What's going on

I'm back again after ten days or so away from everything, and the question is: How an I supposed to summarize in English any of the Arabic reports and commenaries on the crises?

There is an intensification of the crises, but these are really cases of more of the same, without much additional "investigative"-type enlightenment, instead with noticeable deepening in the level of criticism and concern. To wit:

I. Iraq

This morning (Thursday June 7) reports of an attempted coalition to topple the Maliki administration are the top stories in both Azzaman and Al-Quds al-Arabi. This represents a promotion from the earlier rounds of news about this alleged scheme, because the earlier reports were less prominent and vaguer.

The Azzaman report (in its UK edition but not in its Baghdad edition) stresses new developments including the alleged participation in the Allawi-Hashemi discussions of a Kurdish group that isn't one of the two mainstream Kurdish parties (and that in fact has a history of fighting them), and talks with the Shiite Fadhila party (recently split from the Supreme Council). Azzaman says Maliki appears to have taken the new developments seriously enough to visit Kurdistan to confirm support of the two main Kurdish parties for the current administration.

Al-Quds al-Arabi, by contrast, stresses the critiques and criticism of the recent developments, along two lines: (1) In its top news story this morning, Al-Quds leads with a statement by Hakim's Supreme Council (formerly called SCIRI) pointing out that the main names involved in the maneuvers to topple Maliki are for the most part people who had an important role in setting up the current political system in the first place. For instance, the statement notes that the first Iraqi administration to set up militias as an integral part of government and society was none other than the 2003 Allawi administration. The implicit point is that the only issue these people would be interested in would be a struggle for bigger pieces of the pie, not any actual political change. (2) In his regular front-page op-ed piece, Abdulbari Atwan notes that Tareq al-Hashemi, the main Sunni-party participant in these talks with Allawi, has threatened at least five times in recent months to leave the government and the political process, but it has become abundantly clear that his only real ambition is to cling to his current position (vice-president of Iraq) for as long as possible. Hashemi leads the Islamic Party of Iraq, and is currently on a tour of Arabic capitals to try and encourage Arab leaders to get involved to protect the Arab character of Iraq. "I can assure Mr Hashemi," Atwan writes, "that these Arab leaders will not respond positively to these invitations," for three reasons: First, they don't have any presence in Iraq in the first place; secondly, it is too late to talk about protecting an Arab character of Iraq given the American and Iranian inroads; and thirdly, it is these same Arab leaders who assisted or at least failed to oppose the Americans in their invasion and continued occupation. It is more than a little bizarre, he adds, for Hashemi to be the one urging this, since he was the leader of the Sunni politicians who lent their support to the American scheme, on the basis of promises that have not come about, and who nevertheless continue to participate in it.

Atwan's concluding point is that while the behavior of Hashemi and his ilk can't be said to be surprising any more, what is surprising and worth noting is the silence of the mother-group behind Hashemi's Islamic Party of Iraq, namely the Muslim Brotherhood. Where do they stand in this, asks Atwan, or do they intend to continue ignoring this issue?


II. Lebanon

With the resumption or continuation of Lebanese Army attacks on the Narh al-Barid camp, historian Bashir Nafie, in an op-ed piece in Al-Quds al-Arabi, focuses on the weirdness of having an all-out war on a couple of hundred individuals, asking if this is really an Army operation, and not perhaps a political one; if this is really something for the benefit of Lebanon and not perhaps part of the so-called War on Terror; if the result will be more stability, or if this isn't rather the prelude to an all-our Lebanese security-collapse. In trying to sort through the issue, Nafie isolates two separate issues, one the question of the role and responsibility of the Lebanese political establishment for the poor Palestinian-Lebanese relationship, including refugee policy and so on. For instance he points out that whatever else may be going on, there isn't any doubt that the military reaction would have been a lot different had the Fatah al-Islam group been based anywhere but in a Palestinian refugee camp. This is one of the ugly faces of the current situation. But there is a second ugly face of the phenomenon, and that is the nature of the membership of Fatah al-Islam, and of all of the other similar extremist groups in the region. Nafie says the Fatah al-Islam phenomenon shouldn't be seen in isolation from other groups like the Jund al-Sham that has been involved in skirmishes in Damascus and elsewhere, the Palestinian groups responsible for recent kidnappings in the occupied territories, the groups in Iraq that engage in attacks that don't discriminate between Iraqis and occupiers, groups in North Africa, and so on. Their strategies, such as they are, are without hope of success because they lack broad public support, but they grow and proliferate as a result of the sense of hopelessness created by the political class throughout the Arab world. He says Arab governments and the political class generally have a tendency to want to just let these movements take their course on the idea that eventually they will collapse as a result of failure. This is handy for the ruling class, because it lets them intensify their reliance on arbitrary power and point the finger at parties other tham themselves. This is another abdication of responsibility, and one in which not only politicians, but clerics and intellectuals and others are also implicated. There is a need to come to grips with the phenomenon via reconstructed national aims, which would include a determination to end the foreign intervention that started the whole process.

The recommendation is vague, but the main point is clear. Fatah-al-Islam, according to Nafie, isn't just some isolated instance of an extremist group to be dealt with with an eye only on its immediate causes and circumstances. Rather, it is manifestation of the same cycle of violence and political disintegration that is happening throughout the region, and people need to come to grips with this issue in its entirely.

I think it is instructive that the Atwan and Nafie pieces aren't thought out or written along the lines that would be normal in a Western treatement of these crises: Atwan and Nafie aren't searching for the latest specific twist in the story, for instance in the former case who will join Allawi and who won't, how the votes would add up, and so on. Rather, he wants to shine a light on where the Sunni involvement in this went off the rails, and for this he goes back to the parent organization of Hashemi's group, namely the Muslim Brotherhood. Where are they, he asks. Similarly, Nafie isn't in search of an investigative reporter's account of the sudden emergence of Fatah al-Islam. Rather, he wants to understand how this phenomenon of groups based on indiscriminate and what he sees as completely non-strategic violence can be dealt with, or rather he wants first of all top point out that it is a common feature of the current political disintegration, and needs to be recognized as that.