Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

I love how seriously the QN readership is taking my challenge to come up with the most important developments of 2009 in Lebanon (favorite so far: “my cousin’s wedding in Chekka”).

In the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote for The National this week about the Middle East in 2009. (If you’re going out to party tonight, please don’t drink and drive.)

Twelve months

The year 2009 began with the Middle East ablaze. On January 1, for the fifth day running, Israeli jets continued to pummel Gaza in advance of a ground invasion that produced over 1,000 Palestinian deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees. The war’s effects rippled across the region in an all too familiar way: suicide bombers in Iraq targeted groups of civilians protesting the Gaza invasion, while America’s allies in the region criticised Hamas for provoking the onslaught. Meanwhile, Iran castigated Egypt for collaborating with the enemy and Syria called off its peace negotiations with Israel. The region had slipped back into the trenches of its Cold War, in which a single Katyusha could trigger a massive military response and an international diplomatic crisis.

A year later, the atmosphere in the region is markedly different. Bitter rivals have visited each other’s capitals to mend fences and the media is full of reports about a new age of reconciliation and diplomatic engagement. Following the turmoil of the previous five years, which witnessed a series of proxy wars between the Western-supported Sunni Arab regimes and the axis consisting of Iran, Syria, and their non-state allies (Hamas and Hizbollah), the relative calm that prevailed in 2009 was just one of many signs that a realignment of interests had begun to take shape.

The reasons for this realignment stem from two basic uncertainties. On the one hand, there is a question mark about the effects of a new – and still seemingly undefined – American policy for the region. Indeed, as disruptive as the neoconservative experiment was to Arab power dynamics, the presence of a new administration in Washington with a different outlook and a different set of priorities has forced the region to reorganise itself once again. On the other hand, Iran’s growing influence and the concomitant challenges to its regime’s authority have further muddied the waters, as its allies and adversaries try to gauge the health and durability of the Islamic Republic on its 30th anniversary. When these two unknown variables are combined, in attempts to assess shifting American policy toward the volatile regional heavyweight, the tea leaves become all the more difficult to read.

(Keep reading)

I haven’t read it yet, but judging from the reviews, it sounds like Lee Smith’s book is a bit of a dud. Max Rodenbeck skewers it for The National:

“Smith believes he has much to teach us about this corner of the world, a patch he covered, from Cairo and Beirut, for the Weekly Standard, the small-circulation flag-bearer for American neoconservativism, before landing his current perch at the right-wing Hudson Institute in Washington. His book, a mix of citations from primers on Arab history, bald assertions, and anecdotage populated by a parade of mournful natives that Smith seems to have attracted in his travels, purports to be an expose of the true nature of the Arabs. It is meant as a corrective to the misty eyed romanticism of other journalists, scholars of the region, and such pitiable types as “Americans too young, confused or rich to love or respect their own country”.

Yet despite the jarring apparition of occasional perspicacity, his 200-page effort at myth-busting is potholed with mistakes, misjudgements and lapses in logic. Right up front, for instance, Smith asserts that Sunni Arabs have crushed minority challengers and ruled “by violence, repression and coercion” for 1,400 years. Yet one might have assumed that Sunni rule would be natural here, considering that nine-tenths of Arabs happen to be Sunni Muslims. (And not the 70 per cent that Smith strangely proposes, a figure quite unattainable even if one throws in not just religious minorities, but ethnic ones such as Kurds in Iraq or Berbers in North Africa.)”

Still not satisfied? An anonymous reviewer puts the Qnion to shame with a savagely brutal take-down.

In other news, Tha’ir Ghandour thinks the Lebanese Forces come out on top in the battle of words between Hezbollah and the Kata’eb, and Michael Young has a New Year’s prediction about Aoun’s relations with Saudi Arabia:

“Within the coming few months, perhaps even sooner, we shall see Michel Aoun visiting the Gulf; and don’t be surprised to hear his followers suddenly less eager to denounce the “Wahhabization” of Lebanese life.

A divorce between Syria on the one side and Iran and Hezbollah on the other is unlikely. Hassan Nasrallah cannot afford to enter into a confrontation with the Assad regime. But his allies are recalculating. When you’re unsure about political decision-making, follow the money. “

Over at Syria Comment, Josh Landis is crowdsourcing a “Year in Review“, and I’ve contributed a few paragraphs about the Syrian-Lebanese relationship:

I think that the Syrian government had a good year, as far as its relations with Lebanon were concerned. The parliamentary elections ended with a pretty ideal result: a win for March 14, followed by the self-destruction of March 14.  This meant that Syria did not have figure out how to run pass coverage for what would have surely been portrayed in the Western media as a “Hizbullah government”. At the same time, though, the defection of Jumblatt and the general fractiousness of the remaining coalition partners meant that M14 no longer posed a credible threat to Syrian interests.

The formation of a national unity government — enfranchising the Doha Accord as the new powersharing mechanism in Lebanon, at least for the time being — formalized the stop-gap solution that Syria has sought, with regard to the weapons of Hizbullah.

The rapprochement with Saudi Arabia seems to have inaugurated a new agreement over Lebanon. It’s not quite a condominium like the one that existed from 1990-2004, but the two countries seem to have agreed to stop making life difficult for each other in Beirut, in exchange for cooperating on matters like Iraq.

It’s not clear what Syria’s long-term aim is for the Lebanese file. Some believe that it wants nothing less than to re-establish control over Lebanon, albeit without having the expense of keeping its army posted there. Others say that its interests in Lebanon are purely instrumental: using Hizbullah as a card in its effort to regain the Golan, and in its bid for greater regional clout.

What’s clear to me is that Syria is trying to diversify its relationships in the region, distributing its eggs from the “axis of resistance” basket (Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas) to other baskets. This does not amount to a potential “flip”, as the State Department is unrealistically hoping for. Those allies remain too valuable to Damascus. But as Tehran looks increasingly vulnerable and the credibility of the regime there is challenged, Syria’s cache as an interlocutor diminishes. This is where its relations with Turkey make much more sense, as does its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.

Steve Walt has an excellent piece over at Foreign Policy about the Gaza Freedom March. I also recommend you check out PULSE, which is covering developments, and Twitter is a goldmine of articles and press reports.  Also check out the Italian GFM members singing Bella Ciao outside the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate in Cairo.

Finally, a good friend of mine, Maggie Schmitt, has produced a compelling video about fishing in Gaza, which you can watch at Vimeo.

Howdy folks. I’m back in the saddle after a snowy Christmas in Chicago and several days spent trying to characterize (in 1200 words) the Middle East in 2009, for a piece in The National. It’ll be out this Friday.

In the meantime, I seem to have caught an acute case of yearinreviewitis, so I thought it might be profitable to discuss the year that was. What do you regard as the most important developments in Lebanon in 2009? Obviously, winning the Guiness record for the biggest plate of hummus was the most significant one, but were there other, less visible, features that you think made a significant difference in one way or another?

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my za’im gave to me: Twelve drums of mazout, eleven snipers sniping, ten warlords sleeping, nine trips to Maameltein, eight maids a-slaving, seven skiers swimming, six geezers lying, five car theft rings….. four calling cards, three French fry sandwiches, two healths my love… And a car freshener shaped like a cedar tree!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!