Kalamna - Middle East Studies at NYU

The latest issue of the The Economist features an interesting article about the rising influence of Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia in the Iraqi political process. The article cites sources who claim that a meeting took place between top American diplomatic and military officials and the head of Iran’s Quds Force in Iraq, General Qasem Suleimani. Analysts interpret this meeting as a sign that the United States is both coming to terms with the massive influence that Iran holds amongst Iraqi Shias and tacitly acknowledging the sheer dominance of the Iranian position relative to that of other regional players. (Although it is yet to be seen just how accommodating the United States will be towards Iranian aspirations for great influence in the region. There are many in the U.S. government who believe the United States must do everything in its power to counter Iranian influence, even if that means using Iraq as a battleground.) The article notes that Iraq has also become an important area of influence for Turkey and Saudi Arabia as demonstrated by the fact that both governments have established links with Iraqi political actors.

"Iraq’s three beefiest neighbors-Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey- have seen their influence in Baghdad wax as the Americans’ wanes. All three fear lest the vacuum left behind be filled by a regional rival…Simply put, the Iranians back the Shias and the Saudis back the Sunnis." (The Economist)

As Killian mentioned in his post, there is another conflict in which the broader Shia-Sunni rift is visible: the battle between the Houthis and the Yemeni government. The changing nature of the conflicts in Iraq and Yemen point to an important trend: the emergence of regional proxy wars between the Middle East’s dominant powers in countries with a weak or emasculated central government. In the Middle East, the prime battlegrounds for regional hegemony are countries in which there is a significant power vacuum (Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon). In Iraq, Iran has employed a clever hedging strategy by supporting both the militias and the Shia-led parties based in Baghdad while the Saudis have advocated on behalf of Sunni interests. What is remarkable here is not Saudi Arabia and Iran’s willingness to use proxies to nakedly pursue their own interests, it is rather America’s inability to effectively project its power in these conflict zones. The economic power in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, and the new regional player, Iran by virtue of their geography and historical ties to constituencies within Iraq, have much more influence over the trajectory of the Iraqi politics than the Americans could wish for. Therefore, America, it seems, will be forced to exercise its remaining influence through its allies in the region, a highly problematic strategy given the authoritarian nature of these regimes and their demonstrated willingness pursue their own regional ambitions through the strategic use of violence. As a number of Iran analysts have noted, the situation in Iraq also exposes the weakness of the American position vis-à-vis Iran: since America has not dealt extensively with Iran in the past thirty years, it maintains little to no soft influence with the Iranian leadership. That is precisely the dismal political reality that General Odierno and Ambassador Hill may have been attempting to rectify through their clandestine meeting with Suleimani, an effort which bears more similarity to the tactics of the C.I.A. than to the methods of a traditional diplomatic corps.

It hasn’t been a fun week. Actually, it’s been a terrible week. I’m going to write this story as a warning to all of you graduate students out there who know the value of stretching every penny, and how much it can sting when you lose some of those funds. The lesson here should be stated before, during and after my little story that follows: watch your bank accounts. Check them everyday at least twice: once in the morning and once after the business day ends. I cannot stress this enough. Now I’m sure many of you are very careful with your money. I believe that I am (at least I did). But if you’re not the kind of person that watches the flow of every dollar through your account then I can say quite honestly that you need to be, because you never know when a mistake can occur or how hard you’ll have to pay for that mistake.
This past Monday, I looked up my checking account online as I typically do once or twice throughout the week and found that my available balance was in the negative. Actually, $120 in the negative to be exact. Concerned, I called my bank’s customer service hotline and asked them to look into it for me. It didn’t make sense to me, because I had just been paid the week before and made two large deposits on top of that. So when the customer service representative spoke to me, he told me that it was showing as negative because a couple of online bill payments I had made over the weekend were posting to the account and the deposits had not fully cleared. I then asked him if there was anything I should be concerned about, to which he replied no and the funds should all clear by Tuesday, bringing me back above zero. Relieved, I said thank you and hung up.
So after this conversation, I merely went about my week. Finishing up my reading from my Problems and Methods class on Tuesday, getting my Turkish work done, and making sure that I put in a decent amount of time at my job were all my concerns. My bank account was not. I didn’t take a single moment to check it all week.
So on Friday morning I decided to finally look into my account and see what the balance was. To my awful surprise, I found that I was not only still in the negative, but I was now hundreds of dollars below zero. I went immediately to my bank to find out what had happened. In a nutshell, that negative balance from Monday never went away. My charges from the weekend cleared before my deposits ever did, resulting in overdraft fees. Overdraft fees: for any of you that have had experience of ever receiving these little gems, you’ll know they’re roughly the monetary equivalent of your bank slapping you across the face. But that’s not all. Most of the time, at least in my experience, you may over draft your account with one or two charges and have to pay one or two typically $35.00 fees. But due to my negligence and my ignorance of what my exact account balance was all week, every single charge I made from Monday to Friday accrued its own $35.00 fee. How many charges did you make this week, Matt? I’ll tell you: fourteen. Fourteen separate charges and fourteen separate fees. That’s right: $490 in banking fees just because I wasn’t smart enough to check on my account all week.
It started with the first couple of overdraft fees from Monday when my account was in the negative which were able to keep my balance low enough when the deposits cleared to have subsequent charges bring the account back down below zero. And that resulted in further fees. And from then on, every time I bought a two dollar cup of coffee, it was actually $37. Every time a check I had written someone was deposited, that amount was compounded with another fee. And on and on it went for five days. I had taken the customer service rep I had spoken to on Monday at face value, and I believed on Tuesday that my account would be fine and I’d have nothing to worry about. That was not a good decision.
The first few bank people I appealed to were unsympathetic, stating that despite what I was told on the phone, watching my account was my responsibility and therefore any fees accrued were also my responsibility. Fortunately, the third person I spoke to was different and saw that my banking record prior to this event was flawless, having never overdrawn even once. As a courtesy for that record, I was forgiven for half of my over all charges, but that still left me out almost $250. The funny part is that none of my charges were in excess of my deposits. The total amounts matched up. I never actually over-drew of my own doing, but when the first few charges came in ahead of my deposits fully clearing, it started a chain reaction of fees that destroyed my balance.
Watch your bank accounts, boys and girls. Check on them every day when you have a couple of extra minutes. There are a dozen different ways to do this without even leaving your room, from text alerts to online banking and so on. Believe me, it’s critically important that you watch every dollar because inevitably there will be some error. If I had been watching, I could have caught this on Tuesday and saved myself literally hundreds of dollars in fees. But I was distracted. Look, I understand we each have a million things to finish and half of them should have been done yesterday, but we cannot get complacent when it comes to the important aspects of our lives outside of academia and/or work. I say watch your accounts, but what I really mean is take the time to watch everything in your life. If you become too consumed with your work, things will always be missed. How you will end up paying for those mistakes will vary, but you should never find yourself in that position to begin with. It’s very easy to get into trouble. Take it from me, because I’ll never let anything go overlooked again no matter how busy I am.

Well, this week has certainly presented another interesting chapter in the ongoing saga of tense relations between the United States and Iran. On Wednesday, Iranian Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced that his country had refused to send its partly enriched uranium abroad to be converted into lightly enriched uranium for the purposes of medical research. Instead, Mr. Mottaki said that Iran wishes to reprocess the material within its own borders. This is in conflict with the deal agreed upon during diplomatic talks in October that included the International Atomic Energy Agency. Needless to say, many who had helped in garnering the deal found themselves a bit frustrated at the end of this week.
But let’s have a little sidebar before going forward: what exactly is this enrichment process and what does it mean for Iran or any country’s nuclear ambitions? With the help of the BBC’s brief “Nuclear Fuel Cycle” chart (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/05/nuclear_fuel/html/mining.stm), one can see the important highlights of the process and why the talks between Iran and other countries have focused on the enrichment process. Essentially, uranium is first mined and then is transformed from a powder ore to a solid known as yellowcake. It is then heated and converted into a gas that is fed through centrifuges, separating its denser atoms (U-238) from its lighter atoms (U-235). It is the U-235 atoms that a country looking to produced nuclear power or nuclear weapons will want to harvest. But here is the important difference: once the atoms are separated in the centrifuge, one needs to obtain uranium enriched to contain only 2-3% u-235 to work in a reactor. Conversely, weapons-grade uranium needs to contain 90% u-235.
So, with all that in mind, where are the talks at this juncture? Iran possesses a large amount of raw uranium and has shown at least a fledgling capability for converting it into lightly enriched uranium. But it appears as though it is only a matter of time before the Iranians are capable of producing weapons-grade enriched uranium. Now as to whether or not those of you reading this believe Iran has a right to this power or doesn’t, I’ll leave it for you all to debate. I’m merely interested in discussing the state of the argument. And right now, other countries are not thrilled about the Iranians’ reluctance to maintain their end of the October deal. France's Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner said he was disappointed.
"There is a clear and negative response from the Iranians," he said (BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8366880.stm).
President Obama has also publicly condemned the rebuff. Announcing in South Korea this past week, he said, "Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal ... and so as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences…We weren't going to duplicate what has happened with North Korea, in which talks just continue forever without any actual resolution to the issue," (Al-Jazeera News, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/2009111962711262687.html).
In response to the strong statements, the Iranians have organized a massive military exercise throughout the western side of the country. The exercise began Sunday and is slated to continue for five days. Thus, the proverbial flexing-of-the-muscles has ensued on both sides. What will it mean in the long-run? Obviously, the true nature of any negotiation is difficult ascertain and predict from the outside, but what will be gained from this stand-off for the Iranians? And do the western nations pitted against the Islamic Republic have the resolve to back-up their strong words if Iran does not fulfill their end of the bargain? The notion of further sanctions on Iran has floated around as of late, but at least one Iranian official scoffs at the idea as being unnecessary and ineffective.
"Sanction was the literature of the 60s and 70s," Manouchehr Mottaki, who is currently visiting Philippines, said at a news conference (Al-Jazeera News , http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/2009111962711262687.html).
"I think they are wise enough not to repeat failed experiences," he said.
So can there be a diplomatic resolution in this tense climate? Honestly, I’m not sure. Hopefully it can, but it certainly won’t come easily.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi vetoing the electoral law that was passed by the Iraqi parliament last week after months of delay has made news in even American media outlets, which means it must be important. According to the Iraqi Constitution, any one of Iraq's three-member Presidency Council can veto legislation. Hashemi has vetoed the electoral law because the law stipulates that Iraq's religious minorities and refugees abroad will be given 5% of the seats in the Iraqi parliament. Hashemi believes this percentage is far too low, since there are approximately 2 million Iraqi refugees - most of whom are Sunnis living in Jordan and Syria - out of a population of 25 million people.

When one does the math, Hashemi has a point. Allocating only 5% of parliamentary seats to the two million refugees abroad is an under-representation. Moreover, Hashemi's veto has engendered charges of sectarianism, since Hashemi is a Sunni and so are most of Iraq's two million refugees living in Syria and Jordan. He is seen by many to be acting out of concern for his constituents.

The stalling of the electoral law in the Iraqi parliament means that elections may be delayed. They are supposed to be held on January 18, 2010, but may be pushed back to February or even later if the electoral law isn't passed and approved quickly. This could create a constitutional crisis in Iraq, since the constitution mandates that national elections be held no later than January 30, 2010.

In addition to Hashemi's objection, the Kurdish Alliance had threatened to boycott the vote in Kurdistan unless they were granted a greater number of seats as well. President Talabani - a Kurd - did not veto the legislation, however.

This political turmoil may not end soon, which could seriously delay elections and precipitate a constitutional crisis if a vote isn't held by January 30th. It will be difficult for Hashemi to climb down from his demand to increase the allotment of seats to Iraqi refugees from 5% to 15% without losing vital political capital. The stakes are high, since high Sunni turnout may give the Hashemi-Mutlaq coalition significant leverage in forming the next government.

I generally try not to say anything too bold about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the oft-delayed 'peace process.' Partly this is because I don't consider myself to be enough of an expert on the convoluted array of issues that make the conflict so intractable. The rest of it is that I don't much like being yelled at.

But a recent article in the NY Review of Books struck me as worth putting out there because it undermines what seems to be a basic assumption among the international community that bilateral negotiations toward a final two-state solution are the only way to reach a durable peace. The article's authors are Hussein Agha (who wrote with Rashid Khalidi 'A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine') and Robert Malley (of the International Crisis Group). The two of them have published other articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both in the NY Review of Books and elsewhere.

I won't rehearse all the points made in the article but will just point out why I thought it was worth a read: they make a convincing argument that the peace process has been too fraught with missteps and failures to imagine that negotiations can start right up again where Bush, Olmert, and Abbas left off. While I was not entirely convinced by the alternatives they presented (and neither, it seemed, were they!) I think their point about a return to the drawing board is a good one. Clearly the current track isn't working. But can I think of a better alternative (and could they)? Not really.

(On an unrelated note, for those of you who attended the Joost Hiltermann talk a couple of weeks ago, here's a podcast on the NY Review's website of him discussing the new election law in Iraq).

One of my biggest regrets from my undergraduate career is not holding enough internships. As a result, I left college unsure of what I wanted to do with my life (which is why I went from Film School to the Kevorkian Center). It’s much harder to dabble and figure out what you want while depending on a paycheck. Which is why as soon as those student loan checks hit my bank account, I was on the hunt for an internship.

Non-profits offer some of the best internships out there because often you get real job experience; the intern isn’t the assistant to a position, the intern is the position. Idealist.org maintains a huge list of non-profit internships all over the country.

In fact, it’s where I found my Social Media & Marketing internship with Iraq Veterans Against the War. This national non-profit doesn’t employ a regular marketing director, which means I get a lot of responsibility (and experience). And for 8-10 hours a week, they provide me with an unlimited subway pass and a meal every time I work. As far as unpaid internships go, you can’t beat it.

Iraq Veterans Against the War is an organization that allies veterans of the current wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan in a call for immediate withdrawal from the region, adequate health care and benefits for returning vets, and reparations for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The title of this entry, “A View From the Other Side” takes on multiple meanings in this context. I have a reciprocal relationship with the organization: in return for my academic understanding of the region, I get the opportunity to interact with people who have actually been there and witnessed the events that trouble us as Middle East Studies students. What is remarkable is that IVAW members, who have showed their patriotism and served their country, share the opinion of the (mostly) liberal MEIS students who often fear being labeled unpatriotic or anti-American for their scholarship.

I had pictured a group of hardened, scruffy old men wearing black U.S. Army painter’s caps and carrying picket signs. What I got was something completely different. The group is surprisingly young, good-humored, and smart. Some, on occasion younger than me, walk with canes for injuries from mortar blasts while others sat listlessly on the base with nothing to do. All have one thing in common: they believe the current wars to be unjust.

It’s sometimes funny to me how much our views overlap, although they come from different “sides.” For example, media coverage of the recent shootings at Fort Hood had me up in arms over its racist overtones in suggesting the “Muslim Terrorist” connection before they even had a name for the shooter; IVAW was frustrated that the media let these racist implications overshadow the impact PTSD likely had on the shooter. (We both found solace in Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the event. Some of the best reporting I’ve seen in years: http://www.youtube.com/aljazeeraenglish#p/search/2/RRDMdq6BE-M .)

The organization does disseminate a good amount of information on the Middle East to clear up misunderstandings that war-mongering folks use to justify the wars (e.g., “the Taliban attacked America on September 11”). Check out their website (www.ivaw.org) for more information, or email me at sme296-at-nyu-dot-edu.

NYU's very own Nir Rosen - a prominent freelance journalist that has covered Iraq extensively since 2003 - has written a new piece on Iraq for Boston Review. In "An Ugly Peace," Rosen states that the new order in post-war Iraq is one of 'enshrined sectarianism' and that the horrific sectarian violence has only declined because of ethnic cleansing, which created a situation in which there were simply 'fewer Sunnis left to kill.'

Rosen's assertion that the violence that characterized Iraq's civil war has died down due to the fact that 'the Shia won' is not new. Yet the details from his personal accounts are nevertheless intriguing and shed new light on the relationship between the Mahdi Army (Muqtada al-Sadr's militia) and the Iraqi government/security forces. Rosen spent time in 2006 and 2007 in Washash, a mixed neighborhood in traditionally Sunni west Baghdad. The Mahdi Army established a base in Washash by 2006 and soon began to turn it into a Shia enclave by driving out Sunnis through assassinations and intimidation. The US army was more concerned with groups affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq at the time, while the nascent Iraqi security forces wouldn't dare step foot into Washash. According to Rosen, the Sadrists had two close contacts in the Prime Minister's office - Major General Adnan al-Maksusi, an intelligence officer, and Dr. Basima al-Jadhri, an advisor to Maliki on Interior and Defense issues. Because of the Mahdi Army's contacts with the Prime Minister and the presence of Mahdi Army supporters in the Iraqi security forces, the Sadrists acted as if they had a carte blanche during 2006 and into 2007. They killed or forced out thousands of Sunni families from mixed or Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad. As more Sunnis fled and the area became more homogenous, violence subsided.

Yet, the situation began to change in mid-2007 and into 2008. The increase in the number of US troops in Iraq coincided with Muqtada al-Sadr freezing all Mahdi Army operations, yet many of his more brash adherents refused to obey his orders. Since there were increasingly less Sunnis to go after in Washash and its surrounding neighborhoods, these once-loved militia units started acting more and more like criminal gangs. According to Rosen, the Iraqi security forces along with US help used this to create a wedge between the Mahdi Army and the residents of these neighborhoods that had become tired of the Sadrists' extortionary ways. By 2008, the Iraqi security forces had arrested many of the rogue elements of the Mahdi Army in Washash and had restored Iraqi government control to the area.

The events in Washash in 2007 and 2008 can be seen as a microcosm of a larger development. As Iraqi security forces regained control of key Baghdad neighborhoods from Mahdi Army control, PM Maliki launched a massive campaign against Sadrist forces in Basra in March 2008 in order to reassert Baghdad's control in the south. Though the campaign faltered at first, it turned out to be mildly successful in weakening the hold of Shia militias over the south in general and Basra in particular.

Taking on Shia militias and asserting government control over the south created space for Maliki to flex his nationalist muscles and opened the possibility of creating cross-sectarian alliances. This is one of the reasons why the coalitions that have formed in preparation for the 2010 national elections are increasingly less sectarian than those from before. Still, it is premature to start talking about a post-sectarian future for Iraq. As Rosen emphasizes, the state now belongs to the Shia (as is immediately evident by the tv and music played in the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Oil). Nevertheless, Maliki's government faces an extremely fractured opposition, and the relative calm in the country has given it some sort of legitimacy - even among Sunnis. This is the 'ugly peace' of which Rosen writes. How long this ugly peace between Shia and Sunnis will hold is unknown. But as emphasized in previous posts, all eyes are currently fixed to the major ethnic cleavage in Iraq rather than to the major sectarian cleavage anyway.

The last week has seen a trickle of press on the escalating conflict in Yemen between the Houthi rebels, the Yemeni government, and now Saudi Arabia.

The news has been startling for its lack of detail and the conflicting nature of the reports. There are few journalists on the ground in North Yemen and so our news on the conflict has primarily been taken from the vague and often contradictory reports being issued by the Houthis, the Yemeni government, and the Saudi government.

What we do know is the following: the on-again, off-again conflict between the Zaidi rebels and the Yemeni army has plagued the country now for five years. The Zaidis are a sect of Shi'a, although far removed from the twelver sect that dominates countries like Iran and some say that they are actually closer in their beliefs to Sunnis. The conflict began in 2004 when the Yemeni government tried to arrest the leader of the Zaidis in the northern Yemeni province of Saada and the group, calling themselves Houthis after this same leader, launched an armed revolt against the Yemeni authorities.

In August, the Yemeni army decided to try to eradicate the rebels once and for all (they called this effort Operation Scorched Earth). They pressed into the region and have been engaging in heavy fighting with the Houthis since, with both sides claiming to be gaining advantage. Then ten days ago, the Houthis raided a valley directly across the border in Saudi Arabia, claiming that the Yemeni army had been using the location as a launching pad for strikes against the Houthis. Saudi responded to the raid with a blistering series of rocket attacks as well as limited ground operations. The most recent update is that the Saudi forces have pushed rebels back away from the border and are continuing to shell the border region of Jebel al-Dukhan in order to enforce a 10km buffer zone along the border.

So what does this all mean? Since we can't talk much about what's actually happening on the ground, most of the commentary out there is on how this conflict might play out and what its implications are for broader regional affairs.

The two most prevalent theses out there are: 1) this could be the beginning of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Saudi supporting the Yemenis and Iran supporting the Houthis. And 2) this could have extremely negative implications for Yemen's stability and security, escalating a domestic conflict into a regional one which will quickly spiral further out of its control.

On the first point, most analysts and experts are pointing out that despite Yemen's frequent accusations that Iran has been supporting the Houthis with weapons, there is little evidence to believe that this has been happening at a significant level -- until now. The danger is that Saudi Arabia's sudden entry into the conflict will propel Iran to make a similarly bold step.

From Saudi Arabia's perspective, most are arguing that Riyadh thinks it may have made a mistake and will make sure to limit its involvement as much as possible. The last thing Saudi wants is to get bogged down in a prolonged proxy way with Iran, fighting guerrilla rebels on their own turf and further destabilizing an already unstable neighbor. There is certainly merit to this argument.

But the sheer size and awesomeness of the Saudi response strikes me as significant. It may be that Saudi does not want to get caught up in a proxy war with Iran. But its response to the Houthi attack went far beyond what would have been necessary to simply repel the incursion and secure the border. On the first day of strikes there were reports of over 100 missiles raining down on a single location in one hour. It has employed Apache helicopters and long-range artillery (perhaps straight off the US assembly lines). The scale of this response suggests to me that Saudi may be trying to flex its muscles. The country has a lot of guns and missiles. It is by far the number one purchaser of foreign arms in the Middle East, but has rarely put these arms to use. The disproportionate response to the Houthi incursion may be an effort to show off some this potential might to its regional rivals. Riyadh probably does not want to get into a war with Iran. But the bombing may be a calculated way of showing Tehran that if a war does begin, Saudi has more than enough means to win it.

Killian Clarke is a first year Master's student interested in contemporary Middle Eastern politics and economics. He has a BA from Harvard College in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. As an undergraduate he conducted thesis research on Egyptian politics and the opposition social movement Kefaya. He has also worked as a Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and as a journalist at the Egyptian newspaper the Daily News Egypt.

In light of the recent tragedy at Fort Hood in which Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 29, we are seeing a variety of responses from the media. Some criticize the US Army for its failure to recognize that Hasan was unstable and a potential threat, and others criticizing President Obama for his efforts to quell the fear that permeated the Bush Era, neglecting that the "war on terror" could still threaten us at home. Then there's the quite obvious backlash that we all anticipated, against American-Muslims in general. Reports emphasize that Hasan had recently become more religious, that he called up the name of God before beginning the brutal shooting and that he had anti-American sentiments related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there are also sources from the US Army who emphasize that while they need to be more careful about the mental stability of their men and women, they are not using religion as the basis of who they must observe more carefully.

In a recent NY Times article, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff asked that the Army be careful "not to jump to conclusions based on early tidbits of information... What happened at Fort Hood is a tragedy,” General Casey said, “and I believe it would be a greater tragedy if diversity became a casualty here.”

This type of reaction to the shootings seems to be what NYU Stern Professor Tunku Varadarajan was reacting to when he wrote his op-ed piece in Forbes magazine, "Going Muslim," causing a backlash from observant Muslims and non-Muslims alike. While Varadarajan's article includes a criticism and accusation of the US Army's emphasis on being "PC" as a contributing factor to the incident, he also begins the article by heavily criticizing the idea that we need to "not jump to conclusions," as General Casey recommended. Instead, he argues that perhaps "we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage" from Muslim-Americans. While other reports stress that we should not generalize this incident as proof that Muslim-Americans could be silent threats in our midst, Varadarajan seems to encourage it, mentioning the friendly local donut vendor in the same sentence in which he refers to Hasan.

He writes:
"The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage--the camouflage of integration--in an act of revelatory catharsis."
He goes on to say:
"How to address the threat posed by the fact that, of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our midst, there are a few (perhaps many more than a few) who are so radicalized that they would kill their fellow Americans? Must we continue to be neutral in handling all people from different groups even though we know that there are differential risks posed by people of one group?"

He is clearly suggesting that we need to reconsider the basic American principles of not judging people or discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or religion- if tragedies like what took place at Fort Hood can still happen, maybe we're being too nice to the Muslims. He writes that "the appearance of equality is not infinite in its appeal--especially if it flies in the face of common sense and self-preservation." Essentially, it sounds like a nice way of saying "fear for your lives!"

Whether or not we agree with the sentiments in Varadarajan's article, a new question came up in the midst of the backlash- to what extent is NYU Stern Dean Thomas Cooley responsible for apologizing for the article, and insisting that this is not the general stance of NYU faculty? After the condemnation from many Muslim and non-Muslim students, faculty and alumni, Cooley's response (as is circulated by email) was that :

"I think it is a very distorted reading to call this hate speech. Read it carefully. In any event I would not censor it or rebuke him for having written it. We are an institution that treasures free speech and open dialogue. You need to think more about what this means since you don't seem to understand it."

While this may sound harsh, and while we may disagree with some of Varadarajan's remarks, I wonder what difference it would make if Dean Cooley spoke out against an article written by one of our professors, and how that would both complicate things and change the way we feel about the incident. No matter where we are coming from, we all acknowledge that this is a tragedy and most of us believe Hasan must be mentally unstable to have committed it. For Dean Cooley to comment on the incident or the article is not going to change the way Muslims are treated on a daily basis as a result of the incident. Also, the fact that Varadarajan's article sparked so much debate only allows us a space to talk about it, rather than knowing that many Americans would agree with the statements made in the article, but would never say it out loud. Of course I don't condone generalizing the tendencies of any religious group or ethnicity, and find it ridiculous to try and instill fear of the local donut guy because he has a beard, but at the very least, those who take issue with this mentality have something concrete to respond to.

I feel like I would be remiss not to mention some of what I’ve been thinking about this past week in light of the recent events at Fort Hood. Obviously, all of what could be said on what transpired at the military compound two weeks ago and the massacre caused by Major Nidal Hasan has pretty much already been said. However, I feel there is one area of the discussion that is only beginning to get its proper acknowledgment. That is, the effect such a tragedy has on the image of Muslim-Americans in this country.
Yes I know: it’s a broken record. We all remember the anti-Muslim backlash in varying degrees following 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole attack, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, the (insert violent extremist event here), etc., etc. But unfortunately, our own nature in this country is to fear and hate first and ask questions later. That’s the way it has always been (see “World War II Japanese internment camps”) and, at least for the foreseeable future, that’s the way it will be. But the way I see it, that is where we come in. As students of the area and as somewhat enlightened people to our own natures, I feel we have a duty to combat this prevailing image with our understanding. We know the difference between the peaceful doctrines of Islam and its own prohibitions against violence and the radical doctrines of a select few who choose to reinterpret it for, well, other reasons. It should be at least partially, if not fully, on us and scholars like us to deflect the inaccurate notions people harbor of Muslims and the Islamic faith within this country.
Case in point, I’m sure many of you read the email circulated this week on the comments made in Forbes magazine by, frighteningly enough, an academic from NYU. Professor Tunku Varadarajan, in an article discussing the events at Fort Hood, coins a colorful new term, “Going Muslim”, to “describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.” (Pause for disapproving sigh). It was a graduate student here from the Steinhardt School of Nutrition, Food studies and Public Health, James A. Ferguson, who spoke out first in an email to President Sexton, among others, condemning the ideas in Professor Varadarajan’s article. In his email, he says,
“I dislike this sort of fear-mongering; it reminds me of the dark times of 9/11 where people were suspicious of their Muslim neighbors. I am a Muslim-American who was born in this country; the implication that I and other Muslims are actually something non-American deep down is highly offensive to me, and to the thousands of Muslim-Americans who currently serve in the armed forces and strongly condemned the murders at Fort Hood last week. “
First, I commend Mr. Ferguson on his valiant stance on such a grossly ignorant implication to be made of the entire Muslim-American community. Second, I feel that while most, if not all, of us here in the Kevorkian Center share Mr. Ferguson’s view, our voice should be much louder in preventing the spread of Islamophobic ideas. And I don’t mean that we all need to submit counter arguments to Forbes so much as I feel we need to use our training to promote understanding in the place of fear to those around us in our personal lives or classes throughout NYU. After all, it is we who have decided to devote ourselves to the pursuit of knowledge and truthful understanding. So what does it say about us if we are to idly ignore the dissemination of ignorant and fearful ideas? I can’t speak for all of us, but I certainly know what it would say about me.

You know, this week I really wasn’t planning on writing another commentary on the ins and outs of our program and what were supposed to understand from it. But then I sat through my Tuesday lecture in the Problems and Methods class. Now for those of you who are reading this from outside the program, the Problems and Methods in Middle Eastern Studies class is one of the required courses for the program and deals largely in, as the title suggests, the various methodologies experts in the field utilize in their work. This particular class focused on biographical dictionaries, a genre within the primary source material that incorporates formulaic entries of personal data on practically anyone considered noteworthy in a given area of the region at a given point in history. Of course, who the dictionary entries focused on depended on who was writing them, but more often than not, it was a means of cataloguing members of the ‘ulama and where they came from.
It wasn’t the subject matter that caught my attention so much as it was the tangents the lecture led to toward the end of class, namely those dealing with open-minded approaches to research. But before I get to that, a brief summary may be in order. My problems and methods course is taught by Professor Khalid Fahmy, but this week Professor Tamer al-Leithy came in as a guest lecturer to discuss his use of biographical dictionaries in his dissertation on conversion in Mamluk Egypt. Professor al-Leithy focused on how Coptic bureaucrats were led to convert to Islam during this period of the latter religion’s ever increasing prominence as well as the particulars of what that conversion meant and how it was received by other Muslims. This was all achieved in large part by examining the biographical literature and thinking about not just what it literally said, but rather what it reflected about the society that produced it. For example, some of the biographers who wrote about prominent Coptic converts during the Mamluk era described them with the epithet “al-Qibti” which denoted their convert status. Essentially, it was meant to indicate that they were less of a Muslim because of their conversion being due to practical political reasons rather than genuinely spiritual ones. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, what was most interesting about this lecture and the point I’m trying to draw attention to, as Professor al-Leithy made abundantly clear, was that the ultimate form of his dissertation was not actually his original focus. Not at all.
Our guest lecturer discussed how, during his research in the archives, he began to pick up on this pattern of Coptic conversion within the biographical literature. From there, he couldn’t help but question what more there was to this story. And more and more, he became distracted from his original project and took on these new questions. It was at this point that Professor Fahmy impressed upon us the need to allow ourselves similar opportunities to become distracted within our research. In many other countries throughout the world, historians and other social scientists are trained to focus on only a singular topic of research and that’s it. It follows a simple pattern: come up with a dissertation topic, defend it, research it, and then produce the paper. Professors Fahmy and al-Leithy, however, said that this should not be the case. Allow yourself to be distracted and let your mind wander through the material you’re looking into. These are the principles that they believe should guide historians and other researchers through archives and source material, not some central static focus. By allowing yourself to become distracted, you can open your mind up to larger, and often, more important questions. In other words, let the material guide you to your conclusions, not the other way around. And be open to drastic shifts in thinking on your way there. This is what Professor al-Leithy did, as has Professor Fahmy and countless others. This is the measure of a creative and successful academic. And personally, I think it makes our craft all the more fun.

Sarah Edkins hails from the small town of Walpole, NH. She graduated from Boston University in 2006 with B.S. in Film & Television before moving on to a string of jobs doing marketing and community relations in the non-profit sector.

Now a first-year master’s candidate at the Kevorkian Center, Sarah first became interested in the Middle East during the 2004 crisis at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Realizing America’s ignorance of the Arab population inspired Sarah to study the Middle East in hopes of avoiding such crisis ever again.

Sarah’s current interests lie in media emanating from the Middle East, as well as foreign media coverage of the region.

Ever since I matriculated in the master’s program at N.Y.U. last fall, I have been plagued by a simple but terribly perplexing question: Why does one study the Middle East? (or as Princetonians , Britishers and old colonial hands (there is an incredible overlap between the three) like to call the region, the “Near East.” For me, the term Near East evokes nostalgia for colonialism, the Persian Empire, and the Moslem rule of Andalusia. Only the former name of Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, has that same evocative effect on my supple, post-postcolonial imagination. I know full well why I’m interested in the region, though my future employer (http://www.mamouns.com/) would not be thrilled if I disclosed my oh-so-practical motivations in a public forum.

Since I know my own motivations, I have begun to frame the question in terms of others desires and interests: What is it that motivates others to study the Middle East?

I believe one’s response to the question “So, why are you interested in the Middle East?” reveals a great deal about his/her assumptions, ideological persuasion, and thought patterns.

Below are a number of possible responses to that question:

Question: “So, why are you interested in the Middle East?”

Response: I want to combat the assumption/stereotype that there is a distinctly Middle Eastern (read: Muslim) impulse towards patriarchy by liberating Middle Eastern (again, Muslim) women through new exegesis of Qu’ranic texts and by writing a revisionist history of Medieval Syria. Specifically, I am focusing on the ways in which Medieval Syrian women subverted gender roles by using a flat iron pan instead of a round pan while preparing hummus.

Good luck. Perhaps you’d like to use Saba Mahmood for your theoretical framework. It’s not as if everybody else and their cousin Khadija are not reading her in an effort to “problematize” some construct or another. Another suggestion: use Foucault- talk about how the patriarchical Syrian state was able to project its power into the domicile through an official discourse regarding proper hummus preparation. But do yourself a favor: While you are busy problematizing gender, agency, Medieval Syria, patriarchy, Islam, Arabness and other “overgeneralized” categories, remember what Orientalism and neoconservatism have taught us: answers about the Middle East are always incredibly simple and intuitive. Question: Were Syrian women oppressed in Medieval times? Answer: Yes, they hated our freedom and our way of life back then.

Response: I believe the Middle East is a region of great strategic interest for the United States and will be important for the next decade to come.

We all know the national security students because of their incredibly myopic view of region and their insistence that the region’s history, politics, and conflicts must be seen through the prism of American foreign policy interests. For the national security students, terribly-accented Amerrabic, references to entire countries as the “theater of operation” and a CLI scholarship in Cairo are musts.

I have a suggestion for these students: study Urdu and focus on Pakistan. No country will give you more street credibility with the Agency than that delightful mix of chaos and South Asian Spice. (see: Salam Khalid’s seminal article: The Karachi Bazaar: Spice Market or Gendered Post-Colonial Space?) Unlike other countries in the region which may be stable in the next five to ten years (Iraq, the Palestinian territories (soon to be Greater Israel)), Pakistan is guaranteed to help you stay employed.

Response: I am interested in Middle Eastern literature and arts.

My answer: How quaint. Me? Before a dinner party, I prefer to read half of an Orhan Pamuk book so that during the event I can reference the former glory of Istanbul, mention Mahmoud Darwish and “the cause,” and then ask the question: “But the real question is: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK” as loudly as possible. Literature students, the work you are doing on Safavid Poetry is just as important as the work being done to end poverty in Africa and the work done by Human Rights Watch on human rights abuses in Gaza. Therefore, you have every right to condescend to political scientists and to speak about your research with an exaggerated sense of self-importance.

These are just a few common answers to the question we are all asked at family get-togethers, dinner parties, and job interviews. In general, a little more self-reflection, self-deprecation, and an awareness that we are not saving the world (literature students) is needed in the field. Let us take ourselves seriously but also be able to laugh at the institutionalized modes of thought and orthodoxies that pervade the field. Only then will we be able to approach an understanding of how those Syrian housewives were able to take a simple cooking implement and subvert the gendered hierarchy that defined Medieval Syria.

Shifa Ali is a second year MA student in NYU's Near Eastern Studies at the Kevorkian Center. She graduated from SUNY Buffalo with a BA in Critical Theory and Religious Studies and went on to become a Fulbright Scholar in Creative Writing, based in Tangier, Morocco. She also worked for two years at the Cinemateque de Tanger.

She is a Kashmiri-American, however much of her academic work is based on the city of Tangier and Middle Eastern Art and Cinema, and she more generally enjoys thinking about music, strings, the Maghreb, linguistics, public transportation, photography, perfume, flea-marketing, fashion, sewing, public bread-making, bollywood, cafe-waiting, small children and embroidering city maps.

Some Iraqi media outlets have been a buzz these last few days with unconfirmed reports of Prime Minister Maliki apparently wanting to coalesce his electoral list - "Rule of Law" (dulat al-qanun) - with the other main Shia electoral list. Teaming up again would practically guarantee the new amalgam of winning a plurality of votes in the national elections on January 18, 2010, but would probably deprive Maliki of his desire to continue as prime minister and to allocate 50% of the total seats the list wins to his candidates. Thus, these reports seem a little unfounded. Maliki himself put the kibosh on these rumors today by saying they are false.

However, this story presents us with a good opportunity to reflect on the current state of Shia politics in Iraq. Though the two main Shia political parties - Da'wa and ISCI - have temporarily parted ways, they used to be partners in the largest alliance in Iraqi politics from 2005 to 2008. The United Iraqi Alliance consisted of Maliki's Da'wa, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the two main Kurdish parties, every now and then the Sadrists, and many other smaller parties as well. The Iranians were instrumental in putting this alliance together back in 2005, since their top priority was to see a political coalition dominated by Iraqi Shia who have had historically close ties with the Iranians. Many major players in ISCI spent decades in exile in Tehran, and its militia (the Badr Brigades, which is sort of integrated into the Iraqi security forces) was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the 1980s. Da'wa and the Sadrists tend to be more home-grown and are generally perceived to be less close to the Iranians.

Throughout the last four years, both ISCI and the Sadrists have grown tired of Maliki and wish to replace him. Meanwhile, Maliki has seen his leverage and personal status rise after his party won a plurality of votes in the provincial elections of January 2009. Moreover, the fact that Maliki campaigned for those elections on a platform of nationalism and the rule of law, he thinks he can eschew his old Shia partners and do just as well in the upcoming national elections without them. There was talk back then of Maliki standing up to Tehran (who wanted to see a united Shia list), taking a stand on principle and eschewing a sectarian political dynamic for one based on nationalism and issues. However, Maliki's decision to temporarily bid farewell to his old Shia coalition partners probably had more to do with personal motives. Everyone else in that coalition wanted him gone as PM - if Maliki were to stay, his political career would have been over. Now Maliki has decided to roll the dice and see if his list can garner more support in January than the Iraqi National Alliance (the new name for the massive alliance of Shia and Kurdish parties - they added the word 'national' to convince you they're not sectarian anymore).

In short, I don't find these reports that Maliki wants to merge his list with the old alliance he just left credible. He'd only do it if ISCI agreed to nominate him as prime minister again, a demand ISCI has repeatedly refused. What happens in the aftermath of the national elections in January is a different story, however. If Maliki wins a plurality, he may have to seek the support of his old Shia buddies to form a government. Of course, that whole process of coalition forming come post-election time will be so byzantine, it makes no sense to try to predict the outcome now.

Brian is a first year masters student at the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU. Prior to beginning his post-graduate work at NYU, Brian worked at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. during the summer of 2009 doing work on Middle East policy. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in May of 2009 with bachelor degrees in economics and Arabic. He has studied Arabic in Egypt and in Jordan. He is primarily interested in the modern political economies of Iraq and Syria. In his spare time, Brian enjoys cigar smoking, cooking, and watching football from the English Premiership.

Shardul K. Oza is a second-year M.A. student in Near Eastern Studies with Business Option at New York University. Prior to coming to N.Y.U., Shardul worked in education as an Assistant Director of Admissions at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and studied Tajik language at Indiana University-Bloomington. He received his B.A. in Religion from Dartmouth in 2006. Like other masters students at the Kevorkian, his academic interests are varied and include politics, languages, cultural studies and development.

Although it has now been a week since the event, I wanted to respond to the workshop that was recently held at the Kevorkian Center on Toby Jones's book project. As noted in Matt's post Toby Jones is a professor at Rutgers who is just completing a project on the social and political implications of Saudi Arabia's oil development on its local populations. As Jones explained, the study is an effort to re-present the story of Saudi modernization in a way that captures the experiences of local populations as the country transformed itself into the 'techno-state.' Jones only presented one chapter of the book, which examined the impact of Saudi Aramco's oil excavations and the Saudi state's land cultivation policies on the Shi'a population of Al-Hasa. The observations he made in this chapter had, in my opinion, some very concrete present-day analogies to a number of overseas Saudi investments that have recently been made in farming, irrigation, and agriculture.

Because the draft is, as yet, unpublished I won't cite directly from his text. But to paraphrase, Jones makes the point that in the 1960s and 1970s the Saudi state was concerned with its ability to feed its population. The country's largely arid land made food scarcity a major social and security issue, and Saudi statesmen were reluctant to rely too heavily on imports of foreign foods. Self-sufficiency in agricultural production became a major development dilemma. The state cast about for ways to resolve this problem and settled on the oasis of Al-Hasa, which had, among other things, abundant water resources. Saudi central planners decided to irrigate the land surrounding Al-Hasa and expand its potential for food production. In 1971 it launched the Al-Hasa Irrigation and Drainage Project in an effort to put 20,000 hectares of land to agricultural use using an elaborate network of canals, equaling 2,000 miles in length. Jones's point was that in executing this project and seeking to impose technical and scientific control over the region's natural resources, the state simultaneously imposed political control over the people who lived there. In this case, the will to control water and land translated into a desire to control people, and the territory of Al-Hasa was transformed not just physically but socially and politically as well.

The connection I saw to the present day was to a recent drive on the part of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states (as well as several East Asian countries) to acquire and develop land in poor developing countries for the purpose of food security and agricultural self-sufficiency. The motivations for these acquisitions are identical to those that propelled the development of Al-Hasa: fear of dependence on volatile foreign food markets, desire for self-sufficiency and independence, and a recognition of the limitations of local cultivation. In Saudi Arabia the decision to invest abroad was precipitated by the government's decision to scuttle a massively expensive and inefficient program of wheat cultivation, involving huge government subsidies and the use of desalinated water for irrigation. Instead the Saudis have turned to their poor neighbors -- Ethiopia and Sudan -- buying hundreds of thousands of hectares of land for bargain basement prices with the intention of sending all or most of the agricultural proceeds back home, free from anxiety-inducing local tariffs and volatile prices. The general manager of one of the Saudi firms pursuing a deal in Sudan remarked cheerfully about the deal: “The area is big, the people are friendly [and] they gave us the land almost free!”

Thankfully these initiatives have not gone without scrutiny from a number of development experts and INGO officials, who have raised all kinds of red flags about the problems inherent to these deals. Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, justifiably raised the prospect of a "neo-colonial" system based on food production and resource exploitation. Even the relatively pro-FDI Economist outlined a number of potential issues that could arise with foreign countries or companies owning and cultivating land in poorer countries: corruption as the deals are often government-to-government, distortion in food prices, lack of transparency, an overall increase in food protectionism, and the erosion of security and property rights of existing landowners.

Although the last grievance alludes to the kinds of issues raised in Jones's paper, the question of long term impacts on local populations has rarely been raised in the discussion of these land deals. When local farmers or landowners are discussed it is often within the narrow context of property-rights and fair-price accounting in the terms of the acquisitions. This is potentially where the case of Al-Hasa may have something interesting to tell us. The scale of these investments is far greater than that of the proposed Al-Hasa irrigation project (the Saudi's goal of 20,000 hectares was never reached). Saudi has now bought 450,000 hectares of foreign land. The UAE has bought over 700,000 and Qatar just slightly less than Saudi. Just like Saudi used "private" companies to develop Al-Hasa it is stepping back and allowing ostensibly private-owned companies to conduct these deals. What will happen to the local populations living on the massive swaths of land when these companies come in and begin imposing new methods of production, irrigation, technical management, and control? Will the desire to control nature once again manifest itself as a will to control humans? Will modernization and the imposition of technocratic know-how manifest itself in irreversible social reconfigurations and political manipulations? And what are the implications (geopolitical, social, security etc.) of having foreign companies imposing control and technocratic power over the citizens of another state? These are the questions Jones asked in his paper and they are ones that development and foreign policy experts ought to be asking today about a set of investments whose implications we may not fully comprehend for many decades to come.

Asharq al-Awsat is reporting that the Iraqi Parliament has just passed the long-awaited electoral law paving the way for national elections on January 23rd - or some time in April, depending on what source you believe.

This is good news, and a big victory for the Kurdish Alliance. In fact, Kurdish MPs were so joyous when the law was officially passed, the chamber erupted into chaos and delirium reigned among the Kurdish factions.

The electoral law had been stalled in the Iraqi parliament for months due to disagreements between Kurdish and Arab MPs over how the elections would proceed in Kirkuk province. The Kurds have been wanting to use new, updated 2009 voter registries while the Arabs and Turkmen have been insisting on using the registries from 2004. The Kurds prefer the newer registries because their numbers have been growing stronger in Kirkuk since 2003. In order to reverse the Saddam-era policies of Arabization of Kirkuk (forced removal of Kurdish families from the mixed province), Kurds have been repopulating the province vigorously, at times even bringing non-Iraqi Kurds in to boost their numbers. Indeed, concerns are ripe on the Arab side that the Kurds have been stacking the province with non-natives in order to fix the demographics in their favor. The concession to use the 2009 registries represents a major coup for the Kurdish Alliance.

Apparently, the US Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, played a key role in getting this legislation passed. I have had reservations about Hill's team in Iraq so far. Rumors abound that the team he brought with him is short on regional and local expertise. However, getting this law approved may just represent quite a significant feather in his cap. The US desperately needs elections to proceed on time so the Obama administration can proceed on schedule with troop withdrawals.

Keep in mind that this could spell trouble ahead. By using the 2009 voter registries in Kirkuk, the Kurds may be able to score big in national elections and further increase their leverage in negotiations over the status of Kirkuk. A strong Kurdish turnout in that province could significantly up the ante in terms of Arab-Kurdish tension in Iraq, and may make the restoration of some sort of sustainable political equilibrium that much harder to achieve after the national elections are over.

Marhaba,
I am writing from Tangier, Morocco at heart, but in more literal terms, from a mint green apartment in W. Harlem. I introduce myself in terms of space and place primarily because that is what I study (the "Middle Eastern" city) and also because much of my experience and perspective comes from having spent time in Tangier, Morocco for over two years and speaking Moroccan Arabic.
I think of Tangier as a sort of womb, breeding the most ridiculous characters and also nurturing a certain sense of nostalgia for times past. The city has a special relationship to America not only because Morocco was the first country to officially recognize the United states, but also for its historic American celebrities, flocking to the then-relatively quiet northernmost tip of Africa to be free of taxes and as advertised, free of any sort of governmental obligation or consequence- the International Zone = no man's land + everybody's land. The writers and the rich who filled the cafes and bars of that moment still haunt the city today through constant references and tourist landmarks based on where they used to travel, even to the point that maps of the city are drawn based on their daily routes.
Paul Bowles and William Burroughs seems to be the most prominent figures to have spent time there, and I am also guilty of unknowingly having spent a month in the hotel room at the Hotel Muneria where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch (I later learned it from a guidebook- room 9), but I question to what extent it is appropriate to use these foreign figures to "represent" the city, to the extent that they are the first thing most people think of or care about when they talk about Tangier.
On the other hand (the Moroccan hand) things are looking up for this long neglected port town. Literally a swim away from Spain (a much politically charged swim), Tangier has become a new focus for King Mohamed VI, particularly in the way of trade and economics. There has been a huge rise in the value of Mediterranean waterfront property, and the new Wali, brought in from Marrakesh, has decided on multiple cosmetic changes reminiscent of the kitchy tourist attractions in Djma al Fna. Tangier also boasts of Africa's largest container port, new commercial centers and apartment buildings and a recently constructed highway to Rabat on what used to be a beautiful virgin coastline.
Of course, my thoughts on the issue of modernization and commodification of the city are subjective and many locals think it is beneficial, but it is curious to consider who is actually financially benefiting from them.

Matthew Boury is a first year student in the Near Eastern Studies Master's Program at NYU. He was born and raised in New Jersey and graduated in 2005 from The College of New Jersey with a B.A. in History and minors in both Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. Matthew’s academic interests include political Islam in the 20th century and the role the interrelationship between Islam and politics has played in contemporary global events. Personally, he enjoys film and is a fervent professional hockey fan. Currently, he resides in Rutherford, NJ with his girlfriend, Victoria.

Personally, I follow the mantra of avoiding two topics of conversation in public: religion and politics. I’m a quietist. However, when something blatantly wrong occurs within either of these two realms, even the quietists tend to get riled up. So it’s time to make my grievance known: Afghanistan, and more specifically the United States’ foreign policy in regards to it. For those of you who haven’t followed this story closely, here’s a brief summary: Recently, it was found that the late summer election for the presidency of Afghanistan was riddled with fraud. Incumbent Hamid Karzai claimed victory initially, but a U.N. commission investigating claims of fraud found these claims to be true and later threw out a third of his total votes. Ultimately, a run-off was scheduled for the end of October between Karzai and his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, but never came to fruition. Mr. Abdullah dropped out, claiming the wide=spread corruption made it impossibly unfair for him (foreign and domestic news agencies reported, however, that financial concerns among other reasons actually precipitated his forfeit). Hamid Karzai subsequently won re-election as Afghanistan’s president by default.
So here’s my problem: upon Mr. Abdullah’s forfeit, the Obama administration willing accepted the re-election of Karzai, congratulating him and beginning to move forward with policy issues of the war against the Taliban, etc. Now I know what you’re thinking: what other option was there for our president to take? I’ll admit it, there really wasn’t one. After all, other governments throughout the world, including the United Kingdom, took similar approaches. But in light of the overwhelming evidence of corruption, the United States has very publicly endorsed a government guilty of manipulating its own democratic process. Of course, all of this has also come while the military leaders in Afghanistan are pleading unsuccessfully for additional troops in their fight against extremists.
Once more, I know what you’re thinking: Matt, this isn’t the first time the U.S. has supported a less than favorable regime. Ok, I’ll concede that as well. But I should say that I was an absolute die-hard supporter of President Obama; I was out at dawn last November to cast my vote for him, I had an Obama poster in my window, I read his books, I eagerly listened to all of his speeches, and so on. And all of this had largely to do with his statement of commitment to make Afghanistan and the transformation of its painful modern history one of his primary concerns in office. And yet here we are one year later: the Afghan election has passed marred with corruption and the clock ticks away while the military screams for the support of additional troops in the fight to stabilize the country and no decision on a long-term comes. I just can’t help but feel utterly disappointed at how our country has responded to the recent events within Afghanistan. I heard a broadcast on the BBC just the other day in which residents of Kabul were briefly interviewed on their reactions to the election and the current state of their country. While some were pleased and some were angry, each indicated very simply that what they desired for their country was stability and peace. Right now they are looking at a failed democratic process and continued violence. They could use some help and I can only hope this disappointing trend in our Afghan policy does not continue.

Hello there, boys and girls. My name is Matt and I will be one of your Kalamna bloggers for the next…well, I’m not really sure how long. Hopefully it’s a while. After all, like many of you current and prospective grad students, money is awfully tight and this is a part-time job. Anyway, this being my first entry on the blog, I felt it fitting to illustrate a bit about the Kevorkian Center and what goes on there.
This past Monday, I found myself sitting in on an academic workshop for visiting Professor Toby Jones. The Kevorkian center holds these events to foster “ongoing efforts…to encourage scholarship that crosses borders—between disciplines, world religions and historical periods—to develop new approaches to area studies.” In other words, it’s a program sponsored think-tank where we as students can come and look at another scholars work, weigh in on the approaches that person took to analyze a given subject, and even critique those approaches when we feel that something didn’t quite work. Needless to say these are important and beneficial events to us as students of the region. But it didn’t occur to me until I sat down and started thinking about this blog how important these events are to the entire graduate experience. Or rather, how they may represent the experience as a whole.
I had met Professor Toby Jones last year for the first time as an applicant to the graduate program at Rutgers University. I was impressed both by his work as a scholar of the Middle East and his down-to-earth demeanor in the meeting I had with him. In short, I liked the guy and when I heard that he was one of the Professors coming to the Center for a workshop, I was eager to catch up with him. After the event had ended, I was able to approach Professor Jones and talk to him for a little while. He recognized me and was happy to hear that I had moved on to an M.A. program and began to ask me what I thought about the graduate experience versus my time in undergrad. That’s when it began to click. Now, for all you prospective students reading this: listen. For all you current students reading this: sorry for being repetitive, since I’m sure this is something already readily apparent to you all. What do we do here at the center? We are here to take all of our collective understanding of the Middle East from all of our different backgrounds and experiences and think about it all in ways that haven’t been done before. Simply, as Professor Jones imparted on me, we’re here to think outside the proverbial box. So the event I attended actually serves as a good metaphor for this principle. Here in the Center, the emphasis has been and will be to extend yourself beyond academia’s disciplinary boundaries and find that “new approach”. In a nutshell, boys and girls, that is why we’re here.

If we want to know why the Middle East has been subject to such political tumult in the past fifty years, we must enumerate and dissect some of the perverse ideologies and currents of political thought which have dominated the region. I thought it would be useful to take a critical look at some of these trends as well as propose several alternatives to existing ideological frameworks. Political ideologues, student activists, Thomas Friedman, and others invested in changing the political configuration of the Middle East (read: the Kurds) have been myopic in their assessment and have not embraced the more radical (possibly “subversive”) alternatives. Borrowing on Arkoun who writes about Islamic reform, I wanted to excavate the “unthought” in Middle Eastern political thought in order to find a new way forward. Below, I have proposed a couple of alternatives to Arab nationalism, Islamism, and secular authoritarianism.

Pan-Zoroastrianism

If Islam really is hindering political and economic reform, why not embrace a more ancient, positively bizarre religion originating in the Middle East. Not only do most people not understand Zoroastrianism, its primary liturgical text is so opaque and strange that it could never give rise to a orthodox interpretation: there is no Zoroastrian equivalent of the Wahhabism or of jihad (trial by fire?) simply because nobody really has any idea what the Avesta actually says. The rise of Pan-Zoroastrianism would allow Iran to find its roots in its pre-Islamic glory days of Darius and Cyprus, while the Arab states would be able to capitalize on their oil reserves by organizing an enormous regional oil fire. Zoroastrianism is also monotheistic, so in that sense, it wouldn’t involve a radical shift in theology for anybody except upper-class Turks, who have no religion besides Europe-worship. Lastly, with the embrace of Pan-Zoroastrianism, Iran’s central role in the new regional configuration would be tacitly recognized without a brouhaha erupting over its religious differences with the rest of the region. However, Middle Eastern Studies centers in the U.S. and the Central Intelligence Agency would surely find themselves scrambling given the small number of specialists trained in Avestan language and ancient Iranian civilization.

Pan-Gaddafism

A new ummah formed on the basis of adherence to an enlightened, father-like leader would resolve the problem of political authority in the Middle East and in the Islamic world more generally. The problem that afflicts Middle Eastern politics is not secular authoritarianism as such: it is that there are too many secular dictators who have shown themselves unable to coordinate with each other and who have made a half-hearted attempt to coopt Islam (read: Mubarak). Already president of the African Union, Qaddafi would be able to infuse the region with a stronger sense of anti-Americanism based on colonial and neocolonial grievances while he would also crystallize the absurdity of the pan-Arab political imaginary. The problem of illiteracy in the Arab world would disappear almost overnight as the Green Book and accompanying commentaries would be disseminated to elementary schools and Egyptian ministry offices alike. Far more interesting reading than Orhan Pamuk or Syed Qutb, the Green Book would give rise to a new literati based in Tripoli who would be able to move the revolution forward, one authoritarian step at a time. The only potential drawback of this new ideology is that it would not prepare the region for long-lasting but benign American hegemony imposed at the end of a barrel. Freedom hating would become the new national (transnational) sport of the Middle East and the freedom-haters and evil doers would find themselves reveling in their newfound unity (tawhid).

Thursday, the Kevorkian Center was fortunate enough to host Joost R. Hiltermann, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group. Professor Hiltermann gave a highly informative lecture about the ‘coming deluge’ that may occur once US forces leave Iraq. The brewing conflict is no longer so much about sectarian violence in Iraq, but about violence between two ethnic groups: Kurds and Arabs.

The conflict is centered around the status of Kirkuk province. Kirkuk is a particularly ethnically heterogeneous province in Iraq. It contains a plurality of Kurds, but also has a significant amount of Arabs, Turkomen and Assyrian-Chaldean Christians. The Kurds are pressing for the province to be incorporated into the Kurdistan Regional Government, while the non-Kurdish inhabitants of Kirkuk strongly resist that idea.

The status of Kirkuk was deemed to be settled by a constitutional mechanism. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution mandates that a referendum be held in order to determine Kirkuk’s final status. However, the language of the constitution is ambiguous in terms of how this referendum should be worded – asking the inhabitants if they want to belong to Irbil or Baghdad is an ethnically loaded question that is bound to precipitate armed conflict by the losing side. The United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq has suggested a compromise be reached through a negotiated settlement. Once this settlement has been finalized, it can be approved or rejected by the inhabitants of Kirkuk in a referendum. This way, posing the question in ethnic terms is avoided.

International Crisis Group has recommended another solution to the Kirkuk conflict. Its “Oil for Soil” compromise stipulates that in exchange for the Kurds’ deferment of Kirkuk for ten years, the KRG will receive demarcation and security guarantees for their internal boundary with the rest of Iraq, as well as the right to manage and profit from their own oil resources. Currently, the KRG cannot export any of its oil since the only way out is through the pipeline leading to Turkey. Turkey refuses to allow any Kurdish oil to pass through this pipeline until the Kirkuk issue is settled. As a consequence, the KRG loses $620 million a year in lost oil revenue while the Iraqi central government loses $3 billion a year from those same sales. Irbil and Baghdad are caught up in a game of seeing who can hold their breath the longest.

The Kurdish political parties – united on the issue of Kirkuk – have demonstrated their unwillingness to compromise on this issue by blocking critical legislation. They have repeatedly blocked the passing of the hydrocarbons law, as well as electoral laws needed to hold elections. Most recently, the Kurdish MPs walked out of the Iraqi parliament last week in order to block the passing of the January 2010 electoral law because the law uses 2004 voter registries rather than more updated ones. The Kurds claim that Kurdish representation in Kirkuk has been growing since 2003 as they reverse the ‘Arabization’ of Kirkuk that occurred under Saddam Hussein. Thus, using more updated registries benefits the Kurds.

Baghdad is equally unwilling to compromise. As Arab politicians try to pose as nationalists in order to eschew the previous sectarian political dynamic (at least publicly), they will be increasingly loath to compromise on an issue so essential to Iraqi nationalism.

How will this issue be resolved? For the Kurds, time is not on their side. Their once resolute alliance with the United States is growing weaker as the US prepares for withdrawal and urgently desires a resolution to the issue. Moreover, the Iraqi state is growing stronger, not weaker. This trend must worry Irbil to some extent. A negotiated settlement is quickly becoming the only option in order to avoid an outbreak of ethnic violence.

This issue may come to a head after the January 2010 elections. No party will win a majority. As a consequence, a coalition government will have to be hammered out and the Kurds will once again be able to play the role of kingmakers. In return for Kurdish support of the government, the Kurds will undoubtedly ask for Arab compromises on Kirkuk. The ensuing ethnic violence this political deadlock may precipitate is what worries many observers of Iraq today. It underscores the lack of constitutional mechanisms available to solve these problems, as well as the lack of sustainability of the constitution in its current form. It should also serve as a reminder to those who believe that Iraq is increasingly looking like it’s on the road to stabilization that the fundamental flaws embedded in its political system still have yet to be corrected, and that more violence is just a shot away if and when political negotiations fail.

Marhaba and welcome to Kalamna which means “Our Talk” in Arabic. Kalamna is the graduate student blog of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University.

Masters students in the program study a wide range of social, political and cultural issues within a region spanning from North Africa to the Middle East to South Asia, as well as those elements which cross over globally. Students have three possible academic paths they can follow on a Masters level at NYU: a joint degree with Journalism, a Business track option with the Stern School of Business or a concentration in Museum Studies. Students in the program may go on to prestigious doctoral programs or pursue professional careers in the cultural arts, media, government, business and the nonprofit sector. Many of them also serve as consultants in the international arena.

Kalamna is a space for students of the Middle East and those interested in learning about the Middle East to share their knowledge, thoughts and experiences beyond the classroom and with the wider university community. If you ever wondered what it would be like to be a student of this region, this is a good place to start finding out. Please feel free to join in, ask your questions and share your comments.

All the Best,

Amal A. Hageb
Program Coordinator
Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/neareast/aboutus.intro.html