http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/libyas-biggest-asset-could-also-be-its-greatest-liability#full

When Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011, hopes ran high for a bright future in Libya. But the third anniversary on February 17 of the start of the protests that led to his downfall finds the country deeply divided in every possible way, and apparently it is only drifting farther apart. The irony is that what is dividing the country most is what should, in theory, be Libya’s greatest hope: its large oil reserves and their as-yet unrealised potential to generate wealth.

Events that would, in better times, foster greater national unity such as the anniversary of the rebellion, the Libyan football team’s upset victory in the African Nations Championship, and the elections for a constitution-drafting committee – all of which happened in the past few weeks – don’t seem to have made a dent in the country’s seemingly endless woes.

The tensions that are driving Libya towards becoming a virtually failed state are ideological, regional, tribal and clan-orientated. On the surface, the greatest tension is between rival militias who are using the power of the gun to promote their agendas. These interests are sometimes linked to political tensions between Islamists and non-Islamists, but sometimes they operate with a twisted logic of their own.

The General National Congress (GNC) has been gridlocked in recent months over endless efforts by Islamists to unseat the non-Islamist prime minister, Ali Zeidan, who had even been kidnapped briefly. Popular disgust with governmental paralysis and lack of unaccountability erupted last week in the form of large public demonstrations against the GNC – whose mandate had been due to expire earlier this month – after Islamists tried to push through a one-year extension for the parliament.

The Al Qaaqaa and Al Sawaaq militias from Zintan, who are loosely aligned with non-Islamist forces, then made a quasi-coup attempt, demanding the entire GNC resign at once or face “arrest”. The Zintan militias are frequently at loggerheads with those from Misurata, who are associated with Islamist groups. However, their intervention was miscalculated, and was rejected by all political movements, including Mahmoud Jibril, the leader of the non-Islamist National Forces Alliance.

The country appears to have simply moved on from this more serious threat, just as it did from a farcical coup attempt on February 14 by Major Gen Khalifa Haftar.

But it’s difficult to overestimate the despondency that has taken hold. Turnout in the election for the constitution-drafting panel was so low that the victors of at least 13 out of 60 seats couldn’t be determined.

If Libyans are deeply gloomy, they came by it honestly. Government gridlock, bullying by the militias, and the sense of a nation drifting towards oblivion are exacerbated by bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and strong regional, tribal and, increasingly, ethnic tensions.

Beneath the surface, however, the most important latent reason for disunity is a primal struggle over money, specifically the country’s oil revenues. Everything else is secondary to the scramble of “primitive accumulation” in a society that is re-creating itself from scratch.

Much of what appears to be about other matters – political ideology, party rivalries, regional tensions and so forth – is merely a cover for the actual motive, which is positioning to gain power with a specific focus on Libya’s potential oil wealth.

It is precisely this jockeying for influence over oil that has virtually destroyed the very industry that is so coveted. Under Qaddafi, the country’s oil was under-exploited, and its proceeds were used for extremely narrow purposes of the dictatorship and its patronage network.

In the immediate aftermath of his downfall, the oil industry appeared to be making a robust comeback. However, even as petroleum production resumed, long-standing grievances in Libya’s south and east, where much of the oil is located, were exacerbated rather than assuaged.

High unemployment and poverty, compared to western Libya and, especially, Tripoli, were not addressed in a judicious manner. Tensions ran so high that a secessionist movement emerged in the eastern region of Cyrenaica.

The government also blundered by ostensibly trying to use former militia members to “protect” the oil facilities. These quasi-official, but practically unaccountable, groups frequently clashed with other militias or angry protesters who often expressed their grievances by disrupting the crucial industry.

As a result of the chaos, and efforts by many different groups of Libyans to get their way politically by disrupting the energy sector, exports now stand at about one-tenth of the normal capacity. The economy, which should be flourishing, is instead foundering, and the government has been forced to increasingly rely on foreign savings to support a public that has not weaned itself off its dependency on the state.

It’s unlikely that Libya would have been doing splendidly by now even if it didn’t have a vast potential oil wealth. Qaddafi left it with nothing, and the rebuilding task was always going to be enormous.

But, with all parties jockeying for position with an eye on the under-exploited oil jackpot, and with so many Libyans having realised that one of the best ways to bully the state, and everybody else, is to disrupt this industry, there’s no doubt that Libya’s energy resources are counter-intuitively causing more harm than good.

For now, what ought to be Libya’s greatest asset is unfortunately proving to be its worst liability.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/535902-whats-at-stake-for-the-us-in-syria

Many think there are no vital American interests in Syria. They couldn’t be more wrong

 

What’s at stake for the United States in Syria? Many American policy analysts have concluded, wrongly, that the answer is very little. The reality, however, is very different. Here’s why.

1) Syria has become Exhibit A in the arguments of both those who predict and welcome and those who bemoan and decry the supposed American drawdown from the Middle East. These analysts tend to particularly highlight President Barack Obama’s abandonment of his announced plan to strike Syrian chemical weapons facilities in favor of an accommodationist agreement – which, according to publicly-stated American intelligence analyses, gave the Syrian dictatorship a new lease on international legitimacy and Russia a clear foreign policy victory.

This is interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as symptomatic of a broader American policy of disengagement from the region as a whole. If the United States wishes to continue to play the role of guarantor of regional security in the Middle East and to be taken seriously as a major player there, the consequences of its Syria policy in the past two years will have to be systematically reversed.

2) Relative American inaction in Syria has strengthened American foes and weakened American friends. It’s not only allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel who are unhappy with the implications of the essentially hands-off policy: Iran and its allies are delighted with the prospect of an accommodation with the United States at the expense of Syria.

This impression, even if unfair, is now deeply ingrained. Syria is seen as a barometer of American risk-aversion and unwillingness to use its power to affect crucial regional conflicts that will determine the future strategic landscape of the Middle East.

3) It is often alleged that no vital American national interests are threatened by the conflict in Syria. But the American posture since the end of the Cold War of being the guarantor of global order is severely undermined by the evident disinterest from not only the Obama administration, but also the country at large, in seriously committing American resources to shaping the character, incentive structure, and potential outcomes of the Syrian conflict. This is simply not the behavior of a guardian of global or regional norms and stability.

4) In fact the United States does have vital national interests at stake in Syria. Unless the United States embraces a complete restructuring of its strategic posture in the Middle East, it cannot maintain its position while neglecting the Syrian war. Friend and foe alike, fairly or unfairly, believe they are detecting American fatigue and irresolution. They will act accordingly, and that will not be in the American national interest.

5) The Syrian war is an incubator for everything that is most hostile and detrimental to American interests in the region. As the conflict has been proceeding, it has strengthened Russia at a global level, Iran at a regional level, and Hezbollah at a local level. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda-inspired organizations are drawing thousands of fanatical young men to be trained and battle-hardened in the Syrian crucible.

The extent to which these extremists will ultimately pose a serious threat to US allies in the Middle East, European states, and even the American homeland, remains to be seen. But there is no question that a new generation of Al-Qaeda-inspired Salafist-jihadists of the most vicious variety is being incubated in Syria. In large part, it is because Western and Arab states have been late to the game and have allowed the most fanatical elements to fund and find recruits among dangerous young extremists who will ultimately emerge from the conflict and then almost certainly look for new targets in the region or beyond.

6) The humanitarian disaster and refugee crisis taking place in Syria is simply unconscionable. Responsibility for addressing this calamity does not rest with the United States alone. But the international community, led by the United States, has not done enough – by every estimation – to deal with the humanitarian crisis, let alone the political and military conundrums, produced by the Syrian war.

True enough, the United States cannot be the world’s policeman. Maybe it even can’t (or rather won’t) be the Middle East’s policeman anymore. But if it won’t even play a decisive role in marshaling the global resources necessary to address this horrifying crisis of dispossession, displacement, privation, and suffering among the most innocent victims, this does even more damage to the American claim to global leadership.

Therefore, what is really at stake is the American role on the regional and global stages. Is the United States still a decisive, proactive, determinative actor? Or has it become a vacillating, reactive, and largely ineffective power?

Those who think the United States lacks a major interest in the outcome in Syria don’t believe that these questions will largely be decided by the American approach to this most devastating and destabilizing of present conflicts.

But they will.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/the-us-will-count-the-cost-of-doing-nothing-in-syria#full

In May last year, I began to publicly speculate that American inaction in, and incoherent policy towards, Syria was largely explicable because “the Obama administration sees the Syria conflict as a subset of the broader problem with Iran”.

American officials were incoherently insisting that President Bashar Al Assad must go, but the institutions of government he presides over must stay.

And then there was the self- defeating and self-fulfilling viewpoint that the United States had “no good options” in Syria in terms of engaging, arming, training and wholeheartedly supporting some elements of the opposition.

This hands-off approach produced – as I and others warned it inevitably would – produced only less appealing alternatives as other forces moved to define the nature of the conflict and the identity and incentive structures of its participants. In the past few months, we have begun to see the fruits of this misguided policy ripening.

In that same article from May, I concluded, “If they really do see Syria as a sideshow in the broader question of whether Iran will have to be confronted or an accommodation can be reached, the inaction might be explicable, but it’s extremely cynical.

“It would mean the people of Syria, and their lives by the scores of thousands, are being treated as pawns in a broader great game.

“If that’s the fundamental explanation for an otherwise bewildering American policy that looks entirely self-defeating, it is both unwise and unworthy of a great country.”

That analysis has since been greatly bolstered by Barack Obama’s threat to attack Syrian chemical weapons facilities, a proactive stance suddenly replaced by a profoundly accommodationist one of making the Assad regime partners in the alleged process of giving up its chemical weapons.

The American administration had set a “red line” which the Syrian regime had crossed on numerous occasions, and once on a large scale.

The response was, in effect, to reward them with enhanced international, and even domestic, legitimacy. The policy now means that the United States endorses, in effect, Syrian regime control over key areas, roads and other infrastructure necessary to transport those weapons to the northeastern ports and out of the country (almost none of which has been actually been done). This is not consistent with a stated policy of regime change in Damascus.

The interim agreement with Iran late last year over its own nuclear programme further heightened the sense that the United States was exploring the prospect of a broader accommodation.

This would involve Iran freezing and rolling back its nuclear activities, but might also acknowledge Iran as a legitimate actor with a tacitly recognised sphere of influence, beginning in Syria.

No one really thinks the United States has embraced such a formula, but anyone who doesn’t suspect that it is toying with one isn’t paying attention to the logical corollaries of evolving US policy, or the remarks of Mr Obama himself, who now speaks openly of a Sunni-Shiite “equilibrium” as a supposedly potential stabilising factor in the Middle East.

When I first began speculating about this almost a year ago, the noted Middle East negotiator and scholar Aaron David Miller, who is also a good friend of mine, took umbrage.

He has been among the most vocal, and certainly intelligent and serious, of those in Washington who have argued that the United States was best guided by not taking a strong stance in Syria.

He bristled at the suggestion that American risk-aversion in Syria was in large part guided by keeping one eye on Iran, and particularly to my description of this as “unworthy”.

In his latest column, It’s Iran, Stupid: The real, unspoken reason America won’t get involved in Syria, Dr Miller essentially embraces and explicates my darkest analysis of the otherwise incomprehensible American policy lacuna towards Syria. He agrees that “by doing nothing, the United States is changing nothing” in Syria, yet he still finds the policy sound.

It’s a legitimate perspective, depending on how you see America’s national interests. But it underestimates the destabilising impact of the conflict regionally, and damage to the US’s standing in the Middle East the policy of deliberately “changing nothing” has produced. It has alienated friends, strengthened enemies and turned the Syrian conflict into a playground for everything that is worst and most anti-American in the region. It’s hardly cost-free, and a strong case can be made that it’s folly.

Dr Miller may be right in describing American (non-) policy in Syria as “amoral but not necessarily immoral”. But with 130,000 people killed, and the use of heavy weapons, poison gas and deliberate starvation against civilians, the line between amorality and immorality perforce becomes blurred, although it’s true enough that the United States must pick its battles carefully.

Now that we agree that the US approach to Syria is in large part driven by hopes of achieving a broader detente with Iran, the biggest difference I have with Dr Miller is this: morality aside, he’s not recognising the powerful long-term costs to American interests and standing in the region the hands-off approach and “equilibrium” fantasy necessarily entail.

Almost a year ago I called this policy “unworthy,” but also “unwise.” As more American policy experts publicly recognise that Syria policy is indeed comprehensible primarily as a subset of Iran policy, I stand, more than ever, by both of those characterisations. It was, and remains, indeed both unworthy and unwise.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/535006-sisis-choice

Field Marshal Sisi has exactly the same reason to run and not run for Egypt’s president: he will win

 

Political power, rule, governance, and high office are often considered synonymous. But looks can be deceiving.

No one really doubts that the true power behind the throne in Egypt’s interim government is the newly-promoted Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has been Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces and Minister of Defense since August 2012. When he led the ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013, Sisi – although he remained only Defense Minister in deference to the Interim President Adly Mansour – certainly became the most powerful man in the country.

With new presidential elections scheduled for mid-April, the stage is now set for Sisi to make the most crucial decision of his career: run or not. From his vantage point, there are powerful arguments in favor of, and against, both decisions.

The most important reason for him to run is that he would almost certainly win. The emerging field is narrow, with only the neo-Nasserist Hamdeen Sabbahi among major Egyptian politicians to have declared his candidacy. By contrast, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the former Muslim Brother and reputedly now “moderate” Islamist, has refused to run, calling the new Egyptian state  – in a not particularly original or apt phrase – a “republic of fear.” And the Salafist Al-Nour party has said it will neither field nor support a presidential candidate for the next 10 years.

Many other potential rivals, including former Foreign Minister and Arab League chief Amr Moussa, have urged Sisi to run as a “national savior.” So has much of the media. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in late January virtually begged Sisi to run for office, as have most of his colleagues in the interim government. So, as things stand, Sabbahi seems to be the only real alternative to a potential Sisi candidacy, and not a particularly threatening one at that.

What’s more, a fledgling cult of personality has developed around Sisi that virtually ensures that if he runs, he will be elected regardless of whoever stands against him. Peddling items emblazoned with his image, no matter how crude, has become a quick and easy way to make a pound or two on the streets of Egypt’s major cities.

The adoration appears to be both spontaneous – a genuine outpouring of affection for the man who rid the country of the now-detested Muslim Brotherhood and who is seen as the embodiment of the military which guarantees order and security – and also coordinated. There is a degree of unanimity in the legally-operating popular media and culture that suggests a certain investment in this image. The campaign has stooped to the level of children’s cartoons, and sweets and candies bearing his picture in little.

Hero-worship, let alone nascent cults of personality, must be very seductive temptresses. Rumored transcripts and leaked reports only exacerbate fears that Sisi may harbor fantasies of being a national savior – as he is already perceived by millions, at least for now – and the confluence of popular adoration, political pressure from his exceptionally wide support base, and, perhaps, his own proclivities may make the lure of office irresistible to him.

But the most important reason for him not to run is precisely the same: that he would almost certainly win. There can be no question of how tempting this must be. But neither Sisi nor any of his real allies should fail to recognize the serious dangers involved if he, in effect, leaves his position as head of the military and takes up that of head of state.

The honeymoon for the post-Morsi interim government has been remarkably sustained. It’s been based mainly on generalized popular relief of being rid of a detested Muslim Brotherhood government and a continued sense that the Brotherhood and its allies pose a threat to the Egyptian state. The crackdown on the Brotherhood, its designation as a “terrorist organization,” and the recent announcement by the government that the Brotherhood has formed a “paramilitary wing,” have all met with general approval by most of the public, as far as anyone can tell.

However, honeymoons cannot last forever. The Egyptian people have been very clear that what they ultimately want is jobs, dignity, and a responsive, accountable government. This is exactly what they didn’t get from the Brotherhood, and if they don’t get it from another government, eventually they will turn on that one as well.

For Sisi to give up his post as head of the military for that of head of state is risky on two counts.

First, it makes both him and, by inevitable and unavoidable extension, the military, responsible, as long as he is in office, for Egypt’s primary national challenges – not just security issues but much more intractable economic and social ones. It is unlikely that any government, no matter how much support and largesse it receives from Gulf states and others, can quickly secure a brighter economic future for a country with the huge population and economic woes of Egypt. Therefore, a backlash against both him and the military as an institution is a plausible medium-term risk, if not an outright likelihood, unless some kind of economic miracle takes place in Egypt.

Second, to become president would probably make it much more difficult for Sisi to retain the control over the military that he has as defense minister and commander-in-chief. Under the new Constitution, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces gets to appoint the Defense Minister for at least the next decade. So could, as president, Sisi effectively also have himself appointed defense minister, and would this be legally upheld? And even if he could, his role as head of state and government in general would inevitably draw him away from the military’s operations on a day-to-day basis. Someone else, either in title or in reality, would become the de facto military chief.

So the real question is, which institution ultimately has more value in terms of power, control, and authority? The enormous apparatus of Egypt’s gigantic bureaucracy and government, or the military with its specialized role, relative autonomy within its sphere of influence, secret budget, and vast but uninventoried and unaudited economic holdings? Might Sisi, by leaving the leadership of the military to take up the main seat of government, be trading a much more secure diadem of real power and authority for a hollow crown of responsibility for irresolvable problems such as Egypt’s profound economic woes?

Of course Egypt is unique, as is Sisi’s immediate conundrum. But it might be worth recalling a situation with some vague similarities, long ago and far away: the experience of Juan Perón. There isn’t an iota of Peronismo in either Sisi’s personality or political rhetoric, and the differences between the two are vast. But both men arose from the military at a time of profound economic and political crisis and turmoil in their countries. Neither had a coherent ideology, but each was able to gravitate huge and incongruous coalitions around their individual personae and iconic imagery.

Perón never had the total control of Argentina’s military that Sisi seems to command now in Egypt. And Sisi lacks Perón’s personal charisma (although, after having been bellowed at by Morsi and his allies for so long, many Egyptians may be profoundly drawn to Sisi’s quiet dignity and low-key style).

For all of the differences of time, place, personality, and political style, both men seemed to emerge from the military as wildly popular political leaders through authoritarian populism, hero worship, and nationalist fervor. Both were essentially blank screens on to which huge ranges of popular forces could project their own fantasies. That can’t last when combined with direct political responsibility.

By becoming president, Perón lost two key things over time: the ability to balance his unwieldy coalition of ideologically incompatible supporters, and his control of Argentina’s military.

One can imagine a similar process happening over time to a President Sisi. He, too, presides over a crazy quilt of political factions that are currently backing him, but which will, sooner or later, undoubtedly turn on each other. And, unless Sisi tries to preside over both the military and the government simultaneously as a kind of all-powerful caudillo – a phenomenon common to Latin America and the Arab world, but now highly unpopular in both – the great likelihood is that the armed forces will eventually drift away from him. Perón, after all, was eventually overthrown by a military coup.

The analogy is undoubtedly badly flawed, and the differences between the two are clearly greater than the similarities. Yet there may be a real echo with some significant lessons.

Sisi and his allies might look at the examples of how the Arab monarchies have dealt with growing public demands on their governments. Some Arab royals have so far successfully managed to rise “above the fray,” blaming popular grievances on the failings of executive authorities with direct responsibility, and frequently replacing a rotating group of cabinet ministers to demonstrate their responsiveness to public discontent.

The Egyptian military could potentially play a similar role: maintaining power and authority over its widely accepted sphere of influence, while avoiding the burden and dangers of direct political responsibility for the entire apparatus of governance. And, ideally, it could use this position to not only underscore social and political stability, but also to press for evolutionary change in Egypt over time, while leaving the details of daily governance to others.

A wise advisor might, at this crucial stage, be whispering in the Field Marshal’s ear that perhaps the burden of the highest office in the land ought be better left to someone like Mr. Mansour, his Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi, or any number of other plausible civilians, while it is in the best interests of both Sisi personally and the military as a whole – for which he has become an icon and a synecdoche – and its current enviable position in Egyptian society, that he be content to remain defense minister and commander in- chief.

But such wisdom in Egypt, and much of the rest of the Arab world these days, is often in disturbingly short supply.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/harmful-rhetoric-can-break-the-momentum-of-boycott-efforts#full

The recent SodaStream controversy has illustrated both the power and shortcomings of the various pro-Palestinian boycott movements. The falling out between actress Scarlett Johansson and her long-term former partners at Oxfam – who support settlement boycotts, but not boycotts against Israel – over her advertising for the company based in an Israeli settlement dovetails with many other European moves to draw the line with Israel.

The European Union recently insisted on excluding settlement-based institutions from its new research funding arrangement with Israel, and Germany is pushing to extend these restrictions to bilateral agreements that also involve the private sector.

Many Israelis, particularly those directly involved in business and finance, including finance minister Yair Lapid and over 100 Israeli CEOs, have expressed deep concern about Israel’s growing isolation over settlements. Israelis who are ideologically committed to a “greater Israel” naturally dismiss the emerging boycott trend as irrelevant bluster.

In fact, the growing mood in Europe that has lost patience with Israel’s ongoing settlement activities, which are universally acknowledged to be a flagrant violation of black letter international human rights law – and therefore declines to subsidise it with a single further euro – does pose a significant danger to Israel of political, diplomatic and even to some extent economic, isolation. But it’s important to note that these European boycotts are targeted directly against the settlements and the occupation, and not at Israel itself.

Here is where the most strident rhetorical “BDS movement” is, in many ways, not only failing to seize an opportunity, but it also does harm to this important campaign.

The European and other successful boycotts are aimed squarely at the occupation and are pushed by those who are determined to achieve a two-state solution. They are absolutely consistent with international law, and based on the fact that settlement activity by an occupying power is absolutely prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49, Paragraph 6, because it is a major human rights violation.

Unfortunately, many self-appointed leaders of the “BDS movement” – whose efforts have had virtually nothing to do with the growing mood in Europe to cease subsidising settlement activity – instead advocate boycotting Israel across the board. The logical conclusion of their approach, and the clear subtext of most of their rhetoric, is a one-state solution in which Israel is replaced by a different state for everyone currently living in former mandatory Palestine as well as all Palestinian refugees.

This creates a series of grave complications for what is an otherwise heartening trend of increasing European refusal to subsidise or tolerate settlement activities any longer.

First, such rhetoric allows supporters of the occupation to conflate boycotts against settlements with boycotts against Israel. There is a large and expanding global constituency, based on the virtually unanimous international consensus in favour of a two-state solution, that correctly identifies Israeli settlements as the unique threat to peace and acts accordingly. But because of the rhetoric of some BDS activists, it’s possible for supporters of the occupation and others to dismiss pro-peace settlement boycotts as “boycotts of Israel”. And there is no real international constituency for either a generalised boycott of Israel or for a one-state solution.

Second, European refusal to cooperate with settlement activity divides Israelis. It says to them that while Israel is a legitimate member state of the United Nations, settlements are illegitimate and their products therefore also illegitimate. BDS rhetoric that urges a total boycott of Israel, on the contrary, unites Israelis around the occupation, allowing the settlers to argue that the future of far-flung settlements deep in the West Bank is “the same as the future of Tel Aviv”.

Rather than being able to claim credit for the increasing movement in Europe and elsewhere to boycott settlements and the occupation, some of the most vocal pro-Palestinian “BDS advocates” actually undermine them by confusing the purpose of such boycotts and allowing Israelis to both argue and, perhaps, believe, that this is a generalised attack against the legitimacy of their state rather than the illegitimacy of the occupation.

The greatest challenge facing the Palestinian national movement, particularly after the last Israeli election in which the existence of the occupation was blithely ignored, is how to bring home the reality of the conflict to Israel’s mainstream majority that lives far from the occupied territories. The developing anti-settlement, but not anti-Israel, boycott movement is one of the first glimmers of real hope about how this can be done in a cost-effective, nonviolent and non-counterproductive manner.

There is no question that Palestinians are onto a very good thing here, if they handle it right. And the Israelis clearly have a problem, as acknowledged by all of their sensible leaders. But, ironically, the biggest threat to this sudden and significant piece of leverage is the strident BDS rhetoric that makes pro-peace actions against settlements that are based squarely in international law look like anti-Israel initiatives that don’t square with the goals of either peace or a two-state solution.

If the rhetoric of strident BDS activists can be brought into line with the reality of anti-settlement boycotts, Palestinians could well acquire a significant and desperately needed new tool of leverage with Israel. If not, while demagogues may not be able to stop the growing international anti-settlement sentiment, they can certainly continue to provide apologists for the occupation with vital rhetorical ammunition for counterattack, and space for conflation and confusion, that they would and should otherwise be denied.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/533889-will-libyas-soccer-victory-help-unite-the-country

Will Libya’s stunning soccer triumph help reinforce national identity against profound threats of division?

 

When Libya’s national soccer team last Saturday held off powerhouse Ghana for 90 minutes of full-time, another 30 minutes of extra time, and then won a nail-biting finish in a penalty shootout in the final of the African Nations Championship in South Africa, perhaps we were looking at something more than just a game. For a country beset by warring militias, rival tribes and clans, and eastern secessionism, this dramatic upset victory in a major tournament could have significant implications in reaffirming the shared Libyan sense of national identity and pride, commonality of purpose, and, indeed, united future.

It doesn’t matter that the African Nations Championship — which excludes any players working outside their home countries — is secondary to the more major Africa Cup of Nations. The unexpected and inspiring victory set off celebrations not seen since the success of the 2011 revolution. In the immediate wake of the fall of Ben Ali, Tunisia’s victory in the same tournament also helped reinforce national identity at a crucial time.

For countries in the grip of transition, or groups seeking to reinforce their identities or create new national narratives, high-level sports can, and historically frequently have, been an unlikely focal point, with impossible to measure but unmistakable political ramifications, both positive and negative.

The redoubtable James Dorsey’s Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer blog has been an invaluable resource on how soccer, soccer politics and dynamics, and soccer fans have been harbingers, barometers and, sometimes even, key factors and actors in Middle Eastern developments in recent years.

Everything from the role of Egypt’s “ultras” football hooligans in the various uprisings and protests in the country, to Qatar’s fraught (and, it would seem, increasingly implausible) bid to host the 2022 World Cup, demonstrates that soccer has a significant socio-political, and at times economic, impact in the contemporary Arab world.

Historically around the world sports, and soccer in particular, have often been seen as metaphors for national identity, reassertion or reemergence, or, alternatively, as a vehicle for sub-national tensions or interstate rivalries that have sometimes boiled over into conflict.

In Spain, Catalans and Basques have relied on soccer as a vehicle for expressing their unique identity, sometimes in an aggressive and hostile manner to traditional Castilian dominance. The first harbingers of open warfare in the former Yugoslavia came in soccer stadiums. Anyone paying attention to the chanting could not have been surprised by the various Balkan wars, including the war in Kosovo.

There are almost endless examples of how historically and throughout the world soccer has both both a uniting and inspiring force, and a means of confirming national and subnational identity groups and expressing tensions between them.

In 1969, a brief but bitter armed conflict — La guerra del fútbol (“the soccer war”) — erupted between Honduras and El Salvador. It wasn’t actually caused by the rioting following a highly contentious World Cup qualifying match, as many mistakenly think, but those tensions were the breaking point for a whole series of pre-existing disputes, largely involving territory, population and the treatment of Salvadorans living and working in Honduras.

In the case of Libya, however, the operative examples are more likely to be the way in which major soccer victories have reinforced national identities with direct, and often stabilizing and uniting, effects.

It was famously, and perhaps exaggeratedly, observed that, “Other countries have their history. Uruguay has its football.” But there’s no doubting the astonishing successes tiny, otherwise undistinguished, Uruguay had, stunning the world by winning the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, and then the first World Cup in 1930 and again by beating mighty Brazil in the 1950 final in Rio de Janeiro, has had a mightily disproportionate positive influence on Uruguayan identity and national pride.

There is also little doubt that Argentina’s first World Cup victory in 1978 gave the ruling military junta a new lease on political life and extended their rule for several years. Indeed, many of the players involved in that triumph have since expressed regret that a dictatorship fighting a “dirty war” against political opposition was able to benefit from their success. It may have left a bitter taste in many mouths over the long run, but in its immediate context Argentina’s victory was galvanizing and unifying.

It would be naïve to think that the Libyan team’s brilliant triumph is a turning point in that country’s post-dictatorship future. It cannot be a panacea to its most serious woes, or even a solution to any of them. It may indeed prove a mere blip in the unfolding Libyan saga. But it would also be naïve and, indeed, ahistorical, to dismiss the possibility that Libyans just got an invaluable reaffirmation of national unity, identity and confidence at a crucial point, when all of them are under profound threat. Take it seriously.

http://www.thenational.ae/despite-some-flaws-tunisias-constitution-shows-promise#full

Here is the good news: Tunisians appear to have been able, for now at least, to thrash out the differences between Islamists and secularists over their new constitution in a relatively peaceable, if contentious and almost entirely political, manner. The bad news? The document the constituent assembly has crafted and passed, article by article, is significantly flawed.

However, the fact that the Tunisian mainstream groups are not battling it out in the streets in one form or another, but rather in a political setting, is, in and of itself, something to be praised in the current Arab environment.

Predictably, the biggest issues revolve around the role of religion and the state. Tunisians have either ended up with a grand compromise, or at least a model of compromise, for the rest of the Arab world. Or they have ended up with a terrible muddle of incoherence and self-contradiction in their basic governing document, which sets the stage for future confrontations that may not be so pleasant. Or both.

Article 1 declares Islam to be the religion of Tunisia, which, in an overwhelmingly Muslim-majority country is somewhat superfluous. Article 2 then declares Tunisia to be “a civil state based on citizenship, the will of the people and the rule of law”.

Such contradictions become even more severe in the highly contentious Article 6, which both “protects sanctities” and, simultaneously, “guarantees freedom of belief and conscience”.

The guarantee of freedom of conscience can only be interpreted as allowing people not to have any religion at all and to be atheists or agnostics or follow whatever religion they please. There is a distinction to be made in the contemporary Arab world between “freedom of religion”, which is often understood as the freedom to be any sort of traditional monotheist one likes, versus a real freedom of conscience, which opens the door to a far greater range of belief systems, including skepticism, agnosticism and atheism.

In the West and elsewhere, it has already been demonstrated that religions can be protected in certain civic senses – exempt from taxation, protected from government intrusion, and so forth – without reducing people’s rights to choose between religions or not have any religion at all.

Despite strong free speech provisions, the “protecting sanctities” clause could set the stage for anti-blasphemy legislation in Tunisia that restricts freedom of speech, such as led to the 2012 sentencing of Jabeur Mejri to seven years in prison for questioning Islam.

It will be hard to reconcile “freedom of conscience” with the “protection of sanctities”. The new Tunisian constitution appears to have it both ways: freedom of thought and expression combined with protection for religious sensibilities. It’s possible, but difficult, to achieve that balance.

Article 6 was amended following a particularly histrionic moment in the frequently contentious debates. On January 5, an Islamist member of the assembly, Habib Ellouz, called a secularist colleague, Monji Rahoui, “an enemy of Islam”.

A ban was then inserted against charges of apostasy (takfir) and incitement to violence. This, too, could be seen as a serious violation of freedom of expression on the one hand, or a necessary protection against the incitement that led to the assassinations of secularists Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.

The brouhaha concluded on an absurdist note with assembly member Ibrahim Kassas shouting “Allahu Akbar” at the top of his lungs until he fainted.

The confusion over religion and the state is also reflected in Article 73, which holds that anyone running for president must be a person “whose religion is Islam”. In an overwhelmingly Muslim country, this is not only insulting to small religious minorities, it’s entirely gratuitous.

Most of this constitution will provide the basis for future, more specific, legislation. And it seems to contain within it both the basis for a genuinely open, pluralistic society that protects both religious belief and freedom of expression. Or could set the stage for laws significantly repressing non-or-anti-religious opinion and expression, and the championing of one religion (Islam) by the state.

Grading on a curve, the new draft Tunisian constitution probably gets a B. But this grading has to be on a curve. It’s excellent both in substance and how it was crafted compared to, for example, the new Egyptian constitution. Many other states are not changing at all.

But the document itself has several glaring flaws and contradictions to worry about, and they reflect simmering, lingering political disputes that have not been resolved but merely postponed by these compromises.

But the gruelling passage of the document by the Assembly included a crucial grace note: the body spontaneously rose and sang the Tunisian national anthem after passing an article ensuring gender equality. This suggests that even on some contentious and unresolved issues, Tunisia has been able to preserve a sense of national unity that, so far, as has eluded several other post-dictatorship Arab states, including its immediate neighbours Libya and, especially, Egypt.

Egypt appears to have lost a common, consensus understanding of what Egypt is and what it means to be an Egyptian. For all of the contention, confusion and contradiction surrounding the new constitution – and despite the announcement by interim prime minister-designate Mehdi Jomaa that he has still been unable to form a new consensus cabinet – Tunisians appear to have, at least thus far, retained a sense of common national identity. Judging from the countries bordering it to the east and west, that is no mean feat.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/531519-does-the-us-seek-an-arab-iranian-equilibrium

American policy in the Middle East has plainly been evolving, but in what direction has been less clear. Analysts have therefore been dutifully reading between the lines of what the risk-averse Obama administration has been doing and saying to try to tease out the new American strategic vision for the region.

Both the administration and the country at large seem ready to reduce the American footprint in the Middle East in favor of other priorities. However, the extent of that drawdown and, more importantly, what is intended to replace it, have been entirely unclear.

These questions became pressing following the American disengagement with Syrian rebels and embrace of the chemical weapons elimination program. When the US led the international community into an interim agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, they became even more so. Yet these moves only hinted at where American strategy might be headed, and raised more questions than they answered.

President Barack Obama, in his own words, has begun to explain what his administration sees as new American strategic policy goals and postures. And they will not please everyone.

In a sweeping overview of the current state of the Obama presidency, David Remnick has provided one of the first pieces of clear explication of where US grand strategy in the region may be headed, or at least where the administration wants to go.

Remnick quotes Obama as saying, bluntly, “If we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion… you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.”

This vision isn’t going to mollify the suspicions of those concerned about Arab Gulf security.

In December, I speculated that a “plausible, but still from an Arab point of view alarming, scenario is that the US is seeking to create a balance of power between what amount to Sunni and Shiite regional alliances. Such an equilibrium, this logic holds, would allow the US to start to draw down its own posture in the region and concentrate on the long-ballyhooed ‘pivot to Asia.’”

Some have suggested that the US is toying with a “concert of powers” to ensure Gulf security. Others have speculated that without a major American force in the Gulf region, for the meanwhile only Iran can protect vital shipping lanes and this explains the potential Washington-Tehran rapprochement.

Obama’s emphasis, however, on a regional “equilibrium” – precisely the term I employed to describe a potential formula through which the US might seek to pull back its own role while avoiding broader chaos – is highly suggestive. Obama doesn’t directly say the US is seeking such an equilibrium, but could be seen as implying it.

Moreover, Obama’s notion that the goal is to get Iran “to operate in a responsible fashion” suggests not only an end to bad behavior by Tehran, but also that Iran could then potentially be entrusted with key responsibilities.

This doesn’t mean that the United States sees Iran as a potential ally or a new partner as some have predicted. But it does seem to suggest that if Iran were to modify its behavior regarding nuclear weapons and funding terrorist organizations it could, and perhaps even should, be regarded as a legitimate regional actor with a major role to play in security based on a Sunni-Shiite “equilibrium.”

It’s hard not to extrapolate from this a vision of an Iranian foreign policy that is at ease, rather than at odds, with the regional status quo. And for that, Tehran would surely require its own tacitly-recognized sphere of influence: a so-called “Shiite crescent” beginning in southern Afghanistan and sweeping all the way through to southern Lebanon.

And, of course, the centerpiece of such an axis would be Syria, if not under precisely the present regime, at least under a general Iranian hegemony. Hence, the idea of not only a rapprochement with Iran, but also the development of a regional sectarian “equilibrium,” might also help to explain an otherwise increasingly passive and self-contradictory American approach to Syria.

Those of us who have worried that US policymakers have come to see Syria-related issues as a subset of the Iran file will be concerned by the potential implications of Obama’s comments to Remnick.

But none of this should be overstated. Obama’s comments may have been off-the-cuff or taken out of context, and are so brief and cursory as to be easily open to misinterpretation.

But since this is the first serious attempt that I am aware of by a senior administration official to explain, in public, what the emerging US vision of a new regional order in the Middle East might be, some additional clarification and reassurances would be both wise and welcome.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/a-us-iran-deal-to-secure-the-middle-east-is-all-but-a-fantasy#full

The single most contentious, urgent and far-reaching policy debate in Washington at present is centred on where the United States is seeking or expecting to go in its reset in relations with Iran.

The largest group is taking things at face value. They accept that the Obama administration simply wants to avoid another unpopular confrontation in the Middle East and is exploring how to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions without having to resort to force. This is the received wisdom. And the burden of proof is strongly on those who suggest there is more to the US-Iranian dialogue than such limited issues.

Defenders of the conventional wisdom have several important arguments on their side.

First, the six-month interim “first step” agreement achieved by the P5+1 with Iran was quite limited. Iran did little to roll back its nuclear programme. And the sanctions relief it received in turn is also limited. Second, there is powerful opposition in both the US and Iran to even this interim agreement. Third, there are real doubts about the prospects for a broader agreement.

What was achieved so far has been relatively cost-free, and it bought both sides valuable time to consider their options and postpone any potential confrontation. Any deeper agreement will require much greater concessions by both sides and face powerful opposition in both societies. It may not be possible at all.

So those who urge caution at over-reading the significance of Washington-Tehran dialogue can make a strong case.

Nonetheless, speculation is proliferating that what could be at stake is a complete restructuring of the American strategic posture in the Middle East generally and the Gulf region in particular.

Neoconservatives Michael Doran and Max Boot recently opined that what the Obama administration is actually looking for is a “concert of powers”, including Iran, the European Union, Russia and others, to stabilise the Middle East. According to this theory, the United States is exhausted and fed up with the Middle East and is looking to share the burden with others.

But even this highly critical speculation in public is outdone by what is being whispered in private, especially among those most alarmed by what they perceive to be the administration’s intentions: a much more far-reaching transformation in the American posture in the region.

The United States, this thinking goes, is the only global power capable of projecting enough force into the Gulf region to secure the crucial shipping routes through which almost half of the maritime-delivered petroleum in the world is transported. This assumes the US wishes to draw down its regional posture but dismisses any joint global effort.

Such thinking holds that Americans face a stark choice: either maintain a major but undesired military presence in the region or face the fact that there is no international or regional balance of power to secure it. If it chooses to draw down, it must, therefore, seek a local power capable of ensuring regional stability and shipping access.

Its proponents hold that, as things stand, only Iran can provide such an assurance. And they claim that the Shia powers of Iran and Iraq, not the Sunni Gulf Cooperation Council states, now possess the greater share of the region’s oil reserves.

The nuclear issue is therefore considered secondary to both countries, although Iran will be forced to make serious nuclear concessions in a broader accommodation that allows it, instead, a wide sphere of influence in a “Shia crescent” running from Afghanistan to southern Lebanon, and even, perhaps, greater clout in the Gulf too.

This argues that Washington is not seeking an unattainable “balance” in the Gulf, but is actually preparing, in effect, to “switch sides” and enter an uncomfortable and uneasy, but mutually beneficial, accommodation with Tehran in order to draw down its military presence and begin the long-ballyhooed “pivot to Asia”.

Such theories are certainly speculative, if not conspiratorial. After all, so far the US has not even begun to seriously reconfigure its military presence in the Gulf region, the agreement with Iran is profoundly tentative and the administration scoffs at such ideas.

However, tidbits of supporting circumstantial evidence can be identified. US reticence in Syria could be read as hedging for an accommodation that confirms that country as part of Iran’s potential agreed sphere of influence. Unconfirmed reports of secret talks with Hizbollah are also suggestive.

And, if such an accommodation is to be made, it would almost certainly have to be presented to the American public as a common front against a mutual deadly threat: Al Qaeda. Indeed, a recent New York Times article that bore all the hallmarks of administration leaks made precisely the dubious case that the US and Iran “face common enemies” across the Middle East.

This is all suggestive, but also very thin.

The bottom line is that few in Washington feel confident they understand exactly what the administration is hoping to ideally achieve in its outreach to Tehran. Constituencies that either welcome or fear the prospect of a broader accommodation are growing rapidly and becoming vocal.

Only one thing seems relatively clear: anyone who believes an American-Iranian accommodation would successfully secure the Gulf region for the coming decades is likely to be deeply disappointed.

It will either prove an utter chimera that these two old and distrustful antagonists are capable of such an arrangement. Or, if it is attempted, it will almost certainly prove destabilising and provoke more instability and confrontation in the region.

Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk are being starved to death by the Syrian regime. Does anyone care?

 

There isn’t much the Palestinian people haven’t suffered. But the use of enforced starvation against them by the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad at the Yarmouk refugee camp breaks new ground in cruelty. Hundreds are said to be facing imminent death by starvation, lack of water and medical care, and the loss, for almost a year now, of all heat and electricity.

Last weekend, at least 41 Palestinian refugees were reported to have died as a result of food and medicine shortages, and all the evidence suggests this account is a low estimate. The numbers continue to grow daily.

Rights groups said that today eight more Palestinians in Syria have died from malnutrition, including an 80-year-old, Jamil al-Qurabi, a 40-year-old, Hasan Shihabi, and a 50-year-old woman called Noor. Meanwhile 10-year-old Mahmoud al-Sabbagh and two 19-year-olds, Majid Imad Awad and Ziad al-Naji, were killed while protesting the blockade of the camp. Muhammad Ibrahim Dhahi is reported to have been tortured to death by regime forces, while Hasan Younis Nofal was killed by one of Assad’s now-notorious barrel bombs.

Yesterday a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) convoy of trucks loaded with desperately-needed food and medicines were fired on by pro-Assad forces, most likely the so-called PFLP-GC, as they tried to enter the camps and were unable to deliver the urgent relief.

The PLO says it is still trying to negotiate with “Syrian officials and [pro-Assad] militants in Palestinian camps in Syria in order to reach a solution and create a safe passage for the entry of relief supplies to Yarmouk.” They are, in effect, begging for the lives of innocent Palestinians suffering a siege that, while significantly smaller in scale, is without doubt much crueler and more arbitrary than anything imposed on Gaza by either Israel or Egypt.

“All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war,” blandly observed Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, Nigeria’s then-Minister of Finance, who is widely blamed for overseeing the use of famine as a technique in the suppression of the Bifran separatist movement. And, he reportedly added, “I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder.” Quite.

During the 20th century, starvation was used as a weapon in numerous conflicts around the world, but has rarely been seen in the Middle East. There was a dreadful famine, partly caused by the Ottoman Empire, both before and during the First World War, and the Sudanese government is widely accused of using this tactic in Darfur. But the Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians have no real track record of such practices. Until now.

Brutality has been commonplace in the Middle East since at least the Second World War, but deliberate starvation has been much less common than shootings, bombings, massacres, and even the use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Palestinians have been driven from their lands, forced to live in squalid refugee camps, murdered en masse by various hostile forces, suffered under decades of occupation, and besieged. For a time being, they were even “placed on a diet” by Israel, which apparently actually calculated how many calories each Gaza resident would be allowed at the height of the blockade. As a people, they could well be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all, short of outright genocide.

But against all odds, the savagery of the Assad regime has managed to discover a form of suffering new to even the Palestinians: starvation as a weapon of war. I suppose for a people who had suffered almost everything else, it was only a matter of time that Palestinians would actually be starved to death.

The crucial thing is not simply that Assad and his allies – Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia – must be held fully and completely responsible for this outrage. It must also be noted that the international community and the Arab world are not doing enough to respond to it, practically or politically. They have done virtually nothing as Yarmouk’s pre-war population of 250,000 has shrunk in the past three years to 18,000 famished, cowering, and shivering souls.
The Palestinians are, predictably, among the most vulnerable of victims in a merciless conflict in which Syrians, especially their own government, have turned on each other with breathtaking viciousness. If little is being done to help the Syrians, how, then, could Palestinians hope to be spared?

More than merely apathy and indifference – or in the case of some actors, a real focus on trying to deal with both Assad and al-Qaeda but not helping the Palestinians in Yarmouk – there is a deep sickness in some Arab political discourse and in a part of the Arab soul. To be fair, most Arabs are appalled at the Syrian war and feel deeply for the suffering of the Yarmouk refugees. But not all, by any means.

Those who still worship at the altar of the false idol of “resistance” and see Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, and their allies as the embodiment of the Arab cause are not simply disingenuous or delusional propagandists. Their thinking – not even, but especially, if it is sincere – is profoundly sick.

This demented attitude has been put on full display by the Lebanese shill for Hezbollah and Iran, Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the Al-Akhbar newspaper that is wholly devoted to those two faithful paymasters. With absolutely no sense of decency or shame, Amin writes, “the unfolding events [in Yarmouk] are 100 percent a Palestinian responsibility.”

He claims that “Palestinians in Syria enjoyed advantages that their counterparts were deprived of in every corner of the world,” untrue certainly of Jordan and Western states, arguably of Israel itself. Being Lebanese, Amin may even believe this, since Palestinians in Syria have indeed historically been treated well in comparison to those who have suffered under Lebanon’s virtual apartheid policies, or in the clutches of the Israeli occupation.
Amin blames Hamas for the crisis – as there is no honor among thieves, neither is there among formerly-allied extremists – and makes an overtly sectarian argument against Sunni, but not Shiite, Islamists. Worse, he accuses the Palestinians – who except for the brutal and tiny pro-Assad factions have made every effort to stay out of the conflict, remembering the lessons of Lebanon – of “contributing to the war in Syria.” This may be the first time in a decade I have defended Hamas, but of this, they are not guilty.

Amin claims that either 27, or maybe 70, Palestinian salafis from Gaza (he cites both figures) have joined the fighting in Syria. Not Hamas members, mind you. Assuming this is true – and it would be a small number compared to the Sunnis fighters from other parts of the Arab world, and miniscule compared to the Shiite combatants that have rallied to help Assad murder his own people, especially Amin’s Hezbollah cronies – who is to blame?

According to Amin it is, believe it or not, the Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk themselves. “What are these Palestinians doing?” he thunders. “Why are they doing it? Who can stop them or convince them that their battle is elsewhere? Palestinian refugees are the ones called to conduct an overall review.”

Really? What were the dying, starving, and wretched refugees in Yarmouk supposed to do about this? Has even Israel ever come up with a more cynical argument in favor of the collective punishment of innocent Palestinians for the actions of a tiny few over whom they have no control?

Like all Arab demagogues, Amin knows just who to blame. On cue, like the broken record he is, he concludes, “The one who seeks to liberate Palestine doesn’t join a bunch of murderers who work under US command to serve one occupier and one criminal: Israel.”

If justifying murder is a sin, Amin is deeply damned. If being boring and predictable is a crime, he’s a capo di tutti capi, even if his real rank is no better than a major in Iran’s Pasdaran. According to him, if Palestinians are being starved, shot, and tortured to death by the Assad regime, they have only themselves to blame.

But the worst sickness is not Amin, who is an ideological hack and a paid stooge. His cynicism comes with a price tag.

The deeper problem is those Arabs who are willing to put up with his rationalizations for extreme cruelty. And, more deeply, it also lies with those who, in the past, were beguiled by the transparent lie – whether they have begun to doubt it yet or not – that there is an “axis of resistance” that includes the Syrian dictatorship, the Iranian theocracy, and Hezbollah; those, including Palestinians, who, either now or in the past, would drop everything to run to hear the latest ravings from “Sayyed Hassan.”

They know who they are, and there is no need to name names. But if they look back on their former attitudes whose shame, most of them show no sign of it. The same mentality continues to operate, with slight adjustments, on significant parts of the Muslim religious right and the Arab political left.

Even assuming they reject what is happening at Yarmouk, and are repulsed by Amin’s brazen exercise in blaming the victims, if the events of the past three years nonetheless haven’t prompted deep introspection and caused them to rethink their whole political worldview, they remain trapped in an ideology that led directly to the tragedy of Syria, and particularly, that of the defenseless Palestinian refugees being starved and murdered at Yarmouk. And, therefore, even if their symptoms are now presenting differently, the deeper sickness remains undiagnosed, unacknowledged, and, most importantly, untreated.