Saudi Arabia and delusions of power

S P SETH

When one looks at the conflict-ridden Middle East, what strikes one is that there are two broad currents that underlie regional instability, aided and abetted by powerful external forces. The first is the proponents of the status quo led by the oil rich Saudi monarchy and its fellow monarchs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). And the second is the inexorable pressure for change. And the two have been in a process of collision. The Saudi-led GCC have been doing their best to push back change. They have sought do this by using Islam, its Wahhabi version in the case of Saudi Arabia, as one of their principal tools. In the absence of any kind of demonstrable popular support for the Saudi monarchy, the sanctity of religion, with a pact of sorts with the country’s clerical establishment, has been a useful tool of longevity at home. And since Saudi Arabia houses and cares for the Islamic world’s most revered sites, it sees itself invested with a special kind of religious dispensation for the rest of the Islamic world.  

Which makes Saudi Arabia regard itself not only as an important regional player but also as an authentic voice internationally of the Muslims. And with its vast financial patronage dispensed to promote all sorts of Islamic causes, it has acquired tremendous political clout for a country with such a small population. Besides, it has used its vast oil resource as a strategic tool to weigh into regional affairs. In other words, Saudi Arabia and the GCC have tended to use their assets to insure the stability of their dynasties at home and promote their causes abroad. And in this, they had the support of the United States and its western allies as their strategic interests converged. Which is to say that they too largely supported status quo of dictators and monarchs ruling their subjects.  To placate their subjects, the Saudi rulers have generously provided economic benefits to their subjects. But this generosity doesn’t extend to foreign workers. So far, such virtual bribery to keep most of their subjects on the royal side seems to have worked, at least on surface, combined with the repressive enforcement of the state sanctioned/sponsored Islamic code.

However, this will, most likely, not work if the region around the Saudi kingdom were racked by political turbulence, as happened during the Arab Spring. Saudi Arabia’s oil producing and Shia-majority eastern province was greatly affected, as well as its near neighbour, Bahrain. But in both cases the kingdom’s army crushed this. Which would explain why Saudi Arabia has worked hard to maintain and perpetuate the status quo in the Middle East, apart from Syria under Bashar al-Assad and in Lebanon where Hezbollah must be contained and eliminated. And lately, this also applies to Yemen where Houthis, a Shiite group, have managed to substantially capture power. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia has been bombing the country since March demanding the restoration of the exiled (in Saudi Arabia) former President Abed-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

In all these cases (Syria under Bashar al-Assad regime, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Yemen increasingly under Houthi control) the common denominator is that they are believed to be Iranian proxies as part of Tehran’s game plan to expand its power into the predominantly Sunni and Arab Middle Eastern region. Saudi Arabia considers it necessary to contain and push back this threat. And as part of this policy, Riyadh has been providing arms and money to Syrian rebels of all descriptions trying to bring down the Assad regime. But this hasn’t worked so far. Instead, a good portion of Saudi-supplied weaponry has ended with the IS now controlling a big chunk of Iraq and Syria, with its ambition to extend the reach of its self-proclaimed caliphate to all Muslim countries. In other words, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf kingdoms are also IS targets as and when they can get around to it. But, for the present, Saudi Arabia is obsessed with Iran and its supposed threat to the Sunni Arab world. And hence, it will continue to bomb Yemen to crush the Houthis, continue supporting and arming rebels of all descriptions in Syria and work to erode Hezbollah influence in Lebanon.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia wants its Sunni Arab neighbours to maintain and perpetuate their status quo. Indeed, when the people’s power exemplified by Arab Spring was in ascendance, the Saudi ruling dynasty was mortified sensing an existential danger from them. And they did their utmost, prevailing on their most trusted and powerful ally, the US, to save the Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Coincidentally, Israel was doing the same—both favouring regional status quo. However, Mubarak couldn’t be saved at the time, even if the US had wanted it because the revolutionary fervour in Egypt seemed unstoppable. Indeed, this was the beginning of a growing strain in Saudi-US relations, which has since widened as Washington didn’t follow up its threat to bring down Syria’s Assad regime after it used chemical weapons on rebels; reinforced further with a prospective nuclear deal with Iran, and US inability to effectively intervene against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. In other words, Saudi Arabia’s superpower ally, the US, is not proving as reliable as it once was.

But at one level, Saudi Arabia was relieved when Egypt’s strong army man, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, overthrew the first ever popularly elected President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, now sentenced to death along with other Brotherhood leaders, on a slew of charges. If this is one way of turning the clock back to recreate status quo, it will only explode at some point with even greater intensity. Perhaps it is already starting to happen, if the violent eruptions in Sinai and elsewhere in Egypt are anything to go by. Riyadh might think that their multi-billion dollar investment in the Sisi regime has put the lid back on the revolutionary upsurge of the Arab Spring, but signs do not seem propitious. The most astute thing for Riyadh would be to start/encourage a process of graduated change in the kingdom as well as in the region, with its large financial resources. But that seems unlikely.

On the other hand, it has tended to overreach by seeking to turn back the tide of change. It is a small country but with delusions of power. It did work up to a point. But now, with the US connection/power weakening and oil ceasing to be an over-riding strategic asset, Riyadh is encountering serious difficulties. In the circumstances, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies might find that they can’t turn the tide of history in favour of change. Instead they might need to change to survive. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au               

The nightmare that is Islamic State

S P SETH

The fall of Ramadi to the Islamic State (IS) has shown it to be more durable than is comfortable to believe. It led the US defence secretary to blame the Iraqi army for lacking the will to fight, even when they far outnumber their enemy. The Iraqis, on the other hand, blame the US for not providing enough weaponry and being selective about their aerial targets. Both might be right to a point. Unlike the loss of Mosul to the IS last June when the army simply fled, this time the Iraqi army did put up some resistance but only just. They seem to be more comfortable with disorderly retreat than putting up a good fight. And the reason for this is that, unlike their enemy, they lack the ideological and religious fervour that imbues and inspires the IS, however abominable that ideology might be.

At the same time, despite all the training and weaponry Iraqi forces have received from the Americans, their US mentors were hardly inspirational. They were basically foreign invaders even when they got rid of the Saddam regime, hated by Iraq’s Shia majority. However, the Nouri al-Maliki government, a Shia version of Saddam’s killing machine---though this time the victims were the Sunni minority- was hardly inspiring with widespread corruption where some of the listed army battalions existed more on paper with top commanders pocketing their salaries. And these so-called commanders were Maliki’s cronies heading different fiefdoms. It is important to remember that Maliki was the US choice, a continuation of the mishandling of Iraq by Washington. In other words, there was nothing inspiring in the Iraqi situation--- whether it was the US role or the Maliki experiment--- for the Iraqi army and society to cherish and uphold. His successor, Haider al-Abadi, might be an improvement on Maliki but in the absence of any worthwhile ideal and vision for the future, the Iraqi army simply is a ragtag force led by self-seekers out to enrich themselves.

Another important drawback is that Iraq lacks the unifying features of a nation state. It is a hodgepodge of ethnic and sectarian elements culled out of a dying Ottoman empire after WW1, like other Middle Eastern entities, and foisted on the world by the British and the French colonialists and manipulated by them for their economic, political and strategic gains. No wonder, the country never developed into a real nation state when its components lacked cohesive features. On the other hand, its disparate and fractious components, like the Sunnis, Shias and the Kurds, were ruled with an iron hand under Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship, with the Shias and the Kurds as his special targets. And when the US attacked Iraq in 2003 and removed and hanged the dictator that was the easy part. The easy success of military operations, symbolized with President George Bush appearing on the deck of a US warship to declare victory, encouraged Washington to uproot the existing system by virtually abolishing the Saddam-era army, bureaucracy and everything else associated with it.

In the absence of any alternative structure to govern the country, Iraq soon descended into anarchy. Which led to the rise of the al Qaeda in Iraq, making things even worse. During 2006 and 2007, the US occupation succeeded in enlisting the support of the Sunni tribal leaders against the al Qaeda that had become unpopular with the local tribes because of its foreign leadership, high handedness and disregard for the tribal leaders. The US made a deal to fund tribal fighters against the al Qaeda in Iraq and to eventually have them incorporated into the regular Iraqi force. However, Iraq’s Maliki government wasn’t willing to incorporate Sunnis into the regular army, as they weren’t trusted. On the other hand, the US-approved Maliki government turned on the Sunni minority and any hope of a cohesive Iraq faded pretty soon.

Under Haider al-Abidi as Iraq’s Prime Minister, the US has been encouraging a coalition of Sunni tribal leaders and fighters into a united front of the Sunnis, the Shia militia and army and Kurdish fighters to fight the IS. At the same time, the US is tactically supportive of Iran’s role in backing the Shia militias with arms and, where necessary, taking a commanding position. While the Abidi government is keen to have the Sunnis on their side, they are reluctant to provide them with the necessary weaponry. The US is continuing the pressure on the Abidi government to enlist Sunni tribal leaders and is keen to provide them with US weapons. But the Abidi government’s distrust of the Sunnis would remain an obstacle. Therefore, any coalition between the Shia regime and Iraq’s Sunni minority is unlikely to eventuate or be effective. And the Kurds, on their part, are concerned more about saving their own autonomous region from IS than diverting their resources and fighters to save Shia Iraq. In other words, all this talk of a US-inspired grand coalition of Iraq’s feuding sectarian and ethnic groups seems rather unlikely.

The US is now committing more elite forces as trainers and advisers, taking their numbers to 3500. Indeed, there is talk of setting up a string of bases to do an effective job of training the Iraqis. This would suggest that the US is being drawn once again into the Iraqi war theatre. Whether this would be more productive than the disastrous experience, starting with the 2003 military invasion, would remain to seen. But the long record of direct involvement in the Iraqi war by the US and its allies is not very encouraging. Already, the US aerial intervention, while useful in stopping the IS advance in some areas, is not proving as effective as was originally thought.

There is also constant talk in the US that Iraqis or, for that matter, people in other troubled Middle Eastern countries, should do more of their own fighting, with the US and its allies willing to help with arms, intelligence, money and aerial support where necessary. The problem, though, is that these people blame their troubles on the US intervention in the region, in the first place. And they do not have the resources, leadership and cohesion to effectively fight against their real or imagined enemies, even as they are simultaneously feuding internally over a host of issues, with sectarian divisions at the top. Iran could be an effective ally against the IS but that raises a host of other questions further aggravating regional fault lines. Hence, there are no easy answers. However, even if the IS were to gain further ground, it will always remain under siege and will have difficulty functioning as a normal state. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au       

     

Obama explains: Will Israel listen?

S P SETH

It is not often that a US president feels the need to explain his policies to an aggrieved country, unless that country happens to be Israel. And that is precisely what President Obama recently did in an extensive interview with the New York Times’ influential columnist Thomas L. Friedman. It concentrated mostly on explaining the rationale of the recent nuclear framework deal with Iran, the final agreement to be fleshed out by end June. Interestingly, it was Obama who invited Friedman in order to expound his views and policy on the subject. Generally, it is journalists who seek interviews with a country’s leader. By taking the initiative to explain, Obama obviously felt the need to explain to Israel and the Zionist lobby in the US that in seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue, he was not acting against Israel’s interests. Indeed, he was putting Iran’s nuclear programme under the most stringent inspection regime for ten or more years, and that will serve Israel’ s security interests. And besides, if it doesn’t work the US will continue to have other options.  

The first thing he emphasized was that Iran was not some giant that is unstoppable. It can be contained and deterred. Indeed it is worth engaging with Iran diplomatically. And if “we can resolve these issues [constraining Iran’s nuclear capability] diplomatically we are more likely to be safe, more likely to be secure, in a better position to protect our allies, and who knows? Iran may change. If it doesn’t, our deterrence capabilities, our military superiority stays in place … We’re not relinquishing our capacity to defend ourselves or our allies.  In that situation, why wouldn’t we test it [the diplomatic path].” It seems pretty simple and straightforward. In simple language, Iran might be clobbered if it didn’t follow the straight and narrow path laid down for them in a nuclear accord.

The point, though, is that Israel is not interested in any nuclear deal with Iran short of abandonment or destruction of its nuclear capability. With this basic parameter, what leads Obama to think that his message would get through? Apparently, he believes that making a direct pitch to the Israeli people over Netanyahu’s shrill rhetoric might work and give him the necessary political space at home to sort out the nuclear issue. Taking on board Israel’s security concerns from an Iran with any nuclear capability, Obama said in his interview that, “… But what I would say to them (Israeli people] is that not only am I absolutely committed to making sure that they maintain their qualitative military edge, and they can deter any potential future attacks, but what I’m willing to do is to make the kinds of commitments that would give everybody in the neighbourhood, including Iran, a clarity that if Israel were to be attacked by any state, that we would stand by them.” He added, “And that, I think, should be sufficient to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table.”

But will that convince Israel? As of now, it seems highly unlikely for two reasons. First, they don’t trust Obama. Second, and more importantly, they don’t trust Iran. On the first, most Israelis found him a bit evangelical on the broad question of seeking reconciliation with the Islamic world not long after he became President. His Cairo speech in 2009 riled Israel because it was not consulted.  It was delivered without clearing it with the Israeli government, which is used to vetting or vetoing US policy on the Middle East. At the same time, the Obama administration started unsuccessfully, as it turned out, its peace initiative on the two state formula on Israel-Palestine relations, gently goading Israel to temporarily, at least, halt its settlement policy. Which enraged Israel, and it showed its anger by continuing to build new settlements.

Obama and, later, his secretary of state, John Kerry, seemed on a mission to promote the two-state formula, even telling Tel Aviv that this was in Israel’s interest. Which seemed preposterous to the Netanyahu government as if Obama knew better than them what was or wasn’t in Israel’s interest? Obama’s Palestine policy might seem well meaning but was not regarded as serving Israel’s interests. And above all, pushing a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme was regarded certainly as not well-meaning, to put it mildly. Indeed, Obama was left in no doubt that Israel was not happy with Obama’s Middle Eastern politics.

Which pained Obama. He told Friedman, “It has been personally difficult for me to hear… expressions that somehow… this administration has not done everything it could to look out for Israel’s interest ---and the suggestion that when we have very serious policy differences, that that’s not in the context of a deep and abiding friendship and concern and understanding of the threats that the Jewish people have faced historically and continue to face.”

The personal chemistry between Obama and Netanyahu didn’t work as the latter behaved more like that the new President needed some coaching about how to conduct his Middle Eastern policy. And as Obama seemed a bit ‘obdurate’, Netanyahu started to play internal politics with the US system. It was reflected in his preference for Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate in the last election, his keenness to address the US Congress and make a pitch against a prospective nuclear deal with Iran, followed up by some US congressmen cautioning Iran that any deal with the Obama administration could be reversed by the US legislature. In other words, the Netanyahu government was seeking to undermine Obama by working against him through the US’s internal political processes.

Obama though seems keen to push ahead with the nuclear deal. As he told Friedman, “We know that a military strike or a series of military strikes can set back Iran’s nuclear programme for a period of time--- but almost certainly prompt Iran to rush towards a bomb…” But the framework deal, when hopefully fleshed out by end-June, will seriously constrain their nuclear path for the next 10 or more years with a stringent inspection regime “able to inspect and verify what’s happening along the entire nuclear chain from the uranium mines all the way through to the final facilities like Natanz… Iran will be subject to the kinds of inspections and verification mechanisms that have never been put in place before.”

While Obama’s pitch with the Israeli people is well meaning and cogently argued, it is not likely to make any real impact.   

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au  

Netanyahu and Israel

S P SETH

By electing the right-wing political cabal, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli voters once again rejected any prospect whatsoever of a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian question. Netanyahu, who had in 2009 seemingly accepted the idea of a two-state solution, formally rejected it when electioneering, proclaiming emphatically that there would be no Palestinian state under his watch. Not only that, he even tried to rouse his Jewish electorate warning that the country’s Arab voters, constituting about 20 per cent of the population, were voting in “droves” to unseat his government. To quote Netanyahu, “The right-wing government [of Netanyahu] is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the ballot booths.” He knew that the racist card, along with the rejection of a Palestinian state, would produce the desired result and it did. He will now be free to pursue an even more oppressive agenda for the country’s Arab citizens and the occupied Palestinian territory.

But under international pressure, particularly from the Obama administration, Netanyahu has sought to backtrack on his rejection of the two-state solution. But, however, it is worded, Israel’s underlying policy is aimed at preventing the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel on the pre-1967 borders, before Israel annexed/occupied Palestine after the June 1967 war. For instance, most Israeli citizens, leaving aside its Arab population, favour the continuation of its settlement policy of encircling Palestinian territory crisscrossed with checkpoints to control the movements of Palestinian people. How do you create a sovereign or even semi-sovereign Palestinian state when its territory is parceled out among Jews supported by state forces to keep the Palestinians out, as well as humiliating them all the time through all sorts of identity checks? It is difficult to believe that an Israeli state practicing such apartheid, whether led by Netanyahu or any other Israeli political formation, will accept a sovereign Palestinian state unless it is subjected to the kind of international sanctions that apartheid-ruled South Africa faced in its dying days. And there is no sign of that as yet.

So why is the Obama administration, and some of its European allies, were suddenly taken aback by Netanyahu’s comments about the rejection of the two-state solution and his Arab baiting? After all, it has been apparent all along that Israel would do everything possible to thwart the emergence of a sovereign Palestinian state. And the discrimination of Israel’s Arab citizens is an open secret. The main reason is that the pretense and symbolism of a two-state formula was useful as a goal, however distant and improbable. It avoided forcing the issue as the Palestinian Authority sought to seek membership of the United Nations and its sister organizations. The US was able to justify its vetoing of the UN Security Council resolutions pertaining to Palestine because, they contended, that there was a peaceful path through negotiations as Israel was ‘committed’ to a two state solution. And it served Israel well, without having to actually deliver the two-state outcome. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continued to police its own people on behalf of the Israeli state. And for that, Israel collected revenue for the PA, which paid for its police and general administration; though the revenue was withheld recently. It seemed a neat arrangement suiting Israel. But they still weren’t happy because the PA at times wanted the real thing, like a real state.

Now that Netanyahu has rejected the two-state solution—never mind his retraction after the election and an apology of sorts to Israel’s Arab citizens-- it is difficult to maintain the pretense of a peacefully negotiated two-state solution. First, because all the diplomatic efforts put in by the Obama administration to further the peace process were frustrated because Israel wasn’t interested in a positive outcome. The diplomatic initiative of the US secretary of state, John Kerry, so incensed the Israeli defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, that he described him ‘messianic and obsessive… [and wished] he [Kerry] should win his Nobel prize [for peace efforts] and leave us in peace’. Which is clearly indicative of the Israeli attitude towards a peaceful solution.

Indeed, Israel’s President Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin is most forthright against the idea of a Palestinian state. In his profile of President Rivlin, David Remnick of the New Yorker wrote that the President “is ardently opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state.” According to Remnick, “He is instead a proponent of Greater Israel, one Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. He professes to be mystified that anyone should object to the continued construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.” Remnick quotes Rivlin to say that, “It can’t be ‘occupied territory’ if the land is your own.” It is as simple as that. Therefore, when Netanyahu ruled out a Palestinian state under his watch, he was saying the obvious as spelled out even more clearly by the country’s president. It is not that Israel has been lacking in making its intentions known but that the US and its western allies haven’t been keen to face the reality because that required doing something tangible to translate into action their support for a sovereign Palestinian state.

Will it happen now? Though the Obama administration is miffed with Netanyahu and there have been strong statements both by the President and some of his senior advisors about reassessing US options after the Israeli leader’s rejection of a two-state solution and his racist comments about Israel’s Arab citizens, it would be very surprising if the US would translate it into a definite policy to push statehood for Palestine. Still the strongest statement has come from the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, before a liberal Jewish American group. He reportedly said that a separate Palestinian state was the best guarantee of Israel’s long-term security because: “An occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end, and the Palestinian people must have the right to live in, and govern themselves in their own sovereign state.” He added, “In the end, we know what a peace agreement should look like. The borders of Israel and an independent Palestine should be based on the [June 4] 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

However, even as the Obama administration have made some bold statements critical of Netanyahu and his government, it has reiterated its commitment to Israel’s security. That makes US statements largely irrelevant. For instance, Israel might simply wait out Obama’s presidency, as he enters the lame duck stage of his administration. With the Congress unlikely to support any change, Israel can do what it wants. But internationally, and to some extent within the US, Israel’s continued intransigence and arrogance is slowly creating exasperation that might create a helpful environment for the eventual creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. But it is still early days for the long-suffering Palestinian people to count their chickens before they are hatched.  

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au