Middle East & North Africa

In military strategy, the idea of “indirect approach” gained prominence in Europe only after the First World War in a book published in 1929. Many would say that it has been an enduring feature of the military strategies of Asian countries for much longer. What can we learn from this idea for transforming the Iran-Israel confrontation?

As the British strategist rightly observed in the preface to a later edition of his work, the principle of indirect approach has an application outside of military combat. It is, he said, a “key to practical achievement” where a “conflict of wills tends to spring from an underlying concern for interests”. He wrote that in such cases, the “direct assault of new ideas provokes a stubborn resistance”. Change, he suggested, is possible, and can happen rapidly, only “by unsuspected infiltration of a different idea or by an argument that turns the flank of instinctive opposition”.

If the Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, accepts the reality of Israel’s existence as a state, and he does, then why can’t we start to think about a treaty between Iran and Israel. We know there are obstacles, the first being the need for Israel and Palestine to have recognized each other as states.  The second is President Ahmedinejad’s reliance on anti-Israel rhetoric for political purposes. There is an even chance that within five years, both obstacles will have disappeared.

One interesting question is whether promotion now of the idea of regional peace and prosperity underpinned by an Iran-Israel treaty could actually hasten the elimination of both obstacles.

It has to happen. States use treaties to end wars and promote mutual economic security. There will be a treaty, either in fifteen years or five years. Why not aim for the five year milestone?

The treaty will be important for the obvious benefits it can bring in terms of peace and military security. Its enduring importance will be its potential to serve as an engine for regional economic development, including the development of transport links, educational advance and technology transfer. While both Israel and Iran ban bilateral trade, it does occur at relatively low levels, sometimes unwittingly through third parties.
It might be convenient to dismiss the robust (if unofficial) relationship between Iran and Israel before 1978 as a weird outcome of another time, but there were some basic economic and human realities at play in that, including Iran’s (small) Jewish community and Israel’s community of Iranian Jews.

Once Iran and Israel have normalized political relations, the trade floodgates will open. Although little remarked, Iran is – according to the IMF and World Bank – among the top 20 economies in the world in terms of GDP (purchasing power parity estimates). Iran ranks higher than Saudi Arabia, which is a member of the G20 while Iran is not.

Iran’s re-integration into the global economy in a post-sanctions world will be a productive process (once Israel and Palestine are at peace and the disputes over Iran’s nuclear program are eliminated).

A little known fact is that Israel, Iran and Palestine are currently all parties to a 2002 treaty on regional economic and security cooperation. This is the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). It has ambitious frameworks for building trust between its members. There is not much agreement between Iran and Israel in this forum, but their common membership in it – where Palestine is, it seems, treated as a state – is certainly worth noting. A Turkish diplomat referred to CICA as a “unique group of dis-similars”, and the forum is inevitably a politicized one. For now, it is the only regional organization bridging Israel, Palestine and Iran. Based on this precedent, a bilateral treaty between Iran and Israel within five years is not impossible – once the two obstacles are removed.  

The Turkish Weekly wrote an article on EWI's roundtable discussion: "Middle East Regional Security Challenges and Opportunities: Dangers and Vision for 2020." The roundtable was moderated by Mehmet Yegin (Center for American Studies-USAK) and Bahadir Dincer (Center for Middle Eastern Studies-USAK). The discussion included EWI President and CEO John Edwin Mroz, EWI Co-Chairmen Francis Finlay and Ross Perot Jr, former Chief of the U.S. Air Force General Michael Moseley, Ambassador Richard Viets of Kissinger Associates and EWI senior fellow Allen Collinsworth.

His Highness Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, the United Arab Emirates’ Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and President of Zayed University, delivered the keynote address.

In his remarks, His Highness urged symposium participants to make concrete and innovative recommendations for action. “Your success and ours depends on building relationships across boundaries and borders and strengthening cooperation in all regions of the world,” he declared.

Francis Finlay, Co-Chairman of the EastWest Institute, spoke about Abu Dhabi’s “extraordinary” progress, pointing out that its strengths lie in actively seeking innovative ideas and sustainable practices from the rest of the world. 

For guests of Zayed University, one of the most remarkable signs of Abu Dhabi’s progress was the crowd of female students who attended the symposium. At a working lunch, both male and female students joined speakers and guests in discussing a broad range of topics, including women’s empowerment and the push for private-public partnerships to spur innovation. Dr. Louise Richardson, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who chaired the first panel, said meeting the students was “the highlight” of her day.

In his concluding remarks, EWI President John Edwin Mroz also expressed his admiration for Abu Dhabi’s accomplishments and the vigorous nature of the discussions. “I don’t dare try to sum up the whole day!” he added. Indeed, the recommendations and conclusions of the panels ranged from a call to educate students as global citizens to appeals for companies to support in-country applied research. But as Mroz pointed out, the day ultimately demonstrated our global interconnectedness – and the importance of conversation as a tool for education and action. A full report on the symposium will follow.

About 16,000 years ago, the entire Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf to some Arab states) was probably dry land. The Euphrates and Tigris rivers would have run through it and flowed directly into the ocean. The current coastal city of Abu Dhabi would have been more than 500km from the sea. The theory, based on seabed core sampling, is credible.

After inundation of the Gulf occurred sometime around 15,000 years ago, climate change brought about rises and falls in the sea level. Around 5,000 years ago, a “slight, but noticeable, change of climate must have taken place, leading to slightly cooler and dryer average conditions”… “sea level was almost three meters higher at the time the climatic changes began than it is today,” according to the scholarly study. 

This theory of sea level change in the gulf may not be correct, but the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a government that does not takes its physical environment, or indeed the global environment, for granted. You see this in the Abu Dhabi airport electronic posters: “If everyone passing through this airport turned the tap off while brushing their teeth, together we’d save 1,000 bathtubs of water every day”.

But Abu Dhabi has gone well beyond water conservation in its policies and in its global diplomacy for the environment. It is now home to IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, which opened its office in the emirate in April 2010, after the organization was set up by treaty in January 2009. Abu Dhabi is also founder and host of the World Future Energy Summit, first held in 2008.

In January 2010, the UAE released the results of a study “Climate Change – Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation in UAE.” At the press conference for the release, H.E. Majid Al Mansouri, Secretary General of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, commented: “The UAE is seriously concerned about climate change on many levels. We are a country that already faces extreme climatic conditions and has precious natural resources, so long-term variations in temperature and precipitation will produce adverse impacts.”

The report concluded that current levels of water use in the UAE are unsustainable. According to the website of the UAE embassy in Washington, “Rising sea levels threaten penetration of groundwater aquifers by seawater, a particular concern to the UAE, which already faces problems with groundwater depletion and pollution.”

The report assessed the impact on the UAE of several scenarios for sea level rise over the next century, finding that even the more conservative scenario of a one metre rise would put at risk “85 per cent of its population living on the coast and more than 90 per cent of the infrastructure also lying along the seashores”.

By August, the UAE was recruiting internationally for staff of a newly formed Directorate for Energy and Climate Change. Some senior officials were suggesting that adapting to climate change has now become the main driver of Abu Dhabi’s strategic planning, at least in the economic sphere.

At the commercial level, the emirate has invested heavily in innovation for energy technology, most visibly through Masdar (meaning the “source’), the name both of a company established in 2006 and the high tech city it is building. The company aims to advance the “development, commercialisation and deployment of renewable energy solutions and clean technologies”.  Masdar, the city, will be a “zero carbon, zero waste city”, and a test-bed for new energy technologies and carbon management policy. The country’s companies are looking to profit from carbon offset funding.

The CEO of the Masdar initiative, Dr Sultan Ahmed al Jaber boasts, “Our ambitions are global”. Will Masdar become the model city of the 21st century and a household name for our grand-children?

“Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repugnant claim that the events of 9/11 were a U.S. conspiracy set an all-time low in this regard, triggering a walkout by the representatives of 33 countries—a new record,” writes Sidhu.

Sidhu argues that Washington DC’s and Tehran’s mutual misperceptions lie at the heart of this problematic relationship.  With Ahmadinejad’s pronouncements of the U.S.’s immoral political and economic system, and the U.S.’s belief that Iran is on the verge of collapse, neither country evaluates the other realistically.  Both countries’ assessments are too extreme.

Sidhu concludes that Iran made a serious mistake in choosing to attack the U.S. rather than communicate at this year’s UN General Assembly: “Clearly, both sides missed a ‘golden opportunity’ to negotiate their way out of the dangerous impasse on the sidelines of the UN.  In this instance, the blame lies squarely with Ahmadinejad.”

Click here to read Sidhu's piece on livemint.com.

Paskal began her presentation with the aphorism “Geography makes history,” and went on to show how disasters change the course of history. Her main message: “In order to understand the geopolitical and the geoeconomic, we must understand the geophysical.”

To make her case, Paskal cited examples from China, the Arctic, and the U.S. , starting with Hurricane Katrina, a primary example of how one natural disaster can dovetail into an international crisis. New Orleans’ infrastructure was not designed with the natural landscape in mind, so when Katrina hit the coast, it wreaked havoc.  Not only was the city destroyed, but Katrina demolished the coastal infrastructure and oil rigs, bringing down 457 pipelines and diminishing the Gulf’s oil production by 57.37%.

"We need to look at not just how we’re affecting the environment, but how the environment’s affecting us,” Paskal pointed out.

To show how environmental change may lead to political conflict, Paskal explored territorial sea rights through the lens of the Maldive Islands.  A mere 6 feet about sea level, the Maldives have already lost 15% of their land area to rising sea levels caused by global warming. As islands like these disappear, the solution is to use materials like sand to build them up again, at which point the islands are no longer considered natural, but, rather, man-made. Why does this matter? A natural island has a 200 mile exclusive economic zone, while a man-made island has only a 500 meter zone.  This raises a myriad of issues such as water sharing, and how we govern international waters and international territories. 

As Paskal concluded, “Geography makes history, but environmental change makes geography.”  

As readers of this newspaper will know, the OSCE spans three continents, brings together about 15 per cent of humanity, has 56 members, and has four out of five permanent seats in the UNSC. There is another regional organization that also spans three continents, represents the aspirations of a bigger slice of humanity (about 25 per cent), and has 57 countries as members, but none with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

The group in question is the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the world’s only “regional organization” based around a religious attribution. Apart from its 57 members (Muslim majority states), there are a number of states or entities as observers: Bosnia and Hercegovina, Thailand, Russia, the Central African Republic and the Turkish Cypriot government.

The OIC has its own Development Bank, its Islamic UNESCO (ISESCO), the Islamic International Court, the International Islamic News Agency, and a host of subsidiary and affiliated organizations. It does not of course represent in a direct political sense all Muslims, but it does purport to speak on behalf of the “umma” (the community of Muslim believers worldwide).

Osama bin Laden wrote often of the Umma, expressing on occasion the hope that it would rise again to a prominent place in world political affairs, and be recognized again for high achievement in the arts and sciences. I mention that not to credit the source in any way, but to demonstrate that the sentiment about an organized Islamic resurgence is seen as a good mobilizing tool. That aspiration is shared by many leaders in the Islamic world, and it is captured in the Charter of the OIC: “to work for revitalizing Islam’s pioneering role in the world”. This vision, one I share, is the departure point of this analysis.

There are other high ambitions expressed in the OIC charter, including the more familiar idea of a “common market”, albeit an “Islamic Common Market”. Turkey, also an aspirant for EU membership, is actively promoting both parts of this OIC agenda: scientific and technological advance and regional economic integration.

The OIC revised its original 1972 Charter only in 2008. At the time, Indonesia’s President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, declared that as a result of the new charter "the possibility of an Islamic Renaissance lies before us".

The OIC is a leading force in the fight globally against violent extremism.  In 2008, the conference declaration noted: “We continue to strongly condemn all forms of extremism and dogmatism which are incompatible with Islam”. The OIC is also leading a global campaign against rising Islamophobia around the world, a phenomenon documented by independent sources.

To many observers, the OIC is an imperfect organization, to be faulted for its internal divisions, for its hostile attitude to Israel, for what some see as its ingrained anti-semitism, and for its extreme political diversity (from monarchies, dictatorships, and radical regimes to democracies of varying stripe).

That view does not capture the essential dynamism and progressive character of the evolutionary path on which the OIC has been set for number of years. Nor does it speak to the sense of injustice over Palestine that for its part, it carries into many political forums.

A full assessment of the trajectory of this interesting organization would be very useful. One thing is clear. The OIC wants a new partnership with the West, and some countries are beginning to respond to that. The path to regional and wider international power and authority may be long and rocky, but the OIC and its member states have a vision for regional and global economic and scientific development that is definitely beginning to change the world for the better. Let’s work with them.

The appeal calls for Afghan Government support of women representatives, peace building and conflict resolution.

Click here to read the Open Letter to the participants of the Kabul Conference.

PN: You’re one of only 9 female parliamentarians in the Federal National Council of the UAE, in the country where women have only recently gained access to political life. How difficult was it to establish yourself as a parliamentarian?

NA: I would not say difficult, I would say challenging, and I have always enjoyed challenges.  It might be hard at the beginning, but I’ve grown immensely with each challenge. My time in the Parliament has been an invaluable learning experience; it has given me great insight into the core strategic issues facing our society, as well as a deep understanding of the institutional challenges that we need to work on.

PN: You are the youngest MP, how does this influence your work in the Parliament and the way you are regarded by your older colleagues?

NA: Of course people first assume that I have less experience and ability to work in the Parliament because of my age. But I would like to add, with certain humility, that at this stage I’ve gained the respect of my older colleagues based on the quality of my work in Parliament. I believe in continuous learning and hard work, and these are the principles I have applied during my term in the Parliament. I don’t think much about my young age, I think about how I can be useful for my society.

PN: You’ve stated once, in an interview, that you can serve your country better working as a parliamentarian rather than in the media industry. Now, after three years in the Parliament, do you still hold this opinion?

NA: I sincerely believe that the role of the media and the Parliament are complimentary and fully interconnected. Both should be focused on public service. Mass media can inform and enlighten citizens so that theyeffectively take part in the political life. As a MP I’ve been working on reviewing and improving draft legislation and engaging the government in the dialogue about the core issues facing society and the solutions and policies that need to be addressed and put forward. The areas I am most passionate about, and have been focused on throughout my term, are education, youth and media.

PN: You have an extensive experience in the media industry. How does it help you in your political career?

NA: My experience in the media has given me a lot of insight into how the mass media can influence people’s mindset and their actions. To build a civil society and increase political participation of all our citizens we need to enlighten and inform people by giving them access to unbiased modern mass media. I’ve tried to focus on it during my term in the Parliament, making sure that the MPs contribute to creation of a progressive mass media market in the UAE.  Working in the media has certainly enabled me to understand how it all works, so I am able to put things into perspective.

PN: Female MPs from Afghanistan and Pakistan find it very difficult to make their positions heard and respected. Do you experience the same problem in the UAE? Do female MPs have the same leverage as their male colleagues?

NA: I do believe that women in the UAE have more political leverage than women in Pakistan and Afghanistan, at this stage. Women in the UAE have been privileged to have clear support of the government in their bid to make their voices heard. However, I don’t mean that women in the UAE are on equal footing with men; we still live in a patriarchal society, where men are regarded as inherent and natural leaders, and the role of women is interpreted through that lens. Things are moving on, however, but we have a long way to go before we’ll be able to say that women have reached the stage where they have equal opportunities with men.

PN: You are strongly committed to promoting human rights and especially women’s rights in the Arab countries. Do you maintain any ties with the MPs from other Muslim countries?

NA: Undoubtedly, there must be solidarity between Arab women, whether they are MPs or civil society activists or just women who want to help and make a difference. The cooperation between Arab female MPs should be given a boost. Meetings are constantly held between Arab female parliamentarians to exchange knowledge and law-making experience. But we certainly need to institutionalize these encounters so as to be able to work as a solid movement and try to abolish the inequalities that women face in the whole Arab world.

PN: More and more female MPs want to increase their impact in peace and security issues, as well. How high is conflict prevention on the political agenda in the UAE?

NA: The issue of conflict prevention is extremely high on the political agenda in the UAE. The UAE has always believed in playing a pro-active role in addressing conflicts regionally and globally through diplomacy, dialogue, and support for progressive development agendas of the neighboring countries that need assistance. The UAE is situated in a highly volatile Middle East region, facing many complex challenges, and we live in an interconnected world, so conflict prevention is the key to the strategic interests of our country.  The UAE’s strategy is to be an active player in the global community, using pro-active diplomacy and dialogue.