Sat. 12 Mar. 2011

JERUSALEM POST The road to Damascus ……………………………...………..1

AMERICAN THINKER Syrian Regime Unlikely to Fall ……………………...………5

CARENJIE ENDORWMENT Why Syria Is Unlikely to be Next . . . for Now ……………...7

HUFFINGTON POST Assad and Gaddafi: The Not So Odd Couple ……………..11

FOX NEWS Will Syria Be the First Arab Nation to Develop a Nuclear

Weapon?................................................................................13WEEKLY STANDARD

Dark Secrets: The sordid history of Syria's collaboration with Qaddafi……………………………………………………..16

GUARDIAN Tear down this Israeli wall ……By Roger Water…………..19

INDEPENDENT Fisk: Palestinians understand Gaddafi better than we do …..22

COUNTER PUNCH The New Arab Awakening: "Neither With the West, Nor

Against It"………By Alain Gresh…………………………25CONSTRUCTION WEEK

Syrian Surge …………………………………………..……33WASHINGTON POST

No War on Libya …………By Wesley Clark..……….……27

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HOME PAGEThe road to Damascus Syria is unlikely to be the next Arab state to witness anti-government unrestOren Kessler,Jerusalem Post,11 Mar. 2011,

A glance at a map of the region reveals the seismic changes the Arab world has undergone since the end of last year. News websites have taken to shading in those countries that have seen popular uprisings, leaving a broad swathe of color from Morocco to Oman. Israel aside, the only Middle Eastern countries to have been spared unrest are the small, oil-washed Persian Gulf welfare states of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and one impoverished, isolated and backward country ruled by an autocratic clique in the worst Arab tradition: Syria.

That Syrians have sat still through the storm is puzzling. They are destitute, on par with resource-poor Yemenis despite having considerable oil and gas reserves. Their country’s political, economic and security establishments are in the hands of the ruling Alawite sect, and Damascus has for years been ostracized from the international community, its only powerful friend the ayatollahs’ Iran. So will Syria be the next Arab country to rise up? The consensus among experts and expatriates seems to be no.

Syria is overwhelmingly poor, with independent estimates placing unemployment at 20 percent. But unlike Tunisia and Egypt – where economic stagnation combined with political dissent to unseat decades-old regimes – Syria hasn’t seen the kind of gaping discrepancies between a large elite and marginalized majority. In Syria – officially a socialist state – poverty has become a kind of norm, as virtually everyone is underprivileged.

Everyone, that is, except the Alawites – and they are untouchable.

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The president’s father and predecessor Hafez Assad so deeply entrenched his ruling Alawite sect in the political and security leadership that the government and security services are essentially one and the same. “The military, ruling elite and ruthless secret police are so intertwined that it is now impossible to separate the Assad regime from the security establishment,” wrote Michael Broning, director of the east Jerusalem office of the German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, in Foreign Affairs this week. “In this respect, the situation in Syria is to a certain degree comparable to Saddam Hussein’s strong Sunni minority rule in Iraq.”

“Syrian society is divided among several communities. That makes things more delicate,” said Eyal Zisser, a Syria expert and senior research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center. Three-quarters of the Syrian population is Sunni; other major denominations are Alawi Shi’ites, Druse and Christians. And within the Sunni community are a number of ethnic minorities – principally Kurds, Turkmen and Circassians – careful not to rock the boat.

“These minority sects will think twice before destabilizing the system,” Zisser said. “Syria borders Iraq and Lebanon, and people see what’s happening around them – they don’t want Syria to turn into Iraq or Lebanon.”

AS IN Saddam’s Iraq, the dominant note in Syrian life is fear. Syrians of all stripes remember well the 1982 Hama massacre, when over three weeks Hafez Assad’s army bombarded the town to quell a Muslim Brotherhood revolt and killed anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 people. More recently, Assad the younger brutally put down 2004 riots in the Kurdish northeast, killing dozens.

Zisser noted that in Egypt, the Mubarak regime allowed space – limited though it was – for civil society to grow. “There were NGOs,” he said.

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“You won’t find this in Syria because the regime is much more oppressive.

So its much more difficult for the opposition to organize.”

“Syria is stable,” Assad told The Wall Street Journal in a rare interview on January 31. “Why? Because you have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue. When there is divergence...you will have this vacuum that creates disturbances.”

Assad may have had a point. Many Syrians share the president’s hostility to Israel and what they perceive as US designs on the region. Like Muammar Gaddafi, Assad’s hard line against the putatively imperialist West has won him considerable support at home.

Syrians have little to no exposure to the foreign press, and social media websites like Facebook are banned.

Like their counterparts elsewhere in the region, Syria’s media are at the service of the presidential palace.

When rumors surfaced in early February of Damascenes hitting the streets for their own “day of rage,” the government- allied daily Al-Watan reported that many Syrians were outraged by the calls for “destruction and civil war” circulating on Facebook, and had launched Facebook groups of their own in support of the regime.

The paper attributed calls for protest to “Israeli, Lebanese or expatriate Syrian elements.”

On February 16, the government daily Al-Ba’ath opined that while other Arab regimes “have placed their faith in foreign [powers] and have subjugated themselves to them, Syria’s masses have rushed to confirm the popular legitimacy [of the regime]. While

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[other] countries suffer from a lack of stability, Syria unites as one.”

A day later, a video was posted to YouTube showing 1,500 protesters rallying in the streets of the capital.

According to the blog Syria News Wire, however, the rally had little to do with the antigovernment unrest sweeping the region. Instead, it reportedly began spontaneously after a police officer insulted a man, then beat him with a stick. “They chant, ‘The Syrian people will not be humiliated,’ interspersed with, ‘Shame, shame’ and ‘With our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice for you Bashar.’ That’s a very Syrian way of saying they were furious at the police, not the president.”

Ribal Assad, a London-based activist, is the Syrian president’s cousin. His father Rifaat went into exile in 1984 after an attempted coup against the first president Assad. In a March 2 article in Lebanon’s Daily Star, Ribal Assad wrote that the “resistance” mantle that Assad long used to justify his power may be wearing thin.

“Until now, Syria’s rulers have relied on their anti-Israel, anti-Western rhetoric to protect themselves. But cries about the Israel-Palestine conflict were rarely heard in the protests in Tunis and Cairo.”

“The regime claims that it is part of the ‘resistance’ with its senior partner Iran,” he wrote. “However, the WikiLeaks cables show that the Syrian leadership told the Iranian regime not to count on it in any war with Israel because it is too weak. So the regime is making a fatal error if it thinks that its old diversionary tactics will continue to provide it with immunity.”

Even the president’s dissident cousin, however, draws the line at demanding the regime’s ouster. “We don’t want a revolution in Syria,” he told reporters in Berlin last month. “We want the

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government to start changing, we want a peaceful change and transitional change.”

The Assad government is both brutal and backward, but its particular circumstances mean Syria is unlikely to face the kind of upheaval that toppled dictators elsewhere in the region. The road from Tunis and Cairo to Damascus may prove longer than anyone had thought.

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Syrian Regime Unlikely to Fall By Aymenn Jawad Al-TamimiAmerican ThinkerMarch 12, 2011,

As protests demanding political and economic reform continue across the Middle East and North Africa, one may justifiably ask how popular demonstrations will affect the regime in Damascus. Those who see a domino effect that began with the ousting of Ben Ali from Tunisia wonder if Syria will be part of the series of dominoes in the current wave of protests.

To be sure, the ruling Baath party is fearful of unrest in Syria, and has adopted an approach of providing economic benefits to keep would-be protestors away from the streets. For example, a social relief fund has been established with an annual fund of 10-12 billion Syrian liras, electricity subsidies for state employees have been increased, an employment program for university graduates has been approved, and taxes on staple foods have been reduced.

Yet, even without taking such measures, is the government in Damascus likely to face major protests of the scale we have witnessed in Egypt or Tunisia? Unfortunately, such a prospect seems improbable for the time being, for two reasons:-

The nature of the regime: Baathist ideology has never been more than a façade for minority despotism in the name of pan-Arab

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nationalism. In Baathist Iraq, the regime served as a cover for Sunni Arab rule at the expense of Shi'a Arab majority, even though the former compromised no more than 20% of Iraq's population. In Syria, the ruling family and the political and military elite all come from the minority Alawite sect, a sub-group of Shi'a Islam which forms roughly 10% of Syria's population. At present, the minority-controlled regime still rules with an iron fist over disenfranchised Sunnis who make up a 74% majority, as it has done so since attaining power in 1963. The regime thus survives by manipulating tensions between the various religious and ethnic groups in the country. As in Baathist Iraq, many Christians belong to the professional middle and upper-middle classes, and like the Alawites view Assad as their protector.

Hence, unless opposition forces can unite a significant segment of the population from all of Syria's ethnic and religious groups, there is a considerable risk that a potential uprising could turn into an ugly sectarian affair, culminating in something like the infamous Hama massacre of 1982 that killed around 20,000 Syrians after an unsuccessful six-year Sunni insurgency campaign spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Syria's Isolation: Since the 1980s, Syria has been much more isolated from the outside world than most nations in the Middle East and North Africa. For instance, in spite of all his faults, Mubarak did allow a relatively significant amount of press freedom in Egypt, such that the country was ranked highest in the Arab world in Freedom House's 2010 ‘Freedom of the Press' index (with a ‘Partly Free' rating) after Kuwait and Lebanon. In addition, the international community -- and the U.S. in particular -- had some leverage over Mubarak as his regime was the recipient of billions of dollars of Western aid. Neither of these points applies to Syria. Consequently, there are no independent civil institutions, such as trade unions and student bodies, that can rally opposition to the regime, which, through strict control of media within Syria, has been able to push an image of embodying ‘resistance' to the West, and thereby win a degree of popular support.

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It therefore comes as no surprise that Assad has been so successful in suppressing attempts to organize protests, including preventive arrests of opposition activists, and that the "Day of Rage" demonstrations planned by Syrian reformists for last month failed to materialize. I wish Syrian opposition activists well in their efforts to dislodge the regime in Damascus but urge for the need to appreciate a key lesson, even as I hope to be proven wrong by the Syrian people on this issue. Namely, the uprisings we have seen in Egypt and Tunisia have not been achieving many of their aims solely because of popular discontent with high food prices, authoritarianism and corruption, all of which are major problems in Syria too. Rather, they are also the culmination of years of work at the grassroots level by opposition activists, something that is desperately needed in Syria.

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Why Syria Is Unlikely to be Next . . . for Now Bassam Haddad Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceMarch 9, 2011

As millions of Arabs stir their respective countries with demonstrations and slogans of change and transition, certain Arab states have been generally spared, including some oil rich countries and Syria. Syria stands out as a powerful regional player without the benefit of economic prosperity and with a domestic political climate that leaves a lot to be desired. Some say it combines the heavy-handedness of the Tunisian regime, the economic woes of Egypt, the hereditary rule aspects of Morocco and Jordan, and a narrower leadership base than any other country across the Arab world. Why, then, is all relatively quiet on the Syrian front?

We can delude ourselves by resorting to facile explanations related to the threat of severe coercion facing a potential uprising in Syria—which certainly does exist. But the reality of the matter

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is more complex. To begin with, one must account for the unexpected: a clumsy incident involving a disproportionately brutal reaction against civilians, even in Syria, will spin structural variables out of control.

“Syria is not Egypt”Any cursory review of the Syrian press, or the press on Syria, reveals that many Syrians empathize with the grievances of their rebellious Arab brethren and share many of them. This includes those who actually protested in small numbers and were harassed and/or beaten on Friday, February 4th, the planned “Day of Anger” in Syria, and during the few days prior. Other sporadic incidents took place in the past few weeks, but none rose to the level of an explicit anti-regime demonstration, as happened in Egypt and elsewhere. This puts Syria in stark contrast with Egypt.

Egyptian protesters grew in courage gradually as civil society snatched gains such as degrees of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of organization and contestation by truly independent political parties, not least among whom is the Muslim Brotherhood, even if by proxy. On the other hand, Syrian civil society does not enjoy nearly the same measures of liberty. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was correct in saying that Syria is not Egypt in a January 31 Wall Street Journal interview. The reverse is equally true.

As repressive as the government of former President Hosni Mubarak might have been, Egypt’s public space was much more open than that of Syria. Independent papers, parties, and political activists have proliferated in Egypt for the better part of the past decade, gaining adherents and mobilizing supporters via various forms of networking. With time, the components of, and room for, collective action have broadened considerably. Between 2004 and 2010 more than 6,000 small- and medium-sized protests took place throughout Egypt, most of them labor protests. Over the past decade in Egypt, these led to a level of individual and group empowerment—as well as re-politicization of the society—from which Syrians are quite removed.

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In addition, while social polarization and poverty are increasing in Syria and social safety nets are deteriorating, the overall socioeconomic conditions are nowhere near those endured in Egypt. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of Syrian society (in terms of politics, region, community, sect, and ethnicity) exacerbates divisions among those affected and discourages cohesion among the opposition. Snowballing demonstrations that would dramatically raise the cost of brutal reaction in Syria are thus unlikely for the time being. As matters stand today, the calculus of the ordinary Syrian does not favor going to the streets – absent an unexpected incident of regime brutality, of course.

…Nor is it Tunisia or LibyaIndividual and group decisions are not motivated solely by social connectivity, legal permissiveness, and collective action. Otherwise, Tunisia’s revolt would have not seen the light of day, as Tunisians dwelled in a security atmosphere intolerant of independent organization and collective action, much like Syria’s today. But Tunisia’s state, regime, and government did not overlap nearly as much as those of Syria do, and certainly the Tunisian coercive apparatuses and army were not as closely knit around the heights of power as they are in Syria. As a result, expecting the Syrian army/security services to jettison al-Assad as their Tunisian counterparts did to Ben Ali is simply a non-starter.

At the same time, despite the existence within both the Libyan and Syrian regimes of a will and rationale to fight for survival, state-society relationships in Syria are much thicker than those of Libya, where detachment at the top has reached delusional levels. For instance, the Syrian regime has promoted a new cross-sectarian business class often with considerable roots in traditional city quarters. If something is afoot in Syria, however, it is likely to come from the northern cities.

The “Resistance” FactorDiscussions of Syria’s vulnerability to internal protests often posit Damascus’s resistance status to explain why Syria will be spared:

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i.e., that because of Syria’s confrontational stance toward Israel and the United States’ brutal policies in the region, the regime enjoys a form of Arab nationalist legitimacy. In particular, Syria’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas is considered a unique and legitimate tool for manifesting such confrontation to imperialism. After all, President Bashar al-Assad polls quite well throughout the region compared to other Arab leaders, and enjoys significant popularity among various segments of Syrian society.

Still, overemphasizing the regime “resistance legitimacy” is problematic on two counts: first, even in Egypt, where Mubarak was viewed as a U.S. protégé and Israel’s accomplice, the demonstrators did not make that point a major issue. Second, the region is entering a new era in which Syria’s confrontational stance might become less unique, as Egypt and other Arab governments take more independent positions and withdraw from the strong U.S. orbit.

It is difficult to make blanket predictions due to the constant dynamism of the factors involved. While Syria’s confrontational positions regarding Israel and the United States might be increasingly popular in the region, the citizens of democratizing Arab states will want governments that are more responsive to them regarding domestic as well as foreign policies. The Syrian government will face this growing demand in due time. For now many factors weigh against revolution in Syria, barring an extraordinary event such as an excessively violent regime reaction to a demonstration or other incident. Observers would be wise not to hold their breath.

Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program and teaches in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University.

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HOME PAGEAssad and Gaddafi: The Not So Odd Couple Dr. Josef Olmert (Adjunct Professor, American University’s School of International Service)Huffington Post,11 Mar. 2011,

Bashar Assad proves himself to be a loyal ally of the Libyan dictator. Whereas the Arab world and most of the international community, but for the likes of Hugo Chavez, mince no words of condemnation to Gaddafi, Assad reserves his criticisms to the West, warning against any outside involvement aimed at stopping the carnage.

Moreover, according to a multiplicity of sources, elements of the Syrian Air force support Gaddafi's ground forces. Interestingly enough, the Syrian regime does not go out of its way to deny these reports. So, what is the game of the young lion (Assad = lion in Arabic) in Damascus?

To start with, the Assad presidents and Gaddafi have been good friends for years, and on more than one occasion, this friendship led to dirty jobs serving mutual interests. The mysterious disappearance of Imam Musa Sadr, the charismatic Lebanese Sh'iite leader in Libya in the late 1970's is just one such case.

While most world attention is focused on Libya and Saudi Arabia, things are also happening in Syria. A few days ago, Karim Arbaji, an opposition blogger, died at the age of 31. It was announced that he died of heart failure, something that could not be verified independently. What is known beyond a doubt is that the funeral in Bab Touma in the Damascus Christian quarter turned into an anti Assad demonstration, attended by the Greek Catholic Patriarch, clearly an unprecedented move by the clergy.

12 human rights groups in Syria, both representing Arabs and Kurds issued a petition against the regime, and inmates in a jail near Damascus rioted and were violently put down. This is all unheard of in the Assad era. Something, the extent of which is not

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clear, is happening in Syria, and with it a possible explanation to why the regime may be interested in its population being aware of the involvement in Libya.

This is Assad's way of signaling to them that what he helps doing in Libya he definitely can do in Syria itself. Some may call it a friendly warning, and others may recall that after the Hamma massacre of the Syrian Muslim brotherhood in February-March of 1982, agents of the regime inflated the number of casualties, in order to gain the deterrence effect over the population. To be sure, thousands were murdered, but not tens of thousands.

It is clear, that the regime has a vested interest in preventing a Gaddafi collapse, as the potential ramifications on Syria's people are all too obvious. Besides, Assad wants to show that only pro-American regimes are toppled during the current mayhem. Gaddafi, therefore, needs to survive at all costs.

Publicly, the regime maintains the façade of business as usual, and the president declared that the Syrian people enthusiastically supports his anti-American and anti-Israel policy. That may be, but just to be on the safe side, food subsidies were dramatically raised, access to the social networks is blocked and the security forces in Damascus have been reinforced and are mainly composed of members of the Alawi minority.

With all that happening, there is a significant question pertaining to the U.S. policy with regard to Syria. Recently, there was a controversy surrounding the Obama administration's decision to send back the American Ambassador to Damascus. At the time, it was the right thing to do, as the U.S. should exhaust every logical avenue of coming to a dialogue with a regime like Syria's, which can play a meaningful role in Middle Eastern politics. But then, what happens when Assad does not play ball, and his policy is diametrically opposed to that of the administration?

Take, for example, the Syrian-Hezballah alliance in Lebanon, which brought down the pro-American PM Sa'ad Hariri, and now

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the Assad overt support of Gaddafi. The Libyan issue should be the Rubicon that Bashar Assad is not be allowed to cross. Clearly, the same ambassador that was just sent to Damascus, can be recalled again.

The writing for the Bashar Assad regime may already be on the wall. Today it is Tripoli and Bengazi, soon enough it could be Damascus and Aleppo. If not for other reasons, it is the need for consistency and credibility that requires much more American attention being given to Syria.

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Will Syria Be the First Arab Nation to Develop a Nuclear Weapon?By Kenneth BandlerFox NewsMarch 11, 2011

Syria has been enigmatic about its nuclear program ever since Israeli air force jets destroyed a reactor in the middle of the night in September 2007. Mystery surrounded the incident. Even the U.S. took weeks to confirm that what had been hit was indeed a facility, based on a North Korean design, which could have produced bomb material. By the time International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors arrived in Syria in June 2008, the Dair Alzour site had been completely cleared, though some traces of uranium still were found.

The site, also known as al-Kibar, has not remained vacant. While President Bashar al-Assad prohibited any more IAEA visits to Syria, asserting that they would violate his country’s sovereignty, Dair Alzour has been rebuilt and at least one other nuclear site is operating near Damascus.

As a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Syria is obligated to cooperate fully with the IAEA. Obstinacy earned

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Syria top billing, together with Iran, at the IAEA board meeting this week. IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Mohammed El Baradei, has openly challenged Tehran and Damascus to be forthcoming about their nuclear programs.

In the case of Syria, there is genuine concern that President al-Assad wants Syria to be the first Arab nation to develop a nuclear weapon, and he is not allowing the memory of one Israeli attack or the constant queries of world powers to get in the way.

The United States shares Amano’s growing impatience. Glyn Davies, U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, accused Syria of “deliberate efforts to conceal the full extent and scope of what we strongly believe were, and may still be, clandestine nuclear activities,” and threatened Syria with isolation.

What are the options?The IAEA can continue to try to work with the Assad regime, and hope it provides the transparency that has been missing in dealings with Iran on its nuclear program. On the eve of the Vienna meeting, in an effort to stave off criticism or stronger action, Syria did offer to allow IAEA inspectors to visit, but only to see a site in Homs.

But that’s not the place that the IAEA wants to visit in order to gain the information needed for a full assessment of the Syrian program. Accepting this offer would compromise the authority of the international nuclear watchdog and excuse Syria.

Or, Syria can be referred to the UN Security Council, which already has adopted four resolutions against Iran. True, Iran has ignored those actions, as well as the series of additional sanctions imposed by the U.S., EU and other countries. As Amano stated, the IAEA cannot “confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities” because Tehran has refused to provide information requested, prevented access to nuclear sites, and barred IAEA inspectors from entering the country.

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A third option, isolating Syria globally, as Ambassador Davies suggests, could backfire. After all, isolating North Korea did not stop it from banning IAEA inspectors, withdrawing from the NPT, and testing nuclear weapons.

Not easy choices. Still, there are good reasons to suspect the worst about the Assad regime’s intentions. The al-Assad family, Bashar and his late father Hafez, have ruled Syria repressively for more than 40 years.

Human rights abuses and denial of free expression are the norm. Popular uprisings like those occurring across the Arab world are not likely to emerge in Syria soon.

Moreover, Syria hosts Hezbollah, Hamas and other major terrorist organizations. And, the al-Assad regime has long favored interfering in the internal affairs of Lebanon. Together with Iran, Syria helped Hezbollah force a bloodless coup, bringing down the government of Saad Hariri.

In sum, Syria is one of the last countries on earth that should be allowed to attain nuclear capability. Going nuclear will only embolden the rigidity of the regime’s rule and threats to neighbors.

The IAEA’s Amano recently told The Washington Post that he is determined to be “the guardian of nonproliferation,” which is precisely the purpose of the NPT, adopted by the UN in 1970, and renewed last year. Both North Korea and Iran, by their actions, have openly challenged the efficacy of this key international treaty, and Syria may be inclined to emulate its two allies.The U.S. should reassert leadership in coordinating international efforts to convince Damascus to desist. It would be a test case for President Obama’s pledge in 2009 to achieve “a world without nuclear weapons.”Kenneth Bandler is the American Jewish Committee’s director of communications.

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Dark Secrets: The sordid history of Syria's collaboration with Qaddafi.Lee SmithThe Weekly StandardMarch 21, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 26

The uprisings sweeping the Middle East have started to blow down some very dark doors?—?the doors that lead to the dungeons and prisons where Arab security services do their work.

In Alexandria and Cairo, Egyptian protesters broke into the offices of state security, where they discovered some of the tools and torture devices used to make prisoners more pliant. Perhaps more important, they unearthed files detailing the nature of the work, and on whose behalf it was done. When the dust has settled, Washington may find its Arab allies much less willing to chase down and detain terrorist suspects, lest they be accused of collaborating with the Americans.

But what about the dark work Arab regimes do with the aid of other Arab states? Libyan rebels last week reportedly brought down two Syrian fighter pilots flying on behalf of Qaddafi’s besieged regime. Arab sources have told me there may be more than two dozen Syrian pilots flying planes in Libya?—?Qaddafi pays well and Damascus can use the money. Besides, the Syrian-Libyan relationship goes back several decades and the ties between their intelligence services are strong.

Those same sources explain that a delegation from Syrian intelligence services was recently dispatched to Tripoli to scrub the Libyan intelligence archives clean of all the records detailing past projects that the two countries had collaborated on, including terrorism. One Arabic-language website claimed that former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam was involved in these joint operations, including the “disappearance” of Moussa al-Sadr, the Iranian-born Lebanese cleric who went missing in Libya in 1978 and is presumed to be dead. A discovery that Syria

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really was complicit in Sadr’s death could cause Bashar al-Assad’s regime some trouble with Lebanon’s Shia community, which revered the cleric. With Syrian officials likely on the verge of being indicted in the assassination of a major Lebanese Sunni figure, the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, Syria can hardly afford to alienate the Shia, the one Lebanese sect still unequivocally supportive of Damascus.

Khaddam sent word from Paris that he had nothing to do with Sadr’s death. In Washington I spoke with Bassam Bitar, a Khaddam associate who worked in the Syrian regime at high levels. “Khaddam warned Sadr not to go to Libya,” says Bitar. “Khaddam always thought Qaddafi was crazy and thought something could go wrong, but Sadr went anyway because he needed Qaddafi’s money for his projects.”

The point of contention between Qaddafi and Sadr was that the Libyan leader wanted the cleric to use the funds to support the Palestinian resistance against Israel, but Sadr was using it instead to build up the impoverished Shia community in southern Lebanon. “The two started to argue and it got out of hand,” says Bitar. “Qaddafi told his officers to ‘take him away,’ which they interpreted as an order to kill him and his two associates.”

That Qaddafi’s court is populated with men who are likely to interpret the dictator’s displeasure as a command to kill says much about the nature of the Libyan regime. When Qaddafi asked the next day where Sadr was and discovered he had been killed, he had his officer killed. “Qaddafi didn’t want to have any troubles coming from killing Sadr,” says Bitar. “He called the Syrians in a panic to ask for advice, and it was Damascus that told him to concoct the story that he was last seen leaving Libya for Italy, where he supposedly disappeared.”

Khaddam’s man in Washington explains that since the former Syrian vice president was in charge of the Lebanon file until Hafez al-Assad handed it off to his son Bashar, the future president, Khaddam had little to do with Syria and Libya’s joint

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terror operations?—?like the Lockerbie bombing. It’s worth recalling that long before Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbasset al-Megrahi was found guilty in the 1988 operation that killed 270 people, including 190 Americans, Syria was the prime suspect. There’s been plenty of speculation that Damascus was given a free pass when the George H.W. Bush White House wanted Syrian cooperation in Operation Desert Storm and the Madrid peace talks, but Bitar and Khaddam believe that the Syrians worked alongside Libya to bring down Pan Am Flight 103. “The Syrians were handling the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Jibril’s group?—?that’s who did it. But I am certain that Megrahi was also a part of it.”

Bitar, who worked at the Syrian embassy in Paris in the ’80s when Damascus was running Palestinian terrorist organizations out of the French capital, says that the intelligence officer responsible for liaison work with other clandestine services was Gen. Mohammed Khouly. “He was with air force intelligence and since Hafez was from the air force that was another reason to trust him. With Bashar all the intelligence outfits are constantly being reshuffled because he doesn’t trust any of these people. That’s why he’s bringing back some of his father’s associates, men Hafez totally trusted?—?like Mohammed Khouly.”

Bitar suspects that it is Khouly who dispatched Syrian intelligence officers to Tripoli to clean the Libyan files. “They don’t want to get on the bad side of the Americans.” However, it’s difficult to know what sort of extravagant mischief Damascus would have to pull to get on Washington’s bad side. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have made a habit of looking the other way when it comes to Syria?—?whether it’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas, or serving as a transit route for foreign fighters on their way into Iraq to kill American soldiers and U.S. allies, Syria has paid no price for its misdeeds. Even reports that Syria has built a second secret nuclear facility, this one on the outskirts of Damascus, have failed to sour a White House that still believes the central issue in the Middle East is the Arab-Israeli peace process. Obama—and probably Obama alone—seems to think that a deal

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between Damascus and Jerusalem will take the air out of Iran’s balloon and calm the region down.

Even so, the furies now coursing the Middle East will not be quelled by a peace process. The real Middle East experts are in the regimes themselves and they know which way the winds are blowing, or else Syrian intelligence would not be cleaning up its files in Libya?—?they’re hedging their bets in the fear that no matter how many pilots they rent out to him, Qaddafi’s days may be numbered.

“Khaddam believes it is coming to Syria, too,” says Bitar. Of course, Khaddam in exile has plenty of reason to wish for the downfall of the regime he once worked for and now loathes. The history of collaboration between Syria and Libya shows that the regime in Damascus is apt to be every bit as brutal as Qaddafi’s when pushed to the wall, and someday maybe not too far in the future it will be.

Lee Smith is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. His book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (Anchor) has just been published in paperback.

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Tear down this Israeli wall I want the music industry to support Palestinians' rights and oppose this inhumane barrierRoger Water (is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd)Guardian,11 Mar. 2011,

In 1980, a song I wrote, Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so to speak, on certain songs, including mine.

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Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest against Israel's wall around the West Bank. They sang: "We don't need no occupation! We don't need no racist wall!" At the time, I hadn't seen firsthand what they were singing about.

A year later I was contracted to perform in Tel Aviv. Palestinians from a movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go.

The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory to see the wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed.

Under the protection of the United Nations I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world, with disdainful aggression.

If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met: people whose lives are crushed daily by Israel's occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: "We don't need no thought control."

Realising at that point that my presence on a Tel Aviv stage would inadvertently legitimise the oppression I had seen, I cancelled my gig at the stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom, an agricultural community devoted to growing chick peas and also, admirably, to co-operation between different faiths, where Muslim, Christian and Jew work side by side in harmony.

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Against all expectations it was to become the biggest music event in the short history of Israel. Some 60,000 fans battled traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for us, and at the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbours and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel.

Sadly, in the intervening years the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and the wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of the West Bank.

For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel's illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed to travel.

In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair-minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.

Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government's policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel.

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My conviction is born in the idea that all people deserve basic human rights. This is not an attack on the people of Israel. This is, however, a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.

Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa's Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel until the day comes – and it surely will come – when the wall of occupation falls and Palestinians live alongside Israelis in the peace, freedom, justice and dignity that they all deserve.

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Robert Fisk: Palestinians understand Gaddafi better than we doIndependent12 Mar. 2011,

To Beirut. Storms. Heavy rain. Seas sweeping over the little port by my home.

A meeting with a close friend of a son of Gaddafi. "He wants a battle, habibi, he wants a battle. He wants to be the big guerrilla hero, the big man who fights the Americans. He wants to be the Libyan hero who takes on the colonialists. Mr Cameron, Mr Obama, they will do it for him. They will give him the hero title. They will do what he wants."

There is a lot of cigar smoke in the room. Far too much. So to the refugee camp at Mar Elias. A man who escaped the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, white-haired now, my age, shaking his head at the plight of his people in Libya. "You know we've 30,000 people there, Robert? Gaddafi flung them out more than 10 years ago. Most of them are from Gaza. They went there and the Egyptians wouldn't let them cross and the Israelis wouldn't let

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them home, and so they came back and now they stay in Libya and hope for the best from this guy!"

Poor old Palestinians. I should have guessed something was up in Jerusalem last year when an Israeli journalist asked me about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency that has been caring for Palestinian refugees for 60 years. "I'm sure," he announced to me, "that they have some connection with terrorism, that they play a role in keeping terrorism going. What are they really doing in Lebanon?" At the time, I thought this all a bit odd. If any UN institution does its job well, it is UNRWA, arranging for the food, education, healthcare and other needs of millions of Palestinians who lost – or whose parents or grandparents lost – their homes in 1948 and 1949 in what is now Israel.

A visit to the filth of the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut, or to Ein el-Helweh in Sidon, is enough to teach anyone that amid this swamp of misery and hopelessness, UNRWA represents the world's only collective sympathy, underfunded, short-staffed, poor though it is. Yet now, the whole organisation is being singled out by a right-wing Israel and its so-called (and self-proclaiming) supporters as purveyors of darkness, "de-legitimisers", a network of support for Palestinians which must be destroyed lest the poorest of the poor – including those in the misery of Gaza – become addicted to their social services. UNRWA – I find it hard to believe this is a real quotation from a research fellow at a major US university, but it is – has "created a breeding ground for international terrorism".

I suppose we might as well laugh as cry, but this comes from a cruel – indeed vicious – article that appeared in the American Commentary magazine a few weeks ago, written by one Michael Bernstam, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. I single it out not because it is atypical, but because it represents a growing and quite ruthless trend in right-wing Israeli thinking, the kind of self-delusional brutality that is supposed to persuade us that the destiny of the poorest of the Palestinian poor is the destruction of

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their camps. In his article, Bernstam actually claims that "for 60 years, UNRWA has been paying four generations of Palestinians to remain refugees, reproduce refugees and live in refugee camps", where it is, "in effect, underwriting a self-destructive Palestinian cycle of violence, internecine bloodshed and a perpetual war against Israel". Get the point? The UN is now the fount of all terror.

There was a time when this kind of drivel would be ignored but it is now part of an increasingly dangerous narrative in which charity is turned into evil, in which the one institution supplying help to perhaps 95 per cent of almost five million Palestinian refugees is to become a target. And since UNRWA in Gaza did appear to become a target in the 2008-9 bloodbath, this is pretty frightening stuff.

But hold on. It goes further. "UNRWA's mandate created ... a permanent supranational welfare state in which simply placing most Palestinians on the international dole has extinguished incentives for work and investment ... and created a breeding ground for international terrorism. It is this open-ended refugee status that puts bread on the table in the rent-free house, together with an array of rent-free services." This allows the Palestinians – mark these words – a "permanent refugee ... war as it is fuelled by a particular 'right of return' claim – the argument that the Palestinians should be given title to the land they occupied before Israel's independence".

Note that word "occupied". Far from owning the land, they "occupied" it! They had a "particular" "right of return" claim. And – wait for the next bit: "The claim of the Palestinian right of return is intended for one historical ethnic diaspora of the descendants of perennial refugees to repopulate another people's nation-state, Israel. This is not the right of return to a country; this is the right of return of a country, a reconquest after a lost war, a claim of the right of retake."

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And so it goes on and on and on ... UNRWA should be abolished, which "would signal the end of the world body's support for the continuance of the Palestinian's agony ... Israel is obviously unsuitable as a country of resettlement because integration there is not feasible ... Instead of perpetuating the dead end that the international welfare state for the Palestinians represents, ending UNRWA's horrific six-decade reign would instantly create the conditions for an honest, meaningful and viable peace process to begin in the Middle East".

There you have it. Mr Bernstam should meet Mr Gaddafi. They have a lot in common. Total contempt for the Palestinians. Total abuse for a people who have lost their future and their lives. Total abuse for anyone but their own tribe. Wasn't it Gaddafi who invented the word "Israeltine"?

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The New Arab Awakening: "Neither With the West, Nor Against It"By ALAIN GRESHCounter Punch,11 Mar. 2011,

A large Muslim country is overwhelmed by strikes and demonstrations. This pillar of US regional policy is damaged by authoritarian rule and its resources are looted by the president’s family; there is social and economic crisis; Washington abandons an old ally and the US Secretary of State calls on a dictator to stand down and allow for democratic transition.

This may sound like Egypt in 2011. In fact, it was Indonesia in May 1998, and the call for President Suharto to stand down came from Madeleine Albright, not Hillary Clinton. He had seized power in 1965 with the help of the CIA in a coup in which half a million communists, or suspected communists, were killed.

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After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Indonesia was no longer needed as a bulwark against communism; the US decided it would rather support democratic movements, and direct them to suit its interests. President Bill Clinton wanted to project a more open image of the US. It turned out to be a wise choice, and Indonesia has maintained close relations with the US, even though, as an active member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, it has taken an independent stance on the Iranian nuclear issue.

What do we learn from this? No dictatorship lasts forever, even when it rules the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Internal changes influence foreign policy, but the extent of evolution depends on the context: Egypt is not Indonesia, and the Middle East is not Southeast Asia.

It has been commonplace for western politicians and diplomats to sneer at the “Arab street”; they asked if we really needed to listen to hundreds of millions of people with their Islamist and anti-western slogans when we got on so well with their leaders, who were so good at maintaining order, and extended such warm hospitality. (Between 1995 and 2001, 400 French government ministers spent their holidays in Morocco.) These leaders maintained the fiction of the Israel-Palestine peace process, even as Israeli settlements spread.

The fantasy that the Arabs are passive and unsuited to democracy has evaporated in weeks. Arabs have overthrown hated authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In Libya, they have fought a sclerotic regime in power for 42 years that has refused to listen to their demands, facing extraordinary violence, hundreds of deaths, untold injuries, mass exodus and generalised chaos. In Algeria, Morocco, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Iraqi Kurdistan, the West Bank and Oman, Arabs have taken to the streets in vast numbers. This defiance has spread even to non-Arab Iran.

And where promises of reform have been made but were then found wanting, people have simply returned to the streets. In

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Egypt, protesters have demanded faster and further-reaching reform. In Tunisia, renewed demonstrations on 25-27 February led to five deaths but won a change of prime minister (Mohamed Ghannouchi stepped down in favour of Beji Caid-Essebsi). In Iraq, renewed protests led to a promise to sack unsatisfactory ministers. In Algeria, the 19-year emergency law was repealed amid continuing protests. The demands are growing throughout the region, and will not be silenced.

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the uprising in Libya, and all the other popular movements that have shaken the region are not just about how people want to live and develop, but about regional politics. For the first time since the 1970s, geopolitics cannot be analysed without taking into account, at least in part, the aspirations of people who have retaken control of their destinies.

This is certainly the case with Egypt. Even if it is too early to predict foreign policy, Washington has lost an unconditional ally: US regional strategy has relied on Egypt, along with Israel (with which Sadat signed a peace treaty in 1979), for the last 30 years. Egypt took part in the 1990-91 Gulf war against Iraq, and Mubarak was at the forefront of the fight against the “Iranian threat”. He maintained the illusion of the Middle East “peace process”, putting pressure on the Palestinian Authority to continue negotiations, and regularly welcomed Israeli leaders to Sharm el-Sheikh, even though it was clear they had no intention of agreeing a peace accord. Egypt under Mubarak participated in the economic blockade of Gaza and helped scupper all attempts at reconciliation by Hamas and Fatah, even one negotiated by another “moderate” country, Saudi Arabia (the Mecca accord of May 2007). During the uprising, some demonstrators waved placards in Hebrew, claiming the only language Mubarak understood was that of Israel’s leaders.

Peace and stabilityThe Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, currently in charge in Egypt, has reassured Washington and Tel Aviv that it will respect Egypt’s international commitments, a reference to the 1978 Camp

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David accords and 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty. It is unlikely Egyptians would want to return to a state of war, but they do not see these agreements as the basis of regional peace and stability: quite the opposite. As Steven Cook of the Council of Foreign Relations in New York put it: “From the perspective of many Egyptians, this arrangement hopelessly constrained Cairo’s power while freeing Israel and the US to pursue their regional interests unencumbered. Without the threat of war with Egypt, Israel poured hundreds of thousands of Israelis into settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, invaded Lebanon (twice), declared Jerusalem its capital, and bombed Iraq and Syria”.

Egyptians have expressed their sympathy with the Palestinians and Lebanese whenever they have had the chance: during the war with Lebanon in 2006, portraits of the Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah were displayed in Cairo shops even as the Egyptian regime condemned Hizbullah’s recklessness. The protesters who fought for multi-party democracy do not much like Iran – a non-Arab, Shia Muslim country and historic rival, whose repressive rule worsens by the day – but they do value its refusal to bow to the diktats of the US and Israel. A more representative future government in Egypt will need to take account of popular feeling over Gaza and relations with Israel, and will probably be more wary of US attempts to form a common (if undeclared) front between Arab countries and Israel against Iran.

Egypt’s room for manoeuvre will also depend on its economic base, which has been weakened by years of “liberalisation”, begun by Sadat’s infitah (opening up of the economy). Egypt remains dependent on US military and food aid, and funding from the EU, which now has a fragile economy. Some commentators suggest that Egypt could adopt an independent foreign policy like Turkey; but Turkey’s diplomatic freedom is based on a dynamic economy, and a GNP three times that of Egypt’s, with roughly the same population.

The upheaval in Egypt worries other Arab countries which are presented as “moderate”. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah

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intervened with President Barack Obama on Mubarak’s behalf. The king, and other leaders, are haunted by the fear of a decline of US power in the region. The fact that the US has managed to put together a broad front against Iran’s nuclear programme and impose sanctions does not hide its failure in Iraq (US troops are due to withdraw by the end of this year, and Iraq has been affected by the protests spreading across the region), the stalemate in Afghanistan, and its inability to get the Israelis to halt expansion of settlements.

Saudi media warningThe resignation of Saad Hariri’s government in Lebanon in January and the abandonment of Mubarak worsened the fears of these “moderate” leaders, already alarmed by the way the movement for democracy had spread. The youth of the Gulf are not immune to events in Tunisia and Egypt. On 16 February, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan called on the authorities to take account of the aspirations of young people, who “take an interest in development projects, follow their implementation and how quickly they are carried out, measure their effectiveness and cost, and share information on who gains and who loses from them” – a reference to the corruption that blights many projects in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia was already trying a more independent path by getting closer to Syria. It responded favourably to overtures by the new Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, in January.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has lost a faithful ally in Mubarak, who was opposed to PA reconciliation with Hamas and supported its policy of negotiation with Israel. The PA has to recognise the change. In February Obama asked PA president Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw a UN Security Council resolution the PA had tabled, condemning Israeli settlement building. Abbas refused, marking a hardening of position towards the US. Will the lack of political progress inspire the youth of the West Bank – and Gaza – to express their desire for freedom and dignity? Will they present their struggle in terms of human rights and equality, and protest peacefully in the streets, against both their leaders and the

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occupation? According to The Jerusalem Post, the Israeli army is creating a rapid reaction force to counter this.

In Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu’s government was more concerned than the US’s Arab allies by events in Egypt, and made clear its strong support for Mubarak. Daniel Levy, of the New America Foundation thinktank, says this attitude illuminates Israel’s frequent claim to be the “only democracy in the Middle East”: it indicates not a fear of being isolated among surrounding dictatorships but a wish to remain the only democracy. Successive Israeli governments have felt comfortable with pro-western authoritarian regimes because they were aware of the Arab street’s solidarity with the Palestinians.

For the moment Israel is paralysed, deliberately exaggerating the role of the Islamists, drawing parallels with Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979 and rattling sabres more loudly over the “Iranian threat”, which it believes the world does not understand. It has told its soldiers they might be ordered to invade Lebanon again, as minister of defence Ehud Barak warned on a recent visit to the northern front.

If the West has lost (with allies already overthrown), does that mean the Syria-Iran axis, and its allies Hamas and Hizbullah, have won? It does, but their weaknesses are clear. Hamas is confined to Gaza, and the likelihood that the UN special tribunal for Lebanon, into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, will indict Hizbullah’s leaders is weakening the movement. The Iranian leadership may have welcomed the revolution in Egypt, but it has put down its own protesters and intensified repression.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has two trump cards: fear among Syrians that unrest will lead to Iraqi-style instability and sectarian conflict, and his firm stance against Israel, which has popular support. However, economic liberalisation and a fast-growing population mean Syria faces severe economic and social problems. Young Syrians want freedom too.

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Palestine not forgottenThe US adapted well to the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, but the situation now in the Middle East is very different – mainly because of Palestine, which many commentators mistakenly believe was a minor issue for the protesters. The organisers of Cairo’s protests banned anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans, deciding to concentrate on opposing the Mubarak regime. But at the huge victory celebration in Cairo on 18 February, after Mubarak stood down, many protesters chanted for the liberation of Jerusalem.

For decades the US has been able to give Israel almost unconditional support with impunity: Arab leaders have remained faithful, and the US has cared little about being unpopular on the Arab street. But this is coming to an end. In March 2010, General David Petraeus, then head of US Central Command, said: “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.” The new geopolitical context will force the US administration to make crucial choices, but does it have the will, and ability, to do so?

These questions also apply to the EU, which has been compromised by its staunch support for Ben Ali and Mubarak. The EU was incapable of maintaining distance from dictators, has made many agreements with an Israeli government that is hostile to peace, and has promoted neoliberal economic policies that have worsened poverty and facilitated massive corruption south of the Mediterranean. Will it now have the courage to listen to the Arab street, which is not in fact a crowd of bearded fundamentalists and women in niqabs? Perhaps, as the Lebanese writer Georges Corm suggests, civil society in the North should follow the Arab example and “raise the level of protest against the dreadful neoliberal oligarchy that impoverishes European economies, creates too few jobs and every year forces more Europeans of all nationalities into insecurity. This backwards evolution benefits a

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narrow layer of managers whose annual pay eats up more and more of the nations’ wealth”.

In only a few years, the world has become polycentric. Every large country, including Brazil, China, India and South Africa, is trying to find its place – neither in opposition nor subservient to the US, but beside it, defending its own interests. Turkey is a member of Nato and a US ally, but plays an important role in the region by taking an independent stance towards Iran’s nuclear program and Palestine. North Africa and the Middle East want to join this global movement. “What the people of the region demand,” wrote Graham Fuller, former CIA officer and author of The Future of Political Islam, “is to be able to take control of their own lives and destinies. ... In the near term, the prescription is stark – Washington must back off and leave these societies alone, ending the long political infantilization of Middle Eastern populations ... based on a myopic vision of American interests”.

“Neither East nor West” chanted Iranian protesters in 1979, opposing both the US and the Soviet Union. “Neither with the West nor against it” could be the slogan now across the Arab world, expressing a desire for independence and sovereignty in a multi-polar world. They will judge the West by its ability to defend the principles of justice and international law everywhere, particularly in Palestine. But they will no longer allow their governments to use the struggle against the West to justify tyranny.

Alain Gresh is vice president of Le Monde diplomatique and heads its Middle East/Muslim world department

This article appears in the March edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, the excellent monthly whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

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Syrian Surge Far from the oversupplied markets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but seemingly unaffected by today’s ongoing political unrest, the old towns and cities of Syria await a period of much-needed development.by Elizabeth Broomhall Construction Week OnlineMar 12, 2011

Bereft of housing, shopping malls, office space and hotels, Syria, according to reports, represents an untapped resource for those still embarking on a period of market diversification, and one of the few emerging markets lacking development in almost every sector.

But for contractors, there are still a few big, burning questions. Many are asking, why now? Historically, Syria has not been so attractive. Others want to know how real the opportunities are there and, if there is money to be made, how easy is it to penetrate the market?

“Syria was not the most attractive market to the private sector previously, either domestically or internationally,” says Adrian Creed, partner at the legal firm Trowers & Hamlins, which has been operating in Syria for some time.

“But the over the last two years, the position has changed. Syria is not a particularly wealthy country; their oil production is in fairly steep decline, and I think they have realised that they cannot continue to fund a big government social programme and military programme without the help of the private sector.”

“This means that, whereas before companies in Syria were state-owned, now they are looking to open up these markets and allow the private sector to participate. This represents quite a steep departure from Syria’s historical approach to doing business and its traditional procurement models,” he added.

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Certainly, the imminence of a new PPP law in the country would suggest this is the case. Aimed at enticing, rather than simply opening up, opportunities for business, the legislation, which is likely to be introduced any day, will include important safeguards to ensure investment protection, as well as a number of investment promotion schemes.

It will also maintain a central procurement process for PPP projects while providing clearer terms of reference and a more modern legislative framework for businesses.

In terms of individual industries, it seems that Syria is lacking development in every sector. From housing and social infrastructure, to malls and hotels, analysts are positive about the opportunities.

Colliers International’s Syria specialist Sadallah Abed said, “The level of development activities in the country, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, was very slow, creating an undersupplied situation across all the market sectors and in all the cities.”

Jones Lang LaSalle’s MENA director for strategic consulting, Laura McLauchlan, agrees. “There is a significant undersupply of purpose-built office space in Damascus and Aleppo, with most businesses operating out of converted residential units. This is causing extremely high rental rates in Damascus. Mall retail in Syria is also a relatively new phenomenon.”

Taking malls as an example, experts emphasise that the current supply of formal mall shopping in Syria is just 130,000m2 GLA which, with a population of four million, equates to less than 0.03m3 per head, compared with 1.6m2 in Dubai.

And, even with the addition of malls being developed by Majid Al Futtaim and Emaar (the Khams Shamat development and the malls within the Eighth Gate development respectively), this will still only equate to 372,000m2 GLA and 0.09m2 per head.

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That said, both analysts would agree that housing and tourism continue to be among the country’s biggest priorities.

“Having one of the richest tourism attractions in the region, Syria lacks quality hospitality products and desperately needs to develop its hospitality offering, especially if it is to diversify its income away from debilitating oil reserves,” says Abed. “It is also in desperate need of low- to middle-income housing projects.”

In order to encourage more tourism projects specifically, the government has already implemented a tax exemption policy for all projects which fall into the tourism category, and allowed companies to import all construction materials and equipment without restrictions.

According to Syrian developer Bena Properties, this is a policy which many developers are taking advantage of. “This is a country which has made a political decision to encourage tourism,” says CEO Hawazen Esber.

“We are taking full advantage of this policy. So far we have five hotels under development, with three under construction.”

As for housing projects, developers active in the country seem to have made a good start on a number of masterplanned communities, this being an extremely high government priority, and reportedly one of the biggest reasons for attracting private investment.

“There is a huge need for housing in Syria,” says Creed, “and good opportunities for contractors to get involved in concession-type projects. The view that all social housing projects are not profitable is just not the case.

In fact, I definitely see this as the next big thing; especially after all the recent unrest, housing is going to go right to the top of the political agenda.”

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But as with every new market, Syria is by no means free from challenges and risks. Among them is the lack of international know-how among local firms and workers, who must be relied upon as international labour is prohibited and, much like Saudi Arabia, there is the ongoing issue of late payments.

“The biggest challenge for us is using local labour, as the law in Syria prohibits us from using foreign labour,” says Riyadh Al Ani, project manager at Arabtec, currently building Bena’s Yasmeen Rotana in Damascus. “The problem is that the local market is relatively unfamiliar with international standards, so we have to give them some assistance.”

In agreement is BG&E engineers’ Dubai technical manager, Simon Corderoy, whose firm is also working on the Yasmeen Rotana. “One of the challenges is that the local workforce in Syria has not worked on projects of the same significance as, say, those in Dubai, so it is difficult getting them up to speed.

In terms of payments, we have not had any issues, but I believe there are issues for some firms to do with payments being made into Syrian bank accounts.”

Another challenge is getting to grips with the local regulations. “They are not difficult to satisfy,” he says, “it is more a case of finding out what they are. This can be a challenge because they are normally all in Arabic.”

Thus, should a contractor decide to work in Syria, Corderoy advises understanding the local requirements fully before even submitting a tender. “If you are making promises, you need to have an understanding of the requirements, or you could come across problems.

For example, they require a heavier loading for carparks in Syria than they do in Dubai, to allow for the storage of ammunition and military vehicles in times of conflict.”

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Other difficulties stem from Syria’s unique culture and geography. While a history of state domination has made Syria fairly bureaucraticin its processes, a sustained period of underdevelopment has left the country behind its GCC neighbours in terms of its legal framework, and the location means the weather is less predictable and more likely to cause delays.

And yet, with so many challenges apparent in all new markets, perhaps a more important question is: how do the challenges in Syria compare to other markets?

“I think what has happened in the Gulf is that they have been augmenting their laws and allowing for PPPs and private investment, and generally keeping up to date with what is happening in the West, making sure their laws are modern and promote investment.

That has not happened in Syria, and I think as a result they are a bit behind in terms of their legislative framework,” says Creed. “That said, I do not really think that is a major impediment, and I would say in the next five years, things are going to change.”

Corderoy also has a positive attitude. “When it comes to challenges for international contractors, Syria is fairly similar to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Of course, the local authorities have their own regulations, but the differences are not drastic.”

Furthermore, companies across the board seem to agree that the benefits far outweigh the difficulties, highlighting perks such as space to build, ease of living and good opportunities for solid project revenues even on social housing projects, not to mention a development trend based on real demand.

“Since demand is domestically-driven and not speculative, there is more than enough expectation about the level of sustained

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growth,” says Banque Saudi Fransi’s chief economist John Sfakianakis.

His view is echoed by Bena Properties’ Esber. “It is much easier to build in Syria than people might think,” he says. “You just need the right team, the right contractor and the right consultant and the right methodology. The problem the country has been facing is the lack of management and the lack of understanding about how to do a deliver a project properly. Often it has to do with the lack of focus from head office or the lack of understanding of working abroad.

“The problem is that companies have tried to apply the GCC model, but it does not fit . In the GCC, development was based more on investment, but in Syria and North Africa you have to rely on local demand.

It shows everywhere – things are in Arabic rather than in English, and here you are more likely to interface with local people rather than expatriates.”

That said, he maintains that there are a number of successful developers and contractors working on and bidding for projects now, and that this is only likely to grow as the country continues to release new tenders.

Facts:0.03m3 Amount of gross lettable area (shopping) per person in Syria$130m Value of Bena Properties’ new Yasmeen Rotana hotel21.09m Total population of Syria

Top Syrian projects:• Khams Shamat development: Majid Al Futtaim• Eighth Gate development: Emaar• Yasmeen Rotana: Bena Properties• Damascus Hills: Bena Properties

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Gen. Wesley Clark says Libya doesn't meet the test for U.S. military actionWesley K. ClarkWashington PostFriday, March 11, 2011;

In March of 1974, when I was a young Army captain, I was sitting in a conference on civil-military relations at Brown University. Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.) was onstage expounding on the lessons from Vietnam about military interventions. He then stopped and looked right at me and the four West Point cadets at my side. "You, the young officer and cadets sitting there - never in your lifetimes will you see us intervene abroad," I recall him saying. "We've learned that lesson."

For all his brilliance, Aspin couldn't have been more wrong.

We have launched many military interventions since then. And today, as Moammar Gaddafi looks vulnerable and Libya descends into violence, familiar voices are shouting, once again: "Quick, intervene, do something!" It could be a low-cost win for democracy in the region. But before we aid the Libyan rebels or establish a no-fly zone, let's review what we've learned about intervening since we pulled out of Vietnam.

The past 37 years have been replete with U.S. interventions. Some have succeeded, such as our actions in Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), the Persian Gulf War (1991) and the Balkans (1995-2000). Some were awful blunders, such as the attempted hostage rescue in Iran (1980), landing the Marines in Lebanon (1982) or the Somalia intervention (1992-94).

Some worked in the short run, but not the longer term - such as the occupation of Haiti in 1994. Others still hang in the balance, such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, consuming hundreds of billions of dollars and wrecking thousands of American lives. Along the way, we've bombed a few tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi himself, operated through proxies in Central

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America, and stood ready with fly-overs, deployments, mobility exercises and sail-bys across the globe.

I've thought about military interventions for a long time - from before my service in Vietnam to writing a master's thesis at Fort Leavenworth to leading NATO forces in the Kosovo war. In considering Libya, I find myself returning to the guidelines for intervention laid out by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in 1984. The world has changed a great deal since then, so I've adapted and updated his vision to develop my own rules for when the United States should deploy its blood and treasure in operations far from home.

Understand the national interests at stake, and decide if the result is worth the cost.

We went into Lebanon with a reinforced battalion of Marines in 1982 because we believed that it was in our national interest to stabilize the situation after the Israelis had been forced out of Beirut. But after the terrorist bombing of their barracks killed 241 U.S. service members the next year, we pulled out. After the tragedy, any benefits seemed to pale in light of the cost and continuing risks.

In 1999, when we launched the NATO air campaign against Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, President Bill Clinton had to state publicly that he didn't intend to use ground troops. He did so in an effort to limit the costs of an initiative that the public and Congress did not consider to be in our nation's vital interest. The administration and I, as the NATO commander in Europe, were in a difficult position, and Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic knew it. But what Milosevic didn't understand was that once we began the strikes - with NATO troops deployed in neighboring countries and the Dayton Peace Agreement to enforce in Bosnia - NATO couldn't afford to lose. And the United States had a vital interest in NATO's success, even if we had a less-than-vital interest in Kosovo.

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In 2001, when the United States went into Afghanistan, it was clear that we had to strike back after the attacks of Sept. 11. And we're still there, despite all the ambiguities and difficulties, because we have a vital interest in combating al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups there and across the border in Pakistan.

How do we apply this test to Libya? Protecting access to oil supplies has become a vital interest, but Libya doesn't sell much oil to the United States, and what has been cut off is apparently being replaced by Saudi production. Other national interests are more complex. Of course, we want to support democratic movements in the region, but we have two such operations already underway - in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there are the humanitarian concerns. It is hard to stand by as innocent people are caught up in violence, but that's what we did when civil wars in Africa killed several million and when fighting in Darfur killed hundreds of thousands. So far, the violence in Libya is not significant in comparison. Maybe we could earn a cheap "victory," but, on whatever basis we intervene, it would become the United States vs. Gaddafi, and we would be committed to fight to his finish. That could entail a substantial ground operation, some casualties and an extended post-conflict peacekeeping presence.

Know your purpose and how the proposed military action will achieve it.

In 1989, when the United States wanted regime change in Panama, a powerful U.S. force took over the country, captured dictator Manuel Noriega and enabled the democratic opposition to form a new government. Panama today is a thriving democracy.

On the other hand, in Somalia in 1992-94, we started out on a humanitarian mission, gradually transitioned to greater use of military power and then had a tragic tactical stumble trying to arrest a warlord. The loss of 18 Americans caused national outrage, and eventually we pulled out. We experienced classic mission creep, without reconsidering the strategy or the means to achieve it.

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In Libya, if the objective is humanitarian, then we would work with both sides and not get engaged in the matter of who wins. Just deliver relief supplies, treat the injured and let the Libyans settle it. But if we want to get rid of Gaddafi, a no-fly zone is unlikely to be sufficient - it is a slick way to slide down the slope to deeper intervention.

Determine the political endgame before intervening.

In Haiti in 1994, it was a matter of getting rid of the military junta that had forced out the democratically elected president and restoring a democratic government. We prepared and threatened an invasion, we used it as leverage in negotiations, and within four weeks of its start, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was back in power.

But in Iraq in 2003, we failed to chart a clear path to democracy before taking action. So after we toppled Hussein, we lacked a ready alternative. Eight years later we've come a long way, but at a very high price.

In Libya, we don't know who the rebels really are or how a legitimate government would be formed if Gaddafi were pushed out. Perhaps we will have a better sense when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with rebel leaders, as she is scheduled to do this coming week. In a best-case scenario, there would be a constitutional convention, voter lists, political parties and internationally supervised free and fair elections. But there could also be a violent scramble for authority in which the most organized, secretive and vicious elements take over. We are not well-equipped to handle that kind of struggle. And once we intervene, Libya's problems would become our responsibility.

Get U.S. public support, obtain diplomatic and legal authority, and get allies engaged.

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Offensive war is, in general, illegal. In the Persian Gulf War, Iraq's actions in 1990 were a clear case of aggression; we obtained full U.N. support. We had a congressional resolution. And we enjoyed the overwhelming backing of our allies and Arab partners. They even paid most of the cost of Operation Desert Storm, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. The resulting military action was widely hailed as a legitimate and moral victory.

In 1999 in Kosovo, the United States and NATO had a humanitarian U.N. resolution backing our actions. The American public was mostly unengaged, but NATO was able to wield its diplomatic power and the incremental use of force to compel Milosevic's surrender. (The coup de grace was his indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia.)

By contrast, going it alone, without substantial international legal and diplomatic support, is a recipe for trouble. Our haste and clumsiness going into Iraq in 2003 - without a compelling reason to intervene, in my view - has cost us dearly.

In Libya, Gaddafi has used and supported terrorism, murdered Americans and repressed his people for 40 years. The American public may want to see him go. But his current actions aren't an attack on the United States or any other country. On what basis would we seek congressional support and international authorization to intervene in a civil war? Do we have the endorsement of the Arab League? A U.N. Security Council resolution?

Avoid U.S. and civilian casualties.

In Kosovo, NATO had the upper hand from the outset. We weren't losing aircraft (we lost only two in combat out of 36,000 sorties flown over 78 days); we never lost a soldier or airman in combat; and because we minimized innocent civilian casualties and the destruction of nonmilitary property, we maintained our moral authority.

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But once Americans start dying, public tolerance for military action wanes sharply. We've seen it time and again, from the aborted attempt to rescue our hostages in Iran in 1980 to Afghanistan today. Intervening successfully isn't so much a matter of how many troops and planes you use, it's about mustering decisive power - military, diplomatic, legal, economic, moral - while avoiding the casualties and collateral damage that discredit the mission.

A no-fly zone in Libya may seem straightforward at first, but if Gaddafi continues to advance, the time will come for airstrikes, extended bombing and ground troops - a stretch for an already overcommitted force. A few unfortunate incidents can quash public support.

Once you decide to do it, get it over with.

Use decisive force - military, economic, diplomatic and legal. The longer an operation takes, the more can go wrong. In 1983, we went in with overwhelming force against an attempted communist takeover in Grenada. With 20,000 U.S. troops against 600 Cuban military engineers and some ill-trained locals, it was over in three days. The Cubans were out, the American students who had been held hostage were freed and casualties were minimal. Grenada transitioned to democracy.

The operation in Panama lasted about three weeks; the ground fight in the Gulf War only 100 hours. We pushed the limit in Kosovo with a 78-day air campaign, but fortunately, Milosevic ran out of options before NATO had to commit to planning an invasion.

Given these rules, what is the wisest course of action in Libya? To me, it seems we have no clear basis for action. Whatever resources we dedicate for a no-fly zone would probably be too little, too late. We would once again be committing our military to force regime change in a Muslim land, even though we can't quite bring ourselves to say it. So let's recognize that the basic requirements

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for successful intervention simply don't exist, at least not yet: We don't have a clearly stated objective, legal authority, committed international support or adequate on-the-scene military capabilities, and Libya's politics hardly foreshadow a clear outcome.

We should have learned these lessons from our long history of intervention. We don't need Libya to offer us a refresher course in past mistakes.

Wesley K. Clark, a retired Army general and NATO's former supreme allied commander in Europe, is a senior fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at the University of California at Los Angeles. He will be online to chat on Monday, March 14, at 11: 30 a.m. Submit your questions or comments now.

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