December 12, 2007 10:42

Another Assassination in Lebanon

Only days ago it seemed as if Lebanon was moving past its latest crisis. The country's feuding factions, backed by America on the one hand and Syria on the other, had reached an agreement on a candidate to fill the country's empty presidency. All that was left was to pass a constitutional amendment allowing the chief of the army, General Michel Sulieman, to become the head of state, a position normally barred to serving military officers. A slight thaw in relations between America and Syria -- as symbolized by Syrian participation in the Annapolis peace conference -- seemed to presage an easing of tension in Lebanon.

But now it seems that the country is teetering one again. This morning, the chief of operations of the Lebanese army was killed in a bomb blast along with at least four other people in the outskirts of Beirut. And on Monday, parliament once again delayed the presidential vote, while rival factions appear to be returning to their hard line positions.

The assassination of Brigadier General Francois Hajj in Babdaa, a town that holds both the presidential palace and military headquarters, is the latest in a string of assassinations that have plagued the country since 2005. Unlike previous victims, most of whom were anti-Syrian politicians and journalists, Hajj had no overt political affiliation. However, he was one of the leading candidates to head the army if Sulieman is elected president, and he was also instrumental in leading the battle against Islamic militants in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp this past summer.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut

December 10, 2007 11:05

Putin lures back Russian Jews from Israel

When the faltering Soviet Union opened its exit gates, over a million Jews flocked to Israel. They are now Israel’s top ice-skaters and chess masters and its most glamorous models. Soviet doctors and nurses staff many Israeli hospitals. They have their own television channels and newspapers, and their own billionaires and rough-edged politicians.

Now Vladmir Putin wants them back, it seems. The Israeli daily Haaretz on Monday ran an excellent expose claiming that under the guise of a Russian culture center in Tel Aviv, headed by a former KGB spy and a noted Hebrew expert, Putin is trying to lure back the Russian professionals who left for Israel in the mid-1970s and onwards. Haaretz claims that Putin established a group called “the Sons of the Homeland” to keep open links between Mother Russia and its wayward children. The daily says that over 3 million Russian-speaking Jews are scattered over five continents, but many of the ones that Putin wants back –-those with education and entrepreneurial savvy, not to mention lots of cash-- are concentrated in Israel.

So, is it working? Haaretz doesn’t explain what enticements the Russian cultural center seems to be offering, other than better wages and swift nationalization. But the paper cites statistics from Israel’s Immigration Ministry showing that 100,000 Jews from the ex-USSR have moved back to Russia and the Ukraine, and another 70,000 Israelis are living in Moscow, but hanging on to their old passports in case the Russian economy sours.

While this is going on, the Israelis are busy in Russia trying to get more Jews to emigrate. But not all Soviet Jews that ended up in Israel are, well, that Jewish. An Israeli mayor told me that when he assisted at the burial of a soldier killed during the 2006 Lebanon war, he saw the deceased’s mother crossing herself –as did many of the dead soldier’s comrades and buddies. Estimates say that up to 300,000 of the ex-Soviets who ended up in Israel may not be entirely kosher. They fudged documents claiming Jewish ancestry. And that may explain why a few Russian teenagers set up their own neo-Nazi gang and vandalized a synagogue and a graveyard. Those are the ones that Israeli would like to see queuing up outside the new Russian Cultural Center for a ticket to Siberia.
--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem

December 10, 2007 5:13

Saintly Bernard vs. Colonel Gaddafi

Monsieur Kouchner, spare us the sanctimony. The French foreign minister's boss, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, extended a ground-breaking invitation to Libya's Moammar Gaddafi, who arrived in Paris today on a state visit. Faster than you can say bienvenue en France, Sarkozy's secretary of state for human rights publicly warned that "Colonel Gaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come and wipe the blood of his crimes off his feet. France should not receive this kiss of death." Backing her up, Bernard Kouchner chimed in about how terribly pained he personally was, "being a human rights activist," to have to welcome such a man as Gaddafi on French soil.

Without doubt, of course, the crimes with which Gaddafi's regime has been accused over the years, including the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, are reprehensible. But Gaddafi engineered a rapprochement with the West in 2003 that included abandoning Libya's weapons of mass destruction and paying compensation to the victims of terrorism laid at Gaddafi's door. It was an unsatisfying deal for many, from Libyan democracy advocates to the families of the terror victims, but it was a deal endorsed even by President Bush in the interests of regional stability. Sarkozy predecessor Jacques Chirac and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Gaddafi in Tripoli and the U.S. reopened its embassy in Libya. Kouchner quite rightly says that what should most concern us now is the Libya of tomorrow.

So, what accounts for Kouchner's hypocrisy? Let's be blunt about it. Gaddafi is in France on a shopping trip, which could include $4.37 billion worth of Airbus planes as well as billions more for a civilian nuclear power program. Sarkozy has also milked Gaddafi to burnish his diplomatic record as well. His invitation to Gaddafi was extended last summer when he was only too glad when Gaddafi allowed the new French leader to claim credit for Libya's decision to free Bulgarian nurses after an eight-year incarceration over AIDs contamination. The nurses flew out of Tripoli with much fanfare on a private jet under the escort of then-Madame Sarkozy.

Kouchner is certainly entitled to his views on Gaddafi. But do insults and hypocrisy benefit the practice of diplomacy? Would it be good diplomacy, perhaps, if the current Iraqi government invited Sarkozy to Baghdad and then publicly repudiated France over its long-standing support for Saddam Hussein's bloody regime?

I wonder if Kouchner is working up an apology to the nation of Algeria, which France occupied for 130 years? Kouchner says he doesn't forget Gaddafi's victims, but has he forgotten the thousands of Algerian freedom fighters who were massacred by French soldiers for daring to demand their independence? The French National Assembly took a novel approach recently: a law to require school history teachers to stress the "positive" aspects of French colonialism, including in Algeria.

As it turns out, just last week Kouchner's boss had a golden opportunity to help put things right when he paid his first visit to Algeria as president--looking for billions in French contracts, of course. Sarkozy called colonialism "unjust" but equated France's "terrible crimes" with those of Algeria's resistance- the occupier and the occupied, it seems, were equally guilty for that one century plus occupation. Sarkozy pointedly refused to honor a two-year-old Algerian request for an apology for the crimes France committed in Algeria.

If Kouchner finds Gaddafi so repugnant and France so morally superior, then there's a very simple answer: don't invite Gadafy to Paris and don't try to make some big bucks out of it. Maybe it's a better idea to take advantage of Gaddafi's striking transformation, encourage further positive steps in public, lecture him in private and tie diplomatic and economic engagement to tangible progress in democracy and human rights. Perhaps Kouchner's real problem is not Gaddafi but his own personal struggle, between the side of him that loves the moral purity of "being a human rights activist," and the other side that loves power too much--with its moral ambiguities and corrupting influences.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

December 10, 2007 4:14

Win a Trip With Andrew Lee Butters

If columnist Nicholas Kristof can use the New York Times to troll for college-age interns, I might as well use this website to announce a job opening.

I'm looking for a paid, full-time, Lebanese reporting assistant/translator for help on articles, a book project, and administrative work.

If you are a regular reader of the Middle East Blog, you probably have a good idea of the kind of work we would do together, and the qualities I'm looking for in an assistant. Candidates should be adventurous, kind and curious, as well as smarter and more organized than I am. (The latter qualities shouldn't be too difficult to find.) He or she should also be bilingual in Arabic and English, have a degree from an American, British, or top Lebanese university, and previous experience in journalism or a demonstrable knowledge of regional politics and culture.

Your first test as a would-be reporter is to find my e-mail address and send me a cover letter and resume.

Those of you who enjoy pointing out the flaws in my writing and the failings in my logic: here's your chance to set me straight. But please, you have to live in Lebanon. Sorry, Jacob Blues.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut

December 9, 2007 5:53

NIE: Tehran's Choice Now

Besides kicking off a taboo-breaking debate in the U.S., the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran shelved its nuclear weapons program four years ago should be an opportunity for Iranians to have a new discussion about the U.S. Iranian leaders, too, should re-evaluate how their past mistakes have contributed to the 28-year Cold War with Washington, and whether improving relations with the U.S. would serve Iran's national interests.

A few observations:

Death to the Great Satan! The revolutionary battle cry doesn't get much traction in Iran any longer. Sure, it makes for good television news footage or a good headline, but it resonates with perhaps no more than 15% of Iranians--approximately the percentage that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can count for his die-hard support. Iranian hard-liners and moderates have to start calculating the damage the rhetoric does to any hopes they have of fully normalizing Iran's relations with the West and particularly the U.S. As well as the damage that is done to its national interests by its provocative support for radical Arab groups like Hizballah and Hamas that help keep Arab-Israeli peace out of reach. If the U.S. can't expect Iran to respond to confused stick-carrot messages, nor should Iran expect American politicians to seek a rapprochement as long as Iran projects its militant face alongside its pragmatic one.

National interests. Nobody should expect a popular revolution like Iran's to leave no political wake. The nationalist and religious fervor stirred up by the overthrow of the shah and the internal and regional battles that followed made it difficult for Iran to have normal relations with the U.S. But nearly 20 years after the end of the destructive Iran-Iraq War, Iran has made extraordinary progress in establishing itself as a serious and semi-normal country. Despite the hue and cry over Ahmadinejad's remarks on Israel and the Holocaust, Iran has greatly improved relations with nearly every country except for the U.S. and Israel. Despite the nuclear controversy, Iran has a much better track record of cooperating with the IAEA than many other countries, including Israel. But if Iran hopes to continue that trend toward being a respected nation, it will have to make some hard choices about whether to unambiguously work toward a rapprochement with the U.S. With its nuclear brinksmanship, Iran may have come perilously close to being targeted for a U.S. attack, a scenario that would have done neither the world nor Iran any good. Iran still faces the prospect of tightened sanctions, a move led by the U.S. because of continuing fears about Iran's nuclear ambitions as well as its support for violent groups. All of Iran's political factions have much to gain by Iran's true return to the community of nations. The domestic battles in Iran should be over which politicians will take the necessary steps, rather than whether to take those steps.

Iranian moderates? Iranian politicians, to be fair, have probably engaged in a more thoroughgoing internal debate about whether to improve ties with the U.S. than American politicians have done vice versa. In Iran the risks of doing so are much higher, in fact, given the poisonous nature of Iran's domestic politics. Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the towering figures of the revolution, flirted with rapprochement as far back as the mid-'80s during Irangate, when Reagan White House envoys brought him a cake and a Bible amid the arms-for-hostages talks. During the Clinton administration, he sought to bring U.S. oil companies to Iran, only to be rebuffed by the White House. His successor Mohammed Khatami extended an olive branch to the "great American people" in a CNN interview early in his presidency, but feared a bolder move would provoke hard-liners opposed to his reform agenda. Then suddenly came Iran's offer of a "grand bargain" with the U.S. in 2003 that may have had the approval of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Khamenei. Now the vindication that Iran claims in the NIE as well as the latest IAEA findings give Tehran a foundation to explore a particularly face-saving peace with Washington. Iranians should now fully absorb that while Cheney and hard-liners favor regime-change, Condi Rice, the Baker-Hamilton commission, Barack Obama and others have advocated dialogue with Iran.

The Amhadinejad Factor. Khatami's successor has done everything he could to exploit U.S. hostility to Iran for his own political popularity. There may be a danger that Ahmadinejad gloats too much about Washington's climb-down. In a television speech last week, he crowed that "a coup de grace was fired at all the dreams of the ill-wishers, and the righteousness of the Iranian nation was proved once again." Yet, even Ahmadinejad seems to see the limits of America-bashing's appeal among the electorate. In the last year or so, he has penned long letters to America in general and Bush in particular, complaining about U.S. policies, to be sure, but seeking to come off as a humanist who has America's future well-being at heart. It doesn't get much attention, because his hard-line persona is so indelible, but Ahmadinejad is on record advocating that the U.S. and Iran turn a page in their relationship. When I asked him in an interview in Tehran one year ago this week whether he regretted that the'79 hostage crisis stands in the way of better relations, he replied, "We have now 25 years behind us. We should think of the future, not about the past." When I asked him if we wanted to talk to the U.S. or not, he said, "I do believe that if the government of the United States changes its behavior, the conditions will be changed. Then a dialogue could take place." Now, Ahmadinejad has the chance to make a historic opening with Washington and get all the credit for it. GIven that better relations with the U.S. would be very popular among Iranians generally, that would help make him the man of the people he considers himself to be.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo