Middle East Policy

First of all, I understand that Iraq is at the beginning of the democracy path, as defined by the norms and practices of western democracy. Actually, the title of this article came from what I saw of the Iraqi political, legal and civil scene in terms of the pending U.S.-Iraqi pact at the Iraqi constitutional institutions. This scene in Iraq was really touching in terms of its vibrancy, and most importantly, its diversity. This Iraqi scene is unique in the Arab world, with an exception for Lebanon as a special case. It is really a very rare situation in the Arab world that no one can predict if a treaty or a political or sovereign decision would be adopted or not by an Arab country. In fact, in Arab countries, every thing is previously settled according to the ruling regime or dictator's will. However, this time, Iraq has made an exception or, as I hope, a precedent. Furthermore, this Arab unique democratic state in Iraq continued even after the Iraqi government's approval of t...

Seemingly, Baath regime starts to take advantage of the new phase with the new elected democratic president in the United States. As expected by everybody knows the last Baath located in Syria, its security apparatus was a very bad director to a fiasco play or drama. Baath security geniuses claimed that they discovered the network responsible for the latest explosion in Damascus. Recently, the Baath TV broadcasted their confessions after a long and wide publicity and advertisement of these confessions. As exactly expected, they indirectly accused Lebanon after a previous and very early political statement claiming north Lebanon a terror base threatening Syria. But the funniest thing about the extremely bad and funny direction of this drama was choosing Fatah-al Islam as responsible for Damascus attack while the entire world and every concerned intelligence department in the world clearly knows who invented and supported this group and for what reason. Apart from this futile and worthle...

Every governing system in any country is attached to a state of politics. The politics here is an entire system-like state with integrated parts and components. The entire state of politics affects the governing system and gets affected by it. Then, there is a dialectical relation between them in addition to an essential integration. In any given country, there should be a state of politics as there is a governing system whatever is it. This is also true with non-democratic governing systems, which produce a shape of politics compatible with it with special specifications and narrowed scope and structure in comparison with the wide and vigor politics in the democratic governing systems. Then, every governing system has its associated shape of politics whatever this system is. There is a really unique case concerning Syria that is no politics there! There is a governing system imitated from the Soviet school run by a persistent Baathist regime inherited from more than 40 years ago. Neve...

The U.S. strike in Syria was really surprising and came in timing difficult to understand or analyze. So, 'why now,' is an open question waiting for more information and some further leaks from U.S. officials. The questions is why the U.S. waited for more than five years to make this movement, although it had some detailed information about activities orchestrating violence in Iraq out of Syria. Many relevant details were provided to Syrian regime by the U.S. in this regard. For now, I will focus on the significance of this strike, which is clear and has many ramifications and aspects. First of all, this U.S. action is directed at humiliating Syrian Baath regime. This approach was adopted by the American administration since the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, which intended to by as humiliating as possible to the Baath regime, and so it was. Moreover, this action constitutes a clear message to the French administration, which unilaterally violated the western isolation of the ...

Are there some terrorists in some places in Lebanon? The answer is yes. But do they have a Lebanese infrastructure or Lebanese origin in systematic way? The answer is no. First of all, during the Syrian intervention, the Islamic presence, especially in political terms, in northern Lebanon, particularly in Tripoli is a state created and nourished by the Syrian security apparatus as a tactic while trying to rule all Lebanon during the civil war there, and employed for this goal. The absolute evidence of this fact can be easily extracted from the stage of Syrian administration of Lebanon after the civil war when the Syrian authority maintained the Islamic phenomenon in Tripoli, while it was hysterically exterminating it in Syria. This was in the first place, then there were some evidences and indicators that the policy of 'keeping' turned into engagement and takeover of some factions and groups to employ them in the future in the Lebanese equation and to have them as pretexts for ...

The eleventh and final report of the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC), established by the United Nations to investigate Hariri assassination and other related political assassinations and terrorist attacks in Lebanon, has been introduced to the Security Council. As usual in this three-year investigation, the report is talking about some progress has been achieved in the investigation through the latest months. However, this report unveiled that there is new information reached by the Commission can lead to identify more individuals in the terrorist network responsible for the Hariri assassination. This is actually not a breakthrough or a precedent in this investigation as there was a series of identifying new individuals connected with this crime, but this is a progress for sure. This late or, in fact, very late progress in this international investigation poses some serious questions about the slow process of investigation and achieving information by the Comm...