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..CENTER FOR WAR, PEACE, AND THE NEWS MEDIA,
New Year's Edition 2005/2006
Department of Journalism, College of Communication, Boston University |
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< b>Year-end edition:
Strategic Flashpoints on the Eve of 2006  Sunni and secular parties are alleging voter fraud and demanding a rerun of the election, as the Shiite religious parties look set to again dominate the legislature |
Iraq
Vote Sinks Another U.S. ‘Best-Case' Scenario That outcome would leave the U.S. facing the same uphill
struggle to persuade the Shiite leadership to do more to accommodate
the Sunnis. Indeed, the LA Times notes that the achievement of U.S.
goals will now necessitate the Bush administration seeking a more
active partnership with the regime in Tehran, which as M.K. Bhadrakumar
notes, was once again the big
winner in Iraq's election. From the point of view of U.S. plans for Iraqi stability,
however, worse than the election outcome is the fact that the results
have already been summarily rejected by the main Sunni parties, in
conjunction with Allawi, who have
demanded a new poll and threatened to boycott the Assembly if the
results are allowed to stand. Far from stabilizing the situation, the
election – in which voters appear to have largely voted on
ethnic and sectarian lines, may have set the stage for an
intensification of civil conflict. (LA Times, December 21, 2005)
U.S. officials made no secret, in the months
preceding Iraq's latest election, that their withdrawal strategy was
premised – in the first instance – on a regime change: the replacement
of the current, strongly pro-Iran government dominated by the Shiite
religious parties by a more secular, moderate, U.S.-friendly
administration that would make compromises to draw in Iraq's alienated
Sunnis who make up the social base of the insurgency. The hope was that
Iraqi voters would blame the poor security and economic situation on
the incumbents, and turn to more secular alternatives such as the first
prime minister picked by the U.S., Iyad Allawi, or even former Pentagon
favorite Ahmed Chalabi. At the very least, it was hoped that the power
of the alliance led by the two main Shiite religious parties would lose
its parliamentary majority, and be forced both to choose more moderate
leaders from within its ranks, and to accept a part in a more secular
coalition. Preliminary results released by the
Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, however, have poured cold
water on those scenarios: So far, the religious Shiite bloc has
garnered around 44 percent of the vote; the Sunni religious parties
dominated in that community and the Kurdish nationalist bloc did
likewise among their own people -- Allawi's list around 8 percent and
Chalabi's less than 0.5 percent (not enough to claim a single seat in
the legislature). So on current indications, the new parliament is
going to look a lot like the old one except for the addition of a Sunni
religious bloc that inclines towards sympathy with the nationalist
insurgency.
Recently noted on Iraq:
Sealing
Abbas's Fate? This week, Israel intensified Abbas's crisis even as it threw
him what might cynically be deemed a lifeline: The Israelis declared
that they would prevent Palestinians living in East Jerusalem from
voting in the election as long as Hamas participated, on the grounds
that the Islamist party maintains its own armed wing. That may be a
lifeline because it creates a pretext for postponing the vote as long
as the Israelis maintain that position – and in light of the twin
challenges by Barghouti and Hamas, postponing may be an appealing
option. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority quickly warned that without
Jerusalem voting, there could be no election. But Hamas just as quickly
warned against any attempt to use the Israeli move as a pretext for
postponing the election – which was originally supposed to have
been held last summer. Allowing the poll to go ahead will likely see
Abbas's grip on power weakened by the democratic process. Postponing it
would see his grip on power weakened by his diminishing political
authority in Palestinian political society, not least in his own party.
(The
Daily Star, December 21, 2005)
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is under
attack on so many different fronts that his political position may
suffer setbacks no matter what course of action he chooses. He promotes
the option of a negotiated settlement among Palestinians, but confronts
an Israeli leadership that has little faith or interest in negotiating
a final settlement, preferring instead to act unilaterally. Among his
own people, he faces an increasingly popular radical challenge from
Hamas, which rejects his strategic orientation and which looks set to
become one of the most important players in the Palestinian legislative
process in the elections scheduled for January. And most recently, the
most popular leader of his own Fatah party, Marwan Barghouti, led a
walkout by the younger, more popular leadership who created their own
electoral slate, angry at Abbas's continued reliance on the circle of
cronies who originally surrounded Yasser Arafat.
Recently noted on Palestinian elections:
EU
and Iran Reopen Talks
Although the gulf between the two sides
remains immense, negotiators representing Iran and the European Union
have reopened stalled talks on Iran's nuclear energy program. While the
Iranians insist on their right to enrich uranium, both sides appear
inclined to avoid confrontation and have agreed to at least establish a
framework for future talks. (Daily Star, December 21, 2005)
Recently noted on the Iran nuclear showdown:
Iraq
Exporting Terror to Europe? Old
Enmities Hobble Asian Unity Drive Bolivia
Vote a Challenge for U.S. and Moderate Leftists
A wave of arrests in Europe has turned up
extensive evidence that Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind of al-Qaeda in
Iraq, has built an extensive network of terror cells in a number of
European countries. While these had originally functioned in support of
Qaeda activities in Iraq, European agencies now fear that Zarqawi will
use them to export terror in the way that he recently did in Jordan.
The development also suggests that Zarqawi may now be eclipsing the
original Qaeda leadership of Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri – with
whom Zarqawi had originally competed before swearing fealty to Bin
Laden – as an operational commander of transnational operations
undertaken under the rubric of the Qaeda movement. (The Daily
Telegraph, December 22, 2005)
Last week's East Asian summit, the first
regional all-in regional gathering to exclude the U.S. for some time,
may have potentially represented a decline in U.S. influence in the
region. But the poisonous atmosphere in relations between the two key
players in Asia, China and Japan, as well as Japan-Korea and
India-China enmities, have effectively prevented the emergence of
anything like a regional consensus. They may have excluded the U.S.
from this particular forum, but Mohan Malik notes that the historical
conflicts among the participants that have resurfaced on the same
rising tide of nationalism that propels them to seek to demonstrate
their independence from U.S. influence may leave Washington with little
reason for concern that it will be shut out of the region any time
soon. (Yale Global, December 21, 2005)
When Bolivians go to the polls this weekend
to elect a new president, the man they're most likely to elect is Evo
Morales, a leftist champion of indigenous people, a farmer of the coca
crop that the U.S. has been trying to eradicate, and a staunch enemy of
Washington's foreign policy. The International Crisis Group, however
counsels patience and engagement by both the United States and the more
moderate leftist governments of the region such as Brazil and
Argentina, in order to avoid driving Morales more deeply into alliance
with the radical populist Hugo Chavez. The alternative might be a civil
war, as natural gas-rich regions threaten to secede. (International
Crisis Group, December 12, 2005)
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Why Latin America Has Swung to the Left Even more critical than the Bolivia result is next July's poll in Mexico, where the candidate of the left, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is the front runner – polls in Peru and Nicaragua could complete the shift to the left. The prospect of the left taking charge in the U.S.'s largest trading partner in the region would have set alarm bells ringing in the era of "domino theory, " when rolling back the left in Latin America was a key pillar of U.S. foreign policy. Yet, today, the Bush administration appears to be somewhat oblivious to the shift in Latin America, and its implications. The U.S. needs to recognize the leftward shift as a democratic choice, and engage with the duly elected governments of those countries, argues Gustavo Wensjoe, even if those governments represent a political outlook more like that of the "Old Europe" that has so irritated the Bush administration than like the conservative governments it helped install in the region. The alternative of confrontation would significantly damage the interests both of the U.S. and the countries of Latin America. (Houston Chronicle, December 21, 2005)
Mideast on the Silver Screen But Spielberg's is hardly the only movie dealing with the region's bloody conflicts currently competing at the box office. George Clooney's portrayal of jaded CIA agent Bob Baer in "Syriana" appears to have wowed audiences if not critics -- the movie bumped Harry Potter off the top of the box office ratings for the weekend that it opened. But it, too, came under fire from conservative critics who accused it of distorting the reality of U.S. clandestine operations in the Middle East, and liberal critics who seemed to accuse it being at once simplistic and incomprehensible. While Hollywood is reportedly moving from the traditional format of movies simply depicting Middle East reality through the eyes of American security personnel – one movie in the works reportedly has Albert Brooks cast as a comedian dispatched by the State Department to find out what makes Muslims laugh (a role that unkind observers might say has lately been played by Karen Hughes in her public diplomacy trips) -- theater goers now also have the option of a film telling the terrorism story through Palestinian eyes: Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now" tells the story of how two young Palestinian men find themselves accepting a mission as suicide bombers, and the decisions they make along the way. Abu-Assad's film has been nominated for a Gold Globe, suggesting that a foreign-language film Oscar nomination may be in the offing. And, of course, Spielberg's "Munich" is already been spoken about as a best-picture contender. In 1978, Vanessa Redgrave caused a commotion in Hollywood by bringing up the plight of the Palestinians in her acceptance speech for best supporting actress; at next year's ceremony the Palestinians may be all over the screens. (Guardian, December 12, 2005)
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