Document Text Content
3 April, 2011
Article 1. NYT
In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out
Ethan Bronner
Article 2. Le Monde diplomatique
The Arab spring - Follow the money
Samir Aita
Article 3. Guardian
Obama doctrine? If only
Michael Boyle
Article 4. The Economist
American foreign policy - Why it's a theory, not a doctrine
Article 5. The Atlantic
Struggling to Restart Egypt's Stalled Revolution
Eric Trager
Article 6. The Washington Institute
Qatar's Quest to Become the Leading Arab State
Simon Henderson
Article 1.
NYT
In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out
Ethan Bronner
April 2, 2011 — With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Authority has been steadily building support for such a resolution in September, a move that could place Israel into a diplomatic vise. Israel would be occupying land belonging to a fellow United Nations member, land it has controlled and settled for more than four decades and some of which it expects to keep in any two-state solution.
“We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September,” said Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, at a conference in Tel Aviv last month. “It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action.” He added, “Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of Israel.”
With aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thrashing out proposals to the Palestinians, President Shimon Peres is due at the White House on Tuesday to meet with President Obama and explore ways out of the bind. The United States is still uncertain how to move the process forward, according to diplomats here.
Israel’s offer is expected to include transfer of some West Bank territory outside its settlements to Palestinian control and may suggest a regional component — an international conference to serve as a response to the Arab League peace initiatives.
But Palestinian leaders, emboldened by support for their statehood bid, dismiss the expected offer as insufficient and continue to demand an end to settlement building before talks can begin.
“We want to generate pressure on Israel to make it feel isolated and help it understand that there can be no talks without a stop to settlements,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “Without that, our goal is membership in the United Nations General Assembly in September.”
Israeli, Palestinian and Western officials interviewed on the current impasse, most of them requesting anonymity, expressed an unusual degree of pessimism about a peaceful resolution. All agreed that the turmoil across the Middle East had prompted opposing responses from Israel and much of the world.
Israel, seeing the prospect of even more hostile governments as its neighbors, is insisting on caution and time before taking any significant steps. It also wants to build in extensive long-term security guarantees in any two-state solution, but those inevitably infringe the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.
The international community tends to draw the opposite conclusion. Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain, for example, said last week that one of the most important lessons to be learned from the Arab Spring was that “legitimate aspirations cannot be ignored and must be addressed.” He added, referring to Israeli-Palestinian talks, “It cannot be in anyone’s interests if the new order of the region is determined at a time of minimum hope in the peace process.”
The Palestinian focus on September stems not only from the fact that the General Assembly holds its annual meeting then. It is also because Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced in September 2009 that his government would be ready for independent statehood in two years and that Mr. Obama said last September that he expected the framework for an independent Palestinian state to be declared in a year.
Mr. Obama did not indicate what the borders of that state would be, assuming they would be determined through direct negotiations. But with Israeli-Palestinian talks broken off months ago and the Middle East in the process of profound change, many argue that outside pressure is needed.
Germany, France and Britain say negotiations should be based on the 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps, exactly what the Netanyahu government rejects because it says it predetermines the outcome.
“Does the world think it is going to force Israel to declare the 1967 lines and giving up Jerusalem as a basis for negotiation?” asked a top Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That will never happen.”
While the Obama administration has referred in the past to the 1967 lines as a basis for talks, it has not decided whether to back the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — the other members of the so-called quartet — in declaring them the starting point, diplomats said. The quartet meets on April 15 in Berlin.
Israel, which has settled hundreds of thousands of Jews inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem, acknowledges that it will have to withdraw from much of the land it now occupies there. But it hopes to hold onto the largest settlement blocs and much of East Jerusalem as well as the border to the east with Jordan and does not want to enter into talks with the other side’s position as the starting point.
That was true even before its closest ally in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, was driven from power, helping fuel protest movements that now roil other countries, including Jordan, which has its own peace agreement with Israel.
“Whatever we put forward has to be grounded in security arrangements because of what is going on regionally,” said Zalman Shoval, one of a handful of Netanyahu aides drawing up the Israeli proposal that may be delivered as a speech to the United States Congress in May. “We are facing the rebirth of the eastern front as Iran grows strong. We have to secure the Jordan Valley. And no Israeli government is going to move tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes quickly.”
Those Israelis live in West Bank settlements, the source of much of the disagreement not only with the Palestinians but with the world. Not a single government supports Israel’s settlements. The Palestinians say the settlements are proof that the Israelis do not really want a Palestinian state to arise since they are built on land that should go to that state.
“All these years, the main obstacle to peace has been the settlements,” Nimer Hammad, a political adviser to President Abbas, said. “They always say, ‘but you never made it a condition of negotiations before.’ And we say, ‘that was a mistake.’ ”
The Israelis counter that the real problem is Palestinian refusal to accept openly a Jewish state here and ongoing anti-Israeli incitement and praise of violence on Palestinian airwaves.
Another central obstacle to the establishment of a State of Palestine has been the division between the West Bank and Gaza, the first run by the Palestinian Authority and the second by Hamas. Lately, President Abbas has sought to bridge the gap, asking to go to Gaza to seek reconciliation through an agreed interim government that would set up parliamentary and presidential elections.
But Hamas, worried it would lose such elections and hopeful that the regional turmoil could work in its favor — that Egypt, for example, might be taken over by its ally, the Muslim Brotherhood — has reacted coolly.
Efforts are still under way to restart peace talks but if, as expected, negotiations do not resume, come September the Palestinian Authority seems set to go ahead with plans to ask the General Assembly to accept it as a member. Diplomats involved in the issue say most countries — more than 100 — are expected to vote yes, meaning it will pass. (There are no vetoes in the General Assembly so the United States cannot save Israel as it often has in the Security Council.)
What happens then?
Some Palestinian leaders say relations with Israel would change.
“We will re-examine our commitments toward Israel, especially our security commitments,” suggested Hanna Amireh, who is on the 18-member ruling board of the Palestine Liberation Organization, referring to cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli troops. “The main sense about Israel is that we are fed up.”
Mr. Shaath said Israel would then be in daily violation of the rights of a fellow member state and diplomatic and legal consequences could follow, all of which would be painful for Israel.
In the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, Ari Shavit, who is a political centrist, drew a comparison between 2011 and the biggest military setback Israel ever faced, the 1973 war.
He wrote that “2011 is going to be a diplomatic 1973,” because a Palestinian state will be recognized internationally. “Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.” He added, “A diplomatic siege from without and a civil uprising from within will grip Israel in a stranglehold.”
Article 2.
Le Monde diplomatique
The Arab spring - Follow the money
Samir Aita
April 2011 -- The reasons for the Arab spring go deeper than immediate demands for freedom and democracy. The protesters want to end the political economy and the authoritarian regimes in place since the 1970s. Monarchies in the Arab world have been absolute, and life-long presidents (with hereditary office) ruled the republics, because they created a supreme power above both state and post-independence institutions (1). They set up and controlled their own security services to ensure that their powers would endure; the services escaped parliamentary or government supervision, and their members could reprimand a minister and impose decisions. It costs money to run such services, and the clientelist networks of one-party states. The funds derive not from public budgets, as do those for the police and the army, but from different sources of revenue. (The New York Times recently reported that Muammar Gaddafi had demanded in 2009 that oil firms operating in Libya should contribute to the $1.5bn he had promised to pay in compensation for the Lockerbie terrorist murders – or lose their licences. Many paid. And Gaddafi’s immediate cash holdings of billions of dollars are thought to be funding his mercenaries and supporters to defend him.) After the spectacular 1973 rise in crude oil prices, Middle Eastern revenues increased considerably. Through the distribution circuits, and in collusion with major multinationals, part of the revenue went direct to the coffers of the royal or “republican” families instead of to the state. Nor was oil their only source of revenue. After there were no more commissions on major public contracts, civil and military, because of budget deficits and structural adjustments, new opportunities arose. In the 1990s there were mobile telephone network launches, and the first major privatisations of public services, with public-private partnerships and build-operate-transfer (BOT) contracts. Mobile networks had massive margins, especially at the start when better-off clients were prepared to pay high prices. The major multinational operators, influential businessmen and governments fought to capture the income. (There is evidence for this in the legal dispute over Djezzy, the Algerian branch of the Egyptian operator Orascom, and the Algerian military, and in a previous dispute between Orascom and Syria’s Syriatel, which happened just as the first large Arab multinationals emerged.) The globalisation of Arab economies and the demands of the International Monetary Fund – supported by the European Commission for the Mediterranean countries – tightened the regimes’ hold on the economy, especially after the oil price crash of 1986. The ensuing decline in public investment and weakening of the governmental regulatory role ensured that the major multinationals held monopolies or oligopolies in exchange for sharing revenue with the powers-that-be. The senior management of the global corporations knew exactly where major decisions were taken and who the imposed local partners were for any new investment: the Trabelsi and Materi families in Tunisia, the Ezz and Sawires in Egypt, the Makhlouf in Syria, Hariri in Lebanon. The Sawires sold their shares in Orascom-Mobinil to France Telecom and offloaded their cement holdings before the Egyptian revolution. Najib Mikati, who had sold Investcom to the South African group MTN, is currently in charge of appointing the new government in Lebanon. Enthralled by the Dubai miracle, all the Arab countries ventured into real estate transactions that allowed them to dissimulate a public/private interest mix. Land was expropriated and then sold cheaply to property developers. Historic city centres were neglected but the local riad (traditional palaces) were renovated by international investors, charmed by the exotic East, and property prices rose on a par with London, Paris or Tokyo. None of this would have been possible without banking, which facilitated the laundering of revenue and found ways to recycle it in real estate and commercial transactions. Banks were also the instruments of governments, providing credit to secure the lasting allegiance of local entrepreneurs.
Erosion of public services
But the state weakened and public services eroded. Where there was a need to send representatives abroad or to tap expertise at home, government members were co-opted; the good ones were technocrats from major international institutions such as the World Bank, but they lacked electoral legitimacy or programmes for which they would be accountable. The state ceased to be seen as a bureaucracy. Even the army weakened as well-equipped praetorian guards guaranteed the continuity of power (2).
Arab governments bore no resemblance to those after independence, which had electrified the countryside and established universal public education. Public services deteriorated, as reports by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) observed, because of privatisations entirely for revenue raising. Even Jeddah in oil-rich Saudi Arabia only has running water one day a week; and a Saudi prince authorised construction work in a valley without planning drainage, resulting in lethal floods. After every scandal there was an anti-corruption campaign, to little effect. The campaigns implied that corruption was a moral or religious issue rather than a systemic predation by leaders in alliance with business. Human dignity and work values were flouted. About a third of the working population in Arab countries is in the unofficial economy, in small jobs not included in unemployment statistics, which have been in double digits for a decade. Another third are self-employed, or employees without work contracts, social security, retirement or union rights. The concept of the employee is disappearing, outside the public sector and government. There, social rights have been maintained and so jobs are coveted, especially by women, but openings are rare, because of the “structural adjustment” policies required by government spending cuts. The labour market is also fragmented by massive migration, both permanent (Palestinians, Iraqis or Somalis fleeing war) and temporary (mainly Asian), where migrants’ economic and social rights are eroded, because the exploitation of migrant labour is now a source of revenue. When the generation of the Arab demographic boom reached working age in the 2000s, connected by the new internet culture, the base toppled the summit in Tunisia and Egypt, and the entire social structure was shaken. People have been surprised by the many demands, social and otherwise, released by the revolution. Arab countries now have to rebuild the constitutional state, where power is finite and subject to institutions, instead of levitating above them. Government-dependent sources of revenue will have to be dismantled, as will monopolies, to release entrepreneurial energy. There will have to be states that guarantee public and social freedoms for all, so that workers have rights, and the states will have to be accountable, based on social consensus. It isn’t going to be easy, because the world, including Europe, isn’t going that way.
Samir Aita is editor of the Arabic editions of Le Monde diplomatique and the author of Les travailleurs arabes hors-la-loi, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2011
(1) See Samir Radwan and Manuel Riesco, “The Changing Role of the State”, Economic Research Forum, 2007.
(2) Read Salam Kawakibi and Bassma Kodmani, “To shoot, or not to shoot?”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, March 2011.
Article 3.
Guardian
Obama doctrine? If only
Michael Boyle
2 April 2011 - In his speech on Monday night, President Obama articulated his rationale for the ongoing military campaign in Libya, claiming that a failure to act would have permitted humanitarian catastrophe that would have "would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world". His argument was essentially one of moral emergency, implying that anyone chastened by the failure of the US and European governments to act in Rwanda and similar cases should recognise the necessity of acting in Libya.
But as recent events have demonstrated, a compelling moral case does not equate to a coherent strategy. Indeed, it is charitable to call this strategy muddled. Initially committed to only to defensive operations to stop the advance of the Libyan military into cities like Benghazi, the Obama administration quickly began working with the rebels to coordinate air strikes to push back Gaddafi's forces. This turned the US, Britain and France into combatants in a civil war; no matter how much they claim only to be engaged in "kinetic military action" or some other Orwellian euphemism, the facts are plain. There are now CIA officers present in Libya to coordinate air strikes with rebels, and the US has flown over 1,600 sorties. While the American public may be fooled by the dissembling language, Gaddafi and his regime will have no illusions about who is bombing them.
Now, if only to underscore this point that this is a real war, the US and its allies are considering sending weapons to the Libyan rebels. Even contemplating this reflects an astonishing level of ignorance: the weapons will embolden the rebels and increase the chances of a bloody, long-running stalemate between the Gaddafi regime and the rebels. The coalition effort has gone from babysitting a civil war to sponsoring it, ignoring precedents such as Afghanistan that make clear that flooding a country with weapons leads only to higher death tolls and vicious blowback over the long run.
All of this could be forgivable if the Obama administration or its European partners had shown an iota of forethought about the potential consequences of their actions. Instead, they appear to have rushed into this operation without a workable Plan B. Their hope was that air strikes and the pressure of rebel advances would cause the regime to crumble. But Gaddafi's forces – still vastly more powerful than the rebels – have reversed their losses and a stalemate looks more likely. Further, even high-profile defections have not yet appeared to influence Gaddafi's (admittedly less than rational) thinking. Unless he is killed or otherwise overthrown, Gaddafi can continue to hold out, supported by a small number of loyalists and family members, in the hope that he can prolong the war to the point where the costs begin to exceed the potential benefits for US and its coalition partners. Given that he faces exile, indictment or death if he is overthrown, he has every incentive to do just that.
If that happens, the only option left would be to place US or allied ground troops to assist rebels in forcing Gaddafi out of power. But Secretary Gates has emphasised repeatedly that there will be no "boots on the ground". Having taken escalation through ground forces off the table, what then is the next step? How will additional pressure on Gaddafi be generated?
More to the point, what exactly is the strategy if the cumulative effect of the action so far is to produce the siege of Tripoli?
Instead of confronting these questions in a hardheaded way, the Obama administration has been obsessed with demonstrating the international legitimacy of the operation, pointing to a UN mandate and the support of the Arab League. But diplomatic blessings do not change the facts of war. Even the transfer of command authority from the US to Nato is mere window-dressing; it is the same set of countries bombing Libyan forces, no matter what acronym they hide behind. It is a peculiar form of bureaucratic myopia to worry more about who sits in what chair in Brussels than about the consequences of poor strategy.
Even more depressingly, the political debate in the US over the Libyan operation has become grotesque, as the same players who served as cheerleaders for the Iraq war have come out in force to celebrate this war as a step forward for human rights. The same liberal internationalists who chided President Bush for seeking regime change in Iraq have applauded President Obama for taking similar action in Libya, despite the fact that the operations in Libya are well beyond the measures to protect civilians authorised in the UN security council resolution.
Similarly, the neoconservatives have seen this operation as a vindication of President Bush's strategy, and a reaffirmation of the right of the US to remove the leader of a foreign country if it suits out interests to do so. Neither party is behaving responsibly here. The Republican presidential candidates are stumbling over themselves finding ways to denounce President Obama for doing precisely what they would have done if put in his position. Meanwhile, few on the Democratic side appear to be willing to push the president to explain his nonsensical position that Gaddafi must go, but that the objective of the US is not regime change.
Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of this operation is that it proves that President Obama has been seduced by the power of the Oval Office into betraying many of the promises he represented as a candidate. The same thoughtful man who once argued that the US should never go to war without a congressional authorisation did not seek one, and waited ten days before even addressing the American public about his rationale for the operation. The same president who pledged in his national security strategy to take into account the limitation of our economic resources in his foreign policy decisions has led us into a war costing hundreds of millions of dollars. The same president once critical of a rush into a "dumb war" has let a compelling moral cause turn the US into a party in another war in the Middle East.
The unfortunate result is that President Obama has begun to resemble his predecessor far more than he or his supporters would care to admit.
Michael Boyle is assistant professor of political science at La Salle University, Philadelphia.
Article 4.
The Economist
American foreign policy - Why it's a theory, not a doctrine
31 march -- IT IS Pavlovian. As soon as a president does something new in foreign policy, the world wants to know whether he has invented a new “doctrine”. The short answer in the case of Libya is that Barack Obama has not invented a new doctrine so much as repudiated an old one. What he is also doing, however, is challenging an American habit of mind.
The doctrine Mr Obama has repudiated is the one attributed to Colin Powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and George W. Bush’s transparently miserable secretary of state when America invaded Iraq in 2003. That held, among other things, that America ought to go to war only when its vital interests are threatened, when the exit strategy is clear, and when it can apply overwhelming force to ensure that its aims are achieved. Nothing could be more different from the account Mr Obama gave Americans on March 28th of his reasons for using military force in Libya. He does not believe that America’s vital interests are at stake (though some “important” ones are); the exit strategy is not entirely clear (Colonel Qaddafi must go, but who knows when, and not as a direct result of American military action); and the force America is willing to apply (no boots on the ground) is strictly limited.
None of this should be a surprise. In “The Audacity of Hope”, the bestseller Mr Obama wrote as a senator in 2006, he set out a theory of military intervention. Like all sovereign nations, he argued, America has the unilateral right to defend itself from attack, and to take unilateral military action to eliminate an imminent threat. But beyond matters of clear self-defence, it would “almost always” be in its interest to use force multilaterally. This would not mean giving the UN Security Council a veto over its actions, or rounding up Britain and Togo and doing as it pleased. It would mean following the example of the first President Bush in the first Gulf war—“engaging in the hard diplomatic work of obtaining most of the world’s support for our actions”. The virtue of such an approach was that America had much to gain in a world that lived by rules. By upholding such rules itself, it could encourage others to do so too. A multilateral approach would also lighten America’s burden at times of war. This might be “a bit of an illusion”, given the modest power of most American allies. But in many future conflicts the military operation was likely to cost less than the aftermath: training police, switching the lights back on, building democracy and so forth.
The president, it now emerges, remembers exactly what he wrote. He hesitated about whether to act in Libya (just ask the French and British, who egged him on but came close to losing hope), but he was always clear about how. All the conditions he wished for in that book five years ago have come to pass. In this week’s speech he ticked them methodically off: “an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground.” Under such circumstances, he said, for America to turn a blind eye to the fate of Benghazi would have been “a betrayal of who we are”.
Why does this theory of intervention, and the noble sentiment attached to it, fail to qualify as a “doctrine”? Because it is too elastic to provide a guide to future action. Would America “betray” itself by turning a blind eye to atrocities under different, less favourable, circumstances? So it seems. It has, after all, done so before, in Rwanda and Darfur—and Mr Obama appears to accept that it might have to do so again when, say, an alliance would be damaged, as in Bahrain, or the job is too hot to handle, as in Syria or Iran. Also unclear is whether an American interest must also be at stake before Mr Obama invokes the moral case for action. Conveniently (for the purpose of selling this particular war), the president detects a “strategic interest” in preventing Colonel Qaddafi from chilling the wider Arab spring, so nobody knows.
In fairness, elasticity is not a sin; and Mr Obama does not claim to have invented anything he calls a “doctrine”. The worst you can say about his approach is that it is merely commonsensical: decide the issues case-by-case while holding some idea of values and interests in mind. Many who say they want more consistency than this (typically by asking some variant of “What about Zimbabwe?”) do so not because they really believe that foreign policy can be run by an algorithm but in order to embarrass Mr Obama in any way they can. Prize chump in the case of Libya this past fortnight has been Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful who demanded consistency, called for intervention and turned on a dime the instant Mr Obama answered.
After you, Sarko
More significant, however, is that habit of mind. In Libya Mr Obama is challenging the assumption of global leadership America has taken for granted ever since the second world war. America has joined coalitions before, but never under a president quite so adamant that America is not in charge—even if the military burden-sharing is indeed a bit of an illusion.
Most Republicans and quite a few Democrats hate this. Mr Obama’s hope is that America’s low profile will make the war more palatable not only to the Muslim world but also to the economy-fixated voters at home who question whether America can still afford to play its traditional leadership role. What he may soon discover is that modesty extracts a price of its own. By sharing the leadership with others, he has made his policy hostage to the limited mandate (no use of force for regime change) imposed by the United Nations and the limited means of his allies in Europe and the Middle East. It may not be a doctrine, it should not be a surprise, but nobody can deny that it is a gamble.
Article 5.
The Atlantic
Struggling to Restart Egypt's Stalled Revolution
Eric Trager
CAIRO, Egypt -- Egypt's popular revolt was on the ropes. Tahrir Square had been mostly empty for weeks. Top regime figures remained free men. And on Wednesday, the Supreme Military Council released a revised constitution that, among other things, retained a Mubarak-era provision mandating that 50 percent of the parliament consist of workers and farmers.
"They are enabling the traditional forces to enter into and win the elections," said Shadi al-Ghazali Harb, an executive member of the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, on Thursday evening.
Meanwhile, the youth organizations that had catalyzed the early stages of the revolt remained deeply divided on whether to keep protesting and, more importantly, on how to guide Egypt's political future.
On Friday, Egypt's youth activists overcame their impasse by agreeing on the past. Echoing scenes of two months prior, tens of thousands of Egyptians packed Tahrir Square to demand that former President Hosni Mubarak and his deputies be put on trial, and that the public funds they stole from the Egyptian people be returned. Posters carried images of former officials behind bars and activists chanted for the capture of former Shura Council president Safwat Sherif, former parliamentary speaker Fathi Sorour, and former chief of presidential staff Zakaria Azmi. The military had held control of the country for seven weeks but, for the Tahrir faithful, the villains remained the same.
"But we need to be patient and we don't have time."
"We still have ministers whose money has not been investigated," said Maged Abduh, a businessman. "Zakaria Azmi is still working, as is Fathi Sarour. Why didn't they bring them and ask them about their money?"
Yet for many in Tahrir, the turnout was cause for hope. The demonstration's organizers had overcome many hurdles in the previous days -- in particular, a series of suspiciously widely distributed, anonymous messages falsely claiming that the demonstration had been postponed until next week. And although it fell well short of the "million-man march" that the organizers had promised, the return of flag-carrying crowds signaled to the military that the shaab -- the "people" -- remained invested in their revolution.
"It was good to send the message that we can have more protests, because people think and feel that the process is too slow," said Abdullah Helmi, a member of the Union of Revolutionary Youth.
The demonstration took place without the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which stood aside despite the pleas of its younger members. The Brotherhood's Guidance Office claimed that they had not been informed of the demonstration early enough to make a decision. They told their youth leaders that they feared a low turnout.
"They have their own way of dealing with the issue," said Muslim Brotherhood youth leader Islam Lotfi, sounding disappointed.
But Friday's demonstration still leaves Egypt's could-be revolution searching for a way forward. While liberals and leftists dominated the square -- at one point, the crowds jeered at a Salafist who took the stage -- the overwhelming majority seemed to be independents, with a handful of small, newly forming parties scattered about. They have no leader or even set of leaders who can channel their demands for a better future into a widely agreeable program, and nobody can credibly represent them before the military council. So for now, the masses can only unify against things.
"The liberals have many small parties, and the left as well," said former liberal Wafd party chairman Mahmoud Abaza. "I think the hope of having a constitution that the Egyptian people will create and the fear of being squeezed between the army and the Islamists will create some opportunities for this front. But we need to be patient and we don't have time."
Still, Egypt's opposition groups may soon run out of things to oppose. In anticipation of Friday's demonstrations, the military announced the day before that Mubarak's top aides had been banned from leaving the country. If the military fully relents and opens investigations into their activities and finances, it may be hard for youth and liberal activists to convince people to return in droves to Tahrir Square. After all, the remaining demands from the revolution will have been met.
For the protesters still taking to Tahrir Square, and for those wary that the military could ultimately retain its grip on power, "saving" Egypt's revolution will require a liberal program for moving the country forward -- and fast. The longer that Egypt's revolutionary groups can only rally around rejecting the already-rejected Mubarak regime, the greater the advantage of illiberal forces in shaping the country's future.
Article 6.
The Washington Institute
Qatar's Quest to Become the Leading Arab State
Simon Henderson
March 31, 2011 -- The small Persian Gulf state of Qatar is emerging as a significant international player in the Libyan crisis and a crucial supporter of U.S. policy. But its relationship with the United States has often been difficult, and its standing in the rest of the Arab world is questionable. For Washington, the challenge is to achieve balance between U.S. expectations, Qatar's own regional ambitions, and the need to minimize any adverse impact on U.S. ties with other Arab allies.
Background
The Qatari peninsula is about the size of Connecticut, but most of its population -- around 200,000 citizens and 600,000 expatriate workers -- lives in and around the capital, Doha. A member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the emirate produces relatively little oil. Instead, its growing wealth is the result of having the third-largest natural gas reserves in the world (after Russia and Iran). Qatar is now the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas, with Asia particularly reliant on its supplies. Revenue from these sales has given Qataris the highest per capita gross domestic product ($88,000) in the world, almost twice the figure for Americans.
In recent days, Qatar became the first Arab state to contribute to no-fly-zone patrols over Libya and recognize the Benghazi-based rebels as legitimate successors to the Qadhafi regime. It has also offered its status and experience in OPEC to help the rebels market the Libyan oil and gas production that they control. In addition, the emirate was a major participant in the March 29 London conference regarding the crisis, and the first meeting of the follow-on Libya Contact Group will soon be held under Qatari chairmanship in Doha.
Qatar's leading representative at the London meeting and the driving force of its foreign policy is Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who serves as both prime minister and foreign minister. HBJ, as he is widely known, is only a distant relative of ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, but the two leaders have an extraordinarily close working relationship, and HBJ is credited with making many of the emir's visions a reality.
Meanwhile, Qatar's Aljazeera satellite television channel is among the most watched in the region; the emir's (second) wife, Sheikha Mouza, is the driving force in encouraging American universities to set up branches in Doha and develop a world-class "medical city"; and Qatar has been chosen as the venue for the 2022 World Cup. The emirate is also becoming an increasingly large business conglomerate, with a national airline fleet that will soon exceed 100 aircraft, and a sovereign wealth fund t hat purchased Harrods, the iconic London store, in 2010, and owns the largest share of stock in a British supermarket chain.
Activist Foreign Policy
If Qatar's foreign policy appears eclectic in substance, its style often seems inconsistent -- and challenging even to its friends. Over the past several years, Qatar has tried to distinguish itself from the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman) by being friendlier toward Iran and less publicly fearful of the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. To the consternation of other GCC leaders, Qatar invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad to Doha for the council's 2007 summit. Privately though, Qatar is cynical about Iran's aspirations. As HBJ once told an American official, "[The Iranians] lie to us, and we lie to them."
More generally, Qatar tends to use Aljazeera as a tool of diplomacy. The network's coverage of domestic Qatari affairs is limited -- instead, Aljazeera news programming often seems aimed at annoying other Arab states. The United States was also a regular target of the network after the invasion of Iraq. For example, one false story broadcast in 2005 alleged that U.S. soldiers in Iraq were removing women's veils. The report caused widespread outrage in the Arab world and, according to then deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, was responsible for the killing of more than 100 American personnel. Qatari officials protested their innocence, claiming that Aljazeera was independent of government control and was permitted freedom of expression. Yet the output of the Arabic news channel and associated website suggests that they omit stories that might damage important diplomatic relationships (although the English channel and website are less constrained and more objective).
Qatar has also sheltered or otherwise affiliated itself with prominent regional radicals. In addition to hosting Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, the emirate has permitted firebrand Egyptian cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi to broadcast a regular show on Aljazeera for years now, despite episodes justifying suicide attacks on Israeli children on the basis that they will grow up to become soldiers. And in the mid-1990s, Qatar allowed al-Qaeda terrorist Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, wanted by the United States for plotting aircraft bombings, to live in Doha, where he was given a government job and protected by a state minister.
Outreach to Israel and the U.S. Military
After Sheikh Hamad overthrew his indolent father in 1995, Doha worked to develop better ties with Washington, which at the time tended to view its relations with Arab Gulf states through the prism of neighboring Saudi Arabia. Among Qatar's tactics was deliberate outreach to Israel as a means of countering potential U.S. congressional opposition. At one point, this led to an Israeli diplomatic office operating under commercial cover in Doha. Yet when presented with a reciprocal offer to open a Qatari office in Israel, the emirate ignored it, while the Israeli presence in Doha met with criticism from other Arab states and was eventually closed.
On a grander scale, Qatar speculatively built the giant al-Udeid Air Base a few miles outside Doha. Following the September 11 attacks, U.S.-Saudi relations grew tense, and Riyadh asked Washington to stop using the Prince Sultan Air Base and its associated Combined Air Operations Center. Qatar was thus able to step in and offer the United States instant access to al-Udeid. Today, the U.S. military runs most of its regional operations out of the base, including patrols to counter any hostile moves by Iran a hundred miles to the north and flights over Afghanistan six hundred miles to the east. Yet U.S. forces do not have carte blanche over al-Udeid: the Qatari military jealously guards its sovereign control over access to the facility even though its own small air force does not use it, instead operating from one side of the capital's main international airport.
Largely Symbolic Role in Libya
Qatar is taking great pride in its role in stemming the Libyan crisis. As the Qatari air force chief of staff put it: "Certain countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt haven't taken leadership for the last three years. So we wanted to step up and express ourselves, and see if others will follow."
In actuality, however, the Qatari military is greatly limited in both size and capability. The four Mirage 2000 jets that Doha deployed to Greece for Libyan operations represent the bulk of its operational air force. And two of those aircraft nearly failed to arrive, having to divert to Cyprus after running short of fuel en route. Reliant on servicing by French and other foreign technicians, the aircraft are not expected to see any real military action.
U.S. Policy and the Emir's Upcoming Visit
Qatari society does not recognize the universal freedoms that guide the Obama administration's foreign policy, but there is little domestic opposition to the emir's rule, which is marked by generous subsidies and traditional Gulf accessibility. Nevertheless, the administration should make the most of Sheikh Hamad's upcoming visit to Washington, originally scheduled for February but now seemingly slated for April. Doha will want to use the visit to confirm its new diplomatic status. Yet Washington must balance its gratitude for ongoing access to al-Udeid and the emirate's diplomatic support on Libya with the recognition that Qatar still has to prove itself as a reliable and consistent ally. Ultimately, Doha seeks guarantees of U.S. protection against Iran, which should be a win-win situation for Washington. But Doha is worried about the commitment of the Obama administration to deal with Qadhafi as well as Iran. Other U.S. Middle East allies will be watching closely to see how Washington handles its new best friend.
Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute.
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