Jordan on The Huffington Post

David Saranga: Social Media as a Platform for Dialogue in the Middle East

2009-12-16T08:38:02Z

How can a conflict to which writers have devoted entire books, and which journalists attempt to explain in a few thousand words of copy be encapsulated in a mere 140 characters? This was the central question posed by the New York Times reporter who interviewed me for an article he was preparing about the initiative to hold a press conference on Twitter during the war in Gaza a year ago. This question was essentially a paraphrase on a comment by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who, in a tone that was part query and part criticism, voiced the same concern live, regarding the first press conference in history ever held by any governmental body on Twitter.

Last week the President of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, inaugurated a new YouTube channel, where he calls citizens from all over the world to share their thoughts with him, emphasizing his desire to "hear" what they have to say - to "hear" their words and not to "sound" his own. For the first time an Israeli leader is prepared and willing to engage in a non-hierarchical dialogue with world public opinion through a direct and unmediated channel. Coming from an Israeli leader, this development is unusual, unique, and extremely unexpected. With the initiative to create a YouTube channel, Peres has joined rank with a select number of world leaders who have embraced technological progress, among them President Obama, Pope Benedict XVI, and Queen Rania of Jordan.

For some time now I have been following with interest the dialogue that Queen Rania has been holding over the social network sites with citizens from around the world. The goal of this dialogue is to improve the image of the Arab world in Western eyes and to try and explain that Islam is not synonymous with terror, and that not every Arab citizen is a potential terrorist. This welcome initiative by Queen Rania, which has been harshly criticized in Jordan, is held only in English, and is oriented to the Western public. Yet since it is held in English it cannot be viewed as an internal Arab dialogue, in which citizens of the Arab world might also share their views with their leaders. Nonetheless, the initiative is important - a significant, if small step, indicating openness to dialogue.

Unlike Queen Rania, President Peres was chosen by the Israeli parliament; unlike the Queen, Peres has inaugurated the YouTube channel in Hebrew and in English, in order to engage in conversation with the citizens of his country aswell; and, unlike Queen Rania's, his YouTube channel will eventually be translated into other languages, Arabic among them. Despite the differences between the approaches of these two leaders, this is an important development, in which key statesmen and public figures are engaging in dialogue with citizens of the world and not only with the citizens of their own country. As such, it represents a new phase in the evolution of public diplomacy. Unlike the past, when transparency and accountability were demanded of democratic leaders vis-à-vis their voters, today these leaders are also involved in dialogue with international public opinion and with a global citizenry. This is a revolution that could only have taken place thanks to the existence of internet-based social networks.

The answer I gave to the New York Times correspondent one year ago is still valid today:

Since the definition of war has changed, the definition of public diplomacy has to change as well.

I was referring to the need of governments to adapt to progress. This answer is also true in times of peace: as the definition of the media has changed, now that social networks have emerged as a central source for information, governments and state leaders must embrace social networks and use them as a platform for conveying their messages in a direct and unmediated fashion. It is time for direct and frank dialogue between governments and global public opinion. Today this is a real possibility for leaders, and it lies directly at their fingertips, within reach of the keyboard.

Andy Worthington: "Model Prisoner" at Guantanamo, Tortured in the "Dark Prison," Loses Habeas Corpus Petition

2009-12-15T11:03:22Z

On Monday, District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan handed the government its ninth victory (against 31 losses to date) in the habeas corpus petitions of the prisoners held at Guantánamo, ruling that the government had established, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Musa'ab al-Madhwani, a 28-year old Yemeni, could continue to be held indefinitely, because of his connections with al-Qaeda.

As the Washington Post explained, however, although Judge Hogan "said that the government had met its burden in proving the accusations ... he did not think Madhwani was dangerous." Noting that he has been a "model prisoner" since his arrival at Guantánamo in October 2002, he explained, "There is nothing in the record now that he poses any greater threat than those detainees who have already been released."

Moreover, Judge Hogan refused to rely on any statements that al-Madhwani had made to interrogators at Guantánamo, ruling that they were "tainted by abusive interrogation techniques," to which he was subjected in the weeks after his capture, before his arrival at Guantánamo, when he was sent to the "Dark Prison" near Kabul, a facility run by the CIA, which, in numerous accounts by released prisoners, resembled nothing less than a medieval torture dungeon, with the addition of extremely loud music and noise 24 hours a day.

Judge Hogan did, however, accept statements that al-Madhwani made during his Administrative Review Board at Guantánamo in 2005, which, he said, were not tainted because they were made years after the abuse took place. Al-Madhwani's lawyers had argued that these statements should also have been excluded, stating, as the Post put it, that they were "contaminated because he was still worried about upsetting his captors." One of his attorneys, Darold W. Killmer, explained, "He was threatened that if he changed his story, he would be sent back to a place worse than at the 'Dark Prison.'"

The Ramzi bin al-Shibh connection

In truth, it was always going to be difficult to convince a judge to accept al-Madhwani's habeas petition, for the simple reason that he was seized after a raid on an apartment block in Karachi, Pakistan, and a firefight with the Pakistani authorities, on September 11, 2002, with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, and Hassan bin Attash, the brother of Walid bin Attash, another of the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators.

Unlike al-Madhwani, and five other Yemenis seized after the firefight, who were held in the "Dark Prison" for up to six weeks, before they were flown to Guantánamo, bin al-Shibh was rendered to Thailand after his capture, and was held for four years in secret CIA prisons, subjected to an array of "enhanced interrogation techniques," and bin Attash, after a week in the "Dark Prison," was rendered to Jordan, where, despite being just 17 years old at the time of his capture, he was held for 16 months in one of the CIA's proxy torture prisons, before being flown to the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, and then on to Guantánamo in September 2004.

With these kinds of connections, it's easy to see why a judge would conclude that al-Madhwani was connected to al-Qaeda, and would accept, as the Post described it, the government's allegations that he "traveled to Pakistan to join al-Qaeda, trained at an al-Qaeda camp, traveled with al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Pakistan and engaged in a firefight with Pakistani authorities before his arrest."

Musa'ab al-Madhwani's story

As al-Madhwani explained at his Administrative Review Board, he arrived in Afghanistan in August 2001, when he was 21 years old, at the urging of recruiters in his homeland, and trained briefly at al-Farouq (a training camp associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before the 9/11 attacks) until it closed immediately after the attacks. After spending a few months in guest houses in Afghanistan, he made his way to Pakistan via Khost, traveling with other Arabs, Pakistanis and Afghans, and then, after trying unsuccessfully to return home via Iran, where, he said, he was "beaten and questioned" before being refused entry, spent ten months being moved around various houses in Lahore, Quetta and Karachi, waiting for an opportunity to return home that never came.

Moreover, when he explained the situation in Karachi at the time of his arrest, an even less militant picture emerged. "The group I was arrested with were staying in two apartments," he said. "One person from each apartment refused to surrender and fought the Pakistani forces sent to arrest us. I was in the group that chose to surrender." He added that the Pakistanis were "thankful for our cooperation and surrendering without fighting." He then explained that there were seven men in his apartment, including one who was killed, who had only been there for about five days, and that two other men -- presumably bin al-Shibh and bin Attash -- shared the other apartment with a family.

In his Review Board, he spoke only briefly about the "Dark Prison," but it was easy to understand why Judge Hogan, who also spoke to him by video-link from Guantánamo, concluded that his "allegations about abusive interrogations were credible," and, noticeably, added that they "were not challenged by government lawyers." In 2005, when a Board Member asked him, "Are you holding anything back from the interrogators?" he replied, "That is impossible, because before I came to the prison in Guantánamo Bay I was in another prison in Afghanistan, under the ground [and] it was very dark, total dark, under torturing and without sleep. It was impossible that I could get out of there alive. I was really beaten and tortured."

If this picture indicates someone who, as I explained in The Guantánamo Files, with reference to other prisoners seized elsewhere in Pakistan, was a "recent Taliban recruit who ended up in Karachi as part of an extended safe house system that was sheltering all Arabs from arrest, and not just those who were committed to al-Qaeda," it is, I believe, a picture that shifts into sharper focus through the stories of the other five men seized with al-Madhwani, aged between 21 and 28 at the time of their capture, none of whom have yet had their habeas corpus petitions ruled upon by a judge.

The other five men seized with Musa'ab al-Madhwani

Ha'il al-Maythali, for example, explained in Guantánamo that he went to Afghanistan in November 2000 to "fight in the jihad," and admitted ferrying supplies on the back lines near Kabul, but said that he was only on the front lines for a week because he had no military experience. The only one of the five to mention the "Dark Prison," he said that "there was very bad torture conducted on people," including himself, which was "so bad that he knew by making up and agreeing to the training it would stop the torture." He added that "his testicles were disfigured to the point where they cannot be repaired."

Said Nashir was accused of attending the al-Farouq camp from July to September 2001, and also attending two speeches by Osama bin Laden while he was there, which was typical of the experiences of new recruits, and Shawki Balzuhair was accused of traveling to Afghanistan in April or May 2001, attending al-Farouq, and serving on the Taliban front lines near Bagram. A greater degree of commitment was hinted at in the case of Ayoub Ali Saleh, who reportedly traveled to Afghanistan to join the jihad in 2000, and trained extensively at al-Farouq, but Bashir al-Marwalah's story is probably the most revealing.

Al-Marwalah admitted traveling to Afghanistan in September 2000 and training at al-Farouq and another camp, but said that he then returned to Yemen to see his family, and especially his father, who was ill. He said that he then returned to Afghanistan in August 2001 and attended al-Farouq again, but refuted an allegation that he had participated in military operations against the U.S.-led coalition, and said that he had fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion began. When the tribunal asked him why he had gone to Afghanistan, he said that he wanted to train to fight in Chechnya, and when he was asked, "Are you a member of al-Qaeda?" he said, "I don't know. I know I am an Arab fighter."

I may be wide of the mark in my assessment of Musa'ab al-Madhwani and the other five men mentioned above, but no other information has been forthcoming to suggest that this is the case -- from Ramzi bin al-Shibh or Hassan bin Attash, for example, in thinly-disguised references to allegations made by "senior al-Qaeda operatives," tying the men into any terrorist plots or operations.

Challenging indefinite detention

While the others, presumably, await rulings on their habeas corpus petitions, al-Madhwani joins the other eight prisoners whose petitions failed in a peculiar legal netherworld, no longer regarded as "enemy combatants" by the Obama administration, but still detained indefinitely as though they were. This is in spite of the fact that, in most of these cases, the men in question are not the "terrorists" of right-wing propaganda, but are, instead, unacknowledged prisoners of war, who, instead of being held according to the Geneva Conventions, have had to endure long imprisonment in an experimental prison devoted to dehumanizing isolation and coercive interrogations, and remain, essentially, as a peculiar category of prisoner with no legal or historical precedent.

For someone like al-Madhwani, regarded by the judge as posing no danger, it is, perhaps, time for an appeal that draws on a case overlooked by Judge Hogan: that of Yasim Barardah, a Yemeni whose habeas petition was granted by Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle on March 31 this year.

In her ruling, Judge Huvelle suggested that the prisoners in Guantánamo were akin to prisoners of war, but with the ability to be released if it could be demonstrated that they no longer posed a threat to the United States. Judge Huvelle drew on the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, which authorized the President to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved in the 9/11 attacks, or those who supported them. The AUMF is relied upon by the Obama administration to justify the detention of the prisoners at Guantánamo, but, as Judge Huvelle explained, it "does not authorize unlimited, unreviewable detention," but instead authorizes holding people "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism"; in other words, "the AUMF does not authorize the detention of individuals beyond that which is necessary to prevent those individuals from rejoining the battle, and it certainly cannot be read to authorize detention where its purpose can no longer be attained."

And that, I think, based on Judge Hogan's comments, is a pretty straightforward definition of the position in which Musa'ab al-Madhwani finds himself, seven years and three months after his capture.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo." He maintains a blog here.

Queen Rania Orders Clothes From Former Project Runway Contestant

2009-12-14T12:04:38Z

In the fashion world, Jordan's Queen Rania is definitely in...and she's only proved that more so by ordering pieces from former Project Runway contestant Rami Kashou. The Jerusalem-born, L.A.-based designer told the L.A. Times that Rania's assistant discovered him after reading an article in a Jordanian magazine. Kashou sent sketches and fabric swatches to the queen, where he created a dark green, draped gown for her Important Dinner for Women in September.

"I didn't know how it was going to be," he said of their first meeting, "But the ice broke as soon as she came out into the hall and shook my hand. She was so humble and so focused and interested. Then the king walks in, and it was one of those moments you remember forever."

He also had to keep in mind Rania's conservative style:

"She can wear something open, but she can't wear something strapless. And she loves my draping -- the thing they beat me up for on 'Project Runway' takes me to the queen of Jordan!"

Wondering what else Kashou has been up to? Check out his upcoming collection. And if you can't get enough of Rania, take a look at her fall fashion or her ravishing wardrobe.

Get HuffPost Style on Twitter and Facebook!

Sharmine Narwani: Thomas Friedman -- Hasbara GrandMaster Or Elitist Dupe?

2009-11-30T11:18:12Z

Hard as I try, my mouth is fixed in an unattractive gape -- unable, it seems, to correct itself. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in his usual clumsy attempts to suggest liberal sympathy while in fact propagating many, many Mideast myths, has caused this unfortunate disfigurement.

In his most recent column on Saturday, Friedman decided to help us understand a phenomenon sweeping the Arab and Muslim worlds, and was generous enough to coin an actual phrase to simplify this concept for the benefit of all Western civilization -- he calls it "The Narrative."

According to the New York Times columnist, "The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11." Yes, he capitalizes it. Like "The Donald." Or "The Treaty of Versailles."

Kind of him to generalize this way. It would have been far more difficult for me if I actually had to think about the Arab-Muslim world as a diverse grouping representing real-life individuals from varying cultures, histories, religions, political persuasions and stages of social, political and economic development.

In his column, Friedman expands on his "The Narrative," saying these Arab-Muslims feel that "America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand "American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" to keep Muslims down."

I don't suppose that our declaration of a grandiose "War on Terror" which refused to distinguish between extremist Salafi militants and legitimate resistance movements -- dubbed a "mistake" by no less a figure than British Foreign Secretary David Miliband earlier this year -- had anything to do with that perception?

Miliband wrote in the Guardian in January that the term "War on Terror" is "misleading and mistaken," and that efforts to "lump" extremists together had been counterproductive, playing "into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common."

How positively Friedman-esque.

He might further note that the current Obama administration has also ceased to use such terms because they have been singularly divisive and entirely unsuccessful.

But I digress. My mandibular deformity was actually caused by Friedman's pronouncement that for at least two decades...

"U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny."

Where does one begin, pray tell? Tyranny, might be a good starting point. Friedman may care to note that two of the most tyrannical governments in the Arab world -- Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- are, in fact the US's closest allies in the Arab Mideast. Egypt has been ruled with an iron fist by President Husni Mubarak for three decades, a man who hits slam-dunks every election year by garnering an eyebrow-raising 90% of the popular vote -- and whose prisons are notorious torture cells for political dissidents. The theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia doesn't even try to feign democratic trappings. No elections, state-controlled media, zero tolerance for dissent -- women forbidden to drive by religious mandate.

So let's count the Egyptian and Saudi populations out from Friedman's description, because they probably don't feel like they have been "freed from tyranny." Let's instead turn our conversation to his "rescuing Muslims" scenario.

Hundreds of thousands of Arab and Muslim men, women and children ceased to exist after our onslaughts in Iraq and Afghanistan. US politicians cheered on Israeli troops as they decimated entire civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2009, destroyed non-military infrastructure vital to these areas and killed over a thousand innocent civilians in each place. Israel fired off one million cluster bomblets in Lebanon, most of these in the war's final three days while ceasefire agreements were being negotiated - knowing full well that 98% of victims are civilians, a third of them children. Says Friedman:

"Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11...primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes -- the Taliban and the Baathists -- and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders."

Forgive me, but is Friedman saying that our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were about regime change? I foolishly thought we had sold the notion to the global community that this was about bringing Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to justice for their role in 9-11. If this is so, Arabs and Muslims should forgive us for being liars as well.

"A million acts of kindness?" Name three.

And then Friedman posits that "most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia..." Tell you what. Name three Americans who can read and do not know that the US government funded, groomed, armed and created the jihadists we are fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq today.

"You need to tell us what it (Islam) is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques," Friedman urges Arabs and Muslims worldwide. Perhaps if we ceased our efforts to block the popular and balanced coverage of Al Jazeera's English channel from being broadcast on our television screens, we would get a clearer picture of the Muslim word, Tom.

Most galling, however, is Friedman's attempt to coin a phrase and insert it into our own nation's narrative. It smacks of Hasbara, a Hebrew term -- often interpreted as 'propaganda' -- used by Israel and its supporters to direct the Middle East debate and reshape public opinion abroad.

This is a matter of significant priority for the Israeli government, and it has at its disposal a veritable army of Hasbara activists in all the important international capitals and campuses. For an unusual -- meaning, available to the public -- example of Hasbara in action, one need only look to the 116-page document "The Israel Project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary" published on Newsweek's website, with talking points for Hasbara activists on everything from Iran's nuclear energy program to the Gaza War to illegal Settlements in the West Bank.

I can only imagine that Friedman wrote this column at 3 am one morning in a full-flegded Jerry McGuire moment that he will hopefully come to regret. He has no facts whatsoever to back up his assertions, and his only source for information on this supposedly widespread "The Narrative" that has infiltrated the collective Arab-Muslim brain is -- wait for it -- the claims of an anonymous "Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert."

Forgive me for saying this because I actually think well of Jordan and its resourceful citizens. But, the current Jordanian establishment, like many other Arab and Muslim elitists, is so far up the collective US, Israeli and Saudi arse, it would take major surgery to find it, let alone free it. Find some new friends, Friedman.

"Many Arab Muslims know that what ails their societies is more than the West, and that The Narrative is just an escape from looking honestly at themselves," concludes Friedman.

Tom, look honestly at yourself. Do you really think that if Arab-Muslim societies were free of external interference and able to elect their leaders in democratic elections, they would hold these alleged grievances?

I suggest that our double standards in dealing with the Middle East and our many, many failed policies there, including propping up brutal leaders to do our bidding, justifiably engenders resentment and anger, not just in the region, but globally too. You ought to have passed by Europe during Israel's Gazan military adventure earlier this year when hundreds of thousands of Europeans in all their major cities protested angrily against the IDF's killing spree. Then again, maybe we would have been forcibly subjected to another one of your columns on the Misinformed European Narrative.

Betwa Sharma: No Toilets or Air For "Forgotten Prisoners"

2009-10-29T17:45:38Z

Prison conditions worldwide are worse than the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture could have imagined. So he said, while presenting his latest findings from detention centers in different regions. Jails without air, toilets and food are not rare.

The UN produces a steady stream of reports every year that are judiciously discussed and web-linked. Occasionally, some of these studies before being archived, invite a raised eyebrow.

In Equatorial Guinea, Rapporteur Manfred Nowak reveals that the government does not provide food and water to the prisoners who must wait for their families to bring water in plastic bottles and food in plastic bags.

Since there are no toilets, prisoners use the same bottles to urinate and the plastic bags to defecate. In most police stations, including the police headquarters in the capital Malabo, tons of filled and stinking plastic bottles and bags had been thrown through the bars to the corridors and open yards.

The government of Equatorial Guinea has rejected the report. “So many countries are not living up to their obligations to respect the basic dignity of human beings in detention,” says Nowak.

In prisons little bit outside of Montevideo in Uruguay, detainees used the water in the toilets for drinking. The sewage system does not work so inmates use plastic bags for defecation, which they later throw outside.

In Uruguay, hundreds of convicts and pretrial detainees spend years in tiny metal boxes called “las latas” (tin cans) under conditions described by the Rapporteur as “inhuman.”

During the summer, heat in these metal boxes reaches 60° C and the lack of ventilation means that detainees had to sit in shifts in front of tiny openings to breathe. They also had to cut themselves in order to get medical assistance.

In Nigeria, a small hole in the corner of the cell served as a toilet for 100 detainees whose cell had a makeshift roof making the temperature and humidity unbearable.

In many cases, prisoners have to wait for hours before a guard lets them out to use a toilet, and most detainees are watched by others as they use a hole in the corner of an overcrowded cell.

The Uruguayan leadership gave orders to close down that particular prison three days after Nowak’s visit in March. In Nigeria, the government decided to release 20,000 prisoners since their pre trial detention lasted longer than their maximum term. Many people above the age of 60 have already been released.

Worse than the beatings and torture to extract confessions.... is living in prisons where the government does not provide food or health services. Instead, it the responsibility of individual families to organize meals and toilet articles.

“If you’re a foreigner or you don’t have a family....you might starve or you may try to get food from other detainees in exchange for slavery like services, sexual services and other services….”says Nowak. “The poor are at the bottom of the prison hierarchy.”

The study declares the “re-education through labour” programme in the infamous Chinese Falun Gong camps equivalent to brainwashing. Then, in Togo, three detainees with serious mental disabilities were simply left unattended in a dark cell.

It is a conservative estimate that one million children are behind bars. Under international law, children can be jailed only under exceptional circumstances for a short period of time.

The report finds that children as young as eight or nine are packed away for minor crimes, end up for prolonged periods in pre-trial detention, and are treated much worse than the grown-ups. “Children more often than adults are subject to beatings and institutionalized corporal punishment......sexual violence,” says Nowak.

This is the Rapporteur’s fifth report since 2004, and now the UN agent is pushing for an international convention that will protect the rights of detainees as a vulnerable group. “Most people have no idea how life behind bars looks in reality,” he says.

In many instances, the UN’s requests to come and inspect the prisons have been denied for several years. “Unfortunately in the Arab world on the one hand torture is wildly practiced and secondly most countries did not request favorably to my request,” he says.

Countries suspected of human rights violations, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria have not responded to requests.

In Jordan, Nowak found that while there was no systematic torture, practices like beating on the soles and then walking on salt were carried out in a prison in Amman. The notorious Al-Jafr prison, located in the desert 350 km south of Amman in Jordan, was closed after the Special Rapporteur visited.

The UN estimates that the 10 million persons deprived of liberty worldwide are living in unacceptable conditions. The Rapporteur stresses that abuses also occur in industrialized nations particularly with aliens awaiting deportation or minors who have broken immigration laws.

Several countries have avoided a check-up including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Israel, Russia and United States. Cuba has invited Nowak for a visit in 2010.

China Dissidents Top Nobel Peace Prize Speculation

2009-10-07T01:25:14Z

OSLO — Chinese dissidents are leading the odds of winning the Nobel Peace Prize this year, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the 60th since the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

Speculation on the chances of Chinese dissidents for the peace prize, announced this year on Friday, has been a yearly ritual. But this time there's a stronger current of expectation surrounding critics of China's long-standing communist regime.

Daoud Kuttab: Jordanians' Public Broadcasting Challenge

2009-09-24T04:51:37Z

Jordan, like many other Arab countries, seems to be having a hard time understanding and dealing with the idea of public service broadcasting.

After decades of government-owned and controlled radio and television stations, under King Abdullah, Jordan began a new era of opening up the airwaves to the private sector. The Audio Visual Law enacted in 2002, which grants license for radio and television stations to the private sector, succeeded in creating a wide range of commercial stations, but despite the license to privatize, Jordan has failed to create a legal environment or introduce traditions that encourage and improve public service broadcasting.

Possibly the biggest problem that exists today is with the state-run radio and television, which used to be a monopoly and was given the task of providing public service programming. Jordanian taxpayers are footing the bill in the form of a broadcasting fee that is collected from every household. The electricity bill of every Jordanian house or business deducts one dinar per account every month. The broadcasting fees go directly to the treasury. Less than half of this amount is given to JRTV, which raises the rest of its needs from advertisements and sponsorships. Jordan TV is thus competing with privately owned media outlets, leaving the latter gasping for air.

The worst part of this situation could be seen by monitoring the daily prize show presented on Jordan TV immediately after iftar in Ramadan. Prizes were given to a few people based on phone calls. The problem was that these calls cost 70 piasters a minute; most callers would be kept on line for a few minutes as the answering machine would took them through a list of options before they got to vote. The process was repeated daily, with many calling hoping to win. The price of these calls is rarely advertised; often young children would call, leaving it to their families to pay tens or hundreds of dinars on their home phone bill.

State-run Jordan TV caters mostly to some of the needier Jordanians who have no access to satellite, and so the problem would be further compounded. The one-hour program itself had no redeeming value, no cultural substance was not even entertaining. It was simple a one-hour-long advertisement for a host of companies who were giving away small prizes. Jordan TV officials said that they had no choice but to do this, since the government does not provide them with the needed income to cover the costs. Over JD15 million is said to be raised annually from the electricity bill, but less than half is actually turned over to the national radio and TV corporation, thus forcing it to cheapen its programming to attract advertisements.

On the regulatory front, the new Audio Visual Law made it possible for tens of local radio and TV stations to appear (mostly based in the capital), but it is not clear whether these stations can secure long-term sustainability. Various loopholes in the law and in practice have resulted in the clustering of advertisement income with a very small, select, group of stations because of the absence of a level playing field.

One radio station, for example, FAN radio, which is owned by the armed forces, has taken advantage of the army's communication system and has access to broadcasting towers throughout Jordan. Another is the police station AMEN FM, which is owned by the Police Department and has therefore access to all police officers and police reports before anyone else. It has publicly refused to have the traffic reports coming from police helicopters or from its headquarters shared with other stations under the excuse that this is security information. Army and police officials say that they have a right to invest in the media just like the private sector. No answer, however, is given to whether the existence of such stations, made possible with tax payer subsidy and government waivers, is good for a competitive audiovisual industry.

In the midst of all this, little attention is given to genuine public service and community-based media. The World Bank has repeatedly shown that poverty levels have disappeared in communities that have a robust community media. In Jordan, the Audio Visual Law favors entertainment-based media rather than media that are interested in local issues. An additional 50 per cent fee is slapped on any station wishing to broadcast news or politics (which is actually much more costly than an entertainment program).

This temporary law must be amended and the idea of penalizing stations which broadcast local news and local politics has to be eliminated. On the contrary, license fee waivers must be given to any not-for-profit radio station that is interested in public service broadcasting.

The Jordanian Cabinet has given waivers only to radio stations based in public universities, the police, the Amman Municipality station and to a station that is connected to a Royal NGOs. A municipality near Madaba set up by UNIFEM was refused a waiver because the municipality members were elected and not appointed! The government-run regulator should be supporting such public service stations and not making it difficult for them to exist and survive.

For the national TV, army and police-owned radio to have advantage in serving the public is fine and commendable. But when these same publicly owned stations seek advertising income using their advantage, there is a real problem. Free competition requires a level-playing field. It is unacceptable for one station to have income from the taxpayers, not have to pay broadcasting fees and have public advantages, and compete with other stations that have only their investment as a source of income.

The audiovisual market is fast growing and needs a fair regulatory process that takes the need of public service broadcasting, community media needs as well as the need of commercial media to survive and thrive into consideration. Leaving the process on auto pilot is simply a formula that invites corruption and makes money under the cover of public service broadcasting.

Amitai Etzioni: Three Cheers for Israel?!

2009-09-21T09:25:01Z

The media is full of stories critical of the way Israel deals with the Palestinians.
There is indeed a lot to criticize, which, by the way, Israelis often do. However, when Israel does something right -- and in a big way -- that too should be noted. After all, one cannot expect a nation that is boxed around the ears every time it strays, but not rewarded when it gets it right, to mend its ways.

Here's what happened, which got next to no coverage, except in the Washington Post.

The Dead Sea is dying. Since 1960, its water level has decreased by 75 feet and its surface area by a third. But this problem is not restricted to one body of water: throughout the Middle East, water is running out. Israel and Jordan have moved jointly to address this problem.

Israel and Jordan have developed a plan to connect and redistribute water sources throughout their countries to shore up the water supply. One project under this plan would provide Amman with water by connecting it to the Dissi Reservoir, an underground water source in the south of Jordan, and would desalinate it by connecting it to Israeli desalination plants that are being built on the Mediterranean. Another plant would send 500 billion gallons of water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea through pipelines and tunnels over a path of 110 miles. Some of this water would be used to replenish the Dead Sea, while the rest would be desalinated for use by both countries.

The desalinated water from the Dissi Reservoir and Dead Sea would be shared amongst Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The replenished Dead Sea would sustain a tourist attraction and provide economic benefits for both Jordanian and Israeli companies who sell its chemicals.

Critics of the plan argue that these new connections will upset the region's ecosystem and recommend that their possible effects be studied, which could take several years. But Jordan and Israel maintain that the plan be implemented immediately to prevent water shortages, as some cities in Jordan have already begun rationing their water supply.

Three cheers for all concerned.

Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor at the George Washington University and the author of Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy (Yale 2007). To contact him write icps@gwu.edu. www.gwu.edu/~ccps/securityfirst

Martin Varsavsky: Iraq, Afghanistan: Lessons From the Pros

2009-09-05T10:57:25Z

The Iraqi and Afghan military interventions have caused the death of over a million people, have cost trillions of dollars, have greatly weakened the US military, have increased the budget deficit, have hurt the dollar, have resulted in much greater terrorism in the Middle East (now expanding into Pakistan), and have fortified Iran's position as the strongest regional power determined on its quest for an atomic bomb. In short, it's been a disaster. As a result, while calling to an end of the intervention was the home of "the weak" (i.e. the Dems, according to the Republicans) now "the brave" as well are asking for withdrawals. As criticism of the US and European policies in the Middle East grows, this article looks at how the failed policies in the region could be reshaped by learning from those who have managed to do surprisingly well for themselves in this troubled part of the world: the Israelis, the Iranians and the Afghan drug lords.

Lessons From Israel

First, allied forces should emulate the strategy of Israel to deal with terrorism -- by ending the occupation of South Lebanon and Gaza -- by ending the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, while keeping key bases in the region from which to retaliate should it be necessary. Israel tried and failed with occupation. It found it too costly, inhumane and inefficient. In the end it withdrew, or separated with a wall, from all occupied territories. Israel's new strategy is to stay away from areas where terrorists are, but to always stand ready to retaliate when attacked from them. As controversial as it is, retaliatory, short-lived invasions such as the ones of Lebanon and Gaza, rather than permanent occupation, work best at deterring Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel has not solved the conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah, but the death toll has dwindled to the lowest levels ever on both sides in 2009. History has shown again that military interventions are much easier than occupations. Why insist?

Lessons From Iran

Secondly, the US and EU should learn from Iran and emulate its tactics, but, of course, in favor of peace. What Iran does best is to influence Middle Eastern nations by proxy. Iran provides key donations and training in areas that improve people's lifestyles and wins their approval for their own objectives, which, unfortunately, are not peaceful. Many Lebanese and most Palestinians now love the Iranians for the help they receive for schools, hospitals, job creation and a vision for the future. We should emulate the Iranians but finance an alternative Muslim lifestyle that is compatible with peace. We should also fund better schooling, housing, jobs and health, but along the proposals of Jordan not Iran. Our opportunity here is to work with the very able King Abdullah II and Queen Rania of Jordan. If we only endowed a foundation led by the King and Queen with a fraction of what we are spending in the war efforts we could outspend and outsmart the Iranians at their own strategy and win good will for a future based on cooperation. The GDP of Iran is a third of that of Spain. We can do much better if we help our allies in the region help everyone else.

Lessons From the Drug Lords

Lastly and sadly, in Afghanistan we must learn from the Afghan drug lords -- the only ones who seem to thrive in this horrible conflict. Allied forces in Afghanistan must understand that the war in that country is mainly about drugs, which make up 1/3rd of the country's GDP. We should also accept the unfortunate truth that if it were not for European and American drug consumerism, drug lords would have no income. It is our mental health problems that finance their drug traffic. We are mainly responsible for it. Drug lords finance their wars against us with our money. How? They buy drug crops at very low prices and collect market prices from consumers of drugs in Europe and the USA through their mafias. What is the solution? What we should do is buy all the drug crops from Afghan peasants directly, outbidding drug lords and cutting them out of the value chain. After we have the crops we should simply destroy them. Interestingly, peasants in drug producing nations -- such as Colombia or Afghanistan -- get a tiny fraction of the end value of drugs; drug lords make a living by collecting the spread between what they buy the crops at and what they sell them for as drugs on our markets. But we must get in that market and neutralize their income without hurting the peasants. Another similar solution -- costly but very "European" -- is to imitate the Common European Agricultural Policy of subsidies to Afghanistan. By paying a surplus for each Afghan sheep and cow, we will make it more profitable for Afghans to raise cattle than growing drug crops. This would have the appeal of ending drug cultivation altogether. But whatever we do, we can't fight the livelihood of most of the population if we want to stabilize the country. People must make a living, and the drug lords provide one.

Faisal Ghori: Building Hope: What Yahoo!'s Acquisition of Maktoob.com Means

2009-09-02T17:56:00Z

Hope is often in short supply in the Middle East, but that may be quickly changing, at least for the region's entrepreneurs. On August 25, Yahoo!, the Internet giant, announced that it will acquire Maktoob.com, the Middle East's largest web portal and online community founded and operated in Jordan. As the very first acquisition of a Middle East-based technology company by an American technology giant, this is nothing short of a sea change for the region. Overnight it has bolstered the region with instant credibility and given its entrepreneurs reason to hope that they too can succeed in creating companies. The acquisition, in short, has fundamentally altered the technology landscape in the Middle East.

In a day and age when business in the Middle East has become synonymous with Dubai, this story's genesis is found in the rocky crags of Jordan. Better known for Petra and the Dead Sea, Jordan has been the region's leading base for technology startups. While Dubai may boast of an Internet City, more of the region's startups were founded and operate in Jordan than anywhere else in the Middle East. This can be owed in large part to investments made by King Abdullah II in the technology sector. Amongst its peers, Jordan is the only Middle Eastern nation with a technology incubator and a fledgling technology ecosystem. Proverbially overnight, Samih Toukan, CEO and founder of Maktoob.com, and his team have accomplished what Jordan has spent the better part of a decade trying to do: garner international attention for its technology sector. This is nothing short of a coup; Jordan and the region's entrepreneurs are now in the spotlight.

For Toukan the road to success has been considerably longer than overnight. He founded the company in 1997 when the Internet was still nascent in the Middle East. Originally founded as an Arabic online email service, over the past 12 years Maktoob.com (literally meaning "written" in Arabic) expanded into a full-fledged search portal and online community, providing a vast array of services ranging from matrimonials to local sports. By any measure Maktoob.com is the Middle East's undisputed Internet leader, with over 16.5 million unique users.

It is not surprising then that Maktoob.com was the first regional Middle Eastern technology company to be acquired. However, what is surprising is that the acquisition happened now. If nothing else, the acquisition signifies that the Middle East has now for the first time become relevant in the eyes of American Internet giants, and with their attention, the region has become globally relevant for its technology-based entrepreneurship. This significance has not been lost on Toukan. For him the acquisition signifies that "it's time to invest in the Arab world. The market is ready and has huge growth potential and there is good talent and brains out there and also good exits for your investments."

Given the lack of initial public offerings (IPOs) as a viable exit (no technology company has ever gone public in the region), the acquisition will assuage investors' concerns about exiting a technology investment in the Middle East. Emile Cubeisy, Managing Director of IV Holdings, a venture capital firm that invests in technology companies in the Middle East, says the acquisition "is an important milestone, in that it proves to Arab entrepreneurs that if you focus on building true value in your businesses, execute patiently and with professionalism, and go through the full stages of growth, real exit opportunities will emerge." While IV Holdings is one of a handful of regional venture capital firms, American technology giants like Intel, Microsoft and Cisco began investing a while ago with other American investment firms slowly following their lead. Tiger Global, a US investment firm, was amongst the largest stakeholders of the company. Maktoob.com's acquisition will now make it increasingly harder to ignore the 300 million audience that comprise the greater Middle East.

Maktoob.com's accomplishment was not without its difficulties. In the typical investment cycle of technology startups, an investment lasts between five and seven years. For Maktoob.com, it took nearly twice as long. Throughout the region, nearly 13 years after the Internet was introduced, entrepreneurs still refer to the technology market as being in its infancy. Ahmad Humeid, perhaps the region's earliest serial tech-entrepreneur, observes that regionally e-commerce activity and quality of Internet content remain "dismal" with Middle Eastern nations widely censoring the Internet, and the overall environment for technology companies remains bleak. Clearly, the Middle East has not done as well as other global technology hubs including Israel, Europe and Asia, all of which can point to billion dollar companies from their shores. It is rumored that Yahoo! acquired Maktoob for around $85 to $100 million. While this amount is significant for Jordan and the region given its small scale, it would not move the needle in Shanghai, London, or Tel Aviv.

Yet, Maktoob.com, with its widespread reach, did move the needle enough in Sunnyvale, Ca., for Yahoo! to move off the sidelines. The acquisition has done for Jordan and the region what AOL's acquisition of Mirabilis, the maker of the chatting client ICQ, did for Israel nearly a decade earlier: it has provided vital lifeblood for technology based entrepreneurship. For all of Ahmad Humeid's pessimism, he remarks that for him the acquisition "represents a real breakthrough. It sort of gives me a push to hold on to the dream of building something worthwhile on the 'Arab Internet.'" Regionally, that type of hope is worth much more than whatever Yahoo! paid to acquire Maktoob.com.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: The 'One-state Solution' Only Stokes Palestinians Self-Delusion

2009-08-19T15:15:12Z

In a New York Times op-ed, Robert Malley, who served as President Clinton's special assistant for Arab-Israel Affairs and Palestinian Hussein Agha, in his New York Times oped "The Two State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything" suggests that the "two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored." He continues:

"To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948... the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews...As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel".

Withdrawal to pre- 1967 borders won't suffice for the Palestinians, the authors suggest we must revisit the Arab state of mind in 1948, "to bring the conflict back to its historical roots, distill its political essence and touch its raw emotional core."

Here's a snapshot of six decades ago. For the emerging Arab nation states, many themselves constituted by the stroke of a French or British pen, there was dismay and anger that the international community had recognized a Jewish state alongside Trans Jordan; bewilderment over how the Jewish people-in three short years managed to step out of the black hole of Genocide onto the world stage; wholesale denial of the Jews' 3000 year attachment to the promised land; insistence that "Israel" was forced upon the Arab world because of Europe's guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. The Arab Street was whipped into frenzy with calls to finish Hitler's vision by driving Holocaust survivors and the 600,000- strong pre-WWII Jewish population into the sea. Local Arabs were urged to leave 'for a few weeks' as seven Arab armies were dispatched to destroy the fledgling Jewish state.

The other narrative? Despite British White Papers and blockades, Jews--from Yemen and Iraq, to Poland, France and Morocco, would not be deterred from returning to the only land they never really left. For this land-one that Palestinian children are still taught never housed David's Palace or Solomon's Temple, whose walls they are told never echoed the prophetic calls of Isaiah and Jeremiah-was and is the Jewish People's once and future homeland.

Sixty years, five wars, two intifadas, scuds, suicide bombers and 8,000 kassam rockets later, the leader of Israel's Right, Prime Minister Netanyahu, declared his readiness for a two- state solution, with the caveat that Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish State. Not so fast, warn Malley and Agha: In the eyes of the Palestinians, "to accept Israel as a Jewish State would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy."

In fact the "no to side-by-side- Jewish and a Palestinian states" chorus has some powerful voices committed to a solution that would at once solve Palestinian grievances by erasing the historic error of Zionism.

There's Professor Tony Judt's who declares that Israel, is "bad for the Jews," and that ultimately there must be a single Palestinian state, from which Jews either depart or stay as a "protected" minority. The One-State solution was the subject of an academic conference recently in Toronto. First columns in the New York Review of Books and now a New York Times op-ed that does nothing to debunk Palestinian self-delusions.

Why no peace? Apparently, it's not because Fatah's National Assembly and Hamas serially deny the legitimacy of today's Jews and 3,000 years of Jewish continuity in the Holy Land. Why no Palestinian State? It's not because Fatah and Hamas' unending civil war that makes a mockery of the idea of democratic Palestinian self-government. Its not because President Mahmoud Abbas, for the past five years has been unable to even set foot in the largest city in his domain-Gaza- for fear of assassination.

No, the authors suggest, it is Israel's very existence that is the real obstacle. For the Palestinian national movement, they insist remains "above all, a refugee movement"-rooted in the imperative of rectifying the aspirations of Palestinians (or their ancestors) displaced in 1948. " In other words, the Jewish state has to be rolled back beyond the 1967 borders-beyond even the 1948 borders-until it becomes, not even a postage stamp but a historic error buried beneath a new Arab or Muslim state.

This delusionary vision may have received an unintended boost from President Obama's unfortunate omission in his Cairo address of any recognition that Israel has legitimate claims to existence that predate the Holocaust. Who then will finally tell the Palestinians that Israel's kings did not reign in Norway, her prophets did not preach in Pakistan and Jesus of Nazareth did not walk in the shadow of Madrid's Holy Temple.

To advance his Mideast agenda President Obama should go to Israel, and publicly put an end the One-state charade. He should declare America has one more 'change we can believe in'--that "No nation should ever again be stripped of its identity", especially the Jewish people that has suffered and struggled for thousands of years to cling to its national destiny. And Europe, whose societies would be thrown into chaos if the "right of return" for refugees was ever applied to their nations should tell the Palestinians-"Time to put your 'Mediterranean to the Jordan vision on a diet and get on with the business of peaceful nation building."

Israel is not 1938 Czechoslovakia; it can defend itself and has no intention of quietly committing suicide. There will be no Munich II. So until the Palestinians and the elite undertakers eager to bury the Jewish state finally recognize the legitimate national aspirations of 5.7 million Jews, there may not be peace, but there will always be an Israel.

This essay was co-authored with Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Rana Husseini: Jordanian Journalist Who Exposed 'Honor Killings' Tells Story In New Book

2009-07-28T17:00:58Z

"Jordan Farmer Kills Sister Over Alleged Affair," read a recent headline from the Agence France-Presse. The 24-year-old man stabbed his sister after he became suspicious that she was having an affair. This is an "honor killing."

That this story became news is partly the accomplishment of an award-winning Jordanian journalist who broke the silence about honor killings with her reports for the Jordan Times.

"The most surprising thing to me is how a person can kill a close relative," Rana Husseini told WIDE ANGLE. She chronicles 15 years of her reporting and the resulting push for social and legal reform in Jordan in her new book, "Murder in the Name of Honor."

Honor killings are relatively rare - numbering about 25 a year in Jordan, and about 5,000 a year worldwide (13 women a day). But the crime is one of the most brutal practices in the modern world. It occurs when a family feels its female relative has tarnished its reputation by her "immoral behavior" - which can range from being raped to having an unrecognized phone number on her cell phone - and is often carried out by the woman's brother or father.

Husseini's effort to report on the crime met resistance in Jordan when critics accused her of hurting the country's reputation and of trying to devalue its culture by imposing Western values.

"I've been accused of being a Western agent," said Husseini. "Its unfortunate, but you can't stop, you have to fight."

Her work received another blow in 2003, when an Iranian-American published a misleading book about honor killings, "Honor Lost," that tells the story of the author's childhood friend who was killed by her father after he discovered she was in love with a Christian. Husseini said the book was rife with errors and stereotypes (she counted eighty errors) about how Muslims treat women, and hurt efforts to change Muslim attitudes about the crime when Western conservatives in the United States and Australia used it to support an attack on Iraq. The publisher, Random House Australia, later acknowledged doubts of the author's veracity and offered refunds on all returned books.

In fact, honor killings are most commonly associated with Muslims, but as Husseini notes in her book "while some Muslims do murder in the name of honor - and sometimes claim justification through the teachings of Islam - Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and others also maintain traditions and religious justifications that attempt to legitimize honor killings."

In addition to Jordan, the practice occurs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Egypt, Syria and even Israel, where honor killings have been documented among both Muslims and members of the Druze faith, although Hussieni notes they are "not in high numbers."

Husseini has lent her support to campaigns in Jordan to amend laws that outline lenient punishment for perpetrators of honor killings. Article 340 of the country's legal code mandates that "he who discovers his wife, or one of his female relatives with another in an adulterous situation, and kills, wounds or injures one or both of them, benefits from a reduction in penalty." The campaign yielded a temporary amendment of a related law, and a longer lasting change in public awareness.

"The voices that oppose these crimes are getting more attention than before," said Husseini.

As recently as this month, Jordan's Justice Minister, Ayman Odeh, said perpetrators of honor crimes would get no legal exemptions. "A crime is a crime. There is no such thing as honor crimes. All people are equal before the law," said Odeh.

Husseini says one of the most satisfying results of her reporting has been the change in attitude among men who feel pressured to defend the honor of their family.

"Two years ago at a public lecture in a full auditorium, I opened the floor for discussion," Husseini recalled to WIDE ANGLE. "I had two men ask me in front of everyone, 'I know killing my sister is wrong. What can I do to avoid committing this act if I'm ever put in this situation?' This is a major shift."

In this week's WIDE ANGLE episode, Contestant No. 2, a young Druze woman who pushes the limits of her conservative culture in Israel faces a threat on her life from her uncle when her community expresses concern that her participation in a beauty pageant could damage her family's honor.

See more at WIDE ANGLE.

Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!

Daoud Kuttab: Jordanian Parliament is Back on Air... Indirectly

2009-07-10T11:06:57Z

The gavel-to-gavel broadcast of the Jordanian Parliament was back on the air on June 7. Radio Al Balad (formerly AmmanNet), an independent community radio, succeeded in providing the public with an unfiltered version of the House of Representatives meeting. The return of live broadcasting is, however, nothing but natural.

Arab parliaments are rarely ever broadcast live. The voice of the executive branch in Arab countries is much louder than that of the legislative branch.

I understood the domination of the executive branch over the legislative back in 1997. I was running a small educational TV station in Ramallah, out of Al Quds University, when Parliament began deliberating very close to our studios. We began broadcasting gavel-to-gavel sessions of the Palestinian Legislative Council only to be jammed by the state-run Palestinian TV. When we made a fuss about that, on May 22, 1997, I was arrested and held for seven days. The night before my arrest, our station had broadcast a session of the PLC discussing a parliamentary report about corruption with the Palestinian Authority.

Three years ago, and in a totally new setting, I tried to do the same thing in Jordan. The speaker of the Parliament agreed to a request from AmmanNet radio to allow live broadcast of the Parliament. AmmanNet, which years earlier had been broadcasting on the Internet, had just received an FM licence and the broadcast provided a badly needed public service that many members of Parliament welcomed. Until then, the official Jordanian media covered the Parliament by providing daily short pieces and weekly roundups, all reflecting the government's point of view.

One member of Parliament said that the official media would often broadcast or publish the parliamentary answer of the prime minister without ever mentioning what the question was and which MP asked it.

Live broadcasting of the House of Representatives was short lived. The rise of energy costs in the winter of 2007 produced a wave of public anger at parliamentarians for their routine approval of fuel price hikes. One of the comments on the station's website, later repeated on radio, criticised the parliamentarians' indifference towards the public in an offensive manner. The insult angered the Parliament speaker who, along with the Audio Visual Council, sued the radio station and its owner. The live broadcast which was not critical was also taken off the air. A public apology was made on the website and on radio, but it failed to appease the speaker who, along with the Audio Visual Council, insisted on going to court.

The trial against the radio station lasted more than a year with the court ruled against the station and its manager, fining each JD10,000. Upon appeal, the case was thrown out and the fines cancelled.

Appeals to the Parliament speaker failed to get the broadcast back on the air, despite promises by the speaker that he was willing to forgive and forget. During two meetings with the station's manager and chair, the speaker promised to reinstate the broadcast, but nothing happened.

Various appeals by members of the Parliament also failed to produce any change. Responses varied from claiming that the broadcast cannot be reinstated while the case is in session to attempts to politically criticise the station's manager. Even at the height of the conflict between the Parliament and the established media, the speaker refused to allow broadcasting while, at the same time, criticising the print media for reducing the space MPs get in print.

The conflict with the press included a temporary boycott of the Parliament by four dailies and public criticism by weeklies and news websites. Radio Al Balad and the AmmanNet website continued regular coverage of the Parliament.

Live broadcasts returned without the direct help of the Parliament. On July 6, 2009, two and a half years after being taken off the air, Radio Al Balad was able to broadcast live the afternoon session of Parliament. The radio broadcast came thanks to an initiative by the Parliament to broadcast the sessions on the Internet. Radio Al Balad was able to pick up the Internet signal and broadcast it on the air, giving the Jordanian public the chance to hear what their elected representatives had to say. A satellite television broadcast is also planned to happen soon.

The TV broadcasts have been subcontracted to ABS, a Jordanian television service provider who is renting the Parliament space on one of Nile Sat's frequencies. No mention has been made of the cost, although the deputy speaker of Parliament said that it will be over JD100,000 a year.

Without proper campaign it will be difficult to get Jordanians to tune in to a frequency that is unknown and that has no other programme. No mention has been made as to how the tender was made, and who will be paying for it. The first session broadcast on the air, however, was short lived. At 5:45pm Speaker Abdul Hadi Majali closed the session because quorum was lost 90 minutes after its start. The topic that was being discussed was a special law about Petra Governorate.

Daoud Kuttab: Video Blogging Jordan Turns Citizens Into Journalists

2009-06-17T10:46:49Z

In comparison to the results, in the text below Mohammad Ahmad's seemed humble. "I had made my first video blog about a street in al Rasheed neighborhood in Al Rasifeh because it is so bad that you can't tell where the road begins or ends. And after a long wait and continuous demands, the last of which was my video blog, relief arrived as the road has been finally paved." The video that Ahmad is referring to shows huge vehicles and workers working on the said street, followed by footage of a well paved road, the frame then flashs back to show what the street looked like a few months earlier.

Ahmad's success came after he participated in a citizen journalism video blogging project. He applied for the project organized by AmmanNet, a Jordanian media NGO that received support from USAID's Jordan Media Strengthening Project implemented by IREX, a Washington based international foundation. Participants were given basic journalism training, as well as the technical know how of how to film, edit and post simple video.

Twenty cameras were distributed to citizens wishing to improve their communities through training as citizen journalists. Ahmad's blog is named min waqina (from our reality) and is posted on www.orange.ammannet.net . In his March 29th video, Ahmad shows the unpaved street and tells us the neighborhood's ten-year old problem. "The municipality simply ran out of asphalt when it reached this street leaving it the shape you can see."

The min waqina blog produced 28 comments all critical of local governments and demanding a change. Two months later the city appears to have responded and Ahmad and his community were able to celebrate the paving of the road in a May 30th blog which also elicited comments of congratulation and was chosen to be placed on Ammannet's home page.

Raed Nesheiwat the project manager says that citizen journalism and blogging is a new phenomena in the Arab world. "Whereas most blogs have been done with words, this new blogging project provides web surfers with hard to deny video footage," he said. Nesheiwat who is the CEO of Tamamtech, a Jordanian web design company insists that video blogging would not have worked a few years ago. "When Ammannet was established in November 2000 as the Arab world's first internet radio the average speed for most home internet connections was barely enough to follow radio web casting without buffering. Today high speed internet has made viewing video on line a possibility.

In addition to Ahmad, nineteen other Jordanians including a taxi driver, teenage girls and university students, are video blogging at least twice a week. Videos of hospital escalators not working, cars going the wrong way on a one way streets, fruit bearing trees cut down, remote villages needing basic services and smoking bans unheeded are just some of the hours of footage posted on the internet.

Vblogging has empowered individuals and is slowly creating a generation of active citizen journalists who are fighting to prove that they can use technology to change their own lives and those of their communities. AmmanNet staffers has said that they hope to continue with this project and even expand it to nearby Arab countries.

Mark Levine: The Student of History Needs to Go to Summer School

2009-06-06T12:12:42Z

Near the start of his much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, President Obama described himself as "a student of history;" by the end it was clear that he needs to get back to the classroom.

For all its well-intentioned rhetoric, President Obama's speech was, sadly, conceptually flawed, empirically challenged, and politically blind to the daily realities that drive hundreds of millions of Muslims to increasing despair.

Conceptually, the President's goal was clearly to help correct the mistaken notion shared by so many Muslims and Americans of the notion of an essential conflict between them. He even spoke of Islam, rightly, as being "always part of America."

But such rhetoric was overshadowed by the use of language and themes that hew closely to the long-held notion of "Islam" and the "West" as being two essentially different and civilizations traveling on separate historical trajectories.

To bridge the rift between them, Obama had first to establish a deep, centuries-long tension driven by "historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate." Islam "carried the light of learning" and "paved the way" for modernity and globalization, but it did not participate directly in their birth or development. Instead, modernity and the "sweeping change" it brought "led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam."

This idea of an essentially European modernity forcing its way into hostile Muslim territory is belied by the historical record. Indeed, the banking, credit and trading systems that fueled modern capitalism were born in Muslim-led trading systems of the Mediterranean. And where possible Muslims adopted the latest developments, from weapons to steam engines to agricultural technologies, as soon as they became available.

Yet however inaccurate, such a dualistic narrative serves an important rhetorical function in the President's larger argument. With a gap so wide, he can rightly argue that "change cannot happen overnight." Indeed, before the speech Senior Adviser David Axelrod explained that the breach would likely take more than one administration to heal.

In fact, change could happen overnight; and the policies necessary to achieve it are simple and easily implemented -- precisely because Muslims and Americans share so many of the same values when it comes to respect for democracy, human rights, and the rule of Law.

But change will only happen if President Obama takes seriously what most Muslim have long said, not merely "behind closed doors," but in the open and to anyone who will listen.

Here I'm reminded here of President Reagan's historic speech at the Berlin Wall, almost 22 years ago to the day, on June 12, 1987, where he exclaimed: "There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace... Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

This is the kind of language Obama needed to use in his speech. He needed to demand that the autocrats and occupiers of the region end their oppression, open the doors of their prisons and tear down their walls, and allow the peoples of the region to live in peace, freedom and democracy. And he needed to put the muscle and money of US foreign policy behind those words, the same way Reagan did in confronting the Soviet Union.

First and foremost, President Obama should have announced that the United States would stop providing political, economic and military support to corrupt and brutal authoritarian regimes, without exception. This goes for occupiers like Israel (and, one could add, India in Kashmir and Morocco in the Western Sahara) and governments of key allies such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt -- where thousands of activists have been harassed, imprisoned, tortured, burned and even killed by security forces without any fear US retribution, and will continue to suffer once Mr. Obama leaves.

Sadly, the President has offered little tangible support for some of Egypt's most important dissident voices, such as Ayman Nour, the one-time presidential candidate recently released from prison, who a bit over a week ago was almost burned to death by government thugs. Instead, he and his most senior advisors regularly praise Mubarak's "leadership" in an unending peace process that brings billions of dollars of aid and political support to his government, while well over 30 million of his compatriots live in dire poverty. Obama's effective silence on these issues is deafening to a generation of young Egyptians desperate to move beyond the current system and realize their natural, and national potential in a free society.

Instead of making concrete demands on President Mubarak and other regional leaders regarding freedom, democracy, human rights, and committing the US to a major shift in our policies on those issues, President Obama argued that the first step to healing the US-Islamic divide must be to "confront violent extremism in all of its forms." What the President doesn't realize is that from the standpoint of the peoples of the Middle East, US support for governments like Israel, Egypt and other authoritarian regimes, along with our invasion of Iraq -- which despite his pledge to "speak the truth" he refused to admit was wrong -- have been as extreme and violent as those of militant Islam.

He should have admitted that the Iraq invasion was flat-out wrong, not merely a "war of choice," and apologized for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and untold billions of dollars of their wealth and resources destroyed.

When it comes to Israel and Palestine, the President's words do mark a significant shift in tone from the rhetoric of his predecessors, especially his placing Palestine on equal footing with Israel as a nation deserving independence and sovereignty. But hearing them I couldn't help thinking that they constituted the speech President Clinton should have given sixteen years ago at the start of the Oslo peace process.

Back then, when there were only a bit more than 100,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, calling for a "stop" to settlements made sense. Today, with nearly triple the population and having rendered huge swaths of the West Bank permanently off limits to Palestinians, it is a decade too late. Stopping settlement construction will still leave the West Bank a mishmash of Palestinian islands that cannot form the nuclear of a sovereign state.

Nothing less than the dismantlement of the majority of settlements, bypass roads and checkpoints, will allow for the creation of a territorially viable Palestinian state. Muslim listeners to his speech understand that unless the President is willing to force Israel to choose between the settlements and continued US patronage, peace will remain impossible to achieve.

Mr. Obama has a steep learning curve before he can hope to fulfill the lofty rhetoric of his speech in Cairo. He seems unaware that the best and perhaps only way to get the peoples of the Muslim world to support US goals such as preventing Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, pacifying Afghanistan, and stamping out violent Islamism is to hold all the peoples of the region and their leaders, without exception, to one, easily measurable standard.

Unless his words are matched by a rapid and profound shift in the strategic calculus underlying American foreign policy, Obama's speech will be remembered as little more than "haki fadi," or empty talk, and peace in the Middle East -- and with it America's quest for a better relationship with the people of the Muslim world -- will remain an illusive dream.

Jordan Palestinian Homeland Bill Unlikely To Pass Israeli Knesset

2009-06-03T11:19:54Z

By Tom A. Peter | GlobalPost

AMMAN -- Israel took cursory steps last week toward declaring Jordan the official Palestinian homeland but, in a backward step for the Arab-Israeli peace process, neglected to discuss the plan with Jordan.

The plan -- introduced as a bill in the Knesset and supported by 53 of its 120 members -- has led some lawmakers here to push for a severance of diplomatic ties with Israel. Shortly before U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to unveil a new peace plan in a speech in Cairo, the lawmakers have also called for a withdrawal from a 1994 peace treaty.

The bill is now being discussed by the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. However, crucially, it lacks the support of many top Israeli officials, and because of the way the Israeli legislature works, it is unlikely to proceed further.

In fact, the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, in an interview on Israel Radio last Wednesday, strongly criticized the proposal, calling it a "baseless hallucination" that would interfere with Jordan's internal affairs.

Despite this, many in Jordan say just consideration of such a bill sends the wrong message to Amman, which has been pushing to restart the peace progress.

"I don't believe that the Israeli people want peace," said Mamdouh Abbadi, a member of the Jordanian parliament. "If it was only extremists [who supported this bill], it would stop after three, or five or 10 members of parliament, not 53."

The idea of making Jordan into a Palestinian homeland is not new for Israel, but similar measures in the past have usually garnered only a limited number of supporters and the idea had remained largely on the fringes among Israel's far right.

More than 50 percent of those living in Jordan are of Palestinian origin, and some Israelis argue that Jordan already serves as the de facto Palestinian state.

For Israel, designating Jordan as the Palestinian homeland would help alleviate the problem of dealing with West Bank Palestinians.

Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, director of the Swiss Center for Conflict Research, Management and Resolution at Hebrew University, said that the recent support for the bill in the Knesset may not indicate support for the idea of Jordan as a Palestinian homeland so much as it reveals Israeli concerns about the viability of a Palestinian state. While the majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, most are also concerned about a potential Palestinian state's stability, especially amid the split between the Fatah and Hamas governments.

"The idea is that even if there is a Palestinian state it will not be a viable state and one of the options for the future is the question of some kind of consideration between the Palestinian state and Jordan," said Bar-Siman-Tov.

But for Jordan, one of two Arab nations to hold a peace treaty with Israel (the other is Egypt), the discussion taking place in the Knesset is seen as a prelude to human rights violations against Palestinians and an encroachment on Jordanian affairs. There is a fear that were the bill to become law, Israel could use it to force people from their homes and say they have to go to their "homeland" in Jordan instead.

"What is happening in the Knesset is an aggression toward the regime and the laws and international resolutions of the U.N. security council," said Khalil Atiyah, a member of Jordan's parliament.

The situation is not helped by Israel's new, conservative government. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was last in power in the late 1990s, he ordered an assassination attempt on a member of Hamas inside Jordan. At the time, the incident almost brought peace talks to a halt and today it stands as a reminder to Jordanians about the hard-line measures Netanyahu is willing to take.

Despite the strong reaction of some Jordanian parliamentarians, Mohammad Al-Momani, a political science professor at Yarmouk University, said that ultimately it's the king and ministries that control foreign policy in Jordan, not the parliament.

If the king or other major foreign policy figures in Jordan had reacted strongly to the Knesset bill, it could have stalled the peace process, Al-Momani said. "Obama would have had other things on his plate to look at instead of focusing only on this two-state solution that the current Israeli government is not committing to."

So although the Knesset bill is not likely to become official policy, many Jordanians are not quite so confident. "Since we have an extremist government [in Israel], we do not expect any good actions from it," Atiyah said.

Since Israel's recent war with Gaza, there has been mounting pressure from the Jordanian public on the government to take a firmer stand against Israel. Given King Abdullah II's efforts to reignite the peace process over the last several months, it remains highly unlikely that the government will take action on any of the parliamentarians' calls to cut diplomatic ties with Israel. The king has, however, said that there will likely be renewed fighting if there is no peace within the next 12 to 18 months.

"The Jordanian public opinion, already as it is, is not favorable of the existing government or the coalition that is in charge in Israel. This simply makes it worse," said Nawaf Tell, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. "The Israelis are sending all the wrong signals to the peace camps in the region and Jordan in particular, who is trying to relaunch the peace the peace process on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative."

Read more from GlobalPost.

Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!

Catholic Relief Services: After Trauma, Iraqi Refugees Look for Healing

2009-06-03T11:05:23Z

In 2006, a 1-year-old boy was playing with neighborhood children in a yard near the family home in Baghdad. Suddenly a white car pulled up: Men came out and took the toddler. "They didn't take any of the other children," says his mother Qahira, an Iraqi woman in her 40s who had already lost her husband to terrorists. "Just him."

"He had just started to walk."

For many Americans, a stranger kidnapping a child is a plot point in a movie. A child is grabbed by someone. The hero gets furious, beats the bad guys, and saves the day.

But for thousands of Iraqis, kidnapping is a nightmare they cannot wake up from. Especially between 2004 and 2007, hundreds of children and adults were abducted, tortured and often killed -- all while their frantic relatives scrambled to scrape together enormous ransoms.

Qahira never found her little boy. The kidnappers called her on the phone, but not to ask for a ransom: "We just want to break your heart," they told her. They had killed her husband for his political views soon after she'd learned she was pregnant with the baby.

After fruitless attempts to track the boy down, and after increased threats against another son, Qahira and the rest of her family fled Iraq for Amman, the capital of nearby Jordan. Qahira's eyes glaze with pain when she speaks of her little boy now. "I don't know what happened to him. Some people say [the militants] would throw children in a ditch."

"No one can bear what has happened to me."

Kidnapping is only one atrocity that Iraqis have had to endure. Mutilation, torture and rape have left enduring psychological scars on thousands of the refugees. At Caritas offices distributing CRS-funded food and medical care, refugees share their horror stories. Munjit, who now lives in Amman, had five children and a pregnant wife when his house was bombed; "It killed my whole family," he says. Noor, a 15-year-old girl, witnessed her father's murder at the hands of militants.

Karim, an Iraqi man now living in Lebanon, was a successful car dealer in his home country. In June 2005, he was kidnapped; his abductors demanded tens of thousands of dollars. The family borrowed money to pay the ransom and later, sold their house to pay back the loans.

But Karim, like many others, wasn't released after his family paid the staggering ransom. He was beaten, shot and left for dead.

Thanks to a kind woman who found him and used her headscarf to stop his wounds from bleeding, Karim was reunited with his family. He recovered, and the family fled to Lebanon, where they live rent-free in two small rooms in exchange for taking care of their landlord's house and garden. They are safe for now, but fear still sparks in Karim's eyes as he describes his ordeal.

Sometimes there is a slightly happier ending. Imad had a 14-year-old son kidnapped for a week in 2005. His kidnappers demanded a $15,000 ransom, but after several negotiations, the family paid $5,000 and the boy was returned unhurt. They fled to Lebanon, where Catholic Relief Services provides diabetes medicine for Imad's wife along with other aid.

For years, Catholic Relief Services has been helping Iraqi refugees with rent, food, medical care and shelter. Now, CRS is expanding its psychosocial programs for Iraqi refugees in Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon, hoping to heal some of the trauma Iraqis have experienced.

An Iraqi refugee couple whose teenage son was kidnapped and then was returned after they paid a ransom. The family fled to Lebanon. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

"Some Iraqi refugees I meet look shellshocked," says Doug Ryan, subregional representative for Catholic Relief Services in the Middle East. "CRS has given them heaters and blankets, helping them with basic human needs so that families can stay together," says Ryan. "They can give each other support, but what they don't have is a forum where they can talk about the horrible thing that has happened to them."

Both adults and children need help. "Some Iraqi children remember the time when they were kidnapped," says Yasmine Serry, a CRS staff member who works with Iraqi refugees in Egypt. "Some of the children saw their brother or sister killed in front of them."

With money raised by U.S. Catholic colleges like Villanova and Catholic sisters like the Dominicans, CRS is helping. In October 2008, CRS brought partners from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon to Virginia for a weeklong training session in trauma awareness and resilience.

During the course, they learned how to identify the effects of violence, break the cycle of reliving it and build hope. "The training helped us realize how war and violence affect people, even years later," says Vivian Manneh, program manager for CRS' Iraqi refugee work in the Middle East. "I hope we can relieve some of the suffering and pain that Iraqis have endured."

The CRS project trained Arabic-speaking social workers to address trauma in culturally appropriate ways among the Iraqis they are already serving. The social workers have earned the refugees' trust by helping them with needs like food and medical care, so the refugees feel more able to share their experiences.

Gathering small groups of Iraqi women for hourlong sessions once a week, trained leaders guide them as they share their fears, sorrow and anxiety. Sometimes a psychologist will lead along with the social workers. "In one group session, an Iraqi woman said that she hadn't yet told her children their father had been killed. She told them he was away, working, but it had been several years," says Manneh. "The psychologist said the children might think the father is neglecting them, and that the mother needed to tell her children the truth."

The CRS program also funds activities like games or field trips for Iraqi refugee children who have experienced terrible violence. "As refugees, their lives still aren't 'normal,' " says Manneh. "But we can try to give children a feeling of stability, a sense that good things can happen too."

The psychosocial support groups will never erase the tragedies Iraqis have experienced, but can help them build resilience as they start new lives in other countries. "It's incredible what Iraqi refugees have gone through," says Ryan. "We want to offer them a safe space where they can talk about it, begin to heal and rebuild their lives."

Laura Sheahen is CRS' regional information officer for Europe and the Middle East. She is based in Cairo.

Jordan Stock Fraud Preys On Illiterate, Elderly (VIDEO)

2009-05-28T16:45:58Z

The Jordanian city of Jerash, described as the 'Mumbai of the Middle East' for its historic structures and annual music festival, has been especially hard hit by the global economic crisis. LinkTV reports that this is due to fraudulent stock brokers taking advantage of illiterate and elderly residents. It states that many families have been duped to the point where they lose everything they own, and then end up in debt. Check out the LinkTV report.

WATCH:

Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin: Spurred by Iran, Arab World Witnesses Nuclear Renaissance

2009-05-27T11:44:25Z

The most volatile region in the world is going nuclear.

As North Korea restarts its main nuclear plant and Iran continues to flex its nuclear muscles, a less publicized nuclear renaissance is underway in the Middle East.

Putting the Chernobyls and Hiroshimas aside, in the Arab world, at least thirteen nations - both oil-rich and oil-thirsty - are collaborating with world powers to build nuclear energy programs with unprecedented determination.

As energy and water needs grow, they are confronting the inevitable depletion of oil and natural gas and the nuclear option has trumped renewables (both in terms of feasibilty and economics) as a means to generate electricity while guaranteeing long-term security.

Plus, while no Arab leader will readily admit that Iran's nuclear capabilities have spurred, at least in part, his country's nuclear ambitions, Richard Falk, chair of the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, says the perceived threat from Iran must be a factor.

"Most of the rationale for these expanded nuclear energy programs is almost always related to domestic factors, increasing electricity demand and the expense of importing energy," Falk said.

"But now that Iran is at least a latent nuclear weapon state, it doesn't make any sense [for Arab states] to proceed in [the non-nuclear] direction anymore. It seems they think they need to have their own long-term security in mind," he said.

On Thursday, energy experts and international government officials met in Dubai for the GCC's first Nuclear Summit, a meeting that addressed the justifications, conditions and logistics for developing nuclear power in the Gulf and broader Middle East.

Dr. Mahmoud Nasser Al Deen, advisor to the secretary general at the League of Arab Nations, said that Arab countries have placed energy diversification high on their list of priorities.

"In achieving this objective, they have expressed their clear commitment to the promotion of the peaceful uses and applications of nuclear energy in a transparent manner that fully respects their international obligations," he said.

Dr. Kai-Henrik Barth, nuclear researcher and Georgetown professor, discusses why Arab states are pursuing nuclear power in an unprecedented push

Click to play

With electricity and desalination demands estimated to increase by about 10 percent annually by 2015, the GCC is in dire need of diversifying its energy sources.

The UAE alone estimates it would need 40,000MW of electricity to meet domestic demand by 2020. With drafted plans to generate 15,000MW of electricity from nuclear energy by 2020 at a quarter of the cost of gas powered plants, the UAE already has several construction companies bidding to sign on.

Meanwhile, France, Russia, China and the US are ardently working to sign lucrative deals with the eager Arabs, who are also competing with one another to attract the best investors and suppliers, despite previous plans of regional cooperation.

Competition or cooperation

Last month at the Arab League Summit, the league's secretary-general, Amr Moussa, announced plans to launch an inter-Arab dialogue for nuclear cooperation.

"The Arab world is extremely concerned by Israel's nuclear programs...but the Middle East should be an area that is free of weapons of mass destruction," Moussa said.

"The condition to join this program will be based upon joining the NPT and agreeing that all nuclear efforts will be for peaceful purposes."

But the rhetoric does not match reality in the region as the prospect for cooperation seems to be diminishing.

Even the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, who are set to benefit most from regional cooperation due to their relatively smaller size and associated limitations, seem to be going it alone now.

"There is a lack of cooperation because each country wants to be the first," Kamal Araj, vice-chairman of the Commission for Nuclear Energy in Jordan said, "I think it is really childish."

Dr. Barth, on the lack of Arab cooperation on nuclear initiatives

Click to play

The UAE is moving fast to be the first Arab country to develop a nuclear power program as they have been fast-tracking the process (which usually takes 10-15 years) to fulfill the requirements by 2016. Through engaging vendors and supplier countries at events such as last week's nuclear summit, their plans may soon become realized.

Within a decade there could be about a dozen nuclear reactors in the region, which makes the option of having a regional enrichment facility extremely viable.

"Regional cooperation makes economic sense rather than investing foolishly," Araj said.

The issue of waste disposal poses a key incentive for Arab states to work together. A nuclear repository would reduce stress on smaller countries like the UAE by excusing them from needing their own.

"It doesn't make sense for each country to have a nuclear repository to store high-level waste for a long long time," Araj said.

"If one nation were to host the regional repository in exchange for financial incentives, they would need to safeguard the waste for 100-150 years until the radioactivity had decreased to the environmental levels - then it would no longer pose a threat."

Still, two distinct nuclear approaches are evident as illustrated by Jordan and the UAE.

With virtually no oil or gas and suffering from severe water shortages, Jordan is in dire need of developing alternative energy sources.

Before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Jordan relied on hydrocarbon imports from Iraq to support 95 percent of its energy consumption, receiving oil at an extremely cheap rate. But in 2003, Iraq began charging full market prices, forcing Jordan to end its generous domestic fuel subsidies.

"The volatility is a major factor," Araj said. "Spending 25 percent of your GDP on oil is a big factor. It was the impetus to revive this nuclear program."

Jordan hopes to have its first nuclear reactor up and running by 2016, though Araj admits 2018 is more realistic. Jordan estimates it has 140,000 tonnes of conventional uranium reserves and an additional 59,000 in phosphate deposits, an impressive amount - enough to make the option to enrich uranium a plausibility down the line.

France, China, South Korea, Russia and Canada have signed deals with Jordan to provide assistance with construction, research and training.

"We have a very active international program," Araj said. "The idea is to develop relationships with all potential supplier countries."

Geopolitics vs international law

In September 2007, Jordan and the US signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperating on the peaceful use of nuclear energy under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a US-led initiative to expand nuclear energy use worldwide while reducing the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Since then the US has announced plans to design and construct a storage facility in Amman for Jordan's radioactive waste and nuclear materials.

But while the project demonstrates US involvement in Jordan's nuclear plans, the US has been reluctant to sign an agreement with Jordan, even while it has signed with the UAE and Bahrain.

Unlike Jordan, both the UAE and Bahrain have committed to forgoing the option to enrich uranium, a move which persuaded the US to sign and Barack Obama, the US president, to endorse and send to the Senate for ratification.

"Until now the US has not completed their procedure so we cannot import US technology," Araj said.

General Electric is just one of several companies that had expressed an interest in working in Jordan, but have been deterred by the US's apparent stalling on the matter.

Falk said one reason for the United States' reluctance may be because of Jordan's framing of its program.

"You have two regimes, with one on top of the other," he said. "The former legal regime, and the new geopolitical regime that is more or less administered by the US, and Jordan may be perceived as eroding the geopolitical regime."

The US deal with the UAE would allow US firms to assist the UAE in building several civilian nuclear power plants despite its record as a transshipment port for weapons-related materials to Iran and the recent release of a video where Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, a member of the UAE's ruling family, is seen savagely torturing an Afghan grain dealer.

To many, the deal indicates that the UAE, which has the financial resources to finance a program, has now entered the "A club" of nuclear ambitious states as it has chosen to conform by the geopolitical reality rather than the legal one.

"If you exercise your legal right, as Iran has sought to do, and other countries have done without difficulty like Japan and Germany, that puts you in the B category where you are subject to this kind of geopolitical pressure," Falk said. "I suppose the UAE is trying to make itself look like the optimal actor in terms of how you ensure energy security transition beyond the petroleum age."

Obama's endorsement demonstrates the administration's commitment to providing an alternative to Iran's approach for Arab nations with nuclear power aspirations.

Dr. Barth on Obama's approach to nuclear power and disarmament

Click to play

While the UAE has agreed to give the IAEA complete access to its nuclear sites, including unannounced inspections under additional safeguard protocols, the key to the its having entered the "A club" was its voluntary renunciation of its rights to enrich uranium under the NPT.

Falk suggests that the US may be stalling with regards to Jordan in order to send a signal that it is not excited about its approach.

"The US may be in deference to Israel's concerns about having these nuclear programs move forward in the region," Falk said. "Jordan, which is dependent on the US in a variety of ways, is framing its program in relation to the legal international treaty rather than in relation to the geopolitical framework which is more limiting to the nonnuclear states than the actual treaty itself."

From Falk's perspective, the geopolitical framework is based on "a pervasive double standard that is embedded in the whole idea of nuclear nonproliferation," or what he called, "the mind game that has been successfully played by nuclear weapons states that makes us believe that the danger comes more from those who don't have the weapons, rather than those who have the weapons."

Israel

Araj also highlighted Israel's influence on American policy, especially on issues related to Israel's perceived security, as a probable reason.

"I think surely Israel has a hand to play," he said. "Israel is against the transfer of technology to the Middle East, whatever the type of technology. They really want to keep the Middle East underdeveloped."

Israel, the only country in the Middle East that currently has nuclear weapons, estimated at between 100-200 warheads, has yet to sign the NPT, unlike its Arab neighbors.

Dr. Barth discusses Israel's relevance in the Arabs' nuclear ambitions

Click to play

The Middle East is filled with various elements of unresolved conflict. Israel possesses formidable nuclear weapons capabilities and Iran has latent potential and appears to be set on advancing its enrichment capabilities.

The Arab world sits anxiously between the two foes, making plans for its own nuclear ambitions and energy programs inextricably linked to the reality of being wedged between Iran and Israel.

"I would think it is in Israel's long term interest to get some sort of regional military denuclearize commitment settled," Falk said. "The unwillingness of the US to press Israel in the way it would press other countries is illustrative of another aspect of these double standards in nuclear weapons and nuclear energy."

Fuel assurances

Kai-Henrik Barth is a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and is currently researching the nuclear power with an emphasis on Iran and the Gulf region.

For Barth, it is crucial that the international community come up with a system of assurances that would deter states pursuing nuclear energy programs from producing the fuel cycle domestically, which could then be diverted for military purposes. In his opinion, enrichment and reprocessing too often leads to dangerous circumstances.

Dr. Barth discusses what is needed for nuclear power and global security to coexist

Click to play

"The UAE and Bahrain did the right thing," Barth said. "If the IAEA would be a stronger organization, they would have - under international authority - fuel banks and leasing programs where no one would have to say I would like to have independence and my own enrichment program."

Barth cites prestige and the perceived threat from Iran as possible reasons for the unprecedented push in the region for nuclear energy programs.

"Somehow the west has failed to live a narrative that delegitimizes nuclear as an object of prestige," Kai said. "If I look into Saudi or Egyptian nuclear efforts I cannot help but see that there is certainly concern about the big neighbor to the north."

These are sentiments echoed by US president, Barack Obama. In a speech in Prague earlier this year, Obama stressed the importance of creating an international fuel bank so countries can get fuel without having to enrich uranium themselves--a road that could lead to the capacity to create nuclear weapons, Obama said.

A $50 million donation from Warren Buffet initially launched the funding drive to establish the fuel bank, which would provide assurances to those pursuing nuclear power, and avoid the need for them to build nuclear fuel production capabilities.

Kuwait recently pledged $10 million, which pushed the amount of funding so far, gathered from the US, the EU, the UAE and Norway, over the $100 million mark to allow the IAEA to begin developing the framework for creating the bank.

If, like the UAE and Bahrain, all Arab countries were to commit to purchasing nuclear fuel from abroad, fears that proposed civilian programs could evolve into weapons development would significantly diminish.

Dr. Hans-Holger Rogner, the IAEA Section Head for Planning and Economic Studies Section, said there is little reason to worry about nuclear materials being diverted for military means with the UAE program.

"A nuclear power plant is not a proliferation risk or weapons risk," Rogner said. "You need the enrichment or reprocessing technology, both of which, in a normal nuclear country, are not available."

The proposed fuel bank would ensure the safety and security of supplies and prevent nuclear technology from being diverted for military purposes.

Araj does not believe Iran intends to become a supplier of uranium for the region, but based on their technological aspirations he sees a regional benefit if Iran were to contain their program as a regional enrichment program, bringing in stakeholders and the IAEA.

"The Iranians are a proud people," he said. "It could be that they would like to develop the technology for the sake of having the technology - if they want to invest in it, it is their business."

For countries planning a nuclear program today, it is more economical to purchase uranium, provided there is a guaranteed source, as initial costs for enrichment are extremely high.

Those critical of the UAE's unilateral decision to forgo enrichment argue that if nuclear fuel were not available on international markets due to sanctions or other reasons, then those that have forgone enrichment would find their nuclear power plants redundant and ultimately useless.

"That is a point which cannot be ignored," Holger said. "But I would say in a normally operating world, fuel has been available and there are actually initiatives at the IAEA to look at how the fuel assurances can be given to deter countries from entering the fuel cycle."

Jordan, like all members of the NPT, legally reserves the right to enrich uranium. But unlike the UAE, intends to keep the option open.

"I think Jordan will go along with the plan to purchase enriched uranium from abroad, rather than enrich uranium locally, as long as it will get a cost-effective uranium supply," Araj said. "If the program becomes sizable, we will then think about enrichment capability."

Whether states decide to forgo enrichment, the potential for collaboration will be a contentious topic of debate as Arab countries appear to have abandoned the collective approach in exchange for individual security and options down the line. Still, opportunities for collaboration remain.

Araj, who stresses the advantages of regional cooperation, says that he looks forward to collaborating, including with Iran, so long as each country would make themselves available for international multilateral frameworks.

Dr. Barth addresses the perceived nuclear threat from Iran and its role in the region.

Click to play

"There is nothing in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership or Nuclear Proliferation Treaty that says a regional enrichment facility cannot be in the Middle East," Araj said. "Europe will have one soon, and then we will follow their example."

Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter!

Jordan Heavy Metal Bands Find Public Ill-Informed About Their Music

2009-05-26T12:27:37Z

AMMAN, Jordan -- Muhannad Bursheh hardly seems like the kind of guy who would be viewed as a troublemaker. He's an audio engineering student enthusiastic about ancient Middle Eastern mythology and he lives with his family in Abdoun, one of Amman's upscale neighborhoods. But Bursheh is also the member of three heavy metal groups.

Don Belt: Pope to Arab Christians: Keep the Faith

2009-05-15T12:04:40Z

This was their moment. For native Christians in the Holy Land -- that small, beleaguered Arab community whose ancestors, on this very soil, were among the first to follow Jesus of Nazareth -- the visit of Pope Benedict XVI was nothing less than a godsend.

Finally, here was a western Christian who understood their predicament.

Like envoys of a forgotten world, Arab Christians embody the fierce and hunted spirit of the early Church. They worship in simple, ancient churches, some dating to the fourth and fifth centuries, and they preserve, in their rituals and liturgy, the earliest expressions of what it means to be a Christian. Relatively wealthy, well educated, and politically moderate, they are the people Middle Eastern societies can least afford to lose. Yet today they are abandoning their homelands as never before, exhausted by political turmoil, robbed of hope and opportunity, and alarmed by the rise in Islamist violence in places like Iraq and Egypt, where they make a convenient target for those who hate the West.

In the Holy Land, caught in the crossfire between Israel and all Palestinians, including Christians, their numbers have plummeted from perhaps 25 percent of the population a century ago to single digits today. Having covered these brave, close-knit communities for decades, most recently for this month's National Geographic, I consider their exit a tragic loss, and so does Pope Benedict XVI, who picked his way through the political minefields of Jordan, Israel, and Palestine this week to deliver a message of hope to Arab Christians: Keep the faith.

It's important for all of us that they do. In a land of bitter conflict, Arab Christians have always been the go-betweens, the human bridge between the Islamic world and the Christian West. Their exodus now would leave a huge void -- not only in the ancient stone churches where they worship, but also in the Middle East's depleted reservoir of hope that so urgently needs replenishing.

If the Pope's vision of Middle East peace were to be realized -- Muslims and Christians living together in a just, viable, prosperous Palestinian state at peace with Israel -- many of the reasons Arab Christians leave would disappear. But in the meantime, just having their 2,000-year history celebrated by the world's most prominent Christian is an answered prayer. According to my Palestinian friend Mark, from Bethlehem, most tourists to the Holy Land have never even heard of Arab Christians. "They think Christianity was invented in Italy or something. I had one lady ask me, 'What does your family think about you being a Christian? I suppose they must have been very upset!'"

Peter Andre And Jordon Split, Ending Their UK Tabloid Reign

2009-05-11T12:17:49Z

LONDON — British tabloid darling Katie Price and her husband, Peter Andre, are splitting up.

Better known to her male fans as Jordan, the 30-year-old's career kicked off in 1996 when she was picked as one of the topless models who appear daily in The Sun newspaper.

Karin Kloosterman: Swine Flu Prompts Israel, the PA, and Jordan Authorities to Spring to Action

2009-05-09T14:32:56Z

The 2,000-mile border between Mexico and the United States is nothing compared to the short distances of about 100 miles between the major cities in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

Borders, distances and how we cross them have taken on new significance lately with the latest outbreak of swine flu, or the H1N1 flu, a global epidemic. Especially severe in Mexico where it is thought to originate, the virulent virus knows no borders, and is a potential risk for people everywhere.

While it might seem that Israelis and Palestinians would have a difficult, if not impossible mission of working together to diagnose and contain H1N1, the reality is far from the truth. Without knowing it, they were preparing for what could become a pandemic, already last September.

The story starts six years ago, when nine top health officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and nearby Jordan formed a league - the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance (MECIDS), to stop the spread of food borne illnesses such as salmonella, across borders.

MECIDS is supported by the Search for Common Ground non-profit organization, the Global Health and Security Initiative, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Making the most of friendships

With three officials from each region taking part in MECIDS, rather than open up yet another organization to tackle avian flu in 2005 when the epidemic became a global concern, MECIDS officials from the respective Ministries of Health and Agriculture decided to add the new flu to their initiative.

"We decided to take the infrastructure of MECIDS with its people and friendships," says Dr. Alex Leventhal, director of Israel's Health Ministry Department of International Relations, who is a MECIDS member. Academic research from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority is now part of the collaboration.

The members all agreed that influenza -- even more than food-borne diseases -- does not respect national boundaries and that international planning against it would be essential. Even after the threat of avian flu went away, the group continued working together and last September held a joint meeting and exercise to simulate how the governments would act if faced with another flu epidemic.

Fully prepared with standardized diagnostic equipment, this past Friday MECIDS officials met in Jerusalem for a five hour meeting to plan how it will monitor and tackle swine flu should it continue to spread. Increasing the efficiency in their laboratories was one concern.

Egypt, which recently called to cull all its pig population, was also invited to join the meeting, as were reporters from Al Jazeera invited by the Palestinian representative Assad Ramlawi, the Palestinian director of public health services, who is now the chair of MECIDS.

Pandemic drills last September

"The idea behind MEDICS is that everybody is equal. So when I decided to be chairman of the group, I suggested it would be a rotating chair," says Leventhal. "This isn't part of the culture in Arab world," he says.

"Last September we had an exchange between the three parties and everyone was explaining what would be the national plan for a pandemic," says Leventhal. What each party would do at each stage and what each country is going to do is now drafted in the plan.

Jordan and the Palestinian Authority now has the proper equipment to test for the H1N1 flu, but still, Israel has offered its lab services at the Chaim Sheba Medical Center - as backup or in the case where a second opinion will be needed, says Leventhal.

There is a common interest among members of this group, he explains. "For instance we have decided we have to upgrade the lab capabilities of the three countries. The organization has bought machinery for diagnostic equipment for the PA and Jordan and we've studied together. Now the same machine [for testing H1N1 flu] will be used in all three countries," he says.

"If one country is stronger, the others will get more in order to harmonize," says Leventhal, about the partnership.

A continued alliance to fight pandemics

"The Jordanians are checking anyone who comes in from Israel. We in Israel only hand out information pamphlets, we aren't conducting tests based on the assumption that the chances of someone coming from Mexico to Jordan and then to Israel is low. We told them that if the need arises, the laboratory at Tel HaShomer is at their disposal," Leventhal said in a previous news story.

He adds that the group is scheduled to meet again in two weeks. At present, there have been no confirmed cases of the flu strain in either Jordan or the Palestinian Authority. The lack of confirmed cases, however, does not rule out that cases do not exist there. It may be a question of education about the virus, and a citizen's willingness to get checked.

"We decided we have to do some work together and will meet in the second week in May. If they want our help we can help provide the answers," says Leventhal, offering Israel's services.

At the time of posting this report, there were seven confirmed cases of H1N1 virus in Israel, with none in the Palestinian Authority or Jordan. So far Jordan, and the PA report no cases, while Egypt (even after it's controversial pig cull inflaming religious tensions) confirms one case.

###
Karin Kloosterman is a Canadian-Israeli journalist and blogger living in Jaffa, Israel. This article is reprinted with permission from ISRAEL21c - www.israel21c.org. She also blogs on Middle East green issues at Green Prophet, and at TreeHugger.

Pope Calls For Cooperation Between Christians And Muslims

2009-05-09T14:05:08Z

Pope Benedict XVI today called on Christians and Muslims to serve mankind with the "light of God's truth" while warning that extremists in nations such as Iraq were exploiting religious differences for political and violent agendas.

Pope Mideast Trip Different Than John Paul's

2009-05-08T09:12:05Z

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI begins a weeklong tour in the Middle East on Friday, a self-described "pilgrim of peace" seeking to strengthen frayed ties with Muslims and Jews and give support to his beleaguered Christian flock in the region.

The trip is designed along the lines of Pope John Paul II's historic pilgrimage in 2000 to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, including stops associated with Biblical events and the life of Christ.