Finally, you wrote to me. After more than one year of autonomous for it, during which contracted typhoid fever and was shot in the knee, my editor saw the news, I thought that I was among Italian journalists who had been abducted and sent me an email that said: "If you get a connection, you could tweet his arrest?"
Read the full story in the Columbia Journalism Review
As the Obama administration has parried pressures to enmesh the United States more deeply in Syria's murderous civil war, last year's high tide of international insistence on Bashar al-Assad's departure seems to be receding. One sign has been in eroding vote tallies in the United Nations. Another is the very public rethinking of Syria policy one hears here in Tunisia, where the Arab uprisings began.
Tunisia has particular moral authority in the Arab world as the vanguard of democratic change against the region's encrusted despotisms. It has been navigating its transition more peaceably than any other (and become the darling of international aid donors as a result). Its new government's instinctive sympathy for Syria's democratic protesters made it one of the first to demand that Assad must go.
But Tunisia's own transition has been rockier than its quick disappearance from our media radar screen might lead us to think, and Tunisians' experience of Islamist politics has changed the lens through which many here now view Syria.
As the process of writing Tunisia's new constitution nears its end, the conflict over political Islam is in crescendo phase. International organizations supporting democracy, many aided by Western governments, have invested heavily in civil-society institutions they hope can assure an unambiguously democratic system, largely working with secular parties of compatible views. Secular-minded Tunisians express alarm about Saudi and Gulf funding for Islamist forces, whose commitment to genuine democracy in Tunisia--much less Syria--they doubt.
The role of the United Nations Development Program in the process, one European foundation director here avers, has been "crucial" in keeping the process on track at all, thanks to its scrupulous impartiality in working with all the parties. But the United Nations can provide no guarantee about the true intentions of Ennahda ("Renaissance"), the Islamist party that won 41 percent of the vote in Tunisia's first elections two years ago. As Joshua Hammer relates in the New York Review of Books, there are ample grounds that Tunisians skeptical of religiosity in public life have for concern.
Ennahda has billed itself as a model of moderate Islamism, one that the West can embrace. To form a governing majority it had to enter a coalition with two smaller secular parties, which have been hard pressed to explain to their supporters how their collaboration has moderated the Islamists. Half the members of parliament from the social democratic Ettakatol party have defected in protest at its alliance with Ennaha. Even the country's labor confederation, which has been among the most effective mobilizers of public resistance to Ennahda's conservative agenda, fears infiltration by "the beards" as pious Muslims win elections to local union posts.
Alarm bells have been ringing since Ennahda's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, was recorded in a meeting with Salafist extremists calling them "my sons and daughters" and appealing for their support for Islamization projects in education. But the Salafists have international ambitions too, among which is the jihad against Syria's "infidel" regime. Tunisian Salafists were fighting with the Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra well before Hezbollah aided Assad at Qusayr, and have been bringing trademark jihadi violence back to Tunisia with them.
A Salafist mob stormed the American embassy September 14 of last year, three days after the Benghazi attack, overrunning most of the compound and burning the American school across the street. Suspicions swirled about government collusion because the Interior Ministry did not send security forces to confront the attackers till the embassy warned that Marine guards were prepared to shoot attackers approaching the embassy's last redoubt. The assassination five months later of a human rights champion turned opposition party leader was the breaking point, and Ennahda began to distance itself from the Salafists.
The escalation of Salafist political violence has hit Tunisians when they are already on edge because of jihadist activity in the southern Sahara since the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya next door. The leaching of arms from Libya has also helped supply jihadist rebels in Syria--yet another factor in Tunisians' reappraisal of the Syrian crisis.
"The government was too hasty in taking the position that Assad had to go," says Ahmed Ounaies, a career diplomat who served briefly as foreign minister in the first transitional government after the fall of Zine el-Abbedine Ben Ali's rule. Tunisians were eager to show solidarity with demonstrators for democracy in other Arab countries.
But liberal democrats are "not who is fighting in Syria today," Ounaies notes. Sensitized by the upsurge in intolerance and violence by Salafists within Tunisia itself, Tunisians have become more agnostic about the Syrian opposition. An unyielding insistence on Assad's early departure, he suggests, is not likely to produce a settlement, or even slow the killing.
With the relatively high education levels, substantial middle class, protections for women's equality, and defense of social rights that Tunisia's legendary Habib Bourguiba bequeathed to the country, Tunisia's revolution has always seemed the likeliest to deliver on its promise. Yet the Islamist divide has been hard to bridge even here, and Tunisians warn Westerners they should harbor no illusions about Syria.
Follow Jeffrey Laurenti on Twitter: www.twitter.com/J_Laurenti
Get AlertsWar is a terrible thing with extremely bad results. But this does not mean people should not be ready for it, even if such a possibility is very remote.
Washington's decision to arm the Syrian rebels (albeit lightly) and the announcement by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi that his country will cut off all diplomatic relations with Syria do not bode well for a quick and peaceful solution to the civil war that has been raging on in Syria for the past two years.
Some Jordanian officials and members of Parliament have asked that the Syrian ambassador to Jordan be considered persona non grata because of some anti-Jordanian statements he made recently.
The decision to ask the US to keep the Patriot anti-missile defence system and to keep the squadron of F16 fighters in Jordan is a hint that a war, or being on the receiving side of a war, is not such a remote possibility.
If the Jordanian government is asking to keep the Patriot missiles, which were in Jordan for a multi-national military exercise, then the public must be made aware that it may -- with little warning -- be the subject of attacks from its northern neighbour.
While the Patriot anti-missile system is proven to be able to intercept and destroy incoming missiles, it has not had a 100 per cent rate of interception.
With signs of a possible military confrontation or attack from Syria and with the Patriot not guaranteed to stop every incoming missile, what can be done to safeguard the Jordanian (and Syrian) population that lives in the areas close to the border?
Even people as far as the centre of Jordan need to think of the far-fetched scenario of having a Syrian official decide to use the country's short- or long-range missiles against Jordan, or of these weapons falling into the wrong hands as the conflicts continues to escalate.
Jordan has tried its best to remain neutral on Syria, but it might be forced to change this position. It is time to prepare the Jordanian public for the worst possibility, regardless of how far fetched.
If all political efforts fail, what can a country do in such a nightmare scenario?
Naturally, the Jordanian army and air force, along with allies, will have to do their utmost to protect the country, but what about the civilians who might be on the receiving end of any possible attack?
A homeland defence strategy must be prepared, and if one is already prepared, it must be updated and tested. Such strategy must certainly include simple issues like raising awareness of the Jordanian public about what to do in case of an attack.
Jordan, a country at peace for decades, has not had to do that. Jordanian houses are not equipped with a shelter, for example, and there are no public shelters available in case of attack. This makes minimising civilian injuries and death much more difficult.
Nevertheless, most military strategists would point out a few basics that need to be implemented as soon as possible.
The first order of business is a communication strategy. Jordan must use and inform the public where to go to for relevant information. With the age of satellite and the Internet, many Jordanians are not regular consumers of local media. The blocking of 300 local news Internet sites is not helpful in this regard.
After establishing and informing the public of the various local radio, TV and other platforms for communication that can be used, it needs to establish a warning system and to educate the public (especially in the north) what it means.
Missiles can be tracked from the moment they are launched, giving governments and the public a few precious seconds to find a place to hide.
Experts, for example, tell the public that they should stay away from windows whose debris, in case of an attack, can do much harm even if the particular location is not directly hit. Simple instructions like staying away from windows can do a lot to save lives.
War is indeed terrible and Jordan's political leadership has had a wonderful and long record of maintaining peace and citizens safe. But if Jordan wants an active citizenry, the government must show a similar attitude towards the citizens, protecting them by providing them with information and guidance to be prepared for the worst possibilities.
Follow Daoud Kuttab on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daoudkuttab
Get AlertsBerlin - the President Barack Obama refuses to describe the type of military aid that United States will give Syrian rebels as well as praise a decision by world leaders at a Summit that ended only to seek a negotiated peace.
Obama says while the leaders could not agree on which should go the Syrian President Bashar Assad, he has decided that it is not possible that Assad regain legitimacy.
Obama spoke at a Conference of press together with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (AHN '-GEH - lah MEHR'-kuhl).
Obama, the President Russian Vladimir Putin and other leaders of the industrial economies group of eight meeting in Northern Ireland this week tried to reduce the marked differences between Russia, a key support for Assad and other Western leaders.
HuffPost related:Get alerts
WASHINGTON -- Giving little relief to those skeptical of U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war, President Barack Obama on Monday said he understands the dangers of mission creep and was determined to avoid them.
Obama, in a taped interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose, defended his decision to provide weaponry to Syrian rebels, saying it followed careful and comprehensive deliberation. His policy, he added, is meant to strike the right balance and is not open-ended.
It is very easy to slip-slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments because if it's not working immediately, then what ends up happening is six months from now people say, 'Well, you gave the heavy artillery. Now what we really need is X, and now what we really need is Y,' because until Assad is defeated in this view, it's never going to be enough, right? Now, on the other side there are folks who say, you know, 'We are so scarred from Iraq. We should have learned our lesson. We should not have anything to do with it.' Well, I reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is, is that we've got serious interests there, and not only humanitarian interests, we can't have the situation of ongoing chaos in a major country that borders a country like Jordan, which in turn borders Israel.
Obama’s middle-ground approach comes at a time of intense scrutiny over what his administration’s Syria policy will be. The president told Rose his objective is ousting Assad so that a “functioning” and “representative" Syria could exist.
Getting to that point, however, has been complicated and bloody. An estimated 90,000 Syrians have died in the fighting. And while Obama has called for Assad to go, he had resisted pressure for stronger measures until recently.
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the White House had gamed out an aggressive approach to the conflict prior to the conclusion by U.S. officials that Assad had used chemical weapons on the rebel forces. That conclusion persuaded the president to enact the new policy.
But that policy remains something of a mystery. The administration said it will supply more weapons and ammunition to the rebels, along with $300 million in humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees. Obama, in his interview, said he retained all options, but would not commit to going further. He specifically rejected calls for a no-fly zone or heavy artillery.
“The last point I’d make on this is a lot of critics have suggested that if we go in hot and heavy, no-fly zones, setting up humanitarian corridors, and so forth,” he said. “That that offers a simpler solution. But the fact of the matter is, for example, 90 percent of the deaths that have taken place haven’t been because of air strikes by the Syrian Air Force. Syrian Air Force isn’t particularly good. They can’t aim very well. It’s been happening on the ground.”
Obama's comments come at a particularly sensitive time. At the G8 summit in Northern Ireland on Monday, his spokesmen acknowledged that Russia -- the other main third-party actor in the Syrian civil war -- remained on a different strategic page than the United States.
“We’ve clearly had differences over Syria in the past and continue to have differences as it relates to principally the fact that the United States believes that any transition in Syria has to involve Bashar al-Assad leaving power,” Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, said on Monday. “However, they do believe and recommitted themselves to working for a negotiated, political settlement to end the violence in Syria.”
At home as well, Obama faces difficulty selling his Syria policy. While foreign policy hawks cheered the initial announcement to arm the rebels, there was an undercurrent of concern that the initiative was too late or didn’t go far enough. On the flip side, many of the president’s Democratic supporters, and some dovish Republicans, warned that there was little strategic upside to getting involved in a bloody sectarian conflict in the Middle East.
By trying to split the difference, Obama may find the right policy and political mix. He may also end up pleasing no one.
“We know what it's like to rush into a war in the Middle East without having thought it through," Obama said. "And there are elements within the Middle East who see this entirely through the prism of a Shia-Sunni conflict and want the United States to simply take the side of the Sunnis. And that I do not think serves American institutes. As I said before, the distinction I make is between extremists and those who are recognized in a 21st century world that the way the Middle East is going to succeed is when you have governments that meet the aspirations of their people, that are tolerant, that are not sectarian. And working through that is something that we have to do in deliberate fashion."
Also on HuffPost: Get AlertsBEIRUT: Human Rights Watch says that the Syrian army is firing ballistic missiles at populated areas where it is fighting against the rebels, killing hundreds of civilians.
The US group said in a report released on Monday that it has investigated nine apparent missile attacks that killed at least 215 people, half of them children, between February and July.
HRW activists visited sites of seven of the nine attacks. There no apparent military targets near the inspected sites, said the group in a statement, calling for President Bashar Assad to stop indiscriminate attacks.
Government officials can not immediately be reached for comment. The army has repeatedly denied that is against civilians during the conflict in two years, saying that its troops are fighting "terrorists" hiding in civilian areas.
HuffPost related:Subscribe
Syria has been subject to a plentitude of political polemics, but just little scholarly research and analysis. Outlets have been saturated with writings by pundits and policy analysts who are beating the drum for the U.S. to intervene in Syria or pushing the U.S. to take a leadership role as it did in case of Libya. What is intriguing is that the same analysts are the ones who would later, should the U.S. decide to intervene in Syria, condemn the United States for its imperialists and modern colonial tendencies. Alongside the pundits, some politicians like Senator John McCain have also been publicly criticizing the current administration for not leading an active role for regime change in Syria and advocating for the implementation of military tactics such as buffer zones, no-fly-zones, and military deliveries. Yet, here are some arguments for why the United States should refrain from intervening in Syria.
First of all, it is important to address a widely argued sentiment claiming the positive impact that a Syrian intervention will have on the U.S.'s national interests and security. Such sentiment argues that if the United States intervenes either directly or indirectly in Syria and topples the Bath-ruling coalition's status quo, the Islamic Republic of Iran would consequently lose not only its consistent regional ally, but also its bedfellow in the international arena. As a result, this will disrupt Iran's logistical and communicational interactions with Hezbollah and Hamas, which in turn, would ratchet down Iran's regional influence. In addition, the next Syrian government, supposedly to be led by a Sunni-majority, would be more strategically allied with the United States and Arab gulf states (Saudi Arabia primarily) rather than with Iran. Therefore, regional pressure will increase and Iranian leaders will become more likely to appeal to negotiations for its nuclear enrichment program and human rights abuses, or alternatively, be subjected to the same fate as Assad.
Unfortunately, this argument does not stand against history or Iran's regional capabilities. Firstly, the Iranian leadership has a successful track record of emerging as the winner whenever a sovereign state in the Middle East experiences instability, civil war, or foreign intervention. For instance, the protracted civil war in Lebanon created the ripe environment for Iranian leaders to give birth to one of the strongest non-state actors in the region: Hezbollah.
Secondly, after the 2003 U.S. intervention in Iraq, Iranian leaders were able to immediately create a powerful Shiite proxy in Iraq - the Jesih AlMahdi (Mehsi Army) - as well as coordinate with Shiite leaders so as to infiltrate Iraqi governmental affairs. The Iranian leadership and Revolutionary Guard's tactical strategies are characterized not by public, foreign interventions, but clandestine investments in a local, community-based, organized group that empower a proxy capable of fighting not only regional governments but world powers such as the U.S. and her Western allies. When it comes to developing proxies, Iran can be considered as the regional mastermind. By implementing this strategy, Iranian leaders avoid being held legally accountable in the region and in the face of the international community.
If the U.S. were to intervene in Syria and liberate Damascus, Iran will definitely not be the loser. Iran has strong political bonds with the Alawite leaders and community and is capable of creating a proxy as powerful, if not more, than Hezbollah in Syria. The Alawite proxy can instigate considerable amount of tension through the region and can keep Syria destabilized and in a civil war climate indefinitely. The price of oil will inevitably raise as a consequence, which will also serve the interests of the Iranian leaders.
The second argument states that if the U.S. intervenes in Syria, the immediate "democratic" system of governance to follow will be strategically and politically allied with the United States. Those who make this presupposition should pay a closer examination to the socio-political fabric of the Syrian society, the state formation, and the process of democratization in the Middle East. In any case of intervention in Damascus, the immediate creation of a centralized government will be highly unlikely.
Democratization is not a simple process that is achievable overnight. I have several family members who have lost their lives in the battle against the police-state of Syria. Unfortunately, democratization is a messy and bloody process that necessitates sacrifices.
If the U.S. intervenes in Syria, we are more likely to witness one of the greatest regional and international proxy battlegrounds, of our generation, in Damascus since the Vietnam War which would pull Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraq and other powers actively into Damascus in order to preserve their national and geopolitical interests.
Part of this article was published in the Los Angeles Times.
Follow Majid Rafizadeh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@majidrafizadeh
Get Alerts
WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain said on Wednesday, two days after meeting with rebels in Syria, that he is confident the United States can send weapons to fighters in Syria without the risk they will fall into the wrong hands.
"We can identify who these people are. We can help the right people," McCain said on CNN's program "Anderson Cooper 360."
McCain, a Republican, is an outspoken advocate for U.S. military aid to the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has angrily denounced Democratic President Barack Obama - McCain's opponent in his failed 2008 presidential race - for shying away from deeper U.S. involvement in the conflict, which has claimed 80,000 lives.
Critics of some lawmakers' push to arm the rebels have expressed concerns that weapons could end up in the hands of militants who might eventually end up using them against the United States or its allies.
But McCain said such radical fighters make up only a small part of the rebels forces.
For example, he said, Syria's Islamist al-Nusra Front, identified as an alias of al Qaeda in Iraq, accounts for only about 7,000 of the 100,000 fighters battling the government of Assad.
"Every single day, more and more extremists flow in... "They're flowing in all the time, these extremists. But they still do not make up a sizeable portion," the Arizona senator said.
The Obama administration, saying it is keeping all options on the table, has sent food and medical supplies to Assad's opponents. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also have been trying to organize an international peace conference on Syria.
McCain said he was escorted during his visit on Monday by General Salem Idris, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and that he had a long meeting with Idris and a group of his battalion commanders.
"They're very disturbed about the dramatic influx of Hezbollah fighters, more Iranians and of course stepped up activities of Bashar Assad," McCain said.
U.S. public opinion is strongly against direct military involvement in Syria, but McCain said no one, including Idris and his commanders, wants American "boots on the ground."
However, he said the rebel forces made clear they want U.S. weapons. "Their message was ... They do not understand. They do not understand why we won't help them," McCain said.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
