The good news is that Iraqis turned out in sufficient numbers for their elections to endow their elected new government with the mantle of legitimacy. The bad news, or rather the problematic news that takes us into uncharted territory, is that for the first time since the thirteenth century, a major Arab nation is about to be governed by Shias. The minority sect of Islam, the Shia, has traditionally been seen as the despised heretics and the lower classes, and as the potential traitors of the Arab world.
And now the prospect of their dominance is ending shivers of alarm throughout much of the Sunni-dominated Arab world. Jordan's King Abdullah warned last month of the emergence of a "Shia crescent" that ran from Iran, through southern Iraq and west through the Shias of Lebanon to the Mediterranean and south through the Shias of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to the Persian Gulf. About 15 percent of the Saudi population is Shia, and they happen to live in the eastern provinces where most Saudi oil is to be found.
With Lebanon to the west and Iraq to the east, Jordan is surrounded by Shias, which gave a personal note of urgency to the young king's remarks in his abortive campaign to delay the Iraq elections. "President Bush needs to be aware that the new government of Iraq will write the constitution," the king said. "The president needs to think out of the box and consider what type of government this will create. If the Americans are so keen to put the Iranians in their place, they need to see that Iraq is the soft under-belly of Iran."
Washington did not take him too seriously and nor did most Western Arabists.
"With these elections, the Americans are changing a historic balance of power between Sunnis and Shias in the Arab world that has endured for centuries," Professor Asher Susser, who runs the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East Studies at Tel Aviv University, and is one of Israel's top experts on the Arab world, said.
"Now the Shias are on the rise in Lebanon, where demographics have made them the largest single community, and where their Hizbullah Party is a major force in parliament. They are the majority community in Bahrain and close to the majority in other Persian Gulf states," Susser added. "And the prospect of Shia rule in Iraq suggests to much of the Arab world that Iraq will no longer be able to fulfill its historic role of holding the Persians at bay."
The Shia brand of Islam was born in defeat. Their founder, Ali, the devout son-in-law of the Prophet, was out-maneuvered for the succession by the father-in-law when Mohammed died. The seminal figure in Shia history, the Imam Hussein, was a grandson of the Prophet and he died a martyr, hopelessly outnumbered, at the battle of Karbala in 680, defending the faith and its purity against the corrupt dynasty that had assumed power in Islam.
There is a legend that as he died, Hussein condemned the Iraqis who had failed to rally to his banner. "May you never satisfy a ruler," he cursed them. "And may you never be satisfied by a ruler."
And now the long defeat and subordination of the Shias may be drawing to a close. The Shias are poised to rule Iraq, courtesy of the Americans and their well-meant democracy. It remains to be seen whether Hussein's curse remains in force, for Iraq, for the Shias and the wider world.
Martin Walker
METIMES.COM

Palestinian women mourn over the body of a girl brought home during her funeral in Rafah Refugee Camp, Jan. 31. (AP Photo)

So, the Palestinians will end their occupation of Israel. No more will Palestinian tanks smash their way into Haifa and Tel Aviv. No more will Palestinian F-18s bomb Israeli population centers. No more will Palestinian Apache helicopters carry out "targeted killings"--i.e., murders--of Israeli military leaders.
The Palestinians have promised to end all "acts of violence" against Israelis while Israel has promised to end all "military activity" against Palestinians. So that's it, then. Peace in our time.
A Martian--even a well-educated Martian--would have gathered that this was the message, supposing he dropped in on the fantasy world of Sharm el-Sheikh this week. Palestinians had been committing "violence," the Israelis carrying out "innocent" operations. Palestinian "violence" or "terror and violence"--the latter a more popular phrase since it carried the stigma of 9/11--was now at an end.
Mahmoud Abbas, who told a close Lebanese friend this year that he wore a suit and tie so that he would look "different" from Yasser Arafat--went along with all this. Just which people were occupying the homes of which other people remained a mystery.
Silver-haired and wisdom-burdened, Abbas looked the part. We had to forget that it was this same Abbas who wrote the Oslo Accords, who in 1,000 pages failed to use--even once--the word occupation and who talked not of Israeli "withdrawal" from Palestinian territory but of "redeployment."
At no point at Sharm el-Sheikh did anyone mention occupation. Like sex, occupation had to be censored out of the historical narrative. As usual--as in Oslo--the real issues were put back to a later date. Refugees, the "right of return," East Beit-ul-Moqaddas as a Palestinian capital: Let's deal with them later.
Never before have we been in such need of the caustic voice of the late Edward Said. Settlements--Jewish colonies for Jews, and Jews only, on Arab land--were not, of course, discussed. Nor was East Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
Nor was the "right of return" of 1948 refugees. These are the "unrealistic dreams" that were referred to by the Israelis.
All this will be discussed "later"--as they were supposed to be in Abbas' hopeless Oslo agreement. As long as you can postpone the real causes of war, that's OK. "An end to violence," that has cost 4,000 deaths--it was all said, minus the all-important equation that two-thirds of these were Palestinian lives. Peace, peace, peace. It was like terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It was the sort of stuff you could buy off a supermarket shelf. If only.
At the end of the day the issues were these. Will the Israelis close down their massive settlements in the West Bank, including those that surround Beit-ul-Moqaddas? No mention of this. Will they end the expansion of Jewish settlements--for Jews, and Jews only, across the Palestinian West Bank? No mention of this. Will they allow the Palestinians to have a capital in Arab East Beit-ul-Moqaddas? No mention of this. Will the Palestinians truly end their Intifada--including their murderous suicide bombings--as a result of these non-existent promises?
If we are going to clap our hands like the Sharm el-Sheikh "peacemakers," we'd better realize that unless we are going to resolve these great issues of injustice now, this new act of "peacemaking" will prove to be as bloody as Oslo. Ask Mahmoud Abbas. He was the author of that first fatal agreement.
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

Ever since the American academic, Samuel Huntington, published his highly controversial thesis regarding the Clash of Civilisations that warned of an inevitable confrontation between the West and the East, few have had reason to look ahead with optimism. What made matters even worse was the fact that such a simplistic thesis had such a wide audience in the world at large. Hundreds, if not thousands of prominent intellectuals, strategists and politicians considered the doom-laden prognosis of Huntington with care.
It is therefore refreshing to come across those who are more than happy to take on the Huntingtonian thesis head on and to expose the fallacies that lie at its roots. One of them is Professor Dieter Senghaas, political scientist and peace studies expert from the University of Bremen, Germany. Over the years Prof Senghaas has worked and taught in a number of fields related to international relations as well as conflict resolution. Recently he began to look into civilisational development and inter-civilisation dialogue.
According to Prof Senghaas: ÒOne of the biggest obstacles that stands in the way of dialogue between East and West today is the belief that cultures and civilisations are somehow self-generated and autonomous entitiesÓ. He points out: ÒWhen Huntington proposed his thesis of the clash of civilisations, this was precisely the logic upon which his whole argument was based. But the premise is false, and it shows that he does not have a theory at all of how civilisations developÓ.
For Prof Senghaas, the reality is that civilisations are complex assemblies that come together amidst a string of variable factors that cannot be controlled or anticipated. ÒIt would be a mistake to think that Europe and the Western world developed the way they did because of some inherent ÔessentialÕ genius. The Western notion of human rights, for instance, is not essentially Western in any way. The development of human rights in the West was the result of a long drawn out process of competition between rival groups and interests. It was never pre-determined. Those who claim that our values are unique to us in the West and that they were produced by some essential factors imbedded in our social and historical character are wrong.Ó
ÒToo often Westerners condemn and judge other societies without looking at themselves. They fail to ask the most obvious of questions: Are these societies really different from ours? What is really happening in these communities? Are they trying to grapple with the same problems that we have had to face ourselves? If they do this, Westerners may realise that these foreign communities are not as foreign and alien as they seem at first. This cultural-blindness has become a major problem for us in the process of international and inter-cultural dialogue. It is no wonder that the Western states are less able than ever to understand global developments around them.Ó
The challenge posed by thinkers like Dieter Senghaas are evident. By forcing societies in the West as well as the East to recognise the complex and undetermined trajectories of their development in the past, he forces them to reconsider their own identities in the present. His sustained criticism of the essentialist premises upon which most forms of ethno-nationalist politics is based comes as a timely intervention when race, religion and ethnicity are returning to the fore as major factors in shaping both national and international politics all over the world.
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

A summit on countering terrorism was held in Saudi Arabia recently. Considering that it has long denied that such a threat even existed, holding the summit was indeed a major development.
During the summit on terrorism, the Saudi government initiated the assiduous use of its religious scholars to nullify the jihadist effects of its own schools. Dr Abdul Aziz al-Askar, a professor of the Islamic University of Imam Muhammad bin-Saud, and Dr Majid al-Turki, an adviser at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, made their presence felt by stating that fighting terrorism had become the top priority of the Saudi government. Al-Turki spoke of an Internet plan drawn up by the Saudi government to have a "secret dialogue" with youths who sympathized with extremist groups. Some 800 messages were reportedly sent, as a result of which some of those youths are reported to have "recanted their views". He also announced that the Saudi government intended to establish an international center for fighting terrorism, and called for the assessment of the established counterterrorism policies. This measure was definitely in line with the Bush administration's ongoing endeavor to restructure the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the United States.
Another important announcement during that conference was the decision of the kingdom to "tighten the noose" on Islamic charities and control their work, a measure that the Bush administration has been strongly advocating since soon after the September 11 attacks.
The Saudi government has also initiated a massive public education campaign under the rubric, "horrors of terrorism". It includes a public display of pictures of bomb-damaged buildings and bloodied corpses in different parts of the country that have experienced terrorist attacks.
The closest the government came to describing the current objective of its counterterrorism strategy was when Minister of Islamic Affairs Sheikh Saleh Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh stated, "The general strategy is to expand the base of moderates." He hastened to add, however, that as long as there were "bad things" happening in Iraq and Palestine, it would prolong negative events in the rest of the world.
What is wrong with the current handling of the Saudi government regarding terrorism? To the extent that any reform-oriented measures or endeavors to develop a strategy should start somewhere, the Saudi summit is a good start. However, if its real purpose is to develop a strategy--which by definition is an enormously cumbersome process--Saudi Arabia has to take up a series of follow-up measures soon after all the lights in the summit hall are turned off and the global media depart the premises.
To start with, the causes of terrorism are highly intricate and defy unidimensional explanations and similar attempts to resolve it. Serious endeavors to eradicate it within one society or in a region must be based on developing comprehensive and multifaceted policies and implementing them on a prolonged and trial-and-error basis. Using "state-owned" mullahs to depict terrorism as "anti-Islamic" and suppressing it by arresting or even killing a few hundred of the "usual suspects" will only prove to be a stopgap measure. It will do nothing to eradicate it.
The Saudi government should realize that its chief problem stems from its closeness, its secretive nature, and its very approach to governance that exclusively relies on dynastic rule. Democracies have no problem debating about problems that ail them--no matter how serious--and then developing corrective policy measures. Close societies, on the contrary, silently suffer from major problems until the political system implodes. Such may be the fate of Saudi Arabia.
ATIMES.COM

Despite the current mood of optimism prevailing in Syria due to the success of President Bashar Assad's recent visit to Moscow, the country continues to face a very serious situation because of its poor relations with the United States and the international community. The Bush administration still denounces Damascus for what it says is Syrian meddling in Iraq; and the international community as a whole continues to deride Syria's interference in Lebanese affairs.
For this reason, the U.S. is unlikely to relax its pressures on the Syrian regime anytime soon. Instead of throwing carrots in its direction, the Americans seem more interested in putting the Assad regime on hold.
The association agreement that Syria and the European Union are expected to sign in May will not be enough to get the regime off the hook. Many European countries, especially France, have been pushing Damascus for months to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1559. President Jacques Chirac reiterated this demand earlier this week in Paris, in the company of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
So what options does the Syrian regime have? How can the regime normalize its strained relations with the U.S., the EU and the international community?
Contrary to what many members of the political class think, the only answer is domestic political reform.
Syria's only real card now is a credible process of political reform. This means not only introducing new reformists into the higher ranks of the Baath Party (as the party seems poised to do soon), it should also involve such "radical" steps as establishing a dialogue with opposition parties and dissidents inside and outside the country, freeing all political prisoners, lifting the state of emergency, and adopting a national reconciliation pact that can accommodate Syria's diverse ethnic, religious and political groups. A new Constitution and a new modus vivendi are in order here.
Only such a process would enable the Syrian regime to break out of its isolation, regain international legitimacy and become an active participant in the emerging order in the Middle East. The Europeans will most assuredly support such a process if it is authentic enough.
Holding talks with a Syria that is democratizing could be too tempting to ignore for the Israelis. It would also give the Syrian government a critical push, buttressing its call for a full return of the occupied Golan Heights. This would also go a long way toward reversing the current trend observed in recent opinion polls in Israel showing a lack of popular support there for the idea.
Even the Bush administration, no matter how eager it is to find scapegoats for its current mess in Iraq, would find it hard to oppose a Syrian regime that has embraced Washington's rhetoric of reform and democratization. In fact, the U.S. might be tempted to use such a transformation to its advantage, highlighting it as a byproduct of its Middle Eastern policies. The administration could then point to Syria, not Iraq, as the model for the kind of "velvet transformation" it wants to see in the region.
Internal political reform may do more than help the Syrian regime extract itself from its internal and external predicaments and pull the rug out from under those interfering in domestic Syrian affairs. It would also help transform Syria, again, into a major regional player and, once comprehensive economic reforms are adopted, into a magnet for foreign investment.
DAILYSTAR.COM.LB