What is "independence?"

When the state of Belgium was formed in 1839, the Europeans who signed the Treaty of London did not realize what a monster it was that they had created. No, Belgium is not a monster (though rising calls for the dissolution of the Belgian state could become one.) The concept of the modern nation state is the monster, and borders are its claws.

Let's go back a bit in history to the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended (temporarily) non-stop fighting in Europe between the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburgs, the Kingdom of Spain, France, Sweden...am I forgetting someone? The treaty sort of drew up Europe and assigned territorial borders and is generally considered to be the birth of the nation-state concept in political science/international relations. Aside from assigned borders, the treaty also agreed that states were to be free from external interference. A state's domestic affairs belonged to the state and to no one else. (Unless it was in Africa where the Europeans were free to do whatever they liked, ahem...)

The Westphalian System did seem to be a good system. Prior to that, borders were forever changing as rival empires fought for more land and more riches and for revenge on family members with whom they did not get along. The Holy Roman Empire continued to pretend that the fall of Rome hadn't occurred, the Hapsburgs' thirst for land was never quenched, and a variety of Kingdoms and Dukedoms and I'm-better-than-youdoms were forever skirmishing over the same parcels of earth.

Belgium was created under the Treaty of London (after the Belgian Revolution) because the UK, France, and Germany couldn't respect Westphalian boundries. Belgium was to be a buffer state between them. The treaty took neither ethnicity nor history into account, gave land to Belgium that belonged to other states, and pretty much set in motion the events that led to World War I (which led to World War II which led to Europe getting sick of war so that they entered into economic union to never fight each other again. It's worked so far...)

At the same time, colonialism was still in full swing. In what we now call the Middle East, perpetual war was fought between the Sassinids and the Byzantines from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Rise of the Islamic Empire at the time of the Prophet. Then came the Abassids, the Fatimids, the Umayyads, and the Moors. Throw in some Mamluks and others, and the Middle East was no different than Europe at the time of The Billion Years War. The Ottomans later took over for the other Muslim empires like the Safavids and the Mughals, and since they were defeated in World War I, the territory was divided up among the victors. It's been that way since the dawn of human history, only this time, lines mattered. Before that, there was never any state called Lebanon, never any country called Palestine, never any government called Syria, and certainly no lines that drew borders. No, today's lines that have caused so many conflicts in the region are largely a product of the European Westphalian idea. I guess it should be called West-fail-ian.

I read something from a Lebanese Twitterer about how there is no independence in Lebanon "while parts of it are occupied." I argue that there is no independence while Lebanon is gripped by fear and suspicion of the people within its internationally recognized borders. I also see a fierce independence among so many young Lebanese and so many civil society activists for whom lines on a map are not as important as feeding your people, running your economy, striving for progress, and ending perpetual conflict.

Lebanon may not be able to change the world outside its artificial borders, but it certainly has the power to change from within. When Prime Minister Hariri said, "Lebanon will not remain a playground for regional conflicts," he was standing up for Lebanon's independence. It's up to the Lebanese people to help him make that a reality. Let it be known, Lebanon, that you have a lot of people cheering for you!

Friday Fodder

Civil Society in Global Governance - a preview

Pulling Torn Pictures of W out of Arab Trashcans

The Westerners who melded the Mayan religion with the writings of St. John the Divine and then turned it into what is apparently a horrific movie may have been right, because I’m quite certain what I heard at the National Endowment for Democracy at the conference on “Middle East Democrats and Their Vision for the Future” means the end of the world is coming.

An Arab said he wished George W. Bush would come back.

This wasn’t just any Arab, this was perhaps the most famous civil society activist in the entire Middle East North African chain of dictatorships pretending to be democracies, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, founder of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, former political prisoner in Egypt, Wallerstein Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Drew University, and generally all around hero for humanity.

Dr. Ibrahim was part of a panel discussing “What assistance can the international community provide?” I’m really taking his idea out of context. His point – and there were others who agreed – was that the Obama administration is very weak in its democracy promotion efforts and that the level of pressure on regimes to change is not there. It is not the first time he has criticized President Obama - his August editorial in the Wall Street Journal outlined his disillusionment.

The panel – which consisted of Tamara Cofman Wittes, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs; Daniel Brumberg, United States Institute of Peace; Scott Carpenter, Keston Family Fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Vidar Helgesen, Secretary-General of International IDEA; Dr. Aseel al-Awadhi, one of the four women members of the Kuwaiti Parliament; Musa Maaytah, Minister of Political Development in Jordan; and Nouzha Skalli, Minister of Social Development, Family, and Solidarity in Morocco – discussed the lack of pressure on Arab governments to reform, unlike during the Bush years, when even Pharaoh Mubarak relented a bit and held presidential elections (even if the elections themselves were a farce).

Cofman Wittes is a well-respected, academically-minded individual who up until her appointment was Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Democracy and Development Project, Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Her CV is here. Her appointment means that she oversees the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Daniel Brumberg has written a lot about liberalization and Arab reform. Vidar Helgesen talked about European approaches to foreign assistance and spoke of the need to stop being so condescending to those groups receiving aid.

The tone of the conversation changed when Scott Carpenter began to speak. Carpenter formerly held Mrs. Cofman Wittes’ post under the Bush administration. He told us that an Egyptian civil society activist said to him they were pulling their torn pictures of Bush out of the garbage and taping them back together. Dr. Ibrahim agreed.

The problem, they say, is that the Obama administration focuses on talking to regimes rather than people, that the level of pressure on regimes to reform just isn’t there, and it is affecting what civil society reformers can accomplish.

Is the criticism warranted? Well let’s see. You have a prominent civil society activist saying there was more done during the Bush years than there has been under Obama. You have an appointment to the head of USAID that takes ten months. You have NGOs on the ground waiting to see what direction the administration is going to go.

Yet.

Even during the twilight of the Bush years, the international community wondered if decades of foreign assistance to the Middle East North Africa region was all for naught. Nothing was changing, and regimes seemed to be getting stronger. In fact, the space created – a sort of Bizarro World kind of freedom – allowed just enough room for “Islamists” to have a voice that was loud enough for regimes to crack down on their people, claiming they were fighting terrorism. There was no political reform, no economic reform, just lip service spilling from the mouths of dictators (no matter how benign they were).

This was enough for the international community to begin asking itself how to change its approach to foreign aid. (In 2003, for example, Daniel Brumberg wrote Liberalization Versus Democracy: Understanding Arab Reform," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Working Paper #37). Throwing money at groups intent on loosening the dictatorial reigns of the Arab World has resulted in…the dethroning of Pharaoh Mubarak? No. The election of someone other than Ben Ali in Tunisia? No. The House of Saud becoming the House of Someone Else? No. Bashar Assad giving a concession speech after hotly contested elections? No.

I was four years old when Pharaoh Mubarak came to power. Lebanon was trying to commit suicide then, and Yemen was split into a microcosm of the commie vs. democracy world order. Habib Bourguiba had been Presidictator of Tunisia for twenty years and lasted another ten before Ben Ali became Presidictator in a coup. An Assad was the Presidictator of Syria. Jordan was ruled by the current king’s dad. Morocco was ruled by the current king’s dad. Saudi was ruled by the current king’s brother or half brother or something like that.

No, change has not come to the Middle East despite all of my tax dollars being funneled there. No we can’t!

Finally, though, someone woke up and started to ask why nothing is different except there are more people willing to blow themselves up. The international community began to reconsider its strategy to “make the world a better place” and decided that bandaids are not appropriate when your arm has been cut off. More democracy people began to say, “Forget the dinosaurs, let’s help the kids!” and youth and community development programs started to receive attention. Foreign assistance programs began to focus on the future rather than choking on the present.

I think like so many other aspects of his presidency, Obama is a victim of history when it comes to strategies towards foreign assistance. Seems that everyone is asking why hasn’t this worked, why have we failed, what can we do differently. He’s jumped into a time of uncertainty and transformation even in the approach to foreign aid. There is a reason it took ten months to appoint someone as head of USAID, and it isn’t because Obama was chopping brush on a ranch in Texas.

And who can honestly say his public diplomacy approach to international relations is a bad idea? Do those civil society activists longing for a return to foreign assistance under the Bush years want the bombs that come with it? That’s part of the package – scare dictators with bombs just enough to allow for some space, isn't it?

Look, President Obama’s deliberate approach to everything is frustrating, especially in the Twitterverse we live in, when two seconds is too long a wait for so many people. It has been ten months, hardly enough time to solve all of the world’s problems. With the appointment of Rajiv Shah as head of USAID and Cofman Wittes to Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, it looks like the approach to foreign assistance is coming around, that a new strategy focusing on the long-term is being shaped, rather than bandaid fixes to election and economic laws that have been applied for so long now.

Right now, I guess it’s just wait and see.

A History Lesson

The National Endowment for Democracy held a conference entitled “Middle Eastern Democrats and their Vision for the Future” with a full cast of high profile democracy types from across the Middle East and Washington.

Before reporting on the day’s acts, I must give a bit of a prologue regarding NED. Think what you will about democracy promotion, but please note that it has its roots in noble minds. There is a name for those who oppose human freedom – in English we call them tyrants.

The NED was established in 1983 by congressional mandate. While NED has its own programs, it has the greater responsibility of managing funding from Congress to its four core institutes – the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the Solidarity Center. The activities of NDI and IRI are well-known – NDI is the Democratic Party’s political reform program and IRI is the Republican Party’s. CIPE is an affiliate of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and Solidarity Center is an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

Current NED and core institute programs in Lebanon include:

NED - You can find a list of NED projects in Lebanon here.

NDI - NDI is very active in Lebanon, helping the Civil Campaign for Electoral Reform and Lebanon Budget Project and groups like Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections, Development for People and Nature Association, Nahwa al-Muwatiniya, Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, and a coalition of seven civic organizations to implement Citizen Lebanon, a civic education and advocacy program taking place in 30 municipalities across the nation.

IRI - IRI does polling and political party development in Lebanon.

CIPE - Lebanese Anti-Bribery Network with Lebanese Transparency Association

SC (none)

Each of these programs involves local Lebanese NGOs who seek to improve democracy in the country. These are hardworking folks who rise above politics and put the good of their country first. I’ve met many of them, and they all are inspiring human beings. There’s nothing cooler in the world than to watch democracy in action (real democracy involving real people doing real things for their country not involving bombs, religions, or egos).

What I’m getting at is that despite an occasional controversy and the persistent conspiracy theories regarding NED programs, NED really does have people at heart. Is there a national security element to democracy promotion? Of course. The old adage “democracies don’t fight other democracies” tells us that we are safer with more democracies in the world.

Quite honestly, if you meet staff of one of these organizations, you’ll come to find that they’re all a bunch of bleeding hearts intent on saving the world from its own mutually assured destruction.

I suppose I had to perform this narrative because I’ve often been confronted by anti-NED rhetoric and accusations that NED and its core institutes are a front for the CIA! (Can we say X-Files?) The bottom line is that NED and its core institutes do great work.

Up next: Part two of this NED event - a post about what actually transpired at the event.

More on migrant rights

Caritas efforts to protect the rights of migrant workers.

A Good Hope for Lebanon

Amel Association is celebrating 30 years of existence this year. Tell them happy anniversary! They produced this great video in August of this year. Keep up the good work!

Visit their website here.
Find them on Facebook here.

Modern Slavery Rampant in Lebanon

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Imagine what 26-year-old Zeditu Kebede Matente thought when she traveled from her homeland of Ethopia to Lebanon in search of a better life. If you have any sense of empathy, you can probably feel the hope that she most likely felt as she packed her things. A future could have been in her sights, one in which she did not have to face the tragedy of poverty that she may have faced in her own country.

Alas, there was no future for Zeditu. She hung herself last month.

The list of names grows:

Ram Embwe
Kassaye Atsegenet
Saneet Mariam
Vololona
Mampionona
Tezeta Yalmiya
Sarada Phuyal

Just a sample of names, so many more names. Real people. Too many.

Where is the Lebanese civil society activism regarding this tragic issue? It seems that journalists are driving the awareness campaign, as they are a great part of civil society. Aljazeera, LA Times, Guardian, and Lebanon's own Daily Star have covered this issue recently. International NGO's like Human Rights Watch and Migrant Rights have called attention to the matter.

A Lebanese blogger is writing about this issue at Ethiopian Suicides. (We have added this to our blogroll in the sidebar.) I highly recommend a trip over there.

If you know of an organization in Lebanon that is working towards ending this horrific treatment of human beings, please let us know. Safadi Foundation USA is looking to raise the profile of these NGOs and to raise awareness about the plight of these women in an effort to stop the abuse.

Isn't it time that Lebanon takes a stand against slavery within its borders?

UPDATE: Today, Anget R. from Madagascar took her life. She was 20 years old.

Women's coalition calls on the new government to recognize women's equality

(Click on the photo to read the letter)

The Equality Without Reservation campaign is calling on the new Lebanese government to recognize women's equality. The coalition wants all Arab Governments to withdraw reservations and to ratify the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

You can find the Equality Without Reservation blog here. Information about the CEDAW situation regarding Lebanon can be found here.

Lebanon, isn't it time?

It's the little things...

CNN has posted a report on smoking in Lebanon. What struck me in particular were the comments made by several Lebanese who are proud to harm their health and the health of others in the name of "freedom."

The use of the word freedom reminded me of small D democracy, power of the people. Lebanon votes, yes, but Lebanese citizens often feel powerless in the system, and that's where this idea of "freedom" comes from. However, true democracy is not just ballot boxes. True democracy is about institutions centered around the rule of law. If Lebanon wants to be a democracy, a change in the "freedom" attitude that defies laws and rules is necessary. Real freedom is not having to worry about when the next war is going to come, not whether you can smoke (and endanger the health of others) or not.

Democracy is also citizen action. Dr. Georges Saade is a good example of democracy in action as he works to better the lives of all Lebanese. Civil society groups like Rotary Club Lebanon are also working to make Lebanon a healthier place to live and breathe. In the end, the people of Lebanon are the ones who will bring about change and make Lebanon a truly free society. It starts with the little things, like respecting those around you. But maybe that's not so little...

Read more about the no smoking cause at our earlier post here.

La la links

Oscar the Grouch trashes Fox News.


Funny, but is it really necessary on a children’s show?

This might only be of interest to language geeks – particularly those who’ve studied Arabic. It certainly makes sense and goes along with what I’ve been saying – that “Arabic” is not a language. It’s a series of languages and the only reason that “Lebanese,” “Egyptian,” “Jordanian,” etc. do not exist as a language is because of the Arab nationalism idea leftover from the Nasser age.

Last week’s massacre at Fort Hood was not the first time it happened there. In 1991, George Hennard killed 23 people before killing himself. Wait – George Hennard? That doesn’t sound like a Muslim name!

A cause liberals and conservatives can get (and are getting) together on. Break down the banks!

Republicans hate women? Who knew?

Shouldn’t this be headlines? 124 people are dead, and it’s buried in the Twitterverse?

I found it odd that an English newspaper would write so much about US health care reform, as it’s one issue that has no direct bearing on the rest of the world. Indirectly, maybe. Because liberals are going to do their best to fight against those Democrats who voted against the bill. I’ll be one of them. It will be stupakendous to see them go down to defeat in the primaries.

That being said, the Stupak amendment doesn’t matter as much as it’s outspoken critics think it does. We need this reform to pass, and it won’t happen without compromise.

I mean, why would so-called progressives prefer no health care reform to a compromise bill with no federal funding for abortion language? Pass the bill, work to change the bad parts later.

Or does it matter?

Flailin' Palin sees US coin design conspiracy. Where does she get this stuff?

Speaking of nutjobs.

Why does rightwing hatred still stun me?

Westboro Baptists used to be so extreme. Now they seem no different than teabaggers.

Support the Troops!™

The Liberal Media™

Really tired of the Che/Lenin/Satan rhetoric from the right while St. Ronnie and St. W get a free pass.

Too big to fail, too big to exist. Awesome. And from a socialist, nonetheless.

Larkin belongs in the Hall.

Paul Krugman is the most sane man in America.

If the woman had told the man that his fascist religion was wrong, he would have been pissed off and Faux News would not touch the story about her being fired.

Another reason liberals are better.

Jesus wept.

Jesus smiled.

Can we help them out?

Socialism!