Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1998, Pages 114-117

Waging Peace

William Quandt Speaks at MEI

Dr. William Quandt, professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia and a White House Middle East adviser in the Carter administrations, spoke May 8 at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC on the Algerian crisis.

Quandt’s discussion was based on his upcoming book Algeria, Between Ballots and Bullets, scheduled for publication in mid- 1998. He started the discussion by reminding the audience of a bloody massacre of people protesting against French colonialism that took place in Algeria on May 8, 1945. Quandt said that although the turbulent and tragic history of Algeria has led many people to conclude that Algerians are violent by nature, he does not agree.

Part of Quandt’s new book focuses on what has happened in the past decade since the sudden collapse of Algeria’s old authoritarian system. He described the period as being “filled with surprises for those of us who followed Algerian affairs, for Algerians themselves, and for others in the region.”

Quandt argued that the collapse was much more dramatic and sudden than anyone had expected. In October 1988, there was an explosion of anti-regime activity all over Algeria. “Even to this day, it is really hard to explain why it happened,” Quandt said.

After reviewing the political changes that occurred in the Algerian political system in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Quandt turned to the critical question of “why all the violence?” He explained that “on average, since 1992, 200 Algerians have been killed every single week.”

Because of instances when the Algerian military has refrained from intervening in occurrences of violence, there are many people who believe that most of the violence is actually done by the regime, Quandt said. This is a widely held belief among both Algerians in exile and French intellectuals, who think that the regime requires this kind of violence to justify its claim on power, and to discredit the Islamic groups.

“I think that is unlikely to be the explanation for most of the instances,” Quandt said.

He conceded, however, that there have been occasions when this has happened in the past.

“Despite the seriousness of the Algerian crisis, one should not conclude that democratization is impossible because of something about Algeria’s historical past or Arab society or Islam,” Quandt said. Algerians distrust politicians, the state, and the government, but “that is not necessarily a bad quality in democratic politics. A little bit of distrust is perhaps a good quality.

“I think Algerian society is ready for democracy and Algeria will probably join the Middle Eastern democracies well in advance of others in the region,” Quandt concluded.

—Raja’ M. Abu-Jabr

Women’s Organizations in Israel and Palestine post-Oslo

Simona Sharoni, assistant professor of peace and conflict resolution at the American University in Washington, DC, spoke at the Middle East Institute on June 5, the 31st anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Dr. Sharoni said that not only did Oslo erase any advances made in world understanding of the Palestinian plight, but it also ended advances made by women’s groups. “The attention span of most Americans is so short that they prefer an instant solution—the handshake in a quick sound bite—to a real conflict resolution,” she said. “Occupation and conflict were replaced with the euphemism of the ‘Middle East Peace Process,’” and the attention shifted to the next story.

Americans look at Palestinian women through a haze of orientalism, Sharoni said. “They aren’t like us. Hanan Ashrawi is seen as an exceptional Palestinian woman. But most Palestinian women activists have similar eloquence and brilliance once you meet them.”

Then there is the mythic threat of fundamentalism, Dr. Sharoni continued. “People don’t think Islam is like Judaism and Christianity. Actually all three texts deal with women about the same way,” Dr. Sharoni said. It’s when the texts are re-interpreted by men that gender inequality crops up in all three.

“We think that life for Muslim women is far harder, so we must rescue them,” she said. “Palestinian women are viewed as victims,” which means we are different.

On the other hand, “there is the myth of sexual equality in Israel,” Dr. Sharoni explained. “Israel had the first woman prime minister, but Golda Meir was not a friend to feminists.” She had to distance herself to remain “the ablest man in politics.”

Israeli women serve in the military but they are prevented from getting close to a battlefield, Dr. Sharoni said. The division of labor on a kibbutz also reinforces gender inequality.

“Despite the photo opportunities using women posing in uniforms with guns and in the fields with bulldozers, a woman’s place is at home with the kids,” she said. “Zionism was a national liberation for Jews but not for women.”

Progress for women usually comes in times of war, according to Dr. Sharoni. Gender struggle occurred with the struggle for liberation in Ireland and South Africa. During the intifada both Israeli Jewish women peace activists and Palestinian women could mobilize and were at the forefront of the struggle on the streets.

Alliances were formed and solidarity visits arranged. Israeli and Palestinian women discovered that they were not as different as each had thought, Sharoni said. But after Olso the women’s groups have become disenfranchised and fragmented. As a result of funding problems, smaller groups have folded or merged.

Many leading women activists have sought refuge in academia or women’s centers. Others are working to make changes within society. Feminism in Israel is viewed as a national insecurity.

“Gender inequality is excusable during war because all efforts must be made to resolve the conflict,” Sharoni explained. “Feminism is a luxury you can’t afford because of the conflict.” But now, during an interminable “Peace Process,” feminism has become an unpopular political position which is threatening to men and ignored by the media, Sharoni concluded.

—Delinda C. Hanley

MEPC Assembles Distinguished Panel to Celebrate UAE’s 25th Birthday

A program to celebrate “25 Years of Progress” in the United Arab Emirates was held by the Middle East Policy Council May 8 in the Dirksen Senate Building. Speakers, all from Washington, DC, included UAE Ambassador to the United States Mohammad Al-Shaali; president Richard Holmes of the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce; president Khalil Jahshan of the National Association of Arab Americans; former U.S. Ambassador to the UAE David L. Mack, vice president-designate of the Middle East Institute; program officer Malcolm Peck of Meridian House International, author of The United Arab Emirates: A Venture in Unity; and another former U.S. ambassador to the UAE, William A. Rugh, president of AMIDEAST.

The program was moderated by president Chas. W. Freeman Jr. of the Middle East Policy Council, who is a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Also present for the symposium was UAE Minister of Information Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan, son of UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, the emir of Abu Dhabi.

Speaking of the official visit to Washington later in the month of Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahayan, Ambassador Shaali said, “We expect this visit to be a turning point in the relations between the UAE and the U.S.” Turning to the extraordinary progress of the UAE since it was formed in 1973 as a voluntary federation of seven of the former Trucial States of the lower Gulf, the UAE envoy continued:

“The UAE has provided prosperity and stability for the people of the federation. Oil money was a factor, but how it was used was what was important. We used the oil money to build an advanced infrastructure, health facilities and educational facilities”

Ambassador Shaali noted also that “the UAE has diversified its economy in the last 25 years” and created “an openness that helped everyone to express his views, helped business to flourish, and invited foreign business to move to the UAE.”

Ambassador Mack, who served from 1986 to 1989 as the third U.S. ambassador to the UAE, noted that the federation was created from “a very loose confederation marked by some historic rivalry and a strong sense of tribal iden tity.” However, he said, it “did share a common culture and a common religion.”

Only 25 years later, he said, the UAE has reached peacefully a stage of federal institutional development that the United States reached only “after several decades and a bloody civil war.” The UAE has “a prosperous economy, a humane society, and civil liberties” which are “in marked contrast to the very obvious failures of some of the so-called progressive and more centralized governments” in the region.

Mack paid special tribute both to the “committed and far-sighted leadership” of UAE president Sheikh Zayed; the ruler’s long-time special counselor, Ahmad Suwaidi; and to Dubai ruler Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Thanks to such leadership, “the UAE is increasingly able to participate in a global economy,” Mack said, adding also that “the Ministry of Information provides great scope to the indigenous media.”

Noting that he was the only symposium participant who had not contributed a chapter to a book introduced at the program, Perspectives on the United Arab Emirates, co-edited by Edmund Ghareeb of the UAE Embassy in Washington and Ibrahim Al Abd, secretary-general of the UAE Information Ministry in Abu Dhabi, Mack recommended its 14 separate essays by recognized experts for an in-depth understanding of this remarkable and lasting experiment in Arab unity.

Providing a political assessment of the UAE, Ambassador Rugh, who served as U.S. ambassador to the UAE from 1992 to 1995 and who before that was U.S. ambassador to Yemen, said that any current differences between the U.S. and the UAE are essentially tactical, not strategic.

He cited UAE relations with Iraq, which were generally good prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. However, the UAE participated fully in the Saudi- and U.S.-led Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait, and “the U.S. and UAE have maintained close relations ever since,” Rugh said.

Current tactical differences involve the embargo on Iraq, which the UAE opposes because “it believes Saddam Hussain is no longer a threat,” Rugh said. He added that “The UAE also opposes the military action which the U.S. has been threatening to take” against Iraq.”

“Today the UAE sees Iran, I believe, as its greatest security threat,” Rugh said. The reason is Iran’s military occupation of three Persian/Arabian Gulf islands long claimed by two of the UAE’s component emirates, Sharja and Ras Al Khaimah. “The UAE has a stronger legal claim to the three islands than Iran,” Rugh said, noting, however, that by themselves the islands have “little intrinsic value.”

Despite its problems with Iran, the UAE has never favored the confrontational approach long pursued by the U.S., Rugh said. “The U.S. view has shifted and, I believe, now is close to that of the UAE,” he added. He noted, however, that “some officials have reacted with caution even though the unfortunate ‘dual containment’ label has been dropped.

“It seems to me that if you take a 25-year perspective, that the U.S. and UAE are much closer now than they have been in the past,” Rugh summarized. “The positions began to come closer together in 1991. The UAE had a falling out with Arafat, and meanwhile the U.S. began working with the Palestinians...The UAE endorsed the Madrid process, but refused to host peace talks involving Israelis.”

The fact that the UAE has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas and has invested many of the receipts in infrastructure such as hospitals, Rugh said, “has persuaded a great many U.S. companies and even the U.S. Navy to invest in facilities there.”

Malcolm Peck, who has served as a Meridian House program officer since 1984, said that “the constitution of the UAE provides the most liberal provisions for freedom of religion” of all the Gulf Cooperation Council states. “The constitution also contains competing tendencies between the unionists and the federalists and a good deal of sensible, flexible pragmatism,” Peck pointed out. However, looking into an uncertain future, he predicted, “Without Sheikh Zayed’s leadership, it will be harder to contain the tensions between unionists and federalists.”

He explained that the “need for strong leadership, rooted in tribal traditions, will continue.” He was optimistic, however, that the UAE’s “young, educated population is largely committed to more open development.”

Khalil Jahshan, who has been NAAA president since December of 1990 and who also is the current chairman of the Council of Presidents of National Arab American Organizations, provided what he called “An Arab-American Perspective of U.S.-UAE Relations.” Noting that the UAE is smaller than the state of Maine, he said it has 2.5 million residents, of whom two-thirds are not UAE nationals. Nevertheless, he said, the UAE has succeeded “in fully reconciling the requirements of a modern state and traditional society.”

Noting that “the UAE has been a close ally of the U.S. while adhering to its own traditions and alliances,” Jahshan said the UAE has emerged internationally as “a moderate force in foreign policy.” In doing this, it has observed “steadfast adherence to principles, but not at the expense of principles as perceived within the UAE itself.”

“The UAE also has achieved an impressive level of political, economic and social stability,” Jahshan said. Speaking of Lebanese and Palestinian expatriate businessmen and workers in the UAE, he noted “how bullish they are and how appreciative they are about living and working there.” He cited also the “high level and seriousness” of media in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, noting that UAE television programming is “unmatched throughout the region.”

Chamber of Commerce president Holmes focused his remarks on the enormous economic development and investment potential of the Arab states of the Gulf, in which the UAE “has been blessed with a very clear and focussed vision” and is “playing a leading role in the Middle East North Africa region.” Holmes said there are about 400 international companies with headquarters in the UAE.

In the ensuing discussion, symposium participants discussed the rapidly emerging role of women in the UAE. Mack pointed out that “well over half of the students at [the UAE’s] Al Ain University are women.” Speaking of local university students, Rugh added, “Women are a huge majority and they are doing very well. They have a very high success rate academically.” Jahshan said that in the UAE the literacy rate among women is higher than among men.

In answer to a question about the UAE and the peace process, Mack said that “one of the points that all the Arab states made in joining the [Gulf war] coalition was that they expected something to be done about the Arab-Israeli dispute.” Now the same Arab states are saying “if it was good for our security to have a peace process, it must be bad for our security to have a breakdown,” Mack noted.

“The Emirates feel very strongly on this issue,” Jahshan pointed out, “and have been very principled in their support for a just and lasting peace.” Added Holmes: “Of course the absence of a resolution of this problem is going to impact on the area.”

—Richard H. Curtiss

Akins Warns U.S. Against Misjudging Situation in Iran for Second Time

In a panel sponsored by Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Edolphus Towns (D-NY), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and James Traficant (D-OH) one year after the election of Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Akins urged extreme caution in charting U.S. policy toward Iran’s Islamic revolutionary government.

Also speaking at the May 18 program, held in the Rayburn House Office Building, was Soona Samsani of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, representing that country’s principal opposition group.

“In 1978 the CIA reported that Iran was ‘not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary stage,’” Ambassador Akins cautioned. “But the shah fled the country two months later.”

One year ago, Akins continued, “to the world’s surprise and the consternation of the ruling mullahs, Khatami won 70 percent of the votes, not so much because he was reputed to be a ‘moderate,’ but because he most certainly was not favored by the government. He was installed and he survives.”

Akins noted that “the State Department is clearly divided. In an admitted effort to curry favor with the mullahs, one branch of the State Department branded as a ‘terrorist organization’ the Mojahedin-e Khalq, the largest of the Iranian opposition movements and the prime target of official Iranian terrorism at home and abroad. The mullahs welcomed the announcement as a triumph of their regime, but did not answer it with any changes in internal or external policies. Not much later, another branch of the State Department ranked Iran as the ‘most active state sponsor of terrorism.’”

Seeking positive evidence of change, Akins noted that “a few restrictions on social life have been relaxed in the last few years; the Revolutionary Guard has lost some of its fervor and can usually be bribed not to break into private homes where ‘immoral activities’ are suspected. Visitors to Tehran—but no place else—notice that the all-encompassing chadors prescribed for women are not quite as concealing as they had been. The state-run press is free to criticize certain actions of government officials, mostly those of rival factions. And Khatami has spoken of ‘opening up informal contacts with the United States.’

“But the basic reforms in theocratic rule, which most Iranians want, have not been implemented,” Akins said. “Khatami does not have the ability—even assuming the will—to make significant changes. His title of ‘president’ implies authority, when he has little. He is outranked and frequently overruled by Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Council of Expedience, and by the ‘supreme guide’ himself, the Ayatollah Khamenei.

“Iranians revolted against the shah not to turn the clock back to the Middle Ages, but because they were sickened by the corruption of his court and his government, by the lack of freedom and by the excesses of the shah’s secret police,” Akins said. “Ayatollah Khomeini promised them a ‘government of God on earth,’ but he and his successor have given them a government whose corruption exceeds that of the shah and whose human rights abuses are an order of magnitude worse. In the 20 years of the rule of mullahs, 120,000 Iranians have been sentenced to death after quasi-legal proceedings—some 40 times the number of those executed during the entire reign of the shah...

“My enduring nightmare is that one of our major foreign policy blunders in the Middle East is about to be repeated in the same country,” Akins concluded. “The United States supported the shah long after it was clear to every objective observer that almost all Iranians had turned against him. It would be ironic and tragic if we were to open relations with the Iranian theocracy just as the Iranian people have concluded that it must go.”

In her talk, the NCR’s Samsami stressed the imminence of possible change in Iran. “Two weeks ago, one of the southern neighborhoods of the capital city of Tehran erupted, as 10,000 people protested against the killing of a 16-year-old street vendor at the hands of the Revolutionary Guards,” she reported. “The unrest continued for four hours. Chanting ‘death to Khamenei’...the crowds clashed with state security forces. A number of governmental buildings were damaged.”

Samsami noted that “The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened recently to crack down on a wave of internal dissent and criticism, saying it jeopardized the country’s security. ‘The universities are in the hands of the opposition, and young people are chanting “death to despots.” We have to behead some and cut off the tongues of others,’ he said.”

Samsami noted that “Contrary to America’s expectations, Tehran did not make any changes in its policies of terrorism and fundamentalism. In fact, after the State Department published its annual report on terrorism, naming Tehran the world’s most active state sponsor, the mullahs took responsibility for the entire list of their terrorism acts, especially their attacks on the Mojahedin.”

The NCR official predicted that “before they can transform themselves into a modern, 20th century dictatorship, [the mullahs] will be swept aside by the Iranian people. The inability of certain circles in America to comprehend this stubborn reality is behind the notion that you can turn the anti-human rulers of Iran into moderates.” The events taking place in Iran today signal the weakness and disarray of the regime and the prospects of its overthrow, not some sort of trend toward liberalism. “Goodwill gestures by the U.S. government, such as the inclusion of the Mojahedin on its list of terrorist organizations, will only serve to goad the regime on,” Samsami concluded, “and to give the Iranian people the negative impression that, once again, the U.S. government is on the wrong side.”

In remarks prepared for delivery at the conference Representative Traficant, who was prevented from delivering them personally by calls to vote on pending legislation, said that “While President Khatami has spoken quite differently than his predecessor, Iran’s actions both domestically and internationally have not materially changed.

“Iran still supports international terrorism. Iran continues to deny its people basic freedoms and human rights. Iran continues to treat its women like cattle,” Traficant said. “There is chaos and conflict throughout the government. One thing is clear—President Khatemi may have—may have—good intentions, but his good intentions have not yet resulted in a change in Iran’s behavior internationally or internally.”

In her prepared remarks, Representative Ros-Lehtinen said, “the U.N. Special Representative on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran has reported that executions have doubled in the last year. Additionally, various international publications report that the number of executions by stoning, one of the most brutal forms of torture and execution, have also increased...Iranian women are singled out by the police for extra persecution and harassment and human rights violations as reported by news services and the U.N. Commission on Human rights.

“The courts in Germany and Switzerland have determined that top officials of the Iranian regime are directly involved in terrorist operations around the world.”

In conclusion, Ros-Lehtinen criticized “the administration’s disregard for the democratic alternative in Iran, the National Council of Resistance.” The congresswoman said this “will only put us on the side of an Islamic extremist dictatorship whose collapse appears closer with each passing day.”

House Democratic Deputy Whip Rep. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) also submitted a statement to the panel, saying that “each of us here today looks forward to the day when Iran rejoins the community of democratic nations. However, today is not that day. President Khatami, while slightly more moderate than his predecessor, will not or cannot overcome the political forces in Iran which avidly pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction and continue support for terrorism.

“Tehran’s unrelenting quest for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles clearly attests that the clerical regime has no intention of moderating its behavior.” Menendez said. “Appeasement by the West will only provide the mullahs with more room to maneuver...

“Firmness is the only means of deterring Khatami and the clerical regime from their quest for an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction,” Menendez concluded. “We must make it clear, especially now when the mullahs may well be on their last legs, that we support the kind of progress toward democracy and genuine reform promised by the democratic opposition.”

—Richard Curtiss