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392. Turkey's Iran Policy: Between Diplomacy and Sanctions
- Author:
- Kadir Üstün
- Publication Date:
- 07-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Insight Turkey
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed the fourth round of sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran on June 9, 2010. Turkey, along with Brazil, voted in opposition to sanctions while Lebanon abstained from the vote. Turkey and Brazil's votes were particularly critical because they demonstrated a lack of unity within the international community. The rationale behind Brazil and Turkey's votes derived from the fact that the nuclear swap deal signed by Iran is, so far, the only concrete deal. It represents the only legal basis that the international community can build upon and hold Iran accountable. Although both countries' “no” votes were consistent with their diplomatic efforts, many analysts are criticizing Turkey in particular for not voting with its traditionally strong allies such as the US. Turkey's vote against the new round of sanctions represents an important milestone not because Turkey is abandoning its long-time allies but because Turkey is learning to make its own foreign policy calculations and decisions.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, and Diplomacy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iran, Turkey, Brazil, and Lebanon
393. A Third Lebanon War: CPA Contingency Planning
- Author:
- Daniel C. Kurtzer
- Publication Date:
- 07-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Lebanon has been a flashpoint for Arab-Israeli violence and military confrontations since the mid1970s. Its political system is weak and outside parties continue to vie for political advantage as part of a larger regional conflict. In particular, Syria and Iran provide support for the militant Islamist group Hezbollah as a strategic asset to pressure Israel. Hezbollah now controls most of southern Lebanon, while its political wing has developed a strong presence in the Lebanese parliament. In July and August 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought what became known as the “Second Lebanon War,” which killed and displaced many thousand s of people and destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure. Since then Hezbollah has steadily rearmed in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which requires, inter alia, “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state” and “no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government.” Hezbollah's arsenal is more potent in quantity and quality today than it was in 2006. Although the border area between Israel and Lebanon is quieter than at any time in the previous decade, speculation that a third Lebanon war will occur in the next twelve to eighteen months has been steadily rising. Israel could decide the security threat posed by Hezbollah has reached intolerable levels and take preemptive military action. Hezbollah, while outwardly showing no interest in confronting Israel at this time, may for various reasons choose or be pressured by Iran to flex its new military capabilities. As happened in 2006, even small-scale military engagements with limited objectives can escalate into a major conflict. Whatever the precipitating reasons, a new conflict over Lebanon would have significant implications for U.S. policy and interests in the region.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, War, Armed Struggle, and Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- United States, Middle East, Israel, Arabia, United Nations, Lebanon, and Syria
394. (In)Security and Reconstruction in Post-conflict Nahr al-Barid Refugee Cam
- Author:
- Ismael Sheikh Hassan and Sari Hanafi
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- This article examines the intersection of the Lebanese state's post-conflict security policy in Nahr al-Barid refugee camp and the reconstruction of the camp, which was destroyed in a battle between the Lebanese army and the militant group Fatah al-Islam. The significance of the government's security focus derives from its intention to make Nahr al-Barid a “model” for all the other camps in the country. After discussing the Lebanese security context, the characteristics of the pre-conflict camp, the arrival of Fatah al-Islam, and the ensuing battle, the authors focus on the urban planning process for a reconstructed Nahr al-Barid, highlighting both the state's militarization of the process and the local grassroots planning initiative which, in partnership with UNRWA, managed to secure some concessions. Also analyzed is the government plan submitted to donors, which conceives of “governance” as community policing without addressing the status of the Palestinians in Lebanon. IN THE SUMMER OF 2007, the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Barid, the second largest of the fourteen United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) camps in Lebanon, was totally demolished. This was a result of a battle between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist fundamentalist group, predominantly foreign, that had implanted itself in the camp only six months earlier. After its destruction, the camp remained a strict militarized zone, imposing additional hardship on a post-disaster community of refugees struggling to rebuild their lives. Various security-based projects and policies affecting the camp's urban form, governance structure, and legal status that were planned, negotiated, or approved by the Lebanese government signaled a new era in Lebanese-refugee relations. With the events of Nahr al-Barid, the Lebanese state entered the realm of the camp, and security concerns and practices assumed new forms that would potentially affect the future lives of Palestinian refugees in all Lebanon. The camp remains a military zone to this day. More importantly, the Lebanese government's plan to make Nahr al-Barid a security model for the other Palestinian refugee camps in the country brings the issue of security more urgently to the forefront of the debate about Palestinians in Lebanon. Nahr al-Barid also fits into a wider security discussion relating to Palestinians in the host countries in the context of the “war against terror,” with issues relating to the status of camps becoming intertwined with the correlative themes of good governance, refugee rights, human security, and integration for the benefit of international donors and development agencies, even as policies on the ground disregard and sometimes contradict these concepts. This article is based on two years of fieldwork and action research in Nahr al-Barid camp. Our involvement included participation in local community post-conflict initiatives, in-depth interviews with Nahr al-Barid residents and community leaders, and up-close observation of various Palestinian and Lebanese actors in the reconstruction planning process. Our aim is to contribute to the debate on the role of “security” in dictating state policy and actions during and after the battle. The fact that government policies are still in flux makes reflection and debate on these events all the more urgent. CONTEXTUALIZING SECURITY WITHIN PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMPS A variety of themes and discourses at the local, regional, and global level intertwine as a backdrop to a discussion of the heightened security measures for Palestinian refugee camps in general and Nahr al-Barid in particular. One of these is the state's traditional fear of refugees as a potentially threatening and disruptive political force. Ironically, this fear—and the security measures it engenders—is shared by those who produced the refugee problem and the host states that suffered its consequences; indeed, some disturbing parallels have been drawn, mutatis mutandi, between measures against Palestinians enacted by Israel and Arab states in the name of security. Thus, whereas historically the violent conflicts between the Palestinian movement and various Arab regimes were attributed to ideological differences and power struggles, the current situation seems to be heading in new directions. Today, what has become a seemingly universal obsession with security and fighting terror increasingly infiltrates Arab slogans to validate various practices against Palestinian camps and neighborhoods (not to mention against their own citizens). These practices affecting citizens/refugees and cities/camps alike are empowered by largely uncritical international military, financial, and political support for the “war on terror.” As a result, massive urban destruction has been wreaked on densely populated communities with scant consideration for civilian populations, with the suspension of civil liberties and imposition of siege now standard procedures validated by security-based arguments for Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Jenin/Nablus in the West Bank (2002), Lebanon (2006), Nahr al-Barid (2007), Gaza (2008), and Yemen (2009).
- Topic:
- Islam and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and Lebanon
395. In the Ruins of Nahr al-Barid: Understanding the Meaning of the Camp
- Author:
- Adam Ramadan
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- The destruction of Nahr al-Barid camp in Lebanon in 2007 was a disaster for the 35,000 people for whom it had become home. To understand what was lost, this article explores what the refugee camp is and what it does, materially and imaginatively, for its residents. Drawing on the words of ordinary Palestinians from Nahr al-Barid and Rashidiyya camps, it describes how the camps are social, cultural, and political refuges from marginalization in exile. While the camps draw meaning from a particular Palestinian time-space that emphasizes displacement and transience, they have also become meaningful places in themselves. Consequently, the loss of Nahr al-Barid and the displacement of its society have been understood as a repetition of the foundational experience of the modern Palestinian nation: the Nakba. IN TRYING TO PORTRAY the disturbed and discontinuous nature of Palestinian existence, Edward Said wrote that Palestinians in exile do not really live, but “linger in nondescript places, neither here nor there.” From this perspective, life in exile is a kind of meaningless purgatory through which Palestinians must pass before the promised future return. Time is privileged over space, and the present comes to be seen as a temporary transition between a meaningful past and a hopeful future. In contrast to Said's claim, I would argue that the refugee camps in which so many Palestinians live are neither meaningless nor nondescript. They may be temporary spaces in which Palestinian refugees await their right to return, but they have nevertheless become imbued with meaning and significance over decades of Palestinian habitation and place making. As I argue in this essay, the meaning and importance of a camp is perhaps never clearer than when the camp is viewed through the prism of loss. Between May and October 2007, a new chapter was written in the story of the Palestinian people. Nahr al-Barid, a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon home to 35,000 people, was totally demolished first by a 104-day military conflict between two non-Palestinian sides, and then through the actions of the victorious Lebanese army: looting, arson, and vandalism. Nahr al-Barid's destruction resumed a sequence of erasure of Palestinian camps in Lebanon dating back over three decades to the destruction of Nabatiyya, Tal al-Za`atar, Dikwaneh, and Jisr al-Basha camps in the early years of the 1975–1990 civil war. The Palestinians of Nahr al-Barid were displaced to Biddawi camp and further afield, staying with friends, relatives, and acquaintances, or sheltering in garages, storerooms, and improvised shelters. With the camp destroyed and the Lebanese army refusing to allow people back, the prospect of a quick return faded into a prolonged and uncertain displacement. In order to understand what, besides buildings and property, was destroyed in Nahr al-Barid, it is necessary to ask what a refugee camp is and—more importantly—what it does, both materially and imaginatively, for its Palestinian residents. In this article, I explore how Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon act as social, cultural, and political refuges from marginalization in exile. I do this by looking at two camps: the destroyed Nahr al-Barid in the north and the still “thriving” Rashidiyya in the south. Using 128 semistructured, qualitative interviews conducted with residents of the two camps in 2007 and 2008, I show how the camps draw meaning from a particular Palestinian time-space, which emphasizes displacement and transience, while at the same time becoming meaningful places in themselves. In these interviews, I asked people about life in the camp, the advantages and disadvantages of living there, what the camp means to them, and prospects for the future. Rashidiyya and Nahr al-Barid are quite different places politically, economically, and socially, but my intention here is not a straight comparison between the two. Rather, I have juxtaposed opinions and quotations from residents of the two camps: the residents of Rashidiyya talking of what they have, those of Nahr al-Barid talking of what they have lost. My aim was to understand what the camps mean and do for Palestinian refugees living a marginalized existence in Lebanon. THE PRESENT AS TRANSIENT A refugee camp can be defined as a temporary humanitarian space, usually set up by international humanitarian agencies and designed to meet the basic human needs of displaced people, including shelter, protection, and short-term relief. Palestinian refugee camps have these basic functions, and Palestinians receive relief, welfare, and social services provided by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Palestinian political factions, and various Palestinian and international NGOs, charities, and other groups. In the course of six decades, however, the camps have developed into seemingly permanent features of the landscapes of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza. Over the years, the inhabitants themselves replaced their tents first with corrugated iron and then with brick and concrete, and the camps became like small cities. As the built environment was assembled into something more permanent, the slow accumulation of experiences and memories, births and deaths, built up a sense of place and meaning. Alongside the networks of formal institutional support, myriad informal social relations among camp individuals and families formed channels through which help and support are given and received. As much as the material fabric of buildings and streets, these relations between people and institutions constitute the space of the camp, creating a place of refuge from the bewildering disorientation and insecurity of exile.
- Political Geography:
- Arabia and Lebanon
396. Art and Ecstasy in Arab Music
- Author:
- A.J. Racy
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
- Abstract:
- Throughout history, the emotional power of music has concerned philosophers, scientists, educators, moralists, and musicians. Growing up in a small rural village in southern Lebanon, I observed such power first hand. When the mijwiz (a double-pipe reed instrument) was played, traditionally using the technique of circular breathing, I saw the local listeners succumb to the instrument's magic spell. Its irresistible Dionysian ethos seemed to compel them to sing and dance. Some villagers maintained that the mijwiz enabled the shepherds, who often played it, to entrance their goats and make them stand still and listen. As an ethnomusicologist who specializes in music of the Middle East, especially of the Arab world, I have come across other similarly compelling cases of musical transformation. When singers chanted their poetry at medieval Abbasid courts in Baghdad, the listeners, including the caliphs themselves, displayed a variety of strong reactions, including moving their feet, dancing, sobbing, weeping, and tearing their garments—or in some cases listening to the performers attentively and bestowing upon them lavish compliments. Meanwhile, medieval Arabic treatises, which in the ancient Greek tradition often treated music as a science, left us ample writings about music's extraordinary cosmological associations and therapeutic effects. And for the Sufi mystics, music and dance became an integral path to transcendence, or the attainment of spiritual ecstasy.
- Topic:
- Islam, Arts, and Culture
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Arabia, and Lebanon
397. Talking with Terrorists: Terrorist Groups and the Challenge of Legitimization.
- Author:
- Joshua Gross
- Publication Date:
- 05-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
- Institution:
- School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
- Abstract:
- When Lebanese voters lined up to vote on June 7, 2009, the Obama administration was unprepared to face the alarming prospect of a Hezbollah-dominated government. The U.S. government remains hamstrung by legal and political obstacles that bar any contact with designated terrorist groups, including Hezbollah. This article examines the hurdles that the United States faces when terrorist groups gain legitimacy through democratic elections. Some terrorism analysts have begun advocating engagement of hostile terrorist groups as an element of a successful counterterrorism campaign. Yet, in the case of Lebanon, Hezbollah's electoral success has not resulted in the degree of behavioral change necessary to make the group a credible candidate for U.S. engagement. Moving forward, the United States should support a process that enables Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to be removed from the terrorist lists should they exhibit consistent and credible progress toward moderation and participation.
- Political Geography:
- United States and Lebanon
398. Lübnan 2010
- Author:
- Filiz Cicioğlu
- Publication Date:
- 01-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Lebanon, one of the most problematic countries in the Middle East for many years, has spent the year 2010 as more active foreign policy compared the previous years. After the parliamentary elections in 2009 and the establishment of the government, domestic political stability has been somewhat secured. The most important subject of the do-mestic agenda was the expectation of the decision of Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Although the decision was not made in 2010, this issue was one of the most debated issues among both groups within the country and their supporters abroad. The new government headed by Saad Hariri who tried to follow an active foreign policy has continued its efforts to establish close relations with regional countries. In this context the relations between Turkey and Lebanon is important. In 2010 besides Turkey, Iran emerged as an important partner. Another important development in foreign policy was warming relations with Syria. In addition to this, the visit of President Bashar al-Assad and Sau-di King Abdullah was a significant foreign policy development in 2010. Turkey, Syria and Jordan, Lebanon initiated an integration process. In Israeli border, a conflict has occurred in 2010, but the event has been stopped before getting greater.
- Political Geography:
- Iran, Turkey, Middle East, Lebanon, and Syria
399. Katar 2010
- Author:
- Ensar Muslu
- Publication Date:
- 01-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- Qatar, with its economic power to enhance its diplomatic activities in various ways, aided many countries and communities, predominantly those in Africa in 2010, initiated various mediation activities and hosted cultural organizations. Qatar, which has hosted various sport activities, became entitled to host a significant sport organization. Al Jazeera satellite channel is the most significant tool of the soft power of Qatar. In 2010, its relations with Iran, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Bahrain, and the United Kingdom were intense. Among them, the two powerful states of the region, Iran and Turkey, occupied the agenda. While the main agenda item of its relations with Iran was the possible American intervention, developments in economic relations principally constituted the relations with Turkey. Qatar has become one of the important economic actors thanks to its oil and natural gas revenues. Its economic activities cover investments in oil and natural gas drilling and plants; and also utilization of revenues received from these fields in other areas. Qatar founded some petrochemical plants and got into financial partnerships by buying shares of international banks in 2010. Many infrastructure and construction projects were prepared and some of them began to be carried out.
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United Kingdom, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Qatar
400. Hoffman: My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century
- Author:
- Khaled Furani
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- In telling the story of Taha Muhammad Ali, Adina Hoffman captures with remarkable sensitivity the sadness, hilarity, mysteries, absurdities, and absences that have made up the life of an extracanonical Palestinian poet, whose reputation in English surpasses his reputation in the Arab world. Born in 1931, Taha, as Hoffman refers to him, hails from the vanquished village of Saffuriyya and for decades sold trinkets to Christian pilgrims, only a few kilometers from his obliterated birthplace, in Nazareth, where he and his family made their home after a brief refuge in Lebanon.
- Political Geography:
- Palestine and Lebanon