Global News Journal

Aflaq, symbol of Iraq and Syria’s shared past

The blue-domed memorial Saddam Hussein built in Baghdad to honour Baath party founder Michel Aflaq, a Syrian Christian who started the movement that dominated Iraq for decades and governs Syria today, has been turned into a shopping centre for U.S. soldiers. Aflaq’s tomb, sitting at the centre of a vault adorned with Koranic verses and Arabesque designs, has been boarded up to make way for a barber shop, a store selling kitschy Iraq souvenirs, a pirate DVD vendor and a ring of other stores.

The new mall at Aflaq’s tomb, located on what is now a U.S. military base in central Baghdad, has thus sealed off a powerful symbol of the deep, and often strained, shared history between Iraq and Syria, one which is being tested in a new feud between Baghdad and Damascus.

Last month, Syria and Iraq recalled their ambassadors after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accused Syria of sheltering mebbers of the Iraqi Baath party whom he blames for backing attacks that killed around 100 people in Baghdad last month.

The Aug. 19 bombings marked a U-turn in the slow improvement of relations between Iraq and Syria, which for decades had stunted diplomatic relations. Since 2003, they have been at odds over U.S. and Iraqi accusations that Damascus has allowed foreign insurgents to stream across its border into Iraq.

Damascus refused Maliki’s demand that Syria turn over Iraqi Baathists believed to be behind the August attacks and accused Iraq of being ungrateful for its efforts to care for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi war refugees now living in Syria.

But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must be unnerved by Maliki’s request at the United Nations for a formal inquiry into the attacks.

Legacy-building IAEA chief goes public with closed-door remarks

Insiders say Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was rather reticent and stiff in public when he took the job in 1997. He’d spent decades below the radar in Egypt’s foreign service, U.S. academia and the U.N. nuclear watchdog as head of the legal and external relations divisions.

But Mohamed ElBaradei evolved into a politically outspoken tribune for international peace and fair play.

That reputation grew as he challenged George W. Bush’s neocons over bogus evidence of mass-destruction weaponry they used to invade Iraq, and their policy of threatening rather than negotiating with Iran, which seemed to backfire by encouraging, not dissuading, Tehran to build up nuclear capability.

ElBaradei’s campaigning for negotiated non-proliferation, disarmament and development through peaceful uses of the atom earned a Nobel Peace Prize for him and the IAEA in 2005.     Now, as he prepares to retire in November, the 66-year-old, self-described “secular pope” has gone into legacy-building overdrive. Media interviews have proliferated with cable TV or web magazine outlets that air or publish his remarks unedited.

This week ElBaradei went public even in private, expounding off-the-cuff and very undiplomatically at a closed door meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, then authorising his remarks to be “leaked” to the media outside.

At other governors’ meetings dealing with hot-button issues like Iran’s stonewalling of IAEA investigators, I had to chase participants by sms or after-hours phone calls just to get tiny, broken snippets of what ElBaradei had said inside.

This time, whole transcripts of his interventions on the boardroom floor found their way to nuclear beat reporters.

Politics and paranoia complicate IAEA’S work on Iran, Syria

The U.N. nuclear non-proliferation watchdog assiduously guards its impartiality as it monitors and investigates disputed activity in Iran and Syria, with suspicious Western powers impatient for the inspectors to draw conclusions.

So the International Atomic Energy Agency typically puts what have become keenly anticipated, quarterly reports on Iran and Syria through many painstaking drafts before they see the light of day, to help ensure that not a single word can be misunderstood, misinterpreted or turned to political advantage.

But the IAEA had to scramble this month to stay the course amid growing Western edginess over Iran’s defiant advances towards nuclear capacity with possible bomb applications, as well as a perceived Syrian nuclear cover-up.

The U.N. watchdog had to do battle with politically charged headlines and alarmist commentary both because of unexplained references in its latest reports and things that were left out.

Unguarded remarks coaxed from senior U.N. officials by aggressive nuclear beat reporters also stirred the pot. First, we pounced on a figure of 1,010 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) accumulated by Iran for future nuclear fuel. Our antennae were twitching since this echoed U.S. estimates of the minimum LEU Iran would need to reprocess into high-enriched uranium (HEU) for a bomb, if it so chose.

Yet, the science is inexact. Other estimates range up to 1,700 kg, depending on factors like quality of uranium, natural loss or wastage of material from further enrichment and so on.

Such nuances got lost in U.S. and European headlines:

Ice cream and football on the road to Damascus

    British Foreign Secretary David Miliband hopes his Middle East trip will help nudge Syria away from supporting the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, but on a visit to Damascus he let slip that other Syrian allegiances were troubling him.

    “People on the streets wanted to talk about politics but also about football,” he told reporters after a tour in which he sampled ice cream from century-old shop in the heart of the ancient capital.

    “There were not enough Arsenal supporters and too many Manchester United supporters,” he said.

    Miliband, a keen Arsenal fan, is not shy about expressing his views on football. When Arsenal unceremoniously exited the Champions League in April after a 4-2 defeat to Liverpool, he criticised the Swedish referee on his Foreign Office blog and accused a Dutch player of faking a fall.

    But he was more conciliatory in Damascus, perhaps because of the hospitality of his Syrian hosts.

    “The ice cream was extremely good and the generosity of the ice cream store owners also extremely broad,” said Miliband, who struggled with a huge cone of ice cream served up Bekdash, which has been making the traditional pistachio variety for over a century.

    “They gave ice cream to all the delegation and also to the security guards.”

What really happened in the U.S. raid on Syria?

   So much of what passes for news in the Middle East is enveloped in shadow, with even seasoned observers reduced to weighing claim and counter-claim with little hard evidence to go on. Yet another example is the U.S. raid across the Syrian border on Sunday.    Syria says the attack by U.S. forces inside Syria was a “terrorist aggression” which targeted a farm and killed eight civilians.     A U.S. official said the raid by U.S. forces is believed to have killed a major al Qaeda operative, known as Abu Ghadiya, who helped smuggle foreign fighters into Iraq.     But do we really know what happened?     We do know that following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of  Iraq, Syria, which feared it was next on Washington’s list of rogue states for regime change, permitted the transit of Jihadi volunteers for the Iraqi insurgency fighting the U.S. occupation of Iraq.     We also know that there have been similar attacks by U.S. forces near the Iraqi border, and also in Afghanistan and across the Afghan-Pakistan border. In at least two instances these operations have mistakenly hit a wedding party and civilian houses despite claims they were al Qaeda hideouts.     We also know that the U.S. military has at least twice in the past carried out attacks across the Syrian border but this was the first time the obsessively secretive Syrian regime has gone public with it and allowed camera crews to reach the area and film the aftermath.     Damascus is resentful because, as part of its attempt to improve its image internationally, it has clamped down on al Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants. It feels its efforts are not being recognised by Washington and that the Jihadis  are seeking reprisals.    “I can tell you and explain that the terrorist explosion in Damacus in September happened because we tightened our border with Iraq. They (Jihadis) wanted revenge for what we are doing. Unfortunately they are not the only revenging party. Of course the Americans tried to ‘reward’ us by carrying out this (attack) ,” said Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem.     Given the credibility of all parties  in this affair it is going to be difficult to get to the the bottom of what happened.

The shadows that lie behind Beirut’s glitzy façade

In downtown Beirut, resurrected from the rubble of the 1975-90 civil war, one is spoilt for choice of smart restaurants, trendy bars and lively clubs. Performances by sexy Lebanese divas and belly dancers contribute generously to Lebanon’s gross domestic product by attracting Gulf Arab tourists enchanted with Lebanese talent and beauty — not necessarily in that order.

There is isn’t a single international designer who has not found his or her way to Beirut’s elegant boutiques and jewellery shops. On the other hand, Lebanese designers such as Elie Saab are dressing Hollywood stars these days.

On the streets of Beirut one can see the latest Mercedes, Jaguars and BMWs jostling with Maseratis and Ferraris, even before they appear in Europe. Appearances aside, Lebanon has one of the best-educated peoples in the Middle East, with its young men and women having a global reach into the worlds of business, banking and academia.

It was comforting to see downtown Beirut teeming again with tourists enjoying the delights the city can offer. Beaches were packed with Beirutis in bikinis and hotels were overbooked with returning visitors who left during the crisis that erupted between the pro-Iranian opposition led by Lebanon’s influential Shi’ite Hezbollah and the U.S.-backed Sunni-led Lebanese government after the assassination in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. This crisis has been put on hold following a Qatari-brokered agreement in May.

Yet underneath the glitzy facade is a country mirroring the real currents of militancy and Sunni-Shi’ite sectarianism unleashed by the Iraq war.

The conflict in Iraq has brought back to the surface the historical Sunni-Shi’ite feud throughout the Middle East. It overthrew a Sunni dictator, brought Iraq’s Shi’ites to power and tipped the balance of power in favour of Shi’ite Iran and its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

This, in turn, has incensed Sunni Arab countries and left a bitter legacy across the Arab world, Lebanon in particular which is traditionally a proxy battleground where regional forces settle their disputes.

Long list of enemies in Syria blast

One of the problems with countries like Syria – secretive and authoritarian – is that whenever a bomb goes off or someone is assassinated, the list of possible suspects is extensive.

One can draw up a long list of enemies who could have plotted and carried out Saturday’s rare car bomb attack on a major road near a Syrian state security complex and an intersection leading to a famous Shi’ite Muslim shrine. The blast, which killed 17 people including a brigadier general and his son, poses another test to Syria’s reputation for keeping a tight grip on dissent and maintaining stability in a troubled area. 

High on any list of possible perpetrators are Sunni Salafi jihadis active in Syria now, and who for years were able to cross through the Syrian borders into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. This stopped recently when Damascus tightened its borders following pressure from Iraq and the United States and opted for a policy of detente and moderation starting with indirect peace talks with Israel through Turkish mediation and a diplomatic drive to end its international isolation.

The jihadis, angry at Syria cutting off their routes, relaunching peace talks with the Jewish state and detaining their militants, could have turned their guns against Damascus. And this could have involved a mix of personnel — foreign expertise helping local Islamists.

Another motive for the latest attack could be Sunni-Alawite tensions in Lebanon. Sunni militant groups based in northern Lebanon have been fighting a sectarian war with Lebanon’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam which has close links to Syria, whose ruling elite has been dominated by minority Alawites for over four decades.

Syria said an Islamist suicide bomber was responsible for the attack and that the vehicle had entered Syria from a neighbouring Arab country on Sept 26. It did not name the country but Syria’s Arab neighbours are Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Assad, whose country has dominated Lebanon for three decades and was forced to withdraw its troops after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, warned this month of a danger from what he called foreign-backed Sunni extremists in the predominantly Sunni city of Tripoli. He called for a solution to “the rising threat” of Islamist militants in the city.

Why is Kirkuk such an obstacle for Iraq?

Iraq’s leaders have overcome many hurdles in their struggle to rebuild their country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.  But agreeing on the fate of the “ethnic tinderbox” of oil-producing Kirkuk is a particularly testing one.

Why has Kirkuk proven to be such an obstacle? For many, settling its fate seems to be an easy task.

The dispute largely revolves around Kurdish demands to incorporate the city into their autonomous northern Iraq region.  Arabs and Turkmens want the city to remain under the control of the Iraqi government as it has always been.

For an outsider the dispute might seem to be an administrative question of who will manage the city but Kirkuk’s fate has taken on national and regional dimensions since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam. It has fuelled the ethnic conflict between Arabs and Kurds and drawn in regional powers, especially neighbouring Turkey.

Kurds look at the city inhabited by Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens as their historic capital, while Arabs and Turkmen argue it equally belongs to them.

While Sunnis and Shi’ite Arabs are locked in a power struggle across the country, they are united in rejecting ceding the city to the Kurdish autonomous region.

But Kirkuk is more than a piece of real estate inheritance. The city sits on a sea of “black gold” — Iraq’s biggest oil field, which has become more lucrative with crude prices above $100 a barrel.

Has Syria come in from the cold?

The European-Mediterranean summit in Paris might have produced grand projects ranging from cleaning up the Mediterranean sea to using North Africa’s sunshine to generate power. But that is is not what it will be remembered for.

It will be remembered for the glorious welcome it bestowed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who until yesterday was persona non-grata in the West, an autocrat leading a pariah regime, which many believe orchestrated the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.  

Assad was the star of the show, which sealed a new detente between Syria and Europe, with the Syrian and Israeli leaders sitting at the same table for the first time.

So what happened? And why are things finally looking up for Bashar? What lay behind this sudden turn in his fortunes? Are Bashar and his government really off the hook?       Is it all forgotten because Assad relaunched indirect peace talks with Israel and gave his blessing to a Qatari-mediated accord that ended Lebanon’s political crisis, allowing the election of a Lebanese president? After all, the new government was in Syria’s favour.

Or is it as some experts commented because Assad proved once again, like his father late President Hafez al-Assad before him, that there won’t be any stability or peace in the region without Syria, that Syria –  with its strong links with Iran, Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah, the Islamist Hamas movement and a string of hired guns — still  calls the shots and could act as a spoiler if ostracised? 

Some observers even speculated that there was collusion in Damascus for the killing in February of Imad Moughniyah, the chief of Hezbollah’s security network and an agent of Iran who topped the U.S. most wanted list for 25 years.

Those familiar with Syrian techniques joked that Syria keeps resorting to the same old get-out-of-jail-free-cards and dodges to get out of crises with the West.

Russia’s Cold War anger over U.S. shield: misjudged?

Russia’s angry response to an accord between Washington and Prague on building part of a U.S. missile defence shield in the Czech Republic is reminiscent of the rhetoric of the Cold War. Although Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says Moscow still wants talks on the missile shield, his Foreign Ministry has threatened a “military-technical” response if the shield is deployed.

That phrase could have come straight out of the Soviet lexicon and seems more at home in the second half of the last century than now. Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer called it psychological pressure to try to encourage opposition to the missile system among Europeans, and described it as “the same sort that was used in the 1980s by the Soviet Union when the United States deployed cruise missiles in Europe.”

We are, of course, a long way from the tensions of the Cold War. But the dispute is reminiscent of the war of words between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1980s over another missile defence system — the Strategic Defence Initiative proposed by Ronald Reagan. His dream of a partly space-based missile system, otherwise known as Star Wars after George Lucas’ 1977 film, never became a reality but the row over it plagued Soviet-U.S. relations for years.

The disagreement over the missile defence system that George W. Bush now wants to be partly based in Europe risks having a similar impact on U.S.-Russian relations. Perhaps fittingly, it has been referred to as Son of Star Wars.

I was a correspondent in Moscow in the 1980s when the dispute over Star Wars was at its height. The disagreements were clear. Reagan wanted to deploy a multi-billion-dollar land- and space-based shield to shoot down incoming missiles. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said the programme would disrupt the nuclear balance and fuel an arms race in space, and expressed  hope that Europe would not become “a testing-ground for the Pentagon’s doctrines of a limited nuclear war”.