Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The ball is in Tehran

March 11, 2008

The ball is in Tehran



THE call by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al Thani for the Gulf Arab countries to maintain clear and frank relations with Iran is very much in line with the long-held policy of the UAE. Iran is very much part and parcel of the region and the Arab countries in the Gulf have maintained close relations with the Iranians since as far as anyone could recollect. Those relations are not and would never be subject to third party interests and there are no ifs and buts in the equation.
The Qatari prime minister's statement comes against the backdrop of US-led stepped-up pressure against Tehran in the name of Iran's nuclear activities. It is no secret that the nuclear dispute is only a smokescreen for Washington's drive towards its goal — as declared by President George W Bush a few days before his re-election for a second term in 2004 — of regime change in Tehran. Given that reality, the talk of diplomatic options coming out of Washington becomes meaningless. The current position of the UN Security Council makes it virtually impossible for Iran to step away from its defiant position, and that is what is precisely the objective of the UN exercise, which is part of the build-up to whatever the US has in mind for Iran.
It is in this context that Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al Thani warned that Gulf Arabs should be careful to prevent misunderstandings or international machinations from pushing the region into another war. 'We should not enter into an international game in which we will be exploited ... and come out as the losers on both sides," he said.
Indeed, the Gulf Arabs have their own issues to be taken up with Iran, but these come in a bilateral context, and that is something that Tehran should also remember.
The Gulf Arabs have made no secret of their position that relations with Iran could be dramatically improved if the bilateral issues were settled in an amicable way.
It is absolutely necessary that Iran steps forward with creative ideas that should lead to the settlement of all outstanding issues with the Gulf Co-operation Council countries. Everyone stands to gain from a fair and just solution to these issues and it would also taken everyone towards the goal of clear understanding of each others' positions and respect for each other's rights and positions. and relations based on non-interference in the internal matters of each other.
Clearly, the ball is in the Iranian court.

Monday, March 10, 2008

More strength to GCC dynamics

March 10, 2008

More strength to GCC dynamics


SAUDI ARABIA'S decision to restore full diplomatic relations with Qatar is a highly positive and welcome move in that it seals a gap in ties between the two members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). Regardless of the reasons for the five-year hiatus in Riyadh-Doha diplomatic ties, it was unnatural that the two GCC countries were at odds.
Unity and collective action to face common changes and joint march towards development are the essence of relations among the GCC countries or any regional blocs for that matter. Any rift among the members, for whatever reason, often hinders the work of the bloc. We have witnessed it among the members of the much-heralded European Union.
The eventual restoration of Saudi-Qatari diplomatic relations was signalled by the presence of Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz at the GCC summit in Doha in December following a visit to Saudi Arabia by Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani three months earlier.
Saudi Ambassador Ahmed Bin Ali Al Qahtani has already taken up his post in Doha.
The restoration of diplomatic ties is being followed by a three-day visit to Doha by Saudi Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz for talks with Sheikh Hamad on the latest developments in the Gulf and the Arab World.
Prince Sultan, in a recent interview, has affirmed that relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia are deep-rooted and historical and therefore not dictated by developments in the region.
"Saudi Arabia and Qatar are two brotherly countries and the relations between them are historical and are governed by blood ties and common fate," said Prince Sultan.
"Our ties with Qatar are not the product of a day, nor the result of emerging circumstances, but a real expression of the depth of relations between the two countries which existed for long decades," he said.
That is indeed the spirit of the relationship among the six members of the GCC. There is every confidence in the air that the restoration of full relations between Saudi Arabia and Qatar would add more strength to the dynamics of the GCC and the Arab League in general.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Paw in the Afghan bottle

March 9, 2008

Paw in the Afghan bottle

Arguably, the blaze of publicity for British Prince Harry's front-line assignment in Afghanistan gave a tough of glamour to the war there, but the harsh reality of the struggling military campaign there remains as bitter as ever.
One wonders whether the photographs of Queen Elizabeth's grandson firing a machine gun in Afghanistan were deliberately "leaked" into the cyberspace with a view to hailing Harry, the third in line to the throne, as a "veteran" of the Afghan war at some point in time. Of course, it could be argued that the British media remained committed to an undertaking not to publicise Prince Harry's 10-week stint in Afghanistan and it was a US website which put out the pictures. It is neither here nor there when seen from a non-British perspective.
However, within Britain, the emergence of pictures, deliberate or otherwise, helped give a "the most positive and glamorous coverage" for the Afghan war, as Peter Wilby, a political commentator for the Guardian, put it. "It was a marvellous boost for army recruitment and revived the legitimacy of a war for which support has been waning."
For one thing, the Afghan conflict has drawn the US-led foreign forces present in the country into a quagmire — as indeed is the case in Iraq notwithstanding all claims to the contrary. There are no magic solutions to end the conflict becasue the issues at stake are too complex and dense for the US or for the UK for that matter to call it quits and leave the Afghans to fend for themselves. The best analogy would be that of a money who gets caught with its paw wrapped around a fruit in inside a bottle. It could withdraw its paw without the fruit but it would not because of the lure of the fruit is too strong.
The reality on the ground in Afghanistan is that the foreign forces are there for a long spell because there is no possibility of a solution that would serve the interests of the US, but Washington would not let go.
In the meantime, the billions of dollars being spent in the name of reconstruction of Afghanistan are going to waste since there is little improvement in the daily life of the ordinary people.
The same goes true for the billions that are being spent in the hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
The Taliban have staged a comeback and now control at least 10 per cent of Afghanistan, according to a US intelligence assessment, and are running their own checkpoints in one province in the south.
One of the reasons cited by the US is the lack of enough troops to fight an effective battle, but few countries are willing to contribute more since their governments have realised the folly of fighting a war that is already lost. Add to that the ongoing protests against Denmark and the Netherlands — which have troops present in the country — sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and a Dutch film in the making, and what we have in Afghanistan is a perfect recipe for more trouble for the foreign troops deployed there.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

More threats and no solution

March 8, 2008

More threats and no solution


THERE COULD BE no justification of deliberate killing civilians in any conflict. This is the widely accepted universal convention and it has to be respected by all parties involved although it is widely ignored in most troublespots around the world. And when civilians do die in armed conflicts, the world reacts with sympathy and condemns the killing. For some reason, it becomes all the more relevant when it happens in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly so when the dead include Israelis.
It is difficult to find much of a difference between Thursday's killing of seven Israeli students at a school in occupied Jerusalem and the murder of innocent Palestinian children in Israeli military attacks in the Gaza Strip in the last few weeks. One of the marked differences was, of course, that while Israel used hi-tech military gear and bombs to carry out most of the killings, Thursday's attack involved a lone Palestinian and an assault rifle.
The world does sympathise with the families of those killed but does not have any sympthy for the Israeli political and military leaders who had no consideration for Palestinian civilians caught in the Israeli frenzy to destroy Palestinian resistance to the Jewish state's occupation of Palestinians.
More than 120 Palestinians — dozens of children and women — who were killed in Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip in the last two weeks. That is not to mention the tens of thousands of Palestinians who died in the course of Israel's occupation of their land since 1947.
If the Israelis want to highlight that Thursday's dead included Israeli teenagers, then the obvious response would be that the Israeli military's Gazan victims included children as young as one month.
An immediate Israeli target for victimisation after Thursday's attack would be the Arab-Israeli community because the assailant was an Arab-Israeli. Having an Israeli ID and working as a delivery man, he did not have any problem moving around in occupied Arab East Jerusalem. The Kalashnikov assault rifle he used is available for cash in most Israeli towns. We have seen how Israel treats its Arab community and we could now expect the Israeli establishment to exploit the chance that has presented itself to tighten pressure on its Arab citizens.
But then, it does not take anyone near the sought-for peace agreement in Palestine that should do away with the very root of the conflict.
Instead of accepting that its brutality against the Palestinians is spawning more security threats rather than removing them, Israel is bent upon pursuing the military option. As things stand today, it requires a dramatic and drastic change in the Israeli mindset even to hope for a fair and just solution in Palestine anytime in the future.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

No easy key to Gaza deadlock

March 4, 2008

No easy key to Gaza deadlock

A FEW Israeli soldiers might have left northern Gaza Strip, but the Israeli assault against the Mediterranean coastal strip is continuing, with Israeli aircraft pummelling targets in Gaza. Palestinians are hitting back with rockets with expanded range.
Israeli leaders are making no secret of their intention to inflict as much casualties and damages before even considering a lull in the offensive ahead of the expected arrival of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the region in what is billed as a mission to salvage the Annapolis process.
No one in this region needs to be told that the Annapolis process is all but dead, and few are attaching any hope to the Rice effort after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended negotiations with Israel in protest against the Gaza bloodshed.
The real concern in the region is the suffering of the residents of the Gaza Strip. Images of the devastation — roads plowed up, cars crushed by tanks and electric poles toppled — give the world only a glimpse of the actual agony of the Gazans trapped in their homes, with many families having lost their loved ones while others have been seriously wounded. The world knows the pathetic conditions prevailing in the hospitals in the Gaza Strip, which is under an total Israeli lockdown.
The unanswered question is: What does Israel intend to gain from its brutality against the Gazans? Surely, the political and military establishment of the Jewish could not but be aware that they could not hope to subdue the Palestinians through the use of military force.
If anything, developments since Friday have shown that the military offensive has only worsened Israelis' "security" fears. Three rockets hit the city of Ashkelon, nearly 20 kilometres north of Gaza, on Monday morning. Although no casualties were reported, the attacks showed an
improvement in Hamas' rocket range that has put the 120,000 Israelis living in Ashkelon under daily fire.
Mediators like European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, are saying that an end to Palestinian rocket attacks is fundamental to finding a solution. They should take close note of the signal from Hamas leaders of a willingness to work out a truce. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar has said that his group is in touch with an unidentified third party to discuss a cease-fire that would include the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and an end to an Israeli blockade of Gaza. For the moment, the Hamas position seems to offer a slim hope of a way out only if Israel is forced to listen. And that is the challenge facing anyone with any influence with the Jewish state.
In the meantime, history is recording one of the worst carnages in recent history, with the world seemingly unable to do anything to check it.

Monday, March 03, 2008

The buck that can't be passed

March 3, 2008


The buck that can't be passed



No doubt the strategists in Washington watching the Iranian president's visit to Iraq this week would be trying to figure what went wrong with their careful planning that they thought had taken care of everything with the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Every word Ahmadinejad spoke and every gesture he made while in Iraq was aimed as much as Washington as the people of Iraq and Iran.
There was an aura of triumph that accompanied the visit, and that is not superficial either. Iran is perhaps the best beneficiary from the US wars against Afghanistan and Iraq in that the US military removed two of Iran's key foes — the Taliban in Kabul and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. As such, Ahmadinejad has every reason to rejoice in the newfound Iranian-Iraqi relationship which he underlined it with seven memorandums of understanding between the two countries that were signed during his visit. The Iranian leader used every moment of the visit — he made four media appearances in 36 hours —  to implicitly, and sometimes explictly, thump his nose at the US.
Ahmadinejad repeatedly harped on the theme of a "new era of relations" between Iran and Iraq, whose people he described as s world leaders in "justice and morality." That was only one of the many broadside salvoes that the Iranian president let off against the US.
Surely, those who in Washington who plotted and orchestrated the invasion and occupation of Iraq should be hating themselves for their shortsightedness for having to listen to the Iranian leader declaring in Baghdad that the United States does not belong in Iraq whereas Iran does and it will help in the reconstruction of Iraq — where the US failed miserably despite having spent tens of billions of dollars.
One of the bleakest moments for the neoconservatives behind the war against Iraq must have been when Ahmadinejad suggested that Americans should take their money and leave Iraq so that "peace and stability will return to the region."
Another came when he said that unlike other foreign leaders who fly into Iraq secretly and unannounced, he had announced his visit to Iraq two months ago and there was no secrecy shrouding his schedule during the visit.
Well, the neocons have no one but themselves to blame for the humiliating but real situation they have deal with in Iraq. They brought it upon themselves in their eagerness to implement their "strategic plans" in the region that not only fell far short of their targets but went off in a direction that they least expected.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

A tough Mideast mission

March 3, 2008


A tough Mideast mission for Rice

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faces an almost impossible mission in her visit to the Middle East this week. With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas having declared a suspension of peace talks with Israel until the Israeli military calls off its brutal assault against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Rice's first task is to find an end to the Israeli operations. Given that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement is one of US President George Bush's declared goals before he bows out of office in 2009, restoration of the so-called Annapolis process — Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — is one of Rice's top priorities. Surely, the US agreement to go along with a UN Security Council statement early on Sunday "condemning the escalation of violence" in Gaza was designed to somewhat placate the Palestinians but without any realistic change on the ground.
The Palestinians have already delcared that peace negotiations "are buried under the houses that were destroyed in Gaza...."
Indeed, as Jordan's King Abdullah II warned last week, "time is running out and we need the United States of America completely involved, to influence the course of discussions, monitor progress, and help bridge the gaps to ensure a final agreement by the end of 2008."
It should not have come as a shock or suprise for Washington to see its hopes of creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008 going up in the flames of Gaza. All the signs were clear for some time that a major Israeli assault against the Gaza Strip was in the offing, but the US did not even try its hand at defusing the situation. Instead, it went along with Israel's "military option" against the Hamas rulers of Gaza rather than exploring diplomatic possibilities. Obviously, the US-Israeli hope was and still is that piling pressure on the residents of the Gaza Strip would be like digging deep into the Hamas roots. We have yet to see any sign of that happening.
At the same time, there are some who expect Rice to somehow produce a formula to end the ongoing flare-up in the Gaza Strip.
They see the US secretary of state of being capable of achieving the impossible although we fail to see any such track record.
Rice is known for her regular assertions that her predecessors failed in the Middle East and she has her own methods to score success. The question is what is her definition of success in the Arab-Israeli context.
In any event, by now it should be more than clear to Rice that the very essence of the crisis in Palestine is linked to US inaction and the absence of a fair and just approach to the Palestinian problem. Washington left it to Israel to lead the way and offered it an all-protective umbrella. And Rice will find it very difficult to rein in the Israelis.
In the meantime, the carnage continues in Gaza, with fears of a wider conflict growing every day.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Tell-tale finding of Israeli mindset

March 1, 2008


Tell-tale finding of Israeli mindset

The finding of an opinion poll this month that 64 per cent of Israelis say that the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas group in Gaza towards a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit shows an understanding among them that the Palestinian segment represented by Hamas should not be sidelined or ignored.
The relevance of the finding is that the people who have to live with the consequences of their choices as opposed to those who try to dictate to them without having to face the realities on the ground believe in dialogue with a group which is ostracised as a terrorist organisation by their government (whose position is supported only by 28 per cent).
The survey concludes that Israelis are fed up with seven years of Palestinian rockets falling on Sderot and the communities near Gaza and that Shalit has been held captive for more than a year and a half. An increasing number of public figures, including senior military officers, have voiced similar positions on talks with Hamas.
The poll also found that the Likud voters, who are seen as the most rejectinist among all the Israelis, are much more moderate than their Knesset representatives. About 48 per cent of Likud voters support talks with Hamas.
The finding also sends a message to the Bush administration that it should reconsider its policy of seeking to isolate Hamas, which swept more than 75 per cent of votes in 2006 elections, and acting as if the group does not exist.
Of course, it is unrealistic to expect any serving American official to tell Israel to read the right signals in the poll's findings and initiate a dialogue with Hamas. It would be political suicide for anyone to do so.
Indeed, Hamas's refusal to accept the three basic conditions — renunciation of armed resistance, recognition of Israel and acceptance of past Israeli-Palestinian agreements — is a non-starter. At the same time, the Hamas calls for a "long-term" cease-fire with Israel indicates the group's willingness to deal with the Jewish state, which it is refusing to recognise.
Hamas is keeping Israel guessing about its intentions, but it is implicit that the group would be willing to enter realistic peace negotiations with the Jewish state provided that the latter makes it clear that it is willing to accept the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are the basis for any peace agreement. The people of Israel seem to have understood it while their government is continuing to feign otherwise.