Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Bahrain: A Kingdom of Fear and Repression

By Emile Nakhleh

Bahrain, a small island country in the Persian Gulf used to be viewed by the international community as a relatively tolerant, inclusive, and liberal country. Once the “Arab Spring” erupted a few months ago in neighboring Arab countries, pro-reform demonstrations gathered steam in and around Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain demanding political and economic reform. The ruling Al-Khalifa family reacted with brutality and repression, including arrests and firing at protesters, detention of journalists, academics, parliamentarians, medical doctors and health providers, without regard for basic human rights. Within a few short months, Bahrain has become a Saudi satellite—politically and ideologically—and is no longer a shining beacon of tolerance in the Gulf.

Several reasons might explain why Bahrain’s uprising so far has not achieved the same results as in Tunisia and Egypt:

• A small population (barely over half a million)
• Pervasive Saudi influence
• The military and security leadership hails from the ruling family
• A tacit American and international support for al-Khalifa suppression of the uprising because of the stationing of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, concern about Iran’s influence in the Gulf, and worries about the potential for instability in the oil region.

Amnesty International in a recent briefing paper describes Bahrain as a “human rights disaster” and suggests that the regime suppression of dissent through arbitrary arrests and torture has created an atmosphere of fear and sectarianism. The al-Khalifa family heads a Sunni minority with access to power, privilege, and wealth and rules over a Shia majority that is mostly poor and dispossessed, with minimal access to government jobs and lucrative economic opportunities. Many Shia live in villages and poorer sections of the capital Manama. A few prominent Shia families have cooperated with Al Khalifa and have been amply rewarded with access to wealth and high government positions, including cabinet posts.

Since March 15, 2011, King Hamad has imposed a state of emergency under the rubric of a “State of National Safety,” which has given the security forces “sweeping powers” to arrest and try protesters in special courts for “offences against the state” with no “explicit human rights safeguards.” Under SNS regulations, hundreds of people have been detained, tortured, and injured. At least 30 protesters have been killed, according to media and international human rights reports. Many others have “disappeared” by agents of the regime in the middle of the night without a word to their families or access to legal defense. More recently two al-Wefaq parliamentarians, Matar Ibrahim Matar and Jawad Fairuz, were arrested by masked armed agents of the regime and whisked away without minimal due process. Their families were not informed of their whereabouts.

Regime repression of protesters and human rights activists—Sunni and Shia—continues unabated. More doctors are being tried in special tribunals for alleged “crimes against the state.” In reality, they were arrested and tried for providing medical help to those injured and beaten by security agents.

Talk of possible dialogue with the opposition, which was first voiced by the Crown Prince and the King’s son Shaykh Salman, has all but evaporated with the advent of at least 1,000 Saudi troops into Bahrain. These troops, including a few from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, came to Bahrain as part of the so-called Desert Shield. They crossed the causeway that connects Bahrain with Saudi Arabia under the Gulf Cooperation Council collective security agreement. The Saudi leadership was extremely distressed by the downfall of Tunisia’s Bin Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak and therefore decided not to spearhead a “counterrevolution” to safeguard the Bahraini and other Sunni Gulf ruling families. The Saudi action reflects Riyadh’s claim that the “Arab Spring” is a threat to internal stability and that Iran was stirring Shia opposition in Bahrain, and potentially in Saudi Arabia.

Three key points underpin the on-going crisis in Bahrain:

• The current protest movement calling for government accountability and reinstatement of the constitution is decades old; in fact, it goes back to 1975 when the ruling family dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the 1973 constitution.
• The movement is not driven by sectarianism. Because the majority of the population is Shia, large numbers of the protesters are therefore Shia. Sunni reformers, however, are also actively involved in opposing regime repression and have been at the forefront of the reform movement.
• The Shia community is diverse politically, socially, and economically and has not voted as a bloc. Nor is the Shia community beholden to Iran. Bahraini Shia over the years have turned to Iraqi and Lebanese Shia Grand Ayatollahs for emulation, and although several prominent Bahraini Shia leaders have studied in Iran, the Shia community does not view Iranian senior clerics as their sources of emulation or marja'.

Bahraini protesters, like their counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere, are as diverse as the wider Bahraini society. They are villagers, city dwellers, laborers, farmers, professionals, teachers, health providers, and government employees. They seek dignity, justice, respect, and the opportunity to live as free citizens. Many of their postings on the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter reflect their desire to have the freedom to dream for a better life and pursue their dreams without repression or restrictions on their freedoms to speak, to create, to travel, and to associate with others. They also aspire to join the rising Arab generation as a peaceful force of change in their societies.

Contrary to Saudi and Bahraini government claims, calls for reform are not a Shia thing or a recipe for sectarianism. Media reports indicate the sectarianism argument has been pushed by the Saudi and Bahraini leadership in order to justify their actions against Bahraini peaceful protesters. Many Bahrainis view the main goal of the Saudi presence in the country is to persecute the Shia community and silence all opposition voices.

The three key ingredients of the envisioned compromise involve a return to the 1973 constitution, a re-establishment of a popularly elected national Assembly, which the king’s father dissolved in 1975, and dissolving the current government, which has been headed by the king’s uncle, Shaykh Khalifa, since independence in 1971. The prime minister is perhaps the most disliked senior member of Al Khalifa because of perceived corruption, nepotism, and repression, according to academic analysis and media reports. Many Bahrainis also view him as a staunch opponent to reform within the ruling family. The opposition movement maintains that implementing these demands will lead to transparent and accountable government, a just distribution of wealth, recognition of freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press, and an independent judiciary.

The pro-reform demands are in response to economic, political, and social grievances, which many Bahrainis have endured for decades. I have discussed many of these grievances in the first edition of my book, Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society, which Lexington Books published in 1976. These grievances, including the same prime minister, continue to exist in the country today.

Emile Nakhleh is the author of Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society (Lexington Books, 2011).

A Tale of Two Cities: Hong Kong and Dubai

By Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Celebrating Disappearance/Appearance

Hong Kong and Dubai have more in common than towers wearing architectural brandnames. Being hubs between what has commonly been called the “East” and the “West,” both cities have been submitted to spectacular developments that transformed them within a few decades from fishing villages deprived of any urban history into international metropolises. Both cities possess port locations that are central to trade and both cities have attracted massive international capital as well as large expat communities. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai occupies a central position within its respective region as a producer of goods, but both function as centers of facilitation and are rather para-sites than sites. Dubai is the third most important re-export centre in the world just after Hong Kong and Singapore. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai has transport rivers and, at present, neither city has a significant amount of raw materials. Though the foundation of modern Dubai depended very much on initial oil reserves that are no longer available, it is correct to maintain that both cities owe their present existence to obstacles that forced them to invest in non-traditional economies. Finally, both cities came to symbolize globalization and an extreme form of urbanity based on aggressive international capitalism.

Attracting international investments, but little “culture” (and being deprived of local cultural resources), for a long time, Hong Kong’s entire existence as a city depended on financial markets. Dubai’s existence can be defined in the same terms. As a matter of fact, Dubai has been quite commonly called “the Hong Kong of the Middle East.” Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai are “real” cities in the conventional sense because neither has preserved its historical context.

Hong Kong and the Celebration of Disappearance

In the 1980s, when Hong Kong owned the world’s largest container cargo terminals, the city’s image was that of a cultural desert determined by superficiality, internal fragmentation, consumerism, and the lack of urban history or local identity. Today all this is seen as typical for Dubai. However, a “cultural turn” promoting a local ethos based on a common language and a particular geographical location, seemingly reversed Hong Kong’s cultural situation in the 1980s, creating a film industry focusing on local stories and local people that would become famous as the Hollywood of the East. In popular music, Cantopop has been a local genre since the 1970s. This, together with a belief in typical Hong Kong virtues such as rationality and discipline, would give Hong Kong the cultural identity it needed, which changed the perception of the city. This individualist cultural system was even strong enough to oppose big businesses.

In a way, Hong Kong became a “postmodern” city: Hong Kong is neither “pre-modern” because it does not exhibit a continuous string of histories, traditions, and culture, nor is it “modern” in the sense of de-cultured, or simply functionally economic. Mike Featherstone has called this type of city, which decides to return to culture, style, and decoration, “postmodern” because here cultural elements are most often “decontextualized, simulated, reduplicated and continually renewed and restyled.”

It is for these precise reasons that it is wrong to characterize Hong Kong’s cultural ascendance as a straightforward process of acculturation. Ackbar Abbas describes Hong Kong’s “cultural self-invention” as a device that is linked, in a paradoxical fashion, to a complex concept of “disappearance,” which comprises at least three things: First, “disappearance” addresses Hong Kong’s frantic cycle of construction, demolition, and reconstruction that yields the impression of a constant disappearance of architectural substance. Second, as Hong Kong has been submitted to more and more aggressive and advanced stages of globalization, the newly built Hong Kong architecture remains restricted to that of the brandname kind. This tendency creates a global environment that, once again, threatens to erase the newly achieved local culture and makes the city “invisible” within an international context, letting topical cultural experience disappear into an anonymous international system. This internationalization concerns also the film industry as its productions have been more and more geared towards international (and Mainland-Chinese) markets. The third meaning of disappearance has to do with the “real” disappearance of Hong Kong as it is taken over by China and will presumably, sooner or later, be absorbed into an oversized motherland.

The first two developments are not unique to Hong Kong, but what is unique is the way in which Hong Kong copes with them. As a matter of fact, Abbas links all three developments (which partly overlap and are difficult to disentangle) to the nostalgic experience of the disappearance of colonial space, which created, in his opinion, not simply a space from which “the colonial” has disappeared, but rather a “colonial space of disappearance.” Abbas’ point is that “disappearance” does not lead to disappearance at all, but rather to a sustained “aesthetics of disappearance” creating, in the case of Hong Kong, the particular cultural space of a “floating identity.” Hong Kong cinema, for example, is eager to keep pace with a subject that is always at the point of disappearing.

Dubai and the Colonial Space of Appearance

Hong Kong will not disappear but it has installed its existence within a peculiar aesthetics of disappearance. Abbas actually believes that Hong Kong will remain almost unchanged for another fifty years. The floating state of Hong Kong’s existence makes it a true forerunner of Dubai, which seems to be suspended in a similar state of floating existence, though at the opposite end of the spectrum. Dubai will simply not appear. For this city, the act of becoming has been charged with such complicated connotations that “becoming” seems to have been eternalized. While Hong Kong revels in what is (almost) no longer there, Dubai revels in what is not yet there. While Hong Kong engenders the feeling of a déjà disparu rooted in an irretrievable, colonial ex-past, Dubai installs itself in a perpetual not yet there that speaks to us through the veil of an indiscernible ex-future.

Dubai has been financed by colossal debt from international banks and its neighbor Abu Dhabi, but “Dubai as an event” has from the beginning been staged as a spectacular and eternally postponed “not yet there.” Apartments were sold long before they were built and would change their owners five times. While in Hong Kong, property speculation causes the absurd state of affairs that sooner or later any building, no matter how new or monumental it is, will vanish from the map, in Dubai maps have been written in the future tense from the beginning. We assist in the creation of Borges’ map that covers the earth because the map is supposed to be the earth. At the airports of Dubai and Abu Dhabi expensive color catalogues of the most famous architectural attractions are handed to tourists for free though a large part of the buildings presented in these catalogues do not yet exist. They are scheduled for the (sometimes very distant) future. The only positive impression that these pictures yield is that of a déjà vu of a not yet there.

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is assistant professor of philosophy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait and the author of Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-Wai (2007), Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan: A Comparative Philosophical Study (2009), and The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity (2010).

Iran Sanctions: A Case of Rising Power Jealousy and Obama’s Ambiguity

By Tullo Vigevani and Gabriel Cepaluni

When President George H. W. Bush announced a new world order in 1992, many believed that the U.S. would be the only superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Less than twenty years after that, we are witnessing developing countries such as Brazil, China, Russia and India taking prominent roles in world politics. The notion of “order” does not explain our changing world. What we are still seeing today is the crisis of the world order created in 1945; not the emergence of a new one.

On May 17th, Brazil and Turkey brokered a nuclear deal with Iran. Under the deal, Iran is to send to Turkey some of his low-enriched uranium stocks, in return for higher-enriched fuel Iran needs to replenish an aging medical-research reactor. On May 18th, the United States, Russia and China seemed to have reached agreement on an Iran sanctions resolution to present to the UN Security Council.

These events allow us to make three considerations. First, commentators tend to use expressions as Global South, developing countries, BRICS, North-South divide, indicating a homogenous group of countries. Nevertheless, the Iran case showed that the so-called rising powers are not a monolithic group, since China and Russia agree with the U.S. on sanctions, which is not in line with the deal promoted by Brazil and Turkey. Second, the Obama administration has been ambiguous about Iran. During the Presidential campaign, Senator Obama repeatedly quoted President Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” With the U.S. administration's apparent dismissal of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil agreement, it seems that Obama is “afraid” of negotiating with Iran, probably because of domestic pressures. Finally, the concept of autonomy through diversification, developed in our book Brazilian Foreign Policy in Changing Times, describes exactly the Brazil-Turkey-Iran agreement. This concept is described as an adherence to international norms and principles by means of South-South alliances, and through agreements with non-traditional partners (China, Asia-Pacific, Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East etc.), trying to reduce asymmetries in external relations with powerful countries.

This is not the first time that Brazil has a key role in the Middle East. Brazil sent a diplomatic mission to the United Nations to the negotiations that resulted in the foundation of an Israeli State in 1948. During this negotiation, Brazil had a position similar to the United States. Now the Brazilian strategy is different but not opposite to the U.S. interests since both countries want to disarm Iran. The world is changing very fast, what makes the future more unpredictable. Unlike in the 90s, few commentators think today that the U.S. will rule the world alone.

Tullo Vigevani is professor of political science at São Paulo State University (UNESP), research coordinator of the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, coordinator of the National Institute for Studies on the United States, and cooordinator of the post-graduate program on international relations at the State University of Campinas and the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paolo and Gabriel Cepaluni has recently been a visiting researcher in the department of government at Georgetown University. They are the authors of Brazilian Foreign Policy in Changing Times: The Quest for Autonomy from Sarney to Lula.

What Went Wrong in Afghanistan?

By Elan Journo

Two hundred twenty-two Americans died in Afghanistan in the first nine months of this year--more than in all of last year, the bloodiest year of the war, up till now. After eight years of U.S. military intervention, the fighters of the Islamist movement are not only unbowed, but on the march. The Islamists (often misidentified by one of their favored tactics: terrorism) seek to impose the totalitarian rule of Allah's law worldwide--an ideal that entails smiting down infidels and subjugating others under sharia. And they're making headway. The borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan are the global nerve-center of jihadist operations, where mass-casualty attacks on Western targets are hatched.

From both liberals and conservatives we hear calls for an immediate withdrawal. President Obama, for his part, has dispelled hopes of achieving victory. A common view now holds that we must resign ourselves to a world in which the Islamist menace remains a fixture of our lives--a threat we might mitigate, but never eliminate. Some now tell us we should negotiate a settlement with the Taliban, bribing them to put down their arms, at least for as long as we keep doling out cash. Witness the emerging consensus that there's no military solution--not in Afghanistan, not in the wider conflict with Islamists.

How did America, the world's most powerful nation, find itself in this morass? A shortage of troops and resources? Reliance on a corrupt Afghan regime (a fact highlighted by the charges of massive election fraud, to name a comparatively tame example)? Some combination of these themes? No, the problem goes far deeper. Our post-9/11 policy--in Afghanistan and across the board--was subverted by a factor that few have thought to examine: the basic moral ideas that animate our foreign policy.

My colleagues and I reached this conclusion by looking at how Washington has directed the military and diplomatic response. The evidence (set out in our book) shows that our culture's mainstream ideas about right and wrong are what shaped our leaders' response to 9/11--from their failure properly to identify the enemy and its chief state-sponsors, to their goals for the Iraq and Afghan wars, and on down to the rules of engagement on the battlefield. These ideas have warped the prevailing conception of the "military option." In essence, the kind of war that our leaders believed was morally proper to wage entailed placing "compassion" ahead of the proper task of self-defense.

Take one example. To avoid affronting or injuring Afghans, Washington drew up lengthy "no-strike" lists including cultural sites, electrical plants--a host of legitimate strategic targets ruled untouchable. This handed the enemy a clear advantage--all the more so as the "no-strike" lists have grown longer. The Islamists exploit this policy (e.g., hiding in mosques and situating themselves in known no-strike zones). In response, Washington has misdiagnosed the problem (its own self-effacing rules of engagement) and further hamstrung our soldiers with ever more absurd restrictions. General McChrystal, who oversees Afghanistan operations, recently lambasted U.S. policy for being "preoccupied with protection of our own forces." (!) Instead he urges that they must minimize their time in armored vehicles and walled bases and "share risk, at least equally, with the people."

That's just a sketch of a tragic larger pattern underlying not just the efforts in Afghanistan, but our broader response to 9/11. A point we make in Winning the Unwinnable War is that the way out of the Afghanistan morass requires Americans to recognize how certain (allegedly) moral ideas have informed, and crippled, our policy--and to challenge those ideas.

Elan Journo is a fellow with the Ayn Rand Institute focusing on foreign policy. He is the editor of and chief contributor to Winning the Unwinnable War: America's Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism.

Turkey’s New Kurdish Opening?

By Nader Entessar

On September 10, 2009, Yusuf Ziya Ozcan, the President of Turkey’s Higher Education Board, announced that the government has approved the establishment of the “Living Languages in Turkey” institute at the southeastern province of Mardin’s Artuklu University. In line with this initiative, Artuklu University, which is located in the part of the country with a heavy Kurdish population, is establishing a Kurdish language and literature department. Presently, some fifteen members of the University’s academic staff are taking Kurdish language classes. In May 2009, a delegation from Artuklu University visited the University of Dohok in Iraqi Kursdistan as part of an effort to create organic links with that and other Kurdish universities in Iraq. In addition to the Kurdish language department, the University is also in the process of establishing a department of Syriac languages and literature with the aim of making Artuklu University into a major center of academic scholarship and learning of major Middle Eastern languages, including Arabic and Persian.

The Turkish government, which is headed by the Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP), has undertaken a number of potentially significant measures in a search for a solution to the country’s long-standing “Kurdish problem.” As I have discussed in my new book, Kurdish Politics in the Middle East, Revised Edition, the Kurdish language had long been banned in Turkey, and in 1967 the government officially outlawed publishing books and other types of printed material in Kurdish. It also made it illegal to record, sing or otherwise disseminate Kurdish songs and music. It was only during the presidency of Turgut Ozal in the early 1990s that the Turkish government acknowledged the Kurdish language as an important component of the country’s Kurdish identity. In 2008, the AKP government allowed the establishment of a state television channel to air programs in Kurdish, a measure that the country’s Kurdish population had demanded for decades. However, Kurdish critics have argued that the government’s restrictions on the Kurdish channel have hampered the free operation of this station. Likewise, many Kurds have taken a wait-and-see attitude towards the recent announcement of the establishment of a Kurdish studies program at Artuklu University.

For decades, Kurdish nationalists have demanded that Turkey recognize their legitimate cultural rights by creating a dual educational system where classes are held in both Turkish and Kurdish. The new Kurdish language department at Artuklu University may be a small step in recognition of Kurdish cultural demands as well as a calculated political move to cement Turkey’s expanding ties with the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq.

Nader Entessar is professor and chair of the department of political science and criminal justiceat the University of South Alabama. He is the author of Kurdish Politics in the Middle East, Revised Edition.

The Author of Digging Through the Bible Tentatively Scheduled to Appear on ABC Nightline

The ABC Nightline program tentatively scheduled for August 31, 11:30 EST will feature an interview with Dr Richard Freund, the author of Digging Through the Bible: Understanding Biblical People, Places, and Controversies through Archeology, on the topic of Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments. John Donvan, the Nightline host, read Dr Freund's book and visited the site where Freund worked in 2007 and identified as the true Mount Sinai.

The Rebirth of the Middle East

By Jerry M. Rosenberg

Increasingly, there is evidence that raising living standards, creating employment opportunities, opening borders to global trade, all in differing ways become the glue for enhancing stability and prosperity throughout the Middle East.

The Rebirth of the Middle East, is based on more than 15 years of research and interviews on this proposition. To assist in evolving a regional economic community over time, for 28 nations of the Middle East, with a population nearing ½ billion people, will require trust and financial and moral assistance from other countries.

Models and flowcharts are presented to develop these concepts. A reinvented Marshall Plan for the entire area is urged, along with the historical elements of the 1948 program that gave hope to a devastated war-torn Europe. This approach encouraged the evolution of what today is the European Union, with 480 million citizens consuming 25 percent of all worldly goods.

Following two invited briefings at the US Department of State, at the World Bank, at universities and conferences throughout the world, and over the years of writing five books on the Middle East, I restructured my theories in a pre-then post-9/11 era, expanding the models and flowcharts initially limited to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the newly defined Middle East, from Morocco in the West, to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the East.

Israel, with its 7 million citizens will play a significant role in moving the rebirth forward. Israel’s Prime Minister seeks economic cooperation with the Palestinians, even before a two-state solution. The Arab world in general seeks peace with Israel, based on meeting a series of conditions. Israel could be part of the core stimuli that drives the cross-border trade forward. And together with funding from prosperous nations of the world, a more stable and secure region can evolve.

Economic development can only be assured if there is a desire to shift from generations of antagonism to a perception that the future can bring prosperity to a frustrated population. The Arab world is rapidly changing, with 60 percent of its people under the age of 25 years. These young and aspiring people want opportunity, are swept by the powers of technology and the internet, and appear determined to rapidly move into the 21st century. Their past hopelessness can once again turn to hope; the greatness of the region more than 1,000 years ago can now be released.

Jerry M. Rosenberg is director of the Center for Middle East Business Studies, and professor of management and global business at Rutgers University Business School and the recipient of Fulbright Specialist Award in 2008. He is the author of The Rebirth of the Middle East, Reawakening: The New, Broader Middle East, and Nation-Building: A Middle East Recovery Program.

Could Mousavi’s Martyrdom Spark Revolution In Iran?

By Adam Lankford

How rarely the fate of a nation rests in the hands of just one man.

And yet, in the aftermath of the election crisis in Iran, reform candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi may be facing a momentous decision.

It’s possible that he could be in the unique position to spark revolution in Iran. But to do so would cost him his life.

In order to understand the potential significance of Mousavi’s death, it is important to understand the powerful history of martyrdom in Iran. Every year, millions of Iranians gather to commemorate the holiday of Ashura, which marks the honored death of Mohammed’s grandson, Imam Husayn ibn Ali. Legend has it that Husayn was killed in battle in 680, after he defiantly refused to swear allegiance to the corrupt dictator Yazid, despite the certainty of his death.

For many Iranians, Husayn’s death is much more than just a story or historical event. It’s the foundation of a divine moral code that insists that standing up to oppressive rulers, no matter what the sacrifice, is not just the right thing to do—it’s God’s sacred command.

Over time, the lessons of Ashura have become a fixture in Iranian politics. In the lead up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini accused the U.S.-backed Shah of being a modern day Yazid: a corrupt and illegitimate leader and the enemy of Shi’a Muslims everywhere. And before long, Iranians rose up and expelled him. Similar charges were made against Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. And thousands of teenage boys ended up martyring themselves for the cause, clearing mine fields with their bodies to repel their Iraqi foes. More recently, Iran’s leaders have employed this same tactic by referring to the United States as the “World Oppressor”—the same type of evil, Yazid-like dictator, just on a larger scale.

But now the shoe is on the other foot. For years, Iran’s leaders have used the legend of Husayn’s death to rally the masses to fight against the enemies they selected. But in the aftermath of the disputed election, millions of Iranians have finally recognized that the corrupt government that is harming them the most is actually run by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and their fellow hardliners. The rooftop chants of “Allahu Akbar” and “Death to Dictators” are evidence of this social awakening.

The defiance of the corrupt regime has begun. However, Mousavi’s death would be the next important step for this historical allusion to be fulfilled. As a martyr in the line of Husayn, Mousavi could become a symbol with extraordinarily powerful religious legitimacy that should not be underestimated.

Mousavi’s martyrdom could remind committed Iranian Muslims that fighting back against the corrupt regime is not merely a matter of their own political freedom—it’s a matter of the religious principles on which they’ve based their entire lives. According to the values which they hold most sacred, they must be willing to die—if that’s what it takes—in order to defeat their current oppressors.

But so far, despite their courage, the Iranian protesters who have died during the conflict appear to have been tragically unlucky, not declared and deliberate martyrs. Very few, if any, have been willing to follow Husayn’s legendary lead and intentionally sacrifice themselves for the cause.

On the other hand, Mousavi has already publicly proclaimed that he is ready for martyrdom, and he continues to defy the corrupt regime. If he deliberately provokes the regime into killing him while emotions are still high, he could leave an indelible mark on the Iranian psyche. And that could spark a revolution.

Adam Lankford is assistant professor of criminal justice at The University of Alabama and the author of Human Killing Machines: Systematic Indoctrination in Iran, Nazi Germany, Al Qaeda, and Abu Ghraib. Listen to an interview with Dr. Lankford about his book at PsychJourney.

The Pitfalls of Historical Amnesia in the Middle East

By Paul J. Rich

In 1914 the British, largely with Indian troops, landed at Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf and began a disastrous march to Baghdad. They were surrounded by the Turks at Kut and there suffered a defeat that was compared to that of Yorktown. The casualties were enormous.

It is amazing that so little attention has been paid to this invasion and to the subsequent unhappy British occupation of what then were the Turkish provinces of Mesopotamia. The region was of course to become Iraq and the British would struggle with trying to impose their agenda well into the 1930s.

So little is said about this that one would think it was a secret, but there is no lack of information on the subject. There are some classic volumes such A.J. Barker’s The Neglected War: Mesopotamia 1914-18, and Briton Cooper Busch’s Britain and the Persian Gulf and his Britain, India, and the Arabs. In fact, scholars have done such notable work on the period and region that it is frustrating to see how untutored American policy towards the peoples of Iraq has been.

Reading about the attempted consolidation of Middle Eastern straps along Western lines in the past might have prevented some of the mistakes that have been made by the United States in its recent interventions. And there remains a great wealth of original source material to explore should anyone be inclined. One valuable archive is the records of the Mesopotamian Commission after the war, a highly controversial fact-finding tribunal investigating the British blunders during the campaign. Charges that it whitewashed the conduct of high British officials have never been resolved.

In retrospect, the British decision to land at Basra and create Iraq had much to do with the desire of those in charge of the Empire to extend Imperial rule into the Middle East. The Gulf shaikhdoms were already part of that Empire and taking the head of the Gulf and then going on to Baghdad seemed a logical extension. Figures such as Sir Percy Cox and Sir Arnold Wilson were the Colin Powells and Donald Rumsfelds of the period.

Occam’s razor is well applied to the Middle East situation. It is not atomic science to ask that American foreign policy display more sophistication. One simply must know something bout the nuances, the cultures, the ancient animosities, before plunging willy-nilly into marching to Baghdad. We didn’t.

Paul J. Rich is president of the Policy Studies Organization in Washington, D.C., visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the editor of Iraq and Gertrude Bell's The Arab of Mesopotamia, Iraq and Rupert Hay's Two Years in Kurdistan, Iraq and Eleanor Egan's The War in the Cradle of the World, and the author of the forthcoming Creating the Arabian Gulf: The British Raj and the Invasions of the Gulf.

Deadly, But Not a War: Some Thoughts on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

By Ilan Zvi Baron

The debate over Israel’s incursion into Gaza has, predictably, fallen into two general camps. On the one side are those who recognize the intolerable condition of being subject to constant attack by rockets and of Israel’s right to defend itself. On the other are those who view Israel’s actions to be heavy-handed, possibly illegal and consistent with the bellicose policies of the occupation. Both views are problematic.
First, the barrage of crude but deadly missiles that were a daily reminder of the ambitions of Hamas’ military wing clearly required some response. Unfortunately, the incursion was not the right response. The objective to stop these rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel succeeded, but only for long enough to highlight its overall failure. It is far more likely that the goal was about Israel recouping its sense of strength after an embarrassing war in Lebanon against Hezbollah. The idea, however, that Israel could demonstrate its military power and reassert its deterrent capability by attacking a significantly weaker foe is unconvincing.

Second, the Palestinians behind the rocket attacks were inviting a heavy-handed response and anecdotal evidence suggests that they welcomed the Israeli incursion as a way to engage the enemy. This callousness of Hamas’ military wing demonstrates a complete lack of care for the Palestinian people. The related argument that the Israeli occupation is the sole cause of Hamas’ use of terror against Israel is also troubling. Such a claim degrades the Palestinians, suggesting that they are not capable of producing positive social or political change.

The idea that Israeli military strength could somehow will the Palestinians into submission has not worked and will continue not to work but only to provoke. There is, in short, neither a clear military nor political goal that stands a good chance of success which could justify this incursion. For the Palestinians, they have no military capacity to fight Israel. The launching of rockets into civilian areas and the use of suicide bombings attest to little concern over the means by which they fight, but rather a decidedly cruel means/ends morality that is matched by Israel’s policy of collective punishment. Contrary to what the opposing parties want to think, this conflict is anything but a war – it is more of a deadly farce with no winners and only successive losers.

Israel has long claimed that it seeks peaceful relations with its Arab and Palestinian neighbors. In theory there is no reason not to recognize this as a genuine desire. The Palestinians no doubt want the same. Hamas has been dedicated to destroying Israel, but its political wing is pragmatic and could follow the path of Fatah, accept Israel’s de facto existence and the two-state solution. Nevertheless, the inherent mistrust, perpetual reliance on violent measures, an ability to fall victim to the plots of spoilers, and a pathology toward implementing any kind of respectful peaceful relations highlight an absence of politics in any positive meaningful sense. Abba Eban famously said that the Arabs “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” He might as well have said this of the Palestinians and Israel.

Ilan Zvi Baron has recently been appointed to a Lectureship in International Political Theory at Durham University and is the author of Justifying the Obligation to Die: War, Ethics, and Political Obligations with Illustrations from Zionism.