likely, they will periodically want to challenge both the United States and its allies in the region to back off. Crises could come sooner than expected, and without much warning, requiring difficult judgments about the risks and rewards of both action and inaction.
That is likely what the future holds. The United States may not be able to avoid a policy of containing China; we are, in fact, already doing so. This is a sufficiently unsettling prospect, however, that we are doing all we can to avoid thinking about it. We conjure hopeful images of a modernizing China that seeks only economic growth and would do nothing to threaten commercial ties with us -- unless provoked -- even as we watch nervously the small but steady Chinese military buildup, the periodic eruptions of popular nationalism, the signs of Chinese confidence intermingled with feelings of historical injustice and the desire to right old wrongs.
Which China is it? A 21st-century power that wants to be integrated into a liberal international order, which would mean both a transformation of its own polity and a limitation of its strategic ambitions? Or a 19th-century power that wants to preserve its rule at home and expand its reach abroad? It is a worthy subject for debate, because the answer will determine the future as much as or more than anything we do. But it is unlikely we will have a definitive answer in time to adjust, to "manage" China's "rise," any more than our predecessors did. As in the past, we will have to peer into the fog and make prudent judgments, informed by the many tragic lessons of history.
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
