Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (63 page)
Read Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East Online
Authors: Robin Wright
If change eventually took root in the region, she added, it would be despite what the United States did in Iraq, not because of it.
So what, I asked, would she do next?
“Keep trying,” she replied.
T
his book is the result of more than three decades of living and traveling throughout the Middle East. I am grateful to the thousands of people in two dozen countries who have shared their stories and offered their insights. I owe the most to the subjects of this book who met with me, sometimes at great personal risk.
My editors at
The Washington Post
—Leonard Downie, Liz Spayd, Susan Glasser, and Scott Vance—supported my project and graciously gave me the time to work on this book. My colleagues Thomas Ricks and Dana Priest offered thoughtful advice, and Glenn Kessler often had to do the work of two people so that I could take time off.
I am particularly grateful to the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which provided a peaceful refuge to think and write as well as the research staff to help. I am enormously indebted to Strobe Talbott, Martin Indyk, and Kenneth Pollack for their thoughtful support and interest. At Brookings, Bilal Saab was a doting, determined, and thorough researcher who poured himself into this project. Christopher DeVito and Shai Gruber were diligent and imaginative assistants. All three worked long hours to come up with both historic and current material to supplement my field research and reporting.
During a pivotal year of travels through the region, I was fortunate to work with an array of talented people in each country. I also benefited from the personal perspective of many Middle East experts. It would take a whole chapter to name them all.
For the historic Palestinian election, Waleed Agel put aside his jazz and his studies long enough to guide me around the territories and through the local political networks. We had a great adventure. Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group, who were both international election monitors, generously shared their insights. Palestinian legislator Ziad Abu Amr, with whom I’ve had a running discussion about political Islam for two decades, was immensely helpful.
In Egypt, good-natured Nagwa Hassan spent long hours ensuring I saw everyone and went everywhere I needed for the book. We accumulated some wonderfully poignant stories. Amr Hamzawy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shared his great expertise on his homeland and on political trends throughout the region.
In Lebanon, Nayla Khoury had the ability to navigate Beirut’s crazed traffic—moving a stick shift with one hand that also held a pen to jot down names, directions, or phone numbers on a notebook balanced on her lap, while getting information in any of three languages on a cell phone in the other hand, leaving her knees to steer the car. She redefined multitasking. Augustus Richard Norton, noted author of his own books on Hezbollah, read through the Lebanon material and made many helpful suggestions. Julia Choucair at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Emile el Hokayem of the Henry L. Stimson Center offered extensive advice. Nicholas Noe, Hezbollah expert and editor in chief of Mideastwire.com in Lebanon, helped track Hezbollah documents.
In Syria, sweet Dalia Haidar often had wise thoughts after tough interviews. I admire her determination and courage. Joshua Landis generously opened up his Rolodex so that I had a full range of contacts on all sides of the debate in Damascus.
My wonderful friends Shaul Bakhash and Haleh Esfandiari have guided me for almost twenty years on the subject of Iran. The intrepid Lily Sadeghi has been my right hand on many trips there. I learned much from the Hadi Semati, who is the joyful Shirazi spirit personified, and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, a colleague at the Brookings Institution. Karim Sadjadpour of the International Crisis Group always provided sage counsel.
In Morocco, Driss Aissaoui was a helpful assistant in Rabat. Stephanie Willman Bordat, who has done groundbreaking work, steered me through the minefield of women’s rights. Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup polling organization also helped me understand the broader attitudes on women’s issues throughout the Middle East. I’m particularly sorry that the noble human-rights activist Driss Benzekri passed away shortly before this book was published; he was such an inspiration.
On Iraq, Ellen Laipson, Henri Barkey, Robin Raphel, and I have spent years debating Iraq and U.S. policy; they always enriched my knowledge and stimulated my thinking. In Baghdad, Barham Salih was pivotal in helping me delve deeper into Iraq, as was Adel Abdul Mahdi. Charles Duelfer also shared his expansive firsthand knowledge after a decade in Iraq, both during and after the rule of Saddam Hussein. Anthony Cordesman is unparalleled in the output of thoughtful data and analysis and always generous with his time.
On the many sides of change in the Middle East, I’m especially grateful to the democracy project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, particularly Marina Ottaway and Paul Salem. Their work on democracy is the most comprehensive undertaken by any U.S. institution. At Brookings, Shibley Telhami is an encyclopedia of vital polling data tracking public opinion throughout the Middle East. Peter Singer was helpful on the precarious state of relations between the United States and the Islamic world.
At Penguin Press, Scott Moyers was a patient and nurturing editor. His advice and ideas made this a much richer book. I feel especially privileged to have worked with him before he left the field of editing. Esther Newberg, my agent, is always a wonderful shoulder; over the years, in other ways, she’s also taught me a great deal about the joys of charity.
No one has done more to inspire me than my mother, who encouraged her children from an early age to taste the world and understand all its people. She never hesitated to visit me in many of the war zones I lived in. And she is always my first—and best—manuscript reader. She would have been much better at what I do if she’d had the same opportunities. I can never thank her enough.
PROLOGUE: THE MIDDLE EAST: THE PROSPECTS
1.
Akbar, Ganji The Middle East: “Money Can’t Buy Us Democracy,”
The New York Times,
Aug. 1, 2006.
2.
“Bloggers May Be the Real Opposition,”
The Economist,
Apr. 12, 2007.
3.
Final statement of a conference, Arab Reform Issues: Vision and Implementation, held March 12–14, 2004 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. Participating organizations included: the Arab Academy for Science and Technology, the Arab Business Council, the Arab Women’s Organization, the Economic Research Forum, and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. This text is available at arabreformforum.com in Arabic and English.
4.
“Stop Terror Sheikhs, Muslim Academics Demand,”
Arab News,
Oct. 30, 2004.
5.
Brian Murphy, “Moderate Muslims Using Quran to Wage ‘Counter-jihad’ against Radicals’ Interpretation of Islam,” Associated Press. Mar. 28, 2006.
6.
Rami Khouri, “A Sensible Path to Arab Modernity,” distributed by Agence Global, Aug. 21, 2005.
7.
Arab Human Development Report 2004: Towards Freedom in the Arab World
(New York: United Nations, 2005).
8.
Samir Kassir, “
Being Arab
” (New York: Verso. 2006), p. 28.
9.
Jim Krane, “Voters in United Arab Emirates Set to Vote in Historic Elections Saturday,” Associated Press, Dec. 15, 2006.
10.
Marina Ottaway, “Tyranny’s Full Tank,”
The New York Times,
Mar. 31, 2005.
11.
Rami Khouri, “From Paris to Sydney, Baywatch to Bombers,” column distributed by Agence Global, Nov. 2005.
12.
Ibid.
13.
“How to Beat the Terrorists: Lessons from a Journey Across the Arab World,” Rami Khouri, column distributed by Agence Global, July 20, 2005.
14.
Interview with pollster Nader Said of Birzeit University in Ramallah, Jan. 23, 2006.
15.
Arab Media: Tools of the Governments, Tools for the People?
United States Institute of Peace, Virtual Diplomacy Series, No. 18, Apr 12, 2005.
16.
Robin Wright and Peter Baker, “Iraq, Jordan See Threat to Election from Iran; Leaders Warn Against Forming Religious State,”
The Washington Post,
Dec. 8, 2004.
17.
Hugh Poulton,
Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic
(New York: New York University Press, 1997), p. 93.
CHAPTER ONE: THE PALESTINIANS: THE CONUNDRUM
1.
Two of the eight factions in the Palestine Liberation Organization were founded and led by Christians. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was founded by George Habash, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine was founded by Nayif Hawatmeh.
2.
Janet Wallach and John Wallach,
Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder,
(New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1990), p. 108.
3.
Robin Wright, “Jeans and Dolls Put PLO into the Big Money,”
The Sunday Times
(London), Oct. 4, 1981.
4.
Nathan J. Brown,
Requiem for Palestinian Reform: Clear Lessons from a Troubled Record,
Carnegie Papers Middle East Series, No. 81, Democracy and Rule of Law Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Feb. 2007.
5.
Khalil Shikaki, “The Future of Palestine,”
Foreign Affairs,
vol. 83, no. 6, Nov.–Dec. 2004.
6.
“Palestinian Corruption,”
Middle East Reporter,
Feb. 6, 2006.
7.
Shikaki’s work has been groundbreaking in identifying trends and surveying public opinion among Palestinians. The United States Institute of Peace, the congressionally created and funded think tank in Washington, D.C., has supported his research and hosted his speeches in Washington. It described him as “one of the foremost authorities on Palestinian national politics.” The Ford Foundation is among several American and European funders of his projects. He has been a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Studies and was the first appointment by Brandeis University’s new Crown Center for Middle East Studies in 2005. He has conducted joint projects with Hebrew University and worked with other Israeli academics. Khalil Shikaki would not discuss his estranged brother more than a decade after his death. His brother’s extremism has haunted his own career. In the early 1990s, before returning to the West Bank, Shikaki taught at Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a University of South Florida think tank. But Campus Watch, a group that monitors courses, faculty, and writings about the Middle East on American campuses, published allegations in 2006 that the younger Shikaki in the early 1990s also had connections to Islamic Jihad, had maintained covert contact with his brother, and had contributed funds that ended up with the extremist group. Khalil Shikaki, the report charged, was “a key intermediary in the organization of the American arm of the Palestine Islamic Jihad.” Brandeis University immediately issued a strong denial. Khalil Shikaki, it said, is “among the most serious, responsible, credible, committed and courageous observers of Middle East politics. For more than a decade and a half, he has been at the forefront of numerous attempts to help reach a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.” He had often briefed American officials and had specifically reached out to Israeli and Jewish groups in the United States, it noted, including the Anti-Defamation League and the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The allegations, the university countered, were based entirely on “unsubstantiated claims, mischaracterizations, innuendos, and guilt by association.”
8.
Palestinians charged the crash was deliberate; the accident followed the stabbing of an Israeli shopping in Gaza a few days earlier.
9.
The interview was posted on the Internet several years later: http://www.palestineremembered.com/al-ramla/zarnuqa/story455.html.
10.
The turning point was a controversial visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the site of the Dome of the Rock and the al Aqsa mosque. Al Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam. Muslims believe the prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven from a rock at the mosque to hear the word of God. The Dome of the Rock—a spectacular gold-domed structure built around the rock and decorated with azure blue and teal green tiles—is the dominant landmark on Jerusalem’s skyline. But both structures are also built on a plateau above the Jews’ First and Second Temples, the holiest site in Judaism. Competing claims to the thirty-five-acre plateau make it the most contested religious site in the world. Sharon, the rotund former general who then led the Israeli opposition, reportedly had Palestinian approval for the visit but had been warned that the Palestinians could not provide protection. So Sharon was accompanied by hundreds of well-armed Israeli police. Soon after his half-hour visit, clashes broke out on the Temple Mount between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli troops responding with tear gas and rubber bullets. Many Palestinians thought Sharon’s visit was political, since he was under assault from right-wing rivals in the Likud Party and was likely to face a national election soon. Five months later, in fact, he won a landslide victory and became Israel’s prime minister—in part because of insecurity sparked by the new intifada. Many Israelis, in turn, charged that the Palestinian Authority encouraged confrontation to deflect attention from Arafat’s failure to make peace. The official media called on Palestinians to support their brothers who had taken a stand at the Temple Mount.
11.
Daniel Williams, “The Second Uprising,”
The Washington Post,
Jan. 21, 2001.
12.
According to statistics from the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Human Rights Watch, some 120 Israelis were killed in attacks between 1994 and the outbreak of the uprising in September 2000. Between 2000 and 2005, hundreds of Israelis were killed in dozens of attacks each year. In the spring of 2005, the main Palestinian militant factions declared an unofficial cease-fire or
hudna.
13.
The al Qassam Brigade was named after Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian-born cleric who had led attacks against British colonial officials and Jewish targets in the 1920s and 1930s. He was killed by British forces after he murdered a Jewish policeman.
14.
International Crisis Group,
Enter Hamas: The Challenges of Political Integration,
Middle East Report No. 49, Jan. 18, 2006; and
Hamas,
Council on Foreign Relations, June 8, 2007, http://www.cfr.org/publication/8968.
15.
Khalil Shikaki, “The Future of Palestine,”
Foreign Affairs,
vol. 83, no. 6, Nov.–Dec. 2004.
16.
Jim Hoagland, “Friends of the CIA,”
The Washington Post,
Apr. 7, 2002.
17.
United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine, “Chronological Review of Events Relating to the Question of Palestine: Monthly Media Monitoring Review,” July 2001.
18.
Hanna Rosin, “Schools’ Links to Hamas Give Arafat Dilemma,”
The Washington Post,
Jan. 2, 2002.
19.
Greg Myre, “Political Sibling Rivalry: Hebron Parliamentary Race Pits Brother Against Brother,”
The New York Times,
Jan. 24, 2006.
20.
International Crisis Group,
Enter Hamas: The Challenges of Political Integration,
Middle East Report No. 49, Jan. 18. 2006.
21.
The full text of the March 19, 2005 Cairo Declaration:
(1) Those gathered confirmed their adherence to Palestinian principles, without any neglect, and the right of the Palestinian people to resistance in order to end the occupation, establish a Palestinian state with full sovereignty with Jerusalem as its capital, and the guaranteeing of the right of return of refugees to their homes and property.
(2) Those gathered agreed on a program for the year 2005, centered on the continuation of the atmosphere of calm in return for Israel’s adherence to stopping all forms of aggression against our land and our Palestinian people, no matter where they are, as well as the release of all prisoners and detainees.
(3) Those gathered confirmed that the continuation of settlement and the construction of the wall and the Judaization of Jerusalem are explosive issues.
(4) Those gathered explored the internal Palestinian situation and agreed on the necessity of completing total reform in all areas, of supporting the democratic process in its various aspects and of holding local and legislative elections at their determined time according to an election law to be agreed upon. The conference recommends to the Legislative Council that it take steps to amend the legislative elections law, relying on an equal division (of seats) in a mixed system, and it recommends that the law for elections of local councils be amended on the basis of proportional representation.
(5) Those gathered agreed to develop the Palestine Liberation Organization on bases that will be settled upon in order to include all the Palestinian powers and factions, as the organizationis the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. To do this, it has been agreed upon to form a committee to define these bases, and the committee will be made up of the president of the National Council, the members of the PLO’s Executive Committee, the secretaries general of all Palestinian factions and independent national personalities. The president of the executive committee will convene this committee.
(6) Those gathered felt unanimously that dialogue is the sole means of interaction among all the factions, as a support to national unity and the unity of the Palestinian ranks. They were unanimous in forbidding the use of weapons in internal disputes, respecting the rights of the Palestinian citizen and refraining from violating them, and that continuing dialogue through the coming period is a basic necessity toward unifying our speech and preserving Palestinian rights.