The Larger Context (Part 2)

Islamism and the Tunisian Test Case

  

When Hazem Amin was researching the life of Abu Qtadeh, the mufti of al Qaeda in North Africa, for The Orphaned Salafi, he went to Ras al Ain, in Amman, Jordan, where the mufti grew up. During the course of an interview with one of the neighborhood residents, the gentleman explained to Amin that “religion here is the stuff of life.”

This statement encapsulates the remarkable achievement of Islamism over the past four decades. For political Islam has never been only about politics, but about social transformation—and hence the catchall “Islam is the answer.” The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) might own this motto but, today, millions of Muslims, many of whom don’t belong to the party, live by it.

That the Gods were smiling upon Islamism, whatever its creed, from the 1960s until well into the 1990s is a well-known fact. Had the US not embraced the trend to fend off Soviet influence; had Saudi Arabia not pumped massive amounts of money to saturate the region with fundamentalist notions, particularly its own Wahhabist version; had the mullahs not taken over Iran in 1978; had the supposed secularism of our dictatorships, monarchies and “republics” alike, not been so self-serving, dubious and capricious…Islamism’s hard work would have turned much harder.

And you’ve got to hand it to them, they did work hard: home-to-home, school-to-school, mosque-to-mosque, law-by-law, rich and poor, one veil at a time, until whole sections of Arab society imbibed and finally internalized the social and political precepts of fundamentalist thought.

The true  measure of Islamism’s success is this magnificent reach and not the specific clout of any individual politico-religious party.

****

A public arena divvied up between Islamic fundamentalism and the pseudo-secular Arab state: this is the dynamic that came to dominate the regional scene in the last quarter of the 20th century.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that in the latest (December 2010) Pew/Gallup Poll on Muslim Attitudes, pluralities of Egyptians (85%) and Jordanians (76%) approve of Islamic influence over political life, just as they do gender segregation (Egypt/54%, Jordan/50%), the stoning of people who commit adultery (Egypt/82%, Jordan/70%) and the death penalty (Egypt/84%, Jordan/85%) for those who leave the Muslim religion. 

It’s not surprising as well that all responses cut across age and gender: men and women, older generations and younger are more or less on the same page.

Extraordinarily, this mindset sits almost oblivious next to the respondents’ favorite form of government. Yep, you guessed it! Democracy (Egypt/59%, Jordan/69%). As if to say, these tenets are givens (mussalamat), matters of belief, where democratic practice has no say and no business.

I have my quibbles with the poll,* among them the unhelpfully small number of Arab countries (Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon) covered in it. Therefore, these results, although echoed in other studies, are best appreciated as qualitative insights, although it is hard to imagine, for example, how the Arab Gulf would exhibit more liberal inclinations.

Still what is instructive about the survey is the stark contrasts it reveals between societies that espouse different systems. In Turkey, a full 31% of respondents view Islam’s role in politics negatively, as opposed to 38% who view it positively. Moreover, the Turks’ aversion to gender segregation (13%), stoning for adultery (16%) and the death penalty (5%) for those who abandon Islam becomes all the more telling when juxtaposed against Jordan and Egypt’s keen support for them.

One does not want to give in easily to the temptations of oversimplification, but, surely, Turkey’s relatively stable democracy and the longstanding secular streak of the state are relevant factors in it’s notable lack of enthusiasm for these “harsh laws,” as the poll describes them.

(I would have liked to include Lebanon in these quick juxtapositions, but I still have too many questions about the research methodology for that country).

****

All of which makes extremely annoying the exclusion of Tunisia from the survey, for this first country to walk out on the so-called Arab order also happens to be the one state that insisted on its secular character.

Part of the exceptionalism of the Tunisian revolt is that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was thrown out for bread and butter without any meddling from God and Crescent. Where other regimes were content to spar with fundamentalism all while incorporating quite a bit of what it preaches, the Tunisian one was vociferous about combating it everywhere it could catch it, along with all other forms of opposition. Which pretty much explains the near absence of any organized effort behind the recent street protests that helped flip the army and bring down the tyrant.

As Tunisians begin their baby steps into a suddenly unpredictable future, and as we watch how the wind will blow in other Arab corners, this difference between Tunisia and its Arab sisters may prove the most salient yet.

****

No one really knows if Ben Ali’s fall will turn into a contagion. If anything, Tunisia’s bad circumstance was still palpably better than that of its neighbors. Clearly, the answer lies just as much with the top echelons of intelligence services and armies as it does in the people’s readiness for serious (and necessarily fatal) action.

But since pundits are beginning to indulge again in ritual speculations about the Arab status quo, it seems necessary to remind those who are captive to stale conventional wisdoms that Islamism, over the course of the past 40 years, had in fact grown into a main fixture of it, in power (Sudan, Gaza, Saudi Arabia…) and out (Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Kuwait, Algeria…).

Track records are just as available for Sudan’s Bashir and Hamas as they are for the Palestinian Authority, for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as they are for Mubarak, for Jordan’s Brothers as they are for the Hashemites. There is no need for head scratching and conjecture here.

Needless to say, after September 11 and Iraq, you need not be curious about the kind of life Salafi-Jihadis propose for the Middle East.

This has been our Arab order for a long time now. If age has been unkind to it, it has been unkind all around.

Islamism, no doubt has considerable mass appeal, but these are not the 1980s, and success did bring with it extreme exposure. If walls begin to fall and the space that opens up is, in fact, allowed or forced to be capacious, Islamism, strong as it is, very likely will have to contend with competing forces, faint though they currently are.

So far, the 21^st century has proved anything but dull. Perhaps one of the more interesting recent developments of the past five years is the way energized civil societies have been surprising the powers that be, fundamentalists included. In these testy times, neither they nor the pseudo-secular states need feel entirely too comfortable should the time for change finally come.

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* Most of the questions do not have more focused follow-ups; bizarrely, the questionnaires did not include definitions to certain concepts before testing them; and, most inconceivable of all, in Lebanon the team apparently conducted the survey in Hezbollah territory without a chaperone.

The Mutating Tragedy of Salafi-Jihadism (Part I)

On the murders in Alexandria and Punjab and Hazem Amin’s new book The Orphaned Salafi

In a region riven with violence, a silencer long favored by the state before it became an article of faith for the fanatically “faithful,” what’s a Coptic church bombing in Alexandria or a murder of a defiant Punjabi governor, Salam Taseer, who dared “blaspheme”?

Rack them up, reflex urges you, for these are only the latest distress signals from a chronically troubled people. And true enough, you can actually run a line of connecting dots from Gaza to Sana’a to Darfur to Nahr al Bared to Cairo, Baghdad and Kandahar. The common denominators are a few, the shared experiences many.

Confronted by an unnerving blend of low-grade hate and full-fledged mayhem, the predictable—and dangerous—reaction by many is a contentment to let thoughts float on the surface of seemingly inexorable events, because, well, this is the Middle East, after all.

And when a hideous act demands some kind of an answer, the habit is to dump it in the lap of extremists, be they—depending, of course, on who’s making the argument--in cahoots with or the duped mercenaries of foreign masters, renegades from otherwise nonviolent fundamentalist camps, or desperate individuals simply unhinged by an abundance of poverty, humiliation and tyranny.

It’s not that Extremism is the wrong answer; it’s just a non-answer. As an Arabic proverb has it, it’s like “explaining water with water.” It takes you everywhere and nowhere. When you utter it, it’s as if you’ve said absolutely nothing at all. Worse still, it’s a wonderful escape hatch. Walk through it and all you need to do is cut and paste the standard set of band aid solutions: symbolic goodwill gestures towards the victims, branding the perpetrators as alien to society and system, an orgiastic show of national pride and unity, anti-terrorism clampdowns and, always, blaming the outsider.

But there is something very specific and very disturbing to be said about the murders in Alexandria and Punjab and much of the violence in this heaving and burning expanse. And Hazem Amin’s just published The Orphaned Salafi (Saki Books, 190 pages), a fascinating collection of vignettes that frame and explain Salafi-Jihadism and those who gave it the kiss of life, says it.

Once you have implanted religion at the center of a society’s identity and value system in an environment that is as illiberal in its parts (homes, curricula, personal status laws, politico-religious parties, mosque…) as it is in sum (authoritarian polities), it is literally a very short and easy ride between mainstream and extreme.

Islamism, made commonplace, visceral and transcendent, becomes an ecosystem, a freewheeling democracy of a sort, where laws and norms and dos and don’ts are any believer’s business.  Under it, unifying civil codes are negotiable for some, anathema for others. Morality is an exhortation or a sword. The community (umma) is uniquely Muslim. Citizenship is an exclusive club membership, with privileges and pecking orders. The Other is potentially everyone but the blessed self and its silhouette.  Sure, there are Shiite nuances and fine distinctions between one creed and the other, but these are details that accessorize the essence.

In Islamism’s orbit, differences of opinion or strategies between, say, the ever so mainstream Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and more radical Islamist elements, or tensions between the state and fundamentalist activists are real but beside the point and misleading when exploring origins and exits.

Seen from this prism, Extremism is not an oozing wound; it’s a condition. It’s not a noxious smell seeping from the basement; it’s the musty air that hangs everywhere in a long shuttered house. You can’t lock it up or chase it away, but you can lift away those pitch-black curtains, open wide those windows and let in the light.

****

This is not what Hazem Amin sets out to do in his book, the overarching purpose of which is to pull the Palestinian dimension into the heart and start of Salafi-Jihadism. But this is what I walked away with.

Not that Amin’s purpose is not worth probing. The Orphaned Salafi is a whirlwind of traumas and their traumatized men, of birthplaces and early decisive encounters, of stations on the warpath and cities that became incubators for combustible converging trends, of ominous meetings bringing together fearsome duets, fiery shaykhs and brutal disciples mad about their faith and dying to shed blood in its name.

The language is Arabic, the style is smooth, the footnotes are a sprinkle and the research is devoid of any foreign input.

The elusive question is Salafi-Jihadism. Amin’s path to it is through a series of human portraits, and the names, the places, the influences and the situations that etched them.

The locales are between a lost Palestine and the shores of the Gulf, neighborhoods crowded with a people in exile and deserts swimming in oil and long immersed in an austere Salafi faith with a particularly prickly temperament.

The founding fathers are Palestinian men shorn of a home and a national identity looking for a community to embrace them as brothers in an inhospitable Arab habitat.

The destination is the Muslim umma, where rootlessness and “foreignness” melt in the all-encompassing embrace of Islam.

The nannies are mainstream politico-religious parties (MB) that offer sanctuary and span borders, and seemingly laical “revolutionary” movements (Yasser Arafat’s Fatah) eager to nurture every manner of Palestinian would be soldier. It just so happens the two are more than acquaintances; they know each other well from back when, during the days of Abu Ammar in Kuwait.

The mood is somber, the psychology latently “perturbed.” The self thirsts for an identity that transcends borders and is committed to radical change for its sake. Behind this agitation stands an inspiration: Sayyid Qutb, that most famous of Egyptian Muslim Brothers who was one of the first to call for jihad against a “heretical” Arab order.

Things are simmering. And, for Amin, as opaque and shifty as the environment that nurtures Salafi-Jihadism is, in the “Palestinian case,” three factors give it anchor: a “weakness in the original [Palestinian] identity and the others that followed it…a turmoil of values, and the Diaspora’s exposure to a wind coming from the desert and another from the river’s western shores.” (p.143).

It is worth serious consideration, then, that the first act on the road to global jihad was Palestinian Islamist Saleh Sarriya’s failed takeover of the Egyptian Technical Military Academy in 1974, in an attempt to overthrow Anwar Sadat. That the all-time rallying cause, when it finally comes, would be Afghanistan, thousands of miles away from Palestine, led by Palestinian Islamist Abdullah Azzam, “the first Shaykh of the Saudi Jihadi” (p.50) and of Osama himself. That Palestinian Islamist Abu Muhammad al-Maqdissi and Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death dance would play itself out in Iraq. That Palestinian Islamist Abu Qtadeh presides now as the Mufti of al-Qaeda in North Africa.

Although there is very little room for larger contexts in Amin’s narrative, certainly one of the most compelling implications of his argument concerns the Palestinian problem itself. For those in the West who are still wondering about its true impact on our politics and its weight in one of this region’s most confounding dilemmas—global jihad--Amin’s is a very persuasive and original angle. 

But it is also in the way that he disentangles the skein of forces that give shape to these men and their mission that the reader begins to understand the real depth and breadth of the presumably fringe phenomenon that is Salafi-Jihadism.

It is therefore nothing short of illuminating to meet Mohammad Ibn Sourour, a Syrian Muslim Brother who brought Salafism into the Ahkwani (MB) house, and Nasser al Din al Albani, the father of Salafism in the Levant, both of whom helped nudge into one two technically separate faiths--Jihadism and Salafism. Equally, to know that it is to Mohammad Rifai, the head of the MB branch in Zarqa, Jordan, and Muslim Brothers like him that Azzam turned when recruiting Afghan Arab fighters for Afghanistan.

The Orphaned Salafi is bound together with such like threads. Amin, a Lebanese journalist with quite a few years on the trail of global jihad behind him, is surefooted in his insights but is a skeptical storyteller wrestling with a subject that refuses to keep still. Mine is not a review, though, and I am not a jihad expert. It is ultimately for those to argue with Amin over emphases and omissions, many of them not altogether inconsequential to the debate itself. Such as, for example, the degree to which Iran can take credit for the rise of Islamism within the Sunni Lebanese scene (of all ironies!) and specifically the Palestinian refugee camps--a major argument in Roger Bernier’s Everyday Jihad, and a total exclusion from The Orphaned Salafi. It’s intriguing as well that Amin does not feel the need to follow the money, an essential piece in any investigation of the spread of Salafi-Jihadism, even if his attention was focused on other dimensions.

Suffice it to say that Amin’s material is sure to make the field of Salafi-Jihadism even lusher than it already is.

Larger contexts next in Part Two.

WikiLeaks, Pew and Hezbollah

Not one leak from Wiki about the Middle East, not even a single cable, qualifies as a shocker.

Beyond the gratification of catching rabbits in the headlights that has brought a big, toothy smile to the grumpiest of faces, we are today exactly where we were before Julian Assange hung, for all to see, our dirty Arab laundry.

That Elias (nicknamed Lulu) al Murr, the Lebanese (Christian) Defense Minister, felt free to advise our Israeli neighbors to hit, in the next war, only Shiite areas and spare “sympathetic” Christian ones, that he so kindly informed the American Ambassador to Lebanon that Shiites join the army to eat, while Christians do it for country, frankly, came as no surprise to most Lebanese. It was not so long ago that some of us were harrumphing openly about the odor of Shiite piss in the center of Beirut, when Hezbollah set up and manned much of the tent city in 2006 and 2007.

In effect, what Murr had downloaded to American ears, he and his ilk—and there’s plenty of them—were burping over dinner tables and expelling in drawings rooms for more years than one dares count. Which explains why Murr is still Defense Minister, why President Michel Suleiman, who chose him as part of his quota in the cabinet, did not feel compelled to issue a this-has-nothing-to-do-with-me statement, why Hezbollah has yet to pillory Lulu (must not be the optimal time to play this chip) and why life just goes on in this “prototype” of a country. It’s also why a smirk, and never shock, claims us for keeps when we’re done reading the day’s batch of disclosures.

Still, how could information so passé and predictable be so delicious? Well, first off, there is that Gotcha! moment that never fails to satisfy, especially us Arabs, precisely because it’s only the people high up who are always having all the fun.

Tell the truth, how lucky was John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, to be privy to the advice of Saudi Arabia’s king Abdullah on Guantanamo’s released detainees?

His Majesty: “You should put an electronic chip in the legs of those detainees. It really works. We do it to eagles and horses.”

Brennan: Humm... Nifty idea. Except that horses don’t have good lawyers.”

Besides, it’s one thing to know that hypocrisy (not to mention sheer idiocy) is alive and well in politics, it’s quite another to see it live, in action, and not to have to wait for the rare slip up or the history books.

****

But now that things might come to a head, once more, in Lebanon, WikiLeaks’ exposures do serve as a useful reminder of the very thorny terrain that meets the many-turbaned Hezbollah beyond its own diehard Shiite expanse. A terrain which the last, and just published, Pew Research Center Survey of Muslim Attitudes (April-May 2010) has rendered in telling numbers.

Of these results, three summarize succinctly the delicate realities that the Shiite movement has to work with as it erects different shields to protect it against various indictments that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is almost sure to issue against it for the murder of Rafiq Hariri: an extraordinary 94% of Lebanese Shiites have a “favorable opinion” of Hezbollah, while an equally potent 84% of Sunnis and 79% of Christians do not.

Adding a coat thick with meaning to these three brass tacks is the survey’s gauge of passions for and against the group: whereas 31% of surveyed Lebanese have “a very favorable” opinion of it, a heftier 51% have a “very unfavorable” one.  

And although the available report does not isolate the percentage of those Shiites who have a “very favorable” opinion as opposed to those who are “somewhat favorable,” which would give us an idea about how that 94% divides up between the real enthusiasts and the tepid ones, it is reasonable to conclude from the above data that much of the fervor that holds up the 31% comes from the Shiite community itself.

In simpler language: at home, Hezbollah is pretty much on its own. While it clearly can snuggle up content in the embrace of its folks, the rest of the country is lined up against it.

Not particularly irrelevant sentiments for the resistance as it revs up to deal with an anticipated offensive of the legal kind by the Special Tribunal and possibly of the opportunistic variety by an Israeli foe with one eye cast on its northern borders and the other gazing far at the Persian horizon.  

To those who have puzzled over the Party of God’s insistence, up to barely a minute ago, on aggressively upping the ante against Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri (reject the court or else!) at a time when it supposedly needs to be searching for a happy middle ground in a hostile climate, therein lies their answer: Hezbollah knows that, in Lebanon, it has already lost much of the non-Shiite audience, and whatever mediums there are, none looks remotely happy. With its back very close to the wall, the movement thought it might as well try some relatively high stakes tactics.

Moreover, Hezbollah also figured that, iffy as the situation clearly is, it’s still not doing too badly. Enveloped by the love of its “people,” stacked up to its teeth in arms, protected by devoted worriers, surrounded by foolish Lebanese adversaries and backed by crafty Syrian and Iranian allies, the party felt that it could afford to rattle the other side with some very intimidating maneuvers.

And so, as the Syrians and Saudis huddled to hammer out a solution, forefingers wagged, eyebrows locked lips, tenors rose, warnings were issued, “cell phone” evidence was bashed, false witnesses were displayed as proof of foul play, the cabinet was brought into a veritable standstill and red lines were drawn. Hezbollah was signaling that it is indeed agitated, pumped up and ready for action.   

****

This is where WikiLeaks and Pew’s survey reenter the scene and make a stronger stand.

Serious as the court challenge might be to Hezbollah--and, judging by its behavior, the evidence looks like it might well be packing a punch--its options are, in fact, very limited and chancy.

Although the movement has, as of late, retreated into quieter rhetoric, the gossip is that it would not hesitate, and is even planning, to take over Lebanon to “cut off the hands of the conspiracy.” But the truth is, if Hezbollah actually pursues this path, it would fire up rather than snuff out the plot against it.

Hezbollah’s juggling of its many intertwined identities is not easy in the best of times; in bad ones it can be downright perilous. This, after all, is a force that is at once a social movement, a single-sect political party, a member of parliament and the cabinet, a resistance against Israel and a strategic bridgehead for Syria and Iran.

By turns, and by choice, it is Shiite, Lebanese, Persian and Arab, depending on the day and the argument. It holds serious political sway but is very happy not to reign except over its own dominions. In many ways, it supersedes the Lebanese state but, for insulation, still craves its political cover. It likes to parade as if in no need of legitimacy but fights tooth and nail for every supportive parliamentary decree and cabinet edict.

It is feared but not liked, even by the followers of Maronite Michel Aoun, its most critical local ally. The Sunnis hate it, and those few who side with it for love of the resistance or dislike of the Hariris will decline—as they did during the violence of May 2008—to side with it if it directs its weapons against their sect.

Ponder the advice given only two days ago by ex Prime Minister Selim Hoss, a traditional Sunni friend of Hezbollah’s and perhaps one of Lebanon’s mildest and most decent politicians: “We believe that the resistance is one of the necessities of life…for the Arab people so long as Israel is bent on a policy of aggression, confrontation and unbridled greed. So let the resistors beware that they have no business in the internal affairs of Lebanon and that their main focus should be on the southern borders.” (Al Hayat newspaper, December 20, 2010).

Pointing its guns inside a very divided Lebanese house would dangerously expose and overburden Hezbollah at a time when it should be at its most lithe and lightest, not only for its sake but for those of Syria and Iran.

This leaves the Party of God with action of the strictly civil and political type: massive peaceful street demonstrations, collective resignations from the cabinet, parliamentary votes of no confidence.

No more and perhaps much less, depending on what Syria And Saudi Arabia work out on Sa’ad’s and its behalf. 

Changing the Conversation

All this frenzied sparring going on in the Middle East makes you think small. In the instant. Day by day, the better to catch an oblique, do or die nuance, a hidden turn in a one-way, face-down tumble. Miss a moment, a word, a gesture, and, God forbid, you might just be missing the purpose of it all. The temptation is to keep tabs, in the hope that the tally somehow will weave a story worth knowing.

But frankly, as needlepoint intricate as this book’s authors would like to think it is, there is nothing remotely subtle in the narrative. On its surface lives a certain kind of senselessness that is at once immovable and incapacitating. In the deep of it runs, like a violent undertow, that incessant matter of religion.

Politics here has become nothing more than a very heated argument between warring faiths and sects. Even among members of the same creed and tribe the race is on in the name of prostration and reverence.   

Islam, in the Middle East, is a brooding king harangued by too many squabbling princes. Ours feels like a march of folly, to borrow some from Barbara Tuchman, and irony is almost beside itself that none other than religion is actually leading the throngs.

Massacres in Iraqi churches; rumored simulations of a Hezbollah take over of Lebanon; unabashed and apparently daily conversations between AhmadiNejad and the hidden Mahdi; talk by the Egyptian Muslim Brothers’ Supreme Guide of “cleansing the system since we carry within us the pure water of the heavens;” women in Hamas’s Gaza being banned from smoking shisha in public cafes…These are just a sample from the latest entries in a years-long running account of puerile, sex-obsessed fatwas, pious rants and sectarian bloodletting.

In this way, the utterly silly has been conspiring with the downright unnerving in the behavior of decision makers from whose hands the lives of so many of us hang. And would that politics here were local and its devastating aftereffects pressure point precise. Would that we the people were mere innocent bystanders and victims without a single bone in this dogfight.

Words like secularism have become blasphemy, privacy in faith proof of heresy. Religion is now practically interchangeable with identity; it has become our highest attainment and our lowest common denominator.

If you are looking to lead and compete in politics nowadays, this is the only game in town. There are no independent forces here—at least none that our best public opinion polls can identify--that amount to anything more than a few brave voices whispering every once in a while from the sidelines, “Is it too much to ask?”

I suppose it hasn’t occurred to our leaders and fundamentalist gatekeepers, who are apoplectic about Israel’s reassuringly blunt Loyalty Oath--which makes allegiance to a Jewish Israel compulsory for non-Jewish aspirants to citizenship--that it made more sense to welcome Israel into the region’s Muslim fold rather than condemn it as an outcast.

After all, what could possibly be offensive to them about this new Israeli measure, which crows atop a growing pile of Israeli laws that scream of discrimination, when searching our own legal codes for examples of religious prejudice would be like picking one’s way through a cotton field in season.

What are we lamenting when we protest this latest show of Israeli bigotry? That they have finally officially come out in the open as one of us?

****

It seems almost beside the point, in the midst of all these deathly my God is better than yours rows, that people here are actually very hard at work at the business of living—and with barely a serious or sensible public policy in sight.

Water, electricity, a proper education, health, the need to create at least 50 million new jobs over the next 10 years if we are to stay put, rich estranged from poor, living galaxies apart…All beside the point. And we haven’t even broached the testier issues of transparency, the rule of law, women’s rights…

In Egypt, you can almost hear the sound of fragile dreams being crushed by a state and an Islamist opposition doing battle over everything that actually does not count.

And so it goes, with varying degrees of pain and embarrassment, in practically every other Middle Eastern destination.

In Bahrain, the few Sunnis battle way too many Shiites, cosmetic reforms going the way of the fight’s other casualties.

In Iraq, the goose that is threatening to lay a million golden eggs, sectarian wrangling has been turned into a fine, if hideous, art.

In Lebanon, close to four million people flail this way and that, like hapless crowds on a sinking deck. As the entire country flounders between clashing cults, the well off work, curse, travel and obsess about the tumult; the poor curse, scramble for crumbs of a living, fret and wait.

****

Right!

These are the lifeless landscapes you are sure to behold if you were standing and peering down.

Crouch and you begin to brush against the faint gusts of wind delicately working their way through them.

Over the last few years, NGOs, by the hundreds—literally—have been sprouting in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan…offering everything from balsam for the destitute to step-ups and beachheads for those who have the remotest readiness (and chance) to want out.

Everywhere you go, there is a loud buzz, growing louder still: entrepreneurship conferences in Dubai (I’ve just come back from a superb one), business incubators in Palestine, youth activism in Amman...

It feels as if civil society is awakening from a decades-long slumber to fill a void carved wide by cruel, old hands.

The private sector is not too far behind. Though still palpably dormant and happy to follow the state’s cue (and orders), you can see it, slow and shy, walking into arenas long abandoned by derelict governments.  

Corporate Social Responsibility is making an appearance on every other company’s website and advertising material. Social entrepreneurship is now our sexiest piece of jargon, an enticing presence in the parlance of the rich and powerful.

Charity has always had a nice pull in this part of the world, but it is becoming at once generous and bottom-line smart to offer the less fortunate a sustainable leg up.

And did you notice? Nary a mention of politics in these circles, except for a few daring bloggers giving officialdom a very mild case of the runs. 

Engagement is seeking different friends, since Democracy and her daughters (political parties, elections, protests, rallies…) have turned out to be pretty rough company.

****

As is typical of noise that begins as a restless stirring that promises to be a trend, it is almost impossible to tell where this is all going, what it signifies and how far it might reach. As usual, Western commentators have brought out their pens in celebration of the change that is coming. And, as usual, they’re way too excited by the hype.

Serious doers are being lumped with chatty ones, marketing gimmicks are being applauded as a thing of substance (remember that glossy ad campaign that became Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution?).  

The US wants a piece of whatever it is we are witnessing. Islamist movements 

are walking around with pensive faces and raised eyebrows. Traditional leftists are screaming that this is neoliberalism in disguise blurring sacred divides. Populists are furious that money is daring to exhibit a conscience with a plan. The state is looking for an angle…

Yes, I am exaggerating for effect…but not that much.

The hullabaloo aside, all that one can say in these very, very early hours with near certainty is that it would appear that an increasing number of very determined and visionary individuals are trying very hard to change the conversation.

That’s it for now.

For their sake, the urge is to mount the table and scream down at the nattering, heedless pundits: “Will you shut up for once and just listen!”

Transcend This!

Basra, Iraq, during the electoral festivities

Casual Notes on the Jordanian, Lebanese and Egyptian Parliamentary Elections.

  

Truly, the seasonal migration to electoral la-la land is by far the most joyous of our trips in this Middle East. Thankfully, the moment is upon us yet again in Jordan (November 9) and Egypt (November 20), and we’ve barely had time to get over the last ones in Iraq (March 2010) and Lebanon (June 2009).

The passport photos usually do the trick, but it’s the slogans that clinch it for you every single time. A quick car ride through Amman’s circular street life and a big, fat album of reasons for Jordan’s still barren marriage with democracy falls in your lap. A moving queue of funny looking people, a medley of hilarities, and you immediately grasp why, after 21 years of parliamentary elections, Jordan is no more democratic today than it was in 1989, when the golden age of political liberalism officially commenced.

“Jordan is for all Jordanians, and all Jordanians are for Jordan.”

“Your voice equals your honor.”

“Yes, total respect is correct.”

“Yes, the nation is for everyone.”

“Daughter of the nation, sister of everyone.”

“Authority (al Haibah) is paramount.”

“The Right of Return is sacred.”

“Without slogans.”

“Let your voice boom.”

“The roads are for the streets and the streets are for the roads.”

“Yes, yes, and yes, yes.”

“Yes before no, and two no’s don’t equal yes.”

“We know you, you know us, give us your vote.”

(The last four are a friend’s personal contribution to the national effort).

Nothing in these panoramas of idiocy is alien or new. Watching them whizz by you is like a moment of déjà vu that keeps rewinding itself. This has been—and, one seriously suspects, shall be—Amman and Baghdad and Beirut and Cairo and…during every electoral fest.

The tendency on the part of well meaning folks inside and out is, of course, to blame the powers that be. But I think they’re way too miserly. In nonsense alone, this is a recurring embarrassment of riches for which a good chunk of the country’s elite is no less to blame than the state itself. If Jordan disappoints today, it disappoints because of them just as much as it does because of its government. If this is a carnival of fools, the jokers are not only the ones composing the silly tunes, they’re the ones dancing to them.

The odd thing is that as far as pretenses go—a regional indulgence of serious mass appeal—our elections don’t do too well. For all the vote buying, the feasting, the sectarian agitation, the busing en masse and the under-the-table, behind-the-curtain deals, voters are always the dullest guests in these parties. From Egypt’s eternally depressed but not necessarily depressing 20-25%, to Jordan’s somewhat more perky 41% (1989) to 54% (2007) range, to Lebanon’s typical split-the-difference 53%, voter turnoff is always outpacing voter turnout. And we all know, because living here makes us know, that this apathy is not that of the satisfied and comfy.

Really, how extraordinary is it that in a recent poll in Jordan, 62% of those polled stated that “they accepted or agreed with the new [electoral] law,” although 66% “were entirely unaware” of it? Who said Jordanians don’t have a sense of humor?

Which brings to mind the best banner yet of any election (I forget the year), made in—where else?—Egypt:

“Iddi sotak aw matiddihoush,

al-Nabawi Ismail mayhimmoush”

“Whether you cast your vote [for me] or not

Al-Nabawi Ismail cares not.”

(The proud owner of the slogan is none other than al-Nabawi Ismail himself, Egypt’s one time interior minister).

So the obvious question is: for whose eyes is this pretense, because it clearly is not for us?

If you’re in Jordan, you might want to head northwest to Lebanon for an answer.

*****

In September 2010, The International Foundation of Electoral Systems (IFES), an outfit that busies itself with, well, matters electoral, awarded Mr. Ziad Baroud, our Interior Minister, The Charles T. Manatt Prize.

Apparently, IFES was genuinely—and, one has to add, rightly--impressed with the low violence and efficiency of the June 2009 parliamentary elections in a notoriously violent and inefficient locale.  If only for the relatively smooth running of the electoral show, Mr. Baroud, by far the most digestible Lebanese interior minister yet, deserved one of those Kindergarten gold stars on his forehead.  

But (read this paragraph very slowly) in awarding Mr. Baroud the prize, IFES, without even a hint of irony—as is often the habit of all clueless Western organizations--stated that its purpose is to “highlight that democracy work transcends political parties and national borders.”

Remember that Japanese giggling box that sounds like a bunch of cackling chicken?

Indeed, who better than Baroud for this honor, since Lebanon does not have anything remotely resembling a political party and since our national borders stand now where they’ve always stood, as mere markers of a betting arena? Might as well get a prize for it, we’ve been doing this kind of transcendental democracy work for so long; come to think of it, since that glorious day when “independent” Lebanon came to be in 1943.

Don’t think this is a joke, as hilarious as it all is. Over $1 billion dollars was spent on the 2009 Lebanese elections, $900 million of which came straight from Saudi Arabia’s coffers into Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s March 14 camp. This in a country of four million, give or take, with a GNP of  $31 billion and approximately 3.2 million eligible voters, 53% of whom voted. For a touch of context, you might want to give the cost of the 2008 US presidential race a fleeting thought: $2.3 billion, expenses and all.

That this obscene amount of money was spent on a contest whose results were preordained to be utterly meaningless in a tiny, systemically confessional state, where so-called parliamentary and cabinet majorities can never govern without the active acquiescence of the so-called minorities, is remarkable commentary on the importance of window dressing in a country that is itself a window dressing.

It would be unjust, though, to pick on IFES alone, when we should be picking on them all. As is the case with IFES, for the European Union, the Carter Center and countless other Western agencies in the democratic licensing business that congratulated Baroud on a job well done but counseled “more reforms,” democracy is the sum of so many items on a score sheet. Just because the elections don’t matter, are bought, are unrepresentative, have practically no bearing on policy and say practically nothing (or all the wrong things) about a country’s actual progress on the democratic footpath doesn’t mean that efficiency, order and all around good effort on voting day don’t count.

I mean, without these scores how would the West be able to tell the difference between the goner and the redeemable amongst us? Frankly, this alone makes it all worthwhile.

Dead serious business, the “work of democracy” for our regimes and a West desperate to keep the conversation going, lest we all be found out. As dead serious and deadly, in fact, as the peace process itself. Imagine the carnage if the halls should ever fall silent.

Tick Tock!

There is not a single unhappy story in Lebanon that knows how to keep its hands to itself. This summer’s bad news, which has been raining on everybody’s party, is like a bacchanal of forebodings.

But then, it’s not unusual for this country to let it all hang out. Unlike the people, problems here do not live bubble-like in parallel worlds; they’re so close to one another, they’re like one family.

So it goes without saying that the recent public health warnings about conjunctivitis, typhoid and scabies are of a piece with the blood curdling Burj abu Haidar September clashes that pitted Shiite Hezbollah, a Syrian ally, with Sunni Ahbash, a fundamentalist Syrian-sponsored group.

They’re certainly of a piece with the trickles of electricity that light up the life of only a trickle of Lebanese, the mountains of garbage that tower over us at the entrance to every other city and village as monuments to our carelessness and indignity, with the cities of modern concrete that have wiped clean entire vistas from our past…

Of a piece with the press conferences by Shiite Hezbollah’s Hassan Nassrallah and Shiite Jamil al Sayyed, the former head of the General Security Bureau, that have made ridiculous the once fearsome prospects of the Rafiq Hariri International Tribunal and a punching bag of a dumbstruck Sunni prime minister.

Of a piece with so-called Syrian-Saudi arrangements—SS, as Nabih Berri, the speaker of our venerable parliament, aptly calls the combo--that signify nothing more than an audacious Syrian comeback and a very embarrassing, and telling, Saudi retreat.

Of a piece with the “national unity” government of a brood of sects that long ago laughed these two words out of the room.

And these pieces, few and scattered though they are from a much larger heap, do very well in explaining the mechanics of how Lebanon actually does not work, and hence how it actually refuses to be.

****

My depiction is not exactly unpopular—it’s in good company here-- but, it has to be said, the competition is fierce. A favorite Lebanese mantra (the last line of defense every time we’re about to drop another notch or two) is that the damage wrought by habitual sectarianism, ubiquitous corruption, an on-paper-only state and ugly, destructive behavior all around is actually beside the point, because--look! Just look at it, won’t you?—the country keeps rising from the ashes and going about the business of living.

And what a living! For every sign of impending doom, for every recital of failure or sound of a crash, an example of Lebanese ingenuity or hipness is brought out of the bag by way of a comeback, as if to say, there is that…but then there is this. Jekyll and Hyde breaking the china and painting the house at one and the same time. Daylight chasing the demons of the night. The final comforting picture is that of an army of Houdinis magically escaping the plots hatched against them, or sheer Lebanese grit always pulling itself up by the bootstraps and dusting itself off after every bruising knock out.

Of course, the showcase itself is none other than swinging Beirut (check out Tyler Brûlé’s accolades). I mean, if we’re so bad, how come we’re so hot? It must be in our genes, this instinct to beat the odds, trick, wrong foot, mock our ill fortunes. And what other Eastern city dares display, with such gusto, this remarkable range of liberal moods in a desert of messianic conservatism? 

Some commentators go so far as to argue that Lebanon’s deep-to-the-bone sectarianism, as illiberal and noxious as it may seem, forces a stasis that automatically rises like an impregnable separation wall in the face of any sect that connives for more than its designated space.   The happy result is a terrible mess, yes, but one that is infinitely more benign and way more freethinking than, say, Hassan Nassrallah at the helm.  

There’s a noble cause to rally the crowds around!

And the state? Why, in God’s name, would you insist on it, or miss it even, if you never had any use for it in the first place? Besides, in a region where bad governance reigns like the plague, isn’t it the damndest feeling to run around stark naked in this Hobbsian jungle?  

****

These arguments may not be out-and-out silly, but they’re like pats on Lebanon’s back after a merciless street fight with the facts.

And the fact is, Lebanon is for show, not for real. True, once upon a time the show was more than enough to keep the reel turning, but here’s the thing: with time, the performance is getting progressively poorer and more unseemly. The Lebanon of today is not where it started 67 years ago, as problematic as it was then. We’re not at the beginning of the experiment; we’re way past the end. We might have had people guessing a couple of decades back. Now the margin for bluffing is practically nil.  

A dear friend told me not so long ago, “God, no matter what, this place keeps coming back and ticking along.”  Perhaps, but the ticking sounds he has been hearing recently are not a clear sign of stubborn life, they are the tick tocks announcing the sure approach of midnight.

From Bahr Lubnan’s recently launched environmental awareness campaign. Timely!

What It All Means

On the International Tribunal Investigating Rafiq Hariri’s Assassination

  

Since the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri has, over the course of five years, deteriorated from a genuine political thriller into a typical Lebanese farce, let me start at The End and jog forward from there: the file of the international tribunal that was set up to investigate the murder has been slammed shut.

The investigation that initially threatened to topple the Syrian regime and promised to squeeze out a tiny bit of the puss that keeps Lebanese politics at fever-pitch has fizzled into yet another embarrassing example about how utterly silly and unnervingly dangerous Lebanon can be.  For a very short while there, right after the murder, you thought you were watching the Manchurian Candidate, only to discover, barely months into the act, that you were in fact sitting through Robert Moore’s Murder by Death. Plenty of giggles, but, alas, no David Niven, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, or Truman Capote on this set; just the usual hooligans running amuck in Lebanon’s theater of the absurd.

Extraordinarily, but never surprisingly for us Lebanese, everything that could go wrong with the investigation did—and, as a friend kindly pointed out, everything that could have gone right did not. Key witnesses turned into false; three intelligence chiefs were arrested only to be released after three evidence-poor years; a chain of cell phones making a chain of calls right before and after the hit, once deemed damning, has just been relabeled as dodgy after the discovery of an Israeli-sponsored spy ring that, from all appearances, had infiltrated our telecom system… By the time old, crucial allies, like the Druze’s Walid Jumbulatt, had defected a few weeks ago, the tribunal was practically friendless and defenseless.

And now, the coup de grâce: an enthralling two-hour long press conference by Siyyed Hassan Nassrallah, the head of Hezbollah, who, with aerial footage of Israeli espionage in action, spies’ testimonies about suspicious Hariri-related chores and tasks and a load full of oomph and logic, first reduced the heretofore ironclad case against Syria and (as of late) the Party of God itself into a series of question marks, sinister schemes and doubts, and then, by way of a bonus for those who have long been waiting to wipe it in March 14^’s face, graciously asked the other camp to put its tail between its legs and carry out the mercy-killing itself.

It’s over! It remains for the constantly overwhelmed and the ever so underwhelming Sa’ad Hariri, the son of the late Rafiq and the current prime minister of Lebanon, to take up Nassrallah on his offer, which, after all, would be only the last of many he has taken up from friends and patrons that have so far seen him sleep in Bashar Assad’s Damascene den.

****

But what does it all mean?

Well, for the moment at least, it means two things of infinite more significance than the tribunal and who actually killed Rafiq Hariri.

For Israel and Lebanon, it means that a moody year has just turned even more unpredictable. Recently, many of the people living in our underworld courtesy of the Jewish state have been popping up like bubbles out of a swamp. The revelations, including Nassrallah’s blow-by-blow, point to an Israeli infestation of state and society. One hundred fifty individuals are already under custody, the biggest catch of whom is Fayez Karam, a former head of the military’s counter-espionage unit, a principal member of Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement and one of the General’s closest confidantes.  

Since covert war became Israel’s battle of choice against Hezbollah after the 2006 faceoff, the policy implications for both are, to say the least, very serious and potentially venomous. No doubt, Israel is already very hard at work revisiting the rules of engagement.

(As an aside: if you are even vaguely familiar with Arab political folklore, I don’t have to tell you that all this is sweet vindication for our conspiracy theorists. Who would dare snigger or roll their eyes now when Hezbollah talks of “environments that cradle spies and traitors.”)

For us Lebanese and for our competing sponsors, it means that in the game of politics, Sa’ad and his entourage are no match for Hezbollah and its Nassrallah. Not that many of us did not know this from the start, and not that this will have any impact on our rock solid sectarian loyalties. But it just so happens that there is much more that goes on in Lebanon than sectarian nitpicking, and in that high stakes regional contest those who are lined up behind Hezbollah must be feeling somewhat more confident about the odds.

Over the past five years, the Shiite movement’s mistakes--the offensive finger wagging, the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, the guns turned in the direction of Beirut and the mountains, the financial scandals…--have been many. But the party’s more recent impressive tactics (and Nassrallah’s own performances) show a team that evaluates and learns from yesterday’s lapses. A feat that seems entirely too daunting for Sa’ad, whose reputation as a featherweight began to take shape when he literally disappeared (rumor had it that he had a breakdown) for an entire week after Hezbollah’s men came calling in May 2008, and finally established deep roots on that supposedly historic day in 2009, when his government received Parliament’s vote of confidence and he proceeded to literally laugh his way through a speech as breathtaking in its ineptness as he clearly is in his.