[lit-ideas] Talking to Islamists or talking to Chalabies
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 20:26:41 -0800 (PST)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC31Ak02.html
We have reached a much more fundamental and alarming
conclusion: Western governments are frighteningly out
of touch with the principal political currents in the
Middle East. The US and its allies overestimated Ayad
Allawi's strength, were "stunned" by Hamas' win, and
were surprised by the Aoun-Nasrallah agreement because
they don't have a clue about what's really going on in
the region.
But why?
With the exception of Israel (where a US and European
appreciation of realities is critical to the
formulation of policy), there are, inter alia, five
political movements and governments in the Middle East
of undeniable importance: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah,
Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The governments of
the West don't talk to any of them.
They do talk to the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan and the Persian Gulf region; but the net
result of most of these contacts is that Western
governments are dependent for information about the
region on a set of clients who, as often as not, are
mere reflections of what Westerners want the Middle
East to be, rather than what it actually is: Ayad
Allawi, who was wrong when he reassured US officials
that Iraq's voters would reject sectarianism, Fatah,
which was wrong when it told us that their acceptance
of US funding for their campaign would enhance their
legitimacy among Palestinian voters, and Lebanese
leader Saad Hariri, who was wrong when he told the US
government that its program for isolating Hezbollah
would work.
This clientism is not new; rather, it is a
continuation of the misreading that led US and British
officials to believe their soldiers would ride to
Baghdad along flower-paved highways.
Once again, we're being "Chalabied". [4]
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