BLAIR'S TOUGHEST
MISSION
 As
Tony Blair takes his leave of 10 Downing Street and mulls his likely
appointment as the new Pasha of Middle East Peace, I'd like to pass on
to him an old Jewish tale that I heard from a western diplomat who spent
a frustrating year dealing with the Israelis and Palestinians. It's the
story of the Baron and his dog.
Once, long
ago in Russia, a Baron decided to expel all
the Jewish peasants from his estate. The
peasants pleaded with the Baron, but he sat
there bored, petting his favorite wolfhound.
After a few minutes, he waved them away.
Just as they were leaving, a rabbi who had
noticed how fond the Baron was of his
wolfhound, said: "You know, we're very
talented at making dogs speak." Intrigued,
the Baron allowed the Jews to stay on for a
year, to teach his dog how to talk. Outside
the Baron's castle, the Jews wailed: "Rabbi,
how can you make such a promise? We're
doomed!" The Rabbi replied with a shrug, "Anything
can happen in a year. The dog could die. Or
the Baron could die. Who can tell?"
This
shortsightedness applies today to the
Israelis, says the diplomat. "There is no
policy. The idea is to hold on as long as
possible against Palestinian demands," he
says. Meanwhile, the Palestinians,
especially the extremists among them, cling
to the dream of winning back all the land up
to the Mediterranean shores, even if, in
their hearts, they know it's impossible. The
moral of this story: As Middle East envoy,
Blair will find Israeli and Palestinian
leaders who are sadly lacking in vision and
pragmatism. Everyone is waiting for the
Baron's dog to die.
The job
comes with no Jerusalem office, and Blair
would most likely find digs inside the
stately American Colony Hotel, whose gardens
and Orientalist splendor could seduce him
into thinking that he is indeed Jerusalem's
new Pasha. But Blair may find himself pacing
his Ottoman-era suite with nowhere to go:
the Israelis will dodge him because he will
demand concessions for the Palestinians,
while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
will lie low because he is incapable of
forcing the territories' militant groups to
cease their violence against Israelis, or
even among themselves.
From the
Palestinians' point of view, Blair has
several strikes against him. For starters,
he's nicknamed "Tony Bush", for his
perceived closeness to the Texan in the
White House. For many Arabs, Blair is
tainted for having signed on, with unseemly
eagerness, to the Bush Administration's
misadventure in Iraq. He's also blamed for
keeping silent, as the U.S. did for nearly a
month, while war raged in Lebanon last
summer, in the misguided hope that Israel
might crush the Iranian-backed militants of
Hizballah. Blair's great skill as a
negotiator is that he can coax enemies into
the same room and mesmerize every individual
that he's in total agreement with them.
That's how he brought peace in Northern
Ireland, a major triumph of his decade as
British prime minister. But Blair is a
master of the broad stroke, and much of his
job will require the talents of a
miniaturist, delving into the minutiae of
where Israeli checkpoints can be removed
inside the Palestinian territories.
His
mission is also shrinking. Formally, he will
be the special representative of the Quartet
of peacemakers, made up of the European
Union, the United Nations, Russia and the
U.S. But the Quartet's so-called "roadmap"
for peace, based on a two-state solution, is
now wastepaper. The Israelis are wary of
outside mediators, which could leave Blair
reduced to lecturing the Palestinians on
good governance instead of negotiating with
the two sides. This is made all the more
difficult by the Quartet's refusal to engage
with Islamic militants Hamas, democratically
elected to power in January 2006 and now,
through force of arms, the new landlords of
Gaza. Will Blair have the chutzpah to speak
with Hamas to reconcile their split with
Abbas? And will the Israelis let him?
Hamas
certainly doesn't think so. Salah Bardaweel,
head of Hamas' parliamentary bloc, says he
doubts that Blair will be able to "disconnect
himself from America and its pro-Israeli
policy." That doubt was shared by one senior
Arab official at the recent Sharm al-Sheikh
summit who said that Blair's appointment is
seen around the Middle East as a favor
bestowed by the White House in recognition
of his loyalty as an ally.
In Blair's
favor, however, are his megawatt charm and
drive. Who else would leap at the chance to
do diplomacy's most thankless job? It also
helps that, so far, he has the trust of Bush
and the Israelis. "We have nothing but
respect for him," said Tzipi Livni, Israel's
foreign minister.
But that
respect could fade if the Israelis think
that Blair is pushing them too far. Blair
should take note of what befell his
predecessor, James Wolfensohn, an American
former president of the World Bank.
Wolfensohn started out with everything going
for him, but when he complained about some
of Israel's more onerous policies inside the
territories, and about the Quartet's
decision to cut off aid to the Palestinians
after Hamas' election victory, the White
House shunned his advice as too pro-Palestinian
and left him dangling. Eventually, he quit.
If Blair starts to challenge Washington's
pro-Israeli tilt — which Arab officials say
is crucial to unknotting the Israeli-Palestinian
impasse — he could end up similarly
sidelined. Blair may find that getting the
Baron's dog to speak could be an easier task
than getting the Israelis and the
Palestinians to speak meaningfully to each
other.
Source: Time online with
reporting by Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem and Scott
MacLeod/Sharm al-Sheikh
 Musharraf
problems are Bush’s problems, too
The sinking political fortunes of Pakistani President Gen.
Pervez Musharraf leave his defenders in Washington in an awkward spot,
shoring up an undemocratic but useful ruler whose close ties to
President George W. Bush are part of his problem at home.
Musharraf has an uncertain hold on power after months of
political turmoil and his own missteps, and his
flirtation in early August with imposing emergency rule
horrified his US allies.
Bush’s
top diplomat got the uncomfortable assignment of calling
Musharraf at 2:30 in the morning in Islamabad to argue
against a step that would play in the West as proof that
an ugly dictatorship lies beneath Musharraf’s moderate
surface.
On
Thursday, hours after Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice’s lengthy call, Musharraf’s spokesman let it be
known that there would be no state of emergency. Some US
officials said they fear Musharraf still could resort to
that step, but there was a palpable sigh of relief from
Bush and others Thursday.
“I
have seen no such evidence that he’s made that decision,”
Bush said during a news conference, before turning the
topic to terrorism, the crux of the US bargain with the
military leader who toppled an elected government in
1999.
“In my
discussions with President Musharraf, I have reminded
him that we share a common enemy: Extremists and
radicals who would like to do harm to our respective
societies,” Bush said. “In his case, they would like to
kill him, and they’ve tried.”
The
Bush administration is under pressure from Congress,
human rights groups, and presidential candidates from
both parties over its complex marriage of convenience
with Musharraf, and sensitive to criticism that the
relationship prizes expedience over democracy.
Rice
laid out a case against emergency rule, but did not
expressly threaten Musharraf with a loss of US support
or foreign aid, US officials said. The officials, who
spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private
conversation, said they were not immediately sure
whether Musharraf would take Rice’s advice.
“They
talked about the ongoing and evolving political
developments in Pakistan,” State Department spokesman
Sean McCormack said. “They had a good conversation.
Beyond that, I don’t think I’m going to offer any other
details.”
Musharraf made a strategic choice after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks, ending public support or tacit
cooperation with the Taleban and Al Qaeda and throwing
his lot with the United States. His extensive
intelligence services have rounded up terrorist suspects
and fed reliable tips to US counterparts, although there
is strong suspicion that the Pakistanis do not always
tell all they know.
Osama
bin Laden
The
national US intelligence director, Mike McConnell, has
said he thinks Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden is
living in the border region of Pakistan, and Musharraf’s
attempt to broker a political solution with tribes had
backfired by giving Al Qaeda room to regroup.
In the
National Intelligence Estimate released last month,
analysts said a hands-off accord between Musharraf and
tribal leaders along the Afghan border created a
comfortable hideout for Al Qaeda.
Since
then, US officials have said they expect Pakistan to
launch more military strikes on Islamic militants while
the Bush administration pumps hundreds of millions of
dollars in development aid into lawless tribal regions
to fight extremism.
Bush
and his spokesmen offer cautious praise for the ruler
who alternates tailored suits with his Army uniform,
while saying little about either his democratic
political rivals or the Islamic leaders who have gained
clout in part by portraying Musharraf as a Bush toady.
“We
have an interest in a Pakistan, as we have said before,
that is on the pathway to greater economic openness and
freedom and reform, greater political openness and
freedom and that’s the pathway that President Musharraf
has set Pakistan on,” McCormack said.
Musharraf has promised elections later this year,
fulfilling a pledge to the Bush administration, but the
state of emergency could have allowed him to delay the
vote.
That
Musharraf was even considering such an idea was seen as
a sign of weakness as he seeks re-election for another
five-year term, and the move would also deeply embarrass
Washington.
“If
this happens, it puts the Bush administration in even
more of a bind than they already are in,” said Daniel
Markey, a former State Department expert on South Asia
now at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“It
will be seen as a failure” of US policy, “and it will
serve to make everybody that much more convinced that
Musharraf’s time is running out, and that he can’t
actually make this transition,” to democratic rule, he
said.
How the United
States makes Pakistan more radical
There is
little doubt that those allies of the Bush
administration who have signed up to the "war
on terror" were quite relieved when they
heard that General Pervez Musharraf had managed
to suppress the Red Mosque revolt in Islamabad
recently, even if that meant that dozens of
students had to be killed in what seemed an
unbalanced shootout.
For most politicians and
mainstream commentators in Germany, France, the
United Kingdom and the United States, the event
was yet another footnote in the global war on
terror, a successful campaign against Al-Qaeda "jihadists"
by a steadfast ally. Ironically, however, it is
the perception of Musharraf as a subservient
enforcer of American interests in the region
that is eroding his legitimacy, not only among
Pakistan's neo-fundamentalist right, but also
among leading civil society figures.
In Pakistan - as in Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere in the Muslim world
- religiously legitimated political activism is
not primarily about "global jihad" but about
domestic politics. The rich imagery and potent
symbols of Islam are repackaged (sometimes
beyond recognition) and employed by a range of
political associations, religious sects, liberal
grassroots organizations and fundamentalist
terrorist movements in order to protest the
abominations of the state on the one side and
real and perceived dependency on the politics of
the White House on the other.
The ongoing crisis in Pakistan
has a lot to do with the misguided policies of
the Musharraf government: the suspension of the
chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar
Muhammad Chaudhry, who was only recently
reinstated after vehement protests by the
country's intelligentsia; the mishandling of the
transnational tribal unrest in Baluchistan and
North Waziristan; and the corruption of
Pakistan's intelligence services.
One of the reasons why Musharraf
was not able to defuse the Red Mosque crisis
even after employing a policy of appeasement for
several months, is that he does not have an "organic"
domestic constituency that could coat his
policies with an ideology that appeals to the
masses. The secular Left despises him because of
the dictatorial powers he has arrogated to
himself and his cronies, while the neo-fundamentalist
right battles the secular tenets of his policy
of "enlightened moderation." Moreover, both are
highly critical of his pro-American stance and
the impact of the "war on terror" on the
country's domestic and international politics.
I would go a step further. Even
before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but
more exponentially after them, any state in the
Muslim world that associated itself too closely
with the foreign policy of the United States
threatened to open itself up to domestic
dissent; Pakistan is no exception to this
dialectic, which places pro-US states against
oppositional societies.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Here it does not help Musharraf
that the US has embarked on the construction of
its third military base in Afghanistan, in close
vicinity to the Afghani-Pakistani border and
well-situated to conduct and supervise military
operations within Pakistani territory. After
all, the new US National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE) has set out that Al-Qaeda has successfully
regrouped in that increasingly anarchic border
area, and that the transnational network
constructed by the organization is functional
enough to conduct terrorist operations in the US
itself. The record of
the Bush administration shows that it has
needed much less incentive to transgress
international norms and violate the sovereignty
of independent nation-states. Indeed, Musharraf
himself deemed it necessary repeatedly to stress
that the Pakistani national army is able to
pacify the borders with Afghanistan and that a
mixture of deal-making and military pressures
could be conducive to that end. Yet, the Bush
administration has still not ruled out military
operations inside Pakistani territory.
But to his opponents the very
fact that Musharraf has to react to US policies
in the region is an indicator of his weakness.
The nation-state of Pakistan emerged out of
massive upheaval that caused immense human
suffering. Its foundational ideology was
inspired by the political expediency of
Muhammad-Ali Jinna, the poetic exigencies of
Muhammad Iqbal and the Islamist activism of
Abul Ala Mawdudi. It was in many ways the
original "Islamic Republic," at the heart of
which its founders placed the struggle for
independence. That the neo-fundamentalist
activism propounded by Taliban-type sects
confronting the Musharraf government from the
right is now at the forefront of the struggle
against the state, is largely due to the
systematic suppression of the legitimate,
oppositional activities of Pakistan's civil
society.
It is one of the many ironies of
contemporary US foreign policy in the Muslim
world that the Bush administration has
implicitly contributed to this radicalization of
Pakistani society.
By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam |
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