Long-time readers may remember that last fall I was applying for the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant. I have now officially been rejected for that. This was not entirely unexpected. At the time, there was a concern from my Arabic professor that my language skills were not yet ready, one which I shared to a lesser degree. (My advisor, on the other hand, was convinced I would be ready.) Still, I am a bit disappointed, because my recent work in the sources has left me feeling more confident, and I expect to be able to cruise once I complete my medieval Arabic private study in Morocco this summer. Still, next year the language situation probably won't be an issue, so hopefully my chances will be much improved.

Now to sit around and wait until the Title VI grants are announced in late April to make sure my job will still exist next year.

 
I just returned from a talk by Khalil Shikaki focused mainly on Palestinian public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shikaki is a Palestinian political scientist who wrote the first book in Arabic on Israeli public opinion, and has been involved in Track Two peace negotiations while doing tons of research on public attitudes and perceptions related to the conflict. His talk was really interesting, I represent it below as best I can.

Basically Shikaki focused on the evolution of Palestinian opinion on four key issues across five turning points of the last ten years. The "turning points" were the start of the Oslo process, the Camp David talks, the al-Aqsa Intifada, the Road Map, and the proposed unilateral Israeli disengagement. Of these, he said Camp David and the Road Map had little effect on Palestinian opinions. The other points gave rise to the following noticable changes on the issues"

The first issue was support for different Palestinian factions. Shortly before the Oslo process, when asked which Palestinian factions they would like to support in an election, 30% said Islamic militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, 45% said Fatah, 10% preferred nationalist radicals such as the PFLP, and about 5% said a minor group, while 10% didn't like any of the choices.

The Oslo process, however, provided a boost to Fatah at the expense of everyone else. During this period, 15% supported Hamas/IJ, 5% the PFLP, and 55% for Fatah. Once the Intifada got going, however, Fatah plummeted. Today, 35% support Hamas/IJ, while only 20% prefer Fatah. Most strikingly, according to Shikaki, a full 40% now dislike all the available choices.

This last development Shikaki related to changing perceptions of the Palestinian Authority. In 1996, voter turnout in the elections was 77%. At that time, just over 50% of Palestinians said they had good government and that the Palestinian Authority was basically honest. Four years later, however, they are more cynical. 20% of Palestinians today believe the PA is governed well, and 86% consider it corrupt. In this context, Shikaki described the rise of a "Young Guard" of Palestinians which disapproves of the "Old Guard" represented by the PA, but has not given rise to an organized leadership or political program.

The third issue he discussed was on violence and diplomacy. According to Shikaki's data, at the start of the Oslo process, 20% of the Palestinians favored violent resistance, while 80% favored diplomacy. There was no overlap between these two camps. Today, however, 80% still support diplomacy, but 80% also support violence, with a clear majority saying a combination of the two is necessary to reach their goals. According to Shikaki, the roots of this lie in Palestinian views of different Israeli governments and the idea that one government can undo the progress of another, as well as a sense that violence works fostered by Barak's withdrawal from Lebanon and something that caused me to scribble down "Hebron/Temple Mount tunnel." In addition, Palestinians are convinced that no progress will be made toward peace as long as Ariel Sharon is in office.

The final issue was the solutions people actually wanted to see. As time was running short, he focused mainly on the current data. As of October 2003, over half of Palestinians supported a two-state solution with a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with Arab Jerusalem as the capital. However, only 1/3 of Palestinians believe most Palestinians support a two-state solution, and fewer than 20% believe Israelis want that. However, only 40% supported Barak's offer at Camp David. According to Shikaki, that last was probably due to a lack of knowledge among Palestinians about what Barak proposed. (This lack of knowledge among Palestinians came up a lot in his talk, and he attributed it to the traditionalist nature of Palestinian society and an authoritarian streak within the government interfering with civil discourse. Another point that came up later was that even 40% of Hamas supporters wanted a two-state solution, and Fatah was bleeding support to them mainly on issues related to corruption and public services. This accounts in part for Hamas leaders occasional statements about long-term truces with Israel as they seek to broaden their appeal.)

With regard to the unilateral steps, Shikaki focused mainly on Gaza, and said that as far as he could tell, the results would be, first, the "total collapse and disintegration of the Palestinian Authority," very quickly in Gaza, but soon in the West Bank, as well. This would be accompanied by an increase in violence as Palestinians perceived it was working. Hamas would be the main political beneficiaries.

What Shikaki is calling for at the moment, and what he said he lobbied for in Washington, was for Palestinian elections prior to a Gaza withdrawal. Based on his research/perceptions, he said that Fatah would likely win such elections, as the opinions of the disengaged 40% match them most closely. Hamas and IJ would likely not get more than the 35% or so which forms their core support, and would not join a coalition with Fatah. He said the benefits of this would be 1.) Creating a Palestinian leadership with renewed legitimacy that can act on crucial issues, 2.) Integrate Hamas and IJ into the system, thus making them less likely to use violence outside the formal PA framework while forcing Fatah to reform or risk losing support, and 3.) Reflect the above opinions about the two-state solution, helping bring to popular consciousness where people really stand.

Anyway, I won't try to add anything to his comments. He's also going to have an article in tomorrow's New York Times. (Regrettably, I didn't have the chance to actually meet him by name like I have most of our speakers, but all well.)

 
Ralph Luker of Cliopatra has a round-up of farewells to the Invisible Adjunct.

 
RFE-RL has a pair of reports about the situation in Herat. The first describes thousands of mourners in the city attending the funeral of Ismail Khan's son, the aviation minister who was killed over the weekend. The second cites Iranian news sources as claiming that both the Karzai government and the United States are seeking to remove Ismail Khan as Herat governor. The latter report could be true, as extending control to Herat would be a huge boost fot the central government, or it could be a conspiracy theory floated by the Iranian government in support of their ally and against the U.S.

 
Invisible Adjunct is leaving both academics and her blog. The title of this post is somewhat selfish, because it sounds like she's very at peace with the decision, and her life will probably be happier as a result. However, her site and the community it spawned was unique in the blogosphere, and she will most definitely be missed.

UPDATE: In honor of her sailing from the Grey Havens of blogging, I wish to dedicate a playing of Annie Lennox's "Into the West" to the Invisible Adjunct.

"What can can you see
on the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
a pale moon rises -
The ships have come to carry you home."

 
Roger K. Simon links to a Ma'ariv story claiming that the Bush administration offered Yassin immunity from assassination in exchange for an end to terror attacks. Simon notes what this says about the U.S./Israel relationship. I would add it also says something about the Bush administration's approach to Israeli/Palestinian issue. I think any Palestinian state will have people with ties to terrorism in the leadership, just like Israel did when it was first founded. If the Ma'ariv report is accurate, then it suggests that Bush at least is taking a pragmatic view of the situation.

Meanwhile, Juan Cole (who has really let fly some rhetoric lately) explores the implications of Israel's targeting of Yassin for the U.S. occupation in Iraq. Cole might be correct that arresting Yassin would have been politically wiser, but despite my pro-Palestinian sympathies, I can never quite feel upset by "extrajudicial killings." One can argue that terrorism is often a form of warfare waged by non-state actors against states. Certainly the terrorists often think so. If you consider yourself a soldier in a war and set things up so that the whole country is a battlefield, then attempts by the other side to kill you would seem legitimate.

Yassin's replacement is Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, as was expected. However, another Hamas leader stated that soon the group would hold elections. Israel will continue to target the Hamas leadership. Abu Aardvark notes what al-Hurra's (lack of) coverage of the assassination says about that network, while Martin Kramer tells the International Herald Tribune that "He can't be reporduced."

What do I think? I have no idea what this will mean in the long term. In the short term, there will definitely be an increase in violence. Hamas has already said they will expand their attacks outside of Israel, which could lead to more cooperation with global networks such as al-Qaeda. The other major unknown piece on the board is the timing and manner of the Gaza pull-out, which I still think this assassination is related to.

 
RFE-RL is reporting demonstrations in Herat against Karzai's government. Now my first instinct here is to speculate that this is an Ismail Khan rent-a-crowd given the strongman nature of his rule. However, many if not most Afghans do have a strong suspicion of centralized government. My advisor once told a story in lecture of his travels through Afghanistan about how an intercity taxi driver bragged about how much of the country was free from Kabul's control. So even if higher authorities did stir this up, it probably didn't take much.

 
Discussions of the situation in Herat are now up at RFE-RL and the Pak Tribune. Zahir Nayebzadeh is a commander loyal so Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The formal issue in the conflict between Nayebzadeh and Herat Governor Ismail Khan is the extent to which Khan should be under the control of the central government in Kabul. (This does not, of course, rule out the probability that Nayebzadeh just wants to be the new Ismail Khan.) Karzai is now sending troops from the Afghan National Army to impose a cease-fire, and if that fails, he will seek aid from NATO forces in Afghanistan.

All of this bears watching. For one thing, it is a test of Karzai's ability to impact the province of the most powerful regional governor. Ismail Khan is also the main warlord backed by Iran, and crucial to Iranian interests in the country. As far as the NATO role goes, it is not clear to me if NATO has the troops to both continue the current campaign against al-Qaeda/Taliban and stabilize Herat if necessary. Yet a conflagaration in Herat would almost certainly bode ill for the future stability of the country as a whole, far more than the continual security problems in Zabul and Waziristan. I also worry about NATO and the U.S. getting sucked into a local dispute we don't fully understand. Part of the problem the U.S. had in Lebanon was in not recognizing the realities of local politics and focusing too much on extending the power of state institutions. Where state institutions are weak, however, politics works through other loyalties. If we believe Nayebzadeh is representing the central government when in reality he is claiming to do so while merely playing everyone for support, and NATO falls for that and offers some sort of support, it will have sacrificed credibility in a meaningless dispute between rival warlords bent on factional aggrandizement.

 
I wish sushi were more filling.

 
Tacitus (1, 2) and Obsidian Wings have had enough of Little Green Footballs. My stance here is simple: I consider it a hate site which should no more be promoted by conservatives and others sympathetic to Israel than those whose primary goal is to support the Palestinians should rely on anti-Semitic sites. Portraying Idi Amin as a typical Muslim and the ongoing "Religion of Peace" mockery posts are beyond the pale of civil discourse. If you think this is an over-reaction, try mentally conceiving an LGF dedicated to attacking groups to which you belong. Tacitus is now interested in trying to get the things certain people want from LGF in a more reasonable manner. I wish him well in this endeavor, and recommend that all current LGF fans dump LGF and move to his new site once it becomes available.

 
Authorities have arrested some people smuggling $20,000 worth of plutonium through Tajikistan, a major conduit for weapons smuggling from Russia to Afghanistan. This material could have been used to make a dirty bomb if it fell into the hands of terrorists. In terms of realpolitik, cooperation in these matters represents a major incentive for the U.S. to work with Central Asian dictators, though as I've said before, that policy has its own problems.

The real issue raised by this in my mind, however, is why the Bush administration is shafting the Nunn-Lugar programs designed to safeguard former Soviet nuclear material. According to this op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, present funding levels will not secure these materials for another decade. And as Arms Control Today states:

"President George W. Bush Feb. 11 offered a strong endorsement of U.S. programs to safeguard or destroy the arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and materials formerly possessed by the Soviet Union. However, in his fiscal year 2005 budget request to Congress, released just a week earlier, Bush did not substantially increase funding for these programs and actually proposed cuts to the Department of Defense component as well as suggested spending shifts in programs in the Departments of Energy and State."

The other end of this smuggling route is also an issue, and the Bush administration's lack of concern with finishing the war in Afghanistan has been well publicized. This is a real WMD issue, and I'd feel a lot safer if it were given a higher priority by the U.S. government.

 
Abu Aardvark has some comments on Syria that I whole-heartedly agree with. In addition, I would add a point about Syrian politics: Whereas Iraq was rule by Saddam Hussein, Syria is ruled by a wider collection of people, and as of a couple of years ago it was even considered likely that Bashar al-Assad was ruling only as a sort of figurehead between rival factions. I don't know the current speculation, but it probably hasn't changed much. This makes little difference for the average Syrian's political freedoms, but it does matter in terms of the range of policy options available when dealing with the country.

 
Shaykh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, has just been killed by Israeli forces. This move is probably related to the planned Gaza pull-out, as some articles I'd read but never got around to blogging about talked about how Hamas was gaining influence in that territory over groups usually linked to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.

UPDATE: The Israeli strike on Yassin has even elicited comment from Arab Street Bum.

 
Item: According to the Encyclopedia of Islam's article on the Azd, the Huddan were the dominant clan along Oman's Pirate Coast.

Item: According to the conventional view of Azd development, the Azd Sarat (from the Sarat Mountains in Asir south of Hejaz) were among the original settlers of Basra, where a few decades later they were joined by the Azd Uman. Prior to that migration, the Azd Uman were not part of a confederation with the Azd Sarat. (In other words, they were not the "Azd" Uman.)

Item: The leader of the Azd in Basra during the early caliphate was Sabra b. Shayman al-Huddani, and the main mosque was the Huddan Mosque.

One of these pieces needs to move somehow. Is there another "Pirate Coast" somewhere?

 
Marwais Sadiq, Afghanistan's Minister of Aviation and son of powerful Herat Iranian-backed warlord Ismail Khan, was assassinated earlier today. Reports suggest that as many as 100 people have been killed in the fighting which followed. The circumstances of all this remain unclear.

 
After a day perusing Robert G. Hoyland's Arabia and the Arabs, I've started reading Golden Fool, Book Two in Robin Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy. The first volume of a Hobb trilogy is always set-up, so I'm not going to judge it yet except to say something near the end of the first book (Fool's Errand) is pretty depressing, though both expected and well-executed. Anyway, as I was saying, the author is setting up a mystery about who Chade's new apprentice assassin is. Only he never uses a pronoun to refer to her. Which makes me strongly suspect it's one of the two possible female characters. I mean, in quiz bowl at least, ducking the gender pronoun means female.

We'll see, I guess.

UPDATE: Or you could introduce a third possibility, one stronger than the other two. Still, I'm only considering women at this point.

 
Stuff seems to have calmed down in Syria, but mark my words, those disturbances will have an impact, even if we can't pick up on it through the media. Al-Jazeera reports on Arab beliefs that the Kurds were hoping for American invervention. There seems to be a common belief that the protests were linked in some manner to Iraq, though I don't know exactly how. Iraqi Kurds were highly supportive of the Iraq war, though, and it may be that Kurds in other nations were, as well.

 
Josh Marshall has a great post on the Presidential campaign and what Kerry should be doing. Here's just a sample:

"The key is simply that the president has no credibility. He has lost the trust of the country's allies in part because he has repeatedly deceived them -- dealt with them falsely or simply lied to them. But to a critical degree neither do they fear him. This is what we're seeing as our few remaining allies in Iraq ramp back their deployments in the country (Spain, South Korea, possibly Poland) and abandon our foolishly shortsighted effort to advance our interests by dividing Europe.

"Right-wingers in this country are casting this pattern as a cosmic moral drama of appeasement, with the faint of heart cowering before the grand struggle. In fact, the president is reduced to a mix of taunt and begging, pleading with other countries not to abandon him. What is a leader without followers? Not a leader."

Read the whole thing.

 
I've had lots of posts about the doings of ayatollahs, Presidents, and IGC members, as well as reflections about what's in store for the Iraqi people. Here, however, are links which give a glimpse at the American troops over there.

First Link

Second Link

(Via Daily Kos)

 
Here in Madison, one of the stations is showing Son of Godzilla. Come on guys, it's only 12:45 a.m. This shouldn't be on for another couple of hours yet! =)

 
I've decided that every Friday, I will post something related to my admittedly limited travels in other countries. (Until I run out, of course.) Often these will be drawn from e-mails sent at the time, which means they won't have been proofread (run-on sentences abound), and were targeted to an audience conisting mainly of relatives and friends who don't study the Middle East at all. (Part of the reason so much Biblical stuff is mentioned is because that would have been a main interest for the relatives.) With that in mind, here is my description of the Kingshighway as it runs from Amman to southern Jordan, and of Petra and its adjacent city of Wadi Musa...

"Over the years, however, I have decided that the 'stereotype' of 'desert' also conveys something important, what I call the 'literary definition' of the word. And it is this definition that you find as you travel south on the Kingshighway, considered a candidate for the world's oldest continuously used road, a road so old that the brochures on it claim it was mentioned in the Bible as travelled by Abraham. Following this road, which runs next to the Hejaz railway between Istanbul and Mecca attacked by Lawrence of Arabia and the Hashemites during World War I (see last e-mail). Past the hills which characterize Amman and Irbid, the land becomes increasingly level, dotted with small shrubs which become increasingly infrequent so that gusts of wind blow large clouds of sand and dust across the land, obscuring the view of the scattered farms along the way and hills and mountains in the distance.

"All throughout this country are small, scattered villages, occasionally noted by blue signs that serve the same function on Jordanian highways as green in the United States. Between them one sees small stone walls and what I suppose you would have to call abandoned house parts, a few walls crumbling, always without a roof, the nature of which I don't know. Also seen as one moves further south are encampments of the Bedouin, large gray tents near a herd of animals and pick-up trucks which can at times barely be seen against the brown-gray landscape covered in a haze of desert heat.

"In the middle of all this are occasional springs near the settlements, each varying according to the amount of water it contains. The largest and richest of these is the Wadi Musa, at which is found a sizable town of the same name. According to one of those stories common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, when the Hebrews were wandering in the wilderness, Moses struck a rock here, and it produced the stream that, in English, means "River/Spring of Moses," flowing from its source in a large gray stone enclosed with a white mosque-like structure down into a valley until it joins another stream far out of sight in the distance. The water of this spring produces soil that is apparently quite rich; outside the mosque across the street is grass, the richest grass that we saw in Jordan. Cool and clean, the structure which contains the source has a hollowed-out floor so that passersby can come and fill their water bottles or other containers with as much as they like, and one sees this happening irrespective of nationality or religion.

"As interesting as all this might be, however, the town of Wadi Musa owes its prosperity not only to the supply of water, but its proximity to Petra, Royal City of the Nabateans, the Rose Red City of the desert carved out of the living rock of in gargantuan proportions which must be seen to be believed. As Jordan's leading tourist attraction, Petra has around it a number of hotels in one of which we stayed, as this week and last week were trips sponsored by the program, which paid all the costs.

"To describe our hotel, the "Petra Forum," as expensive would be an understatement in American terms, much less Jordanian. Eating a standard meal in the dining room costs about $18. Needless to say, we passed on that, and instead wandered into the adjacent strip of restaurants in Wadi Musa before settling into a place called "The Bedouin Tent," this one multicolored with all sorts of what were supposed to be Bedouin implements hanging from the walls. The dining was a rather unpleasant experience - take my advice: If you ever do any serious travelling, try to get off the tourist track. It is here that the types of hospitality, etc. that I have described earlier start to give way to raw commercialism and swipe-whatever-you-can opportunism whether in Wadi Musa, Jerash, or wherever. In Irbid, you can't tip a waiter because it would give offense; here, a handsome gratuity was figured into our check for food which included a chicked dish which included only the skins of the chicken. And of course it cost about $5, more than my average day's spending in Irbid. That aside, however, we definitely enjoyed the hotel, and I even caught some of a Braves-Phillies game on a TV which carried stations in English, Arabic, Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, and I think Japanese. Friday morning, however, we were up at 6 a.m. anxious to hit Petra before the worst of the day's heat.

"Attempting to describe Petra would be an exercise in futility, you must for yourself walk the path past the large stone cubes known as the 'Djinn Blocks' erected for the Djinn (genies) whom the ancient Nabatean Arabs of 1000 years after Moses believed guarded the city they were building across the seemingly miraculous stream they had stumbled across and whose water they channeled through stone channels through the siq, the long, narrow canyon through which the visitor must walk for at least twenty minutes before catching a first glimpse of the Treasury, originally the tomb of the Nabatean King Harith IV, which is in the United States most famous for being used as a set in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Past this monumental structure one reaches a street containing row upon row of stone-carved houses that remind me almost exactly of Tatooine from the movie Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, small dwellings piled on top of each other behind the columns the Romans erected when they conquered this city through treachery, much humbler in scope than the giant royal tombs which line rock face in the distance but which still shine bright red and pink in the sunlight, as the city's nickname indicates.

"It is also here that one sees that Petra, although only a ruin of its former splendor, remains inhabited, for as they have for uncounted centuries, the Bedouin tribe known as the Banu Badul, professed descendants of the Nabateans who built the city, continued to sleep on mattresses in selected houses and the small stands which they run for their livelihood throughout the ruins with the permission of the government which failed in its efforts to evict them as it had the inhabitants of Umm Qais from their village atop Gadara. For the Badul, unlike the tourists who crowd the ruins with paid-for camel and donkey rides and sit sipping coffee at the restaurant at the end of the main street, are of Petra, knowing its nooks and crannies, masters of their domain as no distant government could ever be, so much so that after we had climbed the 800 stairs to reach the distant temple that at 45 by 50 meters is Petra's largest structure, we ambled huffing and puffing over the rocks to get to the top of it, trying to find our footing, only to have one of the Badul actually jog past us, setting his feet precisely and thoughtlessly on the right spots to appreciate the view that makes up his own backyard.

"This view, from the top of ad-Deir, known as the Monastary, is another one of those things which has to be seen rather than simply described, with the sunlight gleaming off the red buildings in the distance, the Wadi Araba into which the Wadi Musa flows cutting a deep gorge, and in the distance, looming over everything at a distance of four hours by donkey, the tomb of Aaron, brother of Moses, as-Salam alaihu, who according to the same story as that of the water from the rock died here atop a mountain and whose tomb is accompanied only by a small white mosque glinting in the distance."

Here is more about Aaron's tomb, including pictures.

 
Diederik Vandewalle writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace relates Libya's decision to give up WMD to the rise of a technocratic class within the bureaucracy which has also promoted economic privatization. It's worth adding here that a scholarly article I read on Libya a few months ago made it sound very much like one of the Gulf states: Its economy is almost totally dependent on oil, and the government is "structured" by patronage and relationships among an extended ruling family. It also has a much smaller population than the more classic revolutionary dictatorships such as Syria and Ba'athist Iraq.

 
Like Allison, I believe sex trafficking is a serious problem, and we should work against it. However, like also like Allison, I can't resist being amused by this.