LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
JULY  23/2006

Latest News From miscellaneous sources 23/07/06
AP writer describes Israel-Lebanon border-Seattle Post Intelligencer
Cyprus plea for help on evacuees-CNN 
UN focus on Mideast humanitarian woes-The Age 
Israel seizes Hizbollah stronghold-Reuters
Lebanese refugees crossing Syrian border-AP
International Red Cross transports aid to south Lebanon-Ha'aretz
LEBANON: Asylum seekers stuck in Beirut-Reuters
Evacuation from Lebanon peaks-Reuters.uk
Turkey may Lead UN Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon-Zaman Online
Israel still operating inside Lebanon, UN says-Monsters and Critics.com
Russia calls for foreign ministers' Lebanon meeting-Reuters
US Plan Seeks to Wedge Syria Away From Iran-New York Times
Hezbollah to Reject US Proposal for Lebanon Border-Bloomberg
Bush: Pressuring Hizbollah, Iran, Syria Mideast key-Scotsman
Israeli tanks crash border into Lebanon-The Age
Israeli warplanes strike communications towers in Lebanon-Canada.com 
Rice to seek pressure on Iran, Syria-Daily Telegraph
Bush pressuring Hezbollah key in Mideast crisis-Khaleej Times 
Maronite bishops call for ceasefire, humanitarian corridors-AsiaNews.it
Israeli tanks, troops raid Lebanese town-AP
U.S. evacuation from Lebanon nears end-AP
Jihadists split on Islam's true enemy-By Edward Wong The New York Times
Israeli incursions a few kilometres into Lebanon-Reuters
Israeli Buildup at Lebanese Line as Fight Rages-By GREG MYRE and JAD MOUAWAD
Press conference by emergency relief coordinator on Lebanon relief-ReliefWeb (press release)
Israel poised to invade Lebanon-Independent Online - Cape Town,South Africa
Israel Stages Operations in Southern Lebanon-Washington Post
In Mideast mosques, Lebanon a common theme-Houston Chronicl
Rice: Cease-fire at this time pointless-Ynetnews 
Across the Middle East, Sermons Critical of the U.S-By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Thousands more Americans flee Lebanon to Cyprus-Boston Globe
Victims of Israel-Hezbollah conflict to be remembered-Ireland Online
Israel to allow aid into Lebanon-Boston Globe - United States
Rice headed for summit- Newsday 
Rice Rejects Quick Fix in Mideast-ABC News 
Britain and US block ceasefire calls-Times Online
Israeli troops massing along Lebanon border-Chicago Tribune
Gaza and Lebanon: Connecting the Dots-Foreign Policy In Focus 
Hezbollah - Serving Muslims with God and Guns-Voice of America 
Israel to allow direct flow of humanitarian aid into Lebanon-Ha'aretz
Humanitarian aid begins arriving in Lebanon-Houston Chronicle
Israel calls up reservists for push into Lebanon-Times Online
Israel set for ground attack on Lebanon-Financial Times
Residents flee southern Lebanon-ABC Online
Foreign evacuation from Lebanon reaches peak, Canadians frustrated-Calgary Sun
'I'm out of Lebanon, and I'm going to cry'-CNN International - USA
Lebanon is ready to defend country, says Lebanese president-Kuwait News Agency

Israel rules out mass attack on Lebanon
Alistair Lyon | Beirut, Lebanon
22 July 2006 12:17
Israel called up thousands of reservist soldiers on Friday but a military source ruled out a mass invasion of southern Lebanon, saying the army would step up pinpoint cross-border attacks against Hezbollah guerrillas. Amid mounting world alarm as Israel kept up a 10-day-old air bombardment and Hezbollah fired more rockets into Israel, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza announced a diplomatic drive and said the conflict's root causes had be tackled before any truce. Fearing a large-scale Israeli ground attack, thousands of Lebanese civilians fled north after the Jewish state warned them to leave border villages.
The Israeli military source said the army had told 3 000 reservists to report for duty. The army could have three to four divisions on the border with Lebanon by the end of the weekend, the YNET news website reported.
The source said the army intended to step up pinpoint incursions into the south. "You should not expect a full-scale incursion into Lebanon," the source told Reuters. Rice told a news conference in Washington she would visit the Middle East next week and attend an Italian-hosted international conference in Rome on Wednesday in an attempt to secure lasting peace. The United States, Israel's main ally, has rebuffed Lebanon's appeals for an immediate UN-backed ceasefire, saying this would not last unless Hezbollah guerrillas, backed by Syria and Iran, were prevented from attacking the Jewish state. "An immediate ceasefire without political conditions does not make sense," said Rice. "What I won't do is ... try to get a ceasefire that I know isn't going to last."
Washington supported proposals for an expanded international force on the Israel-Lebanon border but details were not fixed, a senior US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. A 2 000-strong UN force monitors the border at present.
Israel has so far failed to stop Hezbollah cross-border rocket attacks despite its bombardment, which has killed 345 people in Lebanon and forced half a million to leave their homes. About 90% of those killed were civilians.
Hezbollah rockets crashed into the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Friday, wounding 19 people. Other towns were also hit. Rocket attacks have killed 15 civilians in Israel, which has also lost 19 soldiers in the conflict. Elite Israeli troops have been launching small-scale raids in Lebanon to try to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks. But Israel has been wary of launching a full-scale invasion, only six years after it ended a costly 22-year occupation of the south.
Israel's military chief, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, said Israeli forces had killed nearly 100 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon during the 10-day offensive. The guerrilla group says only six of its fighters have been killed. Lebanese families packed into cars and pickup trucks and clogged roads to the north after Israeli planes dropped leaflets warning residents of south Lebanon to flee for safety beyond the Litani river, about 20km from the border.
An estimated 300 000 mostly Shi'ite Muslim Lebanese normally reside south of the Litani. There was no word on how many have already fled the bombing and fighting of the past few days. Air raids have wrecked many roads and bridges in the region. Israel began its assault after Hezbollah captured two soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12. It has also waged a military campaign in Gaza since June 28 to recover another soldier, seized by Palestinian militants. "The siege on Lebanon is not letting humanitarian aid in," said Hisham Hassan, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "The south is isolated."US helicopters plucked frightened Americans from Beirut, adding to a swelling tide of foreign evacuees to Cyprus and Turkey. At a beach, people carrying suitcases and babies queued for a landing craft to take them out to US warships. "My parents are staying. They think it will last three to six weeks but I think it might get worse when we leave," said George Abi-Habib (25) one of many who voiced similar worries. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was involved in brokering a 2004 prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah, also plans a trip to the Middle East next week. In Gaza, Palestinian medics said Israeli shelling killed a Hamas militant and four civilians on Friday, as tanks and troops withdrew from a refugee camp after a three-day assault. - Reuters

Israeli warplanes strike communications towers in Lebanon, police say Joe Panossian,
Associated Press
Published: Saturday, July 22, 2006 Article tools
BEIRUT -- Israeli warplanes hit TV transmission towers on Saturday in Lebanon, knocking the nation's leading private network off the air and cutting phone links to some regions.
Fighter bombers fired missiles at transmission stations in the central and northern Lebanese mountains, leaving antennas burning on the ground.Three missiles hit a transmission station at Fatqa in the Keserwan mountains, leaving antennas burning on the ground. Another airstrike crippled a transmission tower at Terbol in northern Lebanon, where relay stations for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., Future TV and Hezbollah's Al-Manar are located.
The three stations could no longer be seen in parts of the country although their satellite feed was unaffected. The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. is the nation's leading private network.
Hezbollah TV has been targeted previously, during the hostilities that erupted July 12. It went off the air for less than 10 minutes during the pounding.
The transmission of Radio Free Lebanon, a private station, was also disrupted when airstrikes hit a tower on a mountaintop in Sannine that was also used by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.
Israeli warplanes targeting a truck hit a Christian suburb of Beirut earlier this week, but Saturday's attack was the first major airstrike in the Christian heartland.
The 11-day-old Israeli bombardment has hammered mainly Shiite Muslim regions in southern and eastern Lebanon as well as Beirut's southern suburbs.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces kept up the pressure on southern Lebanese border towns, pounding them with artillery fire, making brief incursions, and according to the Israeli military, taking control of one.
Israel's incursion into Maroun al-Ras came after it pounded the area with bombs and artillery throughout the night.
Several Israeli soldiers, backed by artillery and tank fire, moved into Maroun al-Ras, Israeli military officials said on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the information, and said it was under Israeli control.
But Lebanese security sources, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said that the Israeli military had made incursions of only a few hundred metres into Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun villages.
The village is believed to be a launching point for rocket attacks on northern Israel, including those on the Israeli city Nazareth.
Israeli air raids and artillery shelling also hit the southeast border town of Khiam, Lebanese television and witnesses reported.
UN peacekeepers and witnesses said the Israeli incursion briefly held the border village of Marwaheen before pulling back.
One person was killed and five wounded in overnight airstrikes on the southern town of Nabatiyeh, the Voice of Lebanon radio station said. The report could not immediately be confirmed. Nabatiyeh, located some 12 kilometres north of the border, was heavily bombed a day earlier.
Lebanese television said that Israeli artillery also shelled zones near the disputed Chebaa farms area.
No report of casualties was immediately available.
© Associated Press 2006

Lebanese refugees crossing Syrian border
By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer
Al JADEDEH, Syria - His hands shook. He choked out his words. "Look at me," Mohammed Rahad said as he arrived at the Lebanese-Syrian border, a chaotic collection of makeshift buildings, tents and trailers among the arid hills and thorny brambles.
He held out his trembling hands and pointed to his two children. "They want to know why are we here," he said. "We have nothing." The family is among more than 200,000 Lebanese fleeing to Syria, according to the Syrian Red Crescent.
Scores of people on foot stood in line to get into Syria. Scores more waited in cars — a collection of mostly well-used vehicles overflowing with whatever the refugees could carry.
"What's left of my country?" Rahad asked. Others waiting with him Saturday listened as he shouted in frustration.
"I will take a bomb and put it on me ... and explode it if I could find any Israeli. I would explode it and kill myself and them." He gestured as if stuffing a bomb inside his sweat-stained shirt. "I am not a terrorist, but today if I could, I would blow myself up. It is enough. I want to be a bomb. Israel comes with airplanes and tons of explosives. I want to say to (U.N. Secretary-General) Kofi Annan. Enough!"
Sue Mansour made the dangerous drive from Beirut with her three sons. The Lebanese-American grasped her U.S. passport and tried to push through the hot and angry crowd to the immigration desk. She had come to Lebanon to attend a wedding and arrived July 11, one day before the Israeli bombing began. She had been trying to leave ever since.
She had given up on the U.S. government-sponsored sea and helicopter evacuation out of Beirut, although she and the children were on the American list of people eligible for evacuation.
"We went every day, day after day after day to the place they told us to come but after hours and hours they said, 'Sorry come back tomorrow.'" Finally, they gave up and headed for Syria.
The U.N. estimates there are 700,000 refugees from the fighting, and Annan has said he fears a humanitarian disaster.
Abdul Rahman Attar, head of the Syrian Red Crescent told The Associated Press in Damascus about 200,000 had crossed from Lebanon into Syria, and about 10 percent have received help from the Red Crescent. Attar said he has appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross for more aid and was critical that so little had come to Syria from Europe and from fellow Arab nations.
"We can manage for another 10 or 15 days. But what about all the other countries — the Arab countries and countries in Europe? They are not donating anything (to Syria). We get some donations coming in, 10, 15 or 20 trucks with aid. But that doesn't mean anything. The other countries all they are doing is talking," he complained.
The Syrian Red Crescent has mobilized teams to shepherd refugees to schools that have been converted into hostels, or to mosques or private homes that have been opened to refugees.
Abir Hamid, a 28-year-old mother of two, said she came to Syria after deciding the war would not end soon.
Her 15-year-old sister, Nancy, said they had been on the road in a taxi for eight hours as they fled Beirut.
The two women were vocal supporters of Hezbollah.
Nancy interrupted her sister's story of their escape to say: "I love Hezbollah. Everyone in Lebanon loves them."
Eleven-year-old Wadeya Abu Akar wants to be an engineer when he grows up but he isn't sure it will be in Lebanon. A refugee from Taanayel in the Bekaa Valley, targeted by Israeli jets as a stronghold of Hezbollah, Wadeya had never heard a bomb fall before. "I was just so afraid. I tried to hide but I didn't know where to go. I made my father leave our home. He said, 'No. We will stay,' but I couldn't stay. I said, 'Please I want to leave.' I was so afraid."
At the Al Jadedeh crossing, Daman Mehraz of the Syrian Red Crescent, said the flow of refugees from Lebanon had been steady. Added to the burden are 300 Palestinians who fled the fighting in Gaza. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had been called to intervene.
For the last two days the Palestinians have lived in a nearby mosque unable to get into Syria because they have no travel documents.
Abir Hamid, a young mother of two, was uncertain when she could return home to Lebanon.
"But I think that when I return there will be nothing left," she said.

Israel seizes Hizbollah stronghold: army By Lin Noueihed
MARJAYOUN, Lebanon (Reuters) - Israel ousted Hizbollah guerrillas from a stronghold just inside Lebanon on Saturday after several days of fierce fighting, the army said, as it bombarded targets across the south of the country.
Ground forces commander Major-General Benny Gantz said Israeli soldiers took the hilltop village of Maroun al-Ras, where six Israeli commandos have been killed this week, inflicting dozens of casualties on Hizbollah.
Israel said it planned no full-scale invasion of Lebanon for now, but warned villagers near the border to leave.
In the town of Marjayoun, about five miles from the border, cars packed with people waving white flags fled north fearing Israel will step up an 11-day-old war which has killed 351 people, mostly civilians.
There was no immediate comment from the Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla group, which had said in an earlier statement its fighters had inflicted casualties on the Israeli side.
An Israeli army spokesman had said troops backed by around a dozen tanks and armored vehicles had been fighting in Maroun al-Ras, about two km (one mile) inside Lebanese territory, and found Hizbollah bunkers and weapons stores.
He said Israel might widen its military action, but was still looking at "limited operations." "We're not talking about massive forces going inside at this point."
Resisting growing calls for a ceasefire, the United States stressed the need to tackle what it sees as the root cause of the conflict -- Hizbollah's armed presence on Israel's border and the role of its allies, Syria and Iran.
"Resolving the crisis demands confronting the terrorist group that launched the attacks and the nations that support it," U.S President George W. Bush said on Saturday, a day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to head to Israel.
Israeli forces had urged residents of 14 villages in south Lebanon to leave by 4 p.m. (1300 GMT) ahead of more air raids.
TROOP BUILD UP
Israel has built up its forces at the border and called up 3,000 reserves. Defense Minister Amir Peretz has spoken of a possible land offensive to halt rocket attacks that have killed 15 Israeli civilians in the past 11 days.
But Israel is wary of mounting another invasion, only six years after it ended a costly 22-year occupation of the south. Already, 19 soldiers have been killed in the latest conflict.
Israeli air raids hit transmission stations used by several Lebanese television channels and a mobile telephone mast north of Beirut, cutting mobile phone services in northern Lebanon.
The official in charge of the station transmitting LBC programs was killed, the channel said. A nun at a nearby church said two French nationals were also lightly wounded.
Israel's army said it hit a Hizbollah radio and TV transmitter and an antenna for frequencies "used by Hizbollah." Hizbollah's al-Manar television was still broadcasting after the strikes.
Israeli medics and the army said at least 10 Hizbollah rockets hit towns in northern Israel, wounding 10 people.
Across south Lebanon, families piled into cars and trucks -- flying white sheets they hoped would ward off attack -- and clogged roads north after Israel warned residents to flee for safety beyond the Litani river, about 12 miles from the border.
But witnesses said an Israeli air strike hit one of the few remaining crossings over the river early on Saturday.
The war started when Hizbollah captured two soldiers and killed eight in a July 12 raid into Israel, which had already launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip to try to recover another soldier seized by Palestinian militants on June 25.
Washington supports proposals for an expanded international force on the Israel-Lebanon border but details were not fixed, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. A 2,000-strong U.N. force monitors the border at present.
Amid growing concern about the plight of civilians in Lebanon, Israel said it would ease humanitarian access.
U.N. relief agencies have called for safe passage to take in food and medical supplies. An estimated half million people have fled their homes.
Foreigners have also flooded out of the country. Ships and aircraft worked through the night scooping more tired and scared people from Lebanon and taking them to Cyprus and Turkey.
(Additional reporting by Jerusalem, Nicosia, Washington bureaux)

Jihadists split on Islam's true enemy
By Edward Wong The New York Times
Published: July 21, 2006
BAGHDAD The question has popped up all over Internet sites frequented by Islamic militants: Should your average God-fearing jihadist support Hezbollah in its battle against the Zionist aggressors and their American lapdogs?
The answer seems a foregone conclusion, given the hatred of Israel across much of the Muslim world.
But consider this posting about Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, that appeared on a Web site with ties to Al Qaeda: "Let us explain that the party of Hassan Nasrallah, for us, is a party which has a Shia ideology. Thus, he is considered our enemy like our enemies the Jews, the Christians."
"So what should we do now? What side shall we take? Who shall we support?" asked the seemingly puzzled author, a Sunni known as Saif al-Din al- Kanani.
Rather than uniting the region's holy warriors, the conflict in Lebanon has ignited a robust debate among militants over backing for Hezbollah, the Shiite group that set off the crisis when it captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
The discussions reflect the widening divide between Shiite and Sunni Arabs in parts of the Middle East, and Sunni fears of the ascendance of Shiite-dominated Iran. The Internet volleys, some of them full of fury and venom, also offer a window into the startling diversity of opinion among jihadist groups.
Accusing Palestinians of being anti- Shiite, one Iraqi bitterly writes: "It is better to concentrate one's efforts on helping the Shiite kinfolk rather than the Sunnis."
The world of Islamic militants on the Internet is nebulous, and it is often hard to pinpoint the influence of the myriad figures and groups. But U.S. experts say prominent supporters of jihad, including religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have joined in the debate.
Well-recognized guerrilla groups and militant clerics in Iraq, like the 20th Revolution Brigades and the Muslim Scholars Association, have posted their views on conflict in the Middle East.
About 80 percent of the postings this week on jihadist sites concern support for Hezbollah, according to the SITE Institute, a group in Washington that provides translations of the messages.
Suspicions among Sunnis over growing Shiite power - and a vindictive backlash by Shiites - have come to the fore during the Iraq war and the conflict in Lebanon. Animosity is especially virulent among those Sunni militants who adhere to a conservative strain of Islam that views Shiites as infidels.
And like many Sunni politicians, the militants see in Hezbollah a puppet of Iran, whose Shiite Persian majority has traditionally been regarded by Arabs as an unrelenting enemy.
Though many ordinary Sunnis have spoken out in support of Hezbollah, Sunni Arab governments have withheld their backing.
Conspiracy theories abound on the Internet. One Sunni fighter said the Lebanon conflict is a plot by an Iranian- American-Israeli axis to spread the Shiite faith across the region; another suggested that Sunnis sit this one out and let the Americans and Israelis fight the Iranians and their proxies to the death.
"All of this at the end will be in Islam's favor - even if Islam and its people suffer a great disaster - because the two aggressive powers will be consumed in the war," wrote Sheik Hamid al-Ali, a religious leader in Kuwait who has stood trial for ties to radical groups. "This will provide a relief for this religion which they do not expect."
A cleric in Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdullah bin Jabreen, issued an edict that said of Hezbollah: "The support of that Shiite party is not allowed, and to supplicate for their victory and their establishment is not allowed. We advise the Sunni people to disown them, desert whoever joined them and to reveal the Shiite enmity to Islam and the Muslims."
A Shiite fighter wrote in response: "God damn this Zionist guy. He clearly supports the Zionists."
The two sheiks, like many Sunni militants, belong to the fundamentalist Salafiya branch of Islam, which regards Shiites as little better than non- Muslims. Salafist fighters have killed Shiites and desecrated their grave sites for centuries. Osama bin Laden is a Salafist, as was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who declared war on Shiites in Iraq and helped drag this country into its ever-widening cycles of sectarian bloodletting.
"If they're Salafist jihadists, like Al Qaeda or groups associated with it, this is exactly their vernacular," Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corp., said of the anti-Hezbollah messages. "To them, Shiites are heretics."
But there is no single ideology that all militants adhere to. Examples exist of cooperation between Sunni and Shiite groups. Perhaps most famously, Hezbollah mentored Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two groups that do not have Salafist leanings.
The first suicide bombing in Israel, in late 1993, was believed to have taken place because of Hezbollah's tutelage, Hoffman said. This month, Hezbollah took the two Israeli soldiers after Hamas had already captured an Israeli soldier and triggered an Israeli assault on Gaza.
Even Al Qaeda has links to Hezbollah. The two groups had contact in the early 1990s through a Hezbollah operations chief who fled to Tehran after being chased out of Lebanon by the Israelis.
"Bin Laden is a practical consensus builder; he'll take support," Hoffman said. "He's more opportunistic and more tactful than Zarqawi."
But in the current conflict, Al Qaeda has yet to come out in support of Hezbollah. A Web site with ties to Al Qaeda, Al Hesbah, has posted a wave of anti-Shiite comments in the debate over Hezbollah. One militant calling himself "The Arab Hawk" wrote that "Lebanon today is exposed to a Zionist war not only against Hezbollah, but against all Lebanon. This is what Hezbollah wanted."
Kanani, the Sunni, wrote on the site that Hezbollah had earlier conspired with Israel to secure Israel's northern border, thus allowing Israel to direct its wrath toward the Palestinians. "The Shiite party has no ideological problem with making peace with Jews, collaborating with them and being friendly with them," he wrote.
Another author, known only as "an Egyptian holy warrior," recommended that Al Qaeda not send aid to Lebanon.
"It is known that most of the inhabitants of Lebanon are Shiites and cross- worshippers," he wrote. "Only some countries have the priority to be supported by Al Qaeda: Afghanistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, wherever you can differentiate between friends and enemies."
The Shiite-bashing has provoked some acidic responses on radical Shiite forums. One writer, on www.yahosein.com, questioned Palestinian loyalty to Hezbollah, asking, "For all the assistance the Shiites provide the Palestinians, why don't the Palestinians wave pictures of the mujahid Hassan Nasrallah or banners of his victorious party?"
It is in the deserts of Iraq where the Sunni-Shiite fault line originated in the seventh century, with the slayings of the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law and grandson, and where it now threatens to plunge the country into a civil war. Sunni Arab and Shiite militant groups battle daily across Iraq. Rarely do they cooperate, even though they have a common enemy in the Americans.
BAGHDAD The question has popped up all over Internet sites frequented by Islamic militants: Should your average God-fearing jihadist support Hezbollah in its battle against the Zionist aggressors and their American lapdogs?
The answer seems a foregone conclusion, given the hatred of Israel across much of the Muslim world.
But consider this posting about Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, that appeared on a Web site with ties to Al Qaeda: "Let us explain that the party of Hassan Nasrallah, for us, is a party which has a Shia ideology. Thus, he is considered our enemy like our enemies the Jews, the Christians."
"So what should we do now? What side shall we take? Who shall we support?" asked the seemingly puzzled author, a Sunni known as Saif al-Din al- Kanani.
Rather than uniting the region's holy warriors, the conflict in Lebanon has ignited a robust debate among militants over backing for Hezbollah, the Shiite group that set off the crisis when it captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
The discussions reflect the widening divide between Shiite and Sunni Arabs in parts of the Middle East, and Sunni fears of the ascendance of Shiite-dominated Iran. The Internet volleys, some of them full of fury and venom, also offer a window into the startling diversity of opinion among jihadist groups.
Accusing Palestinians of being anti- Shiite, one Iraqi bitterly writes: "It is better to concentrate one's efforts on helping the Shiite kinfolk rather than the Sunnis."
The world of Islamic militants on the Internet is nebulous, and it is often hard to pinpoint the influence of the myriad figures and groups. But U.S. experts say prominent supporters of jihad, including religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have joined in the debate.
Well-recognized guerrilla groups and militant clerics in Iraq, like the 20th Revolution Brigades and the Muslim Scholars Association, have posted their views on conflict in the Middle East.
About 80 percent of the postings this week on jihadist sites concern support for Hezbollah, according to the SITE Institute, a group in Washington that provides translations of the messages.
Suspicions among Sunnis over growing Shiite power - and a vindictive backlash by Shiites - have come to the fore during the Iraq war and the conflict in Lebanon. Animosity is especially virulent among those Sunni militants who adhere to a conservative strain of Islam that views Shiites as infidels.
And like many Sunni politicians, the militants see in Hezbollah a puppet of Iran, whose Shiite Persian majority has traditionally been regarded by Arabs as an unrelenting enemy.
Though many ordinary Sunnis have spoken out in support of Hezbollah, Sunni Arab governments have withheld their backing.
Conspiracy theories abound on the Internet. One Sunni fighter said the Lebanon conflict is a plot by an Iranian- American-Israeli axis to spread the Shiite faith across the region; another suggested that Sunnis sit this one out and let the Americans and Israelis fight the Iranians and their proxies to the death.
"All of this at the end will be in Islam's favor - even if Islam and its people suffer a great disaster - because the two aggressive powers will be consumed in the war," wrote Sheik Hamid al-Ali, a religious leader in Kuwait who has stood trial for ties to radical groups. "This will provide a relief for this religion which they do not expect."
A cleric in Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdullah bin Jabreen, issued an edict that said of Hezbollah: "The support of that Shiite party is not allowed, and to supplicate for their victory and their establishment is not allowed. We advise the Sunni people to disown them, desert whoever joined them and to reveal the Shiite enmity to Islam and the Muslims."
A Shiite fighter wrote in response: "God damn this Zionist guy. He clearly supports the Zionists."
The two sheiks, like many Sunni militants, belong to the fundamentalist Salafiya branch of Islam, which regards Shiites as little better than non- Muslims. Salafist fighters have killed Shiites and desecrated their grave sites for centuries. Osama bin Laden is a Salafist, as was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who declared war on Shiites in Iraq and helped drag this country into its ever-widening cycles of sectarian bloodletting.
"If they're Salafist jihadists, like Al Qaeda or groups associated with it, this is exactly their vernacular," Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corp., said of the anti-Hezbollah messages. "To them, Shiites are heretics."
But there is no single ideology that all militants adhere to. Examples exist of cooperation between Sunni and Shiite groups. Perhaps most famously, Hezbollah mentored Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two groups that do not have Salafist leanings.
The first suicide bombing in Israel, in late 1993, was believed to have taken place because of Hezbollah's tutelage, Hoffman said. This month, Hezbollah took the two Israeli soldiers after Hamas had already captured an Israeli soldier and triggered an Israeli assault on Gaza.
Even Al Qaeda has links to Hezbollah. The two groups had contact in the early 1990s through a Hezbollah operations chief who fled to Tehran after being chased out of Lebanon by the Israelis.
"Bin Laden is a practical consensus builder; he'll take support," Hoffman said. "He's more opportunistic and more tactful than Zarqawi."
But in the current conflict, Al Qaeda has yet to come out in support of Hezbollah. A Web site with ties to Al Qaeda, Al Hesbah, has posted a wave of anti-Shiite comments in the debate over Hezbollah. One militant calling himself "The Arab Hawk" wrote that "Lebanon today is exposed to a Zionist war not only against Hezbollah, but against all Lebanon. This is what Hezbollah wanted."
Kanani, the Sunni, wrote on the site that Hezbollah had earlier conspired with Israel to secure Israel's northern border, thus allowing Israel to direct its wrath toward the Palestinians. "The Shiite party has no ideological problem with making peace with Jews, collaborating with them and being friendly with them," he wrote.
Another author, known only as "an Egyptian holy warrior," recommended that Al Qaeda not send aid to Lebanon.
"It is known that most of the inhabitants of Lebanon are Shiites and cross- worshippers," he wrote. "Only some countries have the priority to be supported by Al Qaeda: Afghanistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, wherever you can differentiate between friends and enemies."
The Shiite-bashing has provoked some acidic responses on radical Shiite forums. One writer, on www.yahosein.com, questioned Palestinian loyalty to Hezbollah, asking, "For all the assistance the Shiites provide the Palestinians, why don't the Palestinians wave pictures of the mujahid Hassan Nasrallah or banners of his victorious party?"
It is in the deserts of Iraq where the Sunni-Shiite fault line originated in the seventh century, with the slayings of the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law and grandson, and where it now threatens to plunge the country into a civil war. Sunni Arab and Shiite militant groups battle daily across Iraq. Rarely do they cooperate, even though they have a common enemy in the Americans.

AP writer describes Israel-Lebanon border
By BENJAMIN HARVEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Israeli armored vehicles drive on a road along the Israel and Lebanon border near the Israeli village of Avivim as they advance towards Lebanese territory Saturday July 22, 2006. According to the Israeli military, troops backed by artillery and tank fire seized control of a Lebanese border village on Saturday and recovered weapons from another town in Hezbollah territory.(AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
ON THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER -- I woke up after three hours of sleep on top of a table in an Israeli bomb shelter, a helmet, flak jacket and computer bag on the floor beside me.
By 7 a.m., I was watching Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers gather near the Lebanon border.
Israeli artillery pounded Hezbollah targets on a hilltop in the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras for hours Saturday, setting off clouds of smoke with each impact. By midday, the sound of the explosions - a slapping sound followed by a dull thud - had become monotonous.
Two unmanned Israeli drones whirred high overhead like giant dragonflies.
I asked one of the many Israeli soldiers traveling in and out of Lebanon how things were going. Looking very tired, he said, "I hate this."
Fields and farmland were black and smelled of fires that had burned after nearly 10 days of Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah guerrillas had exploded in the area, setting the brush aflame.
Shortly before I saw the first Israeli troops cross the Lebanese border, an Israeli warplane dropped a half-ton bomb onto a Hezbollah bunker about 500 yards from me and other journalists. By the time we heard the plane coming, the mushroom cloud had already started to billow.
We were parked at the now-deserted Israeli village of Avivim, because it offered cameramen a scenic view of the fighting on the village hilltop in Lebanon.
Gunfire and artillery explosions stop making you jump after a few hours, as long as you know where they're coming from and they're not aimed at you.
For a couple of minutes, I wasn't so sure.
At one point, a cameraman and I drove near an Israeli tank blasting away from the summit of a hill, and a tank commander told me to keep out of sight. He said Hezbollah gunmen wouldn't intentionally shoot at someone like me with a flak jacket marked "press," but their aim wasn't always accurate.
The commander's uniform was covered in white chalky dust, and tank shells and bullet rounds littered the ground around him.
Nearby, sitting atop a tank, another soldier read the Torah.
Toward nighttime, Hezbollah started to fire back.
I went downstairs into the bomb shelter to write my story for The Associated Press. I could hear the explosions going off upstairs.
My colleagues yelled at Hezbollah to stop shooting when one hit too close.
I don't think Hezbollah could hear them.
Cyprus plea for help on evacuees
Saturday, July 22, 2006 Posted: 1123 GMT (1923 HKT)
French expatriates wait to be evacuated from Lebanon.WATCH Browse/Search
The USS Nashville brings Americans out of Lebanon. (1:55)
Syrian sports stadium accepts refugees (3:18)

Lebanon Cyprus Diplomacy or Create Your Own
Manage Alerts | What Is This? LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) -- The Cypriot foreign minister on Saturday appealed for help in handling the thousands of people fleeing violence in Lebanon, saying as many as 25,000 evacuees had already arrived on the island and that the number would likely triple.
The foreign minister, George Lillikas, asked for financial help from European countries to help the island cope with the influx.
The European Union said Saturday it was sending a team to Cyprus to help speed up the transport of foreign evacuees to their home countries.
"We're doing our best," Lillikas told AP Television News during an early morning visit to the port of Larnaca, where dozens of boats carrying evacuees from Lebanon have arrived since Monday.
"We had about 20,000 to 25,000 people until now, and we are expecting that number to triple. That is why we need assistance from Europe," he said.
Earlier this week, the government asked other European Union countries to provide planes to help evacuees travel to their home nations.
Cyprus is in the middle of its peak tourist season and the sudden influx has strained its hotels. Larnaca airport has been packed with people and its runways busy with planes ferrying evacuees home.
Officials said Friday that the country had enough food, medicine and accommodation for the evacuees so far, but that more planes were needed.
"Offering assistance to European citizens is the first priority to us," Lillikas said. "We want to use European money to provide evacuation services for all people in Lebanon who want to leave Lebanon."
About 25,000 foreigners have fled Lebanon since fighting began last week between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. Most of them have come through the tiny island of Cyprus, staying for the most part for a few hours only before being flown to their home countries.
Asked whether Cyprus might consider turning boats away, Lillikas replied: "It depends on the capacity we have. So I hope we will not be in this difficult dilemma."
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

UN focus on Mideast humanitarian woes
Email Print Normal font Large font July 22, 2006 - 1:39PM
AdvertisementThe UN Security Council has turned its focus to a dire humanitarian crisis in Lebanon as Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plea for a quick end to the fighting between Israel and Hizbollah failed to gain traction.
Council members said the outlines of a long-delayed initial reaction to the conflict were likely to emerge after an international conference in Rome next week and said they hoped to find common ground in addressing the needs of those driven from their homes by 10 days of Israeli bombing.
Council members came under fire from dozens of world governments during an all-day public meeting on Friday for the apparent indecision shown by the 15-nation UN body.
"How long will the doors of our council remain closed? The children of Lebanon are knocking on your doors and all the peace-loving peoples are calling upon you to act. Stop the bloodbath," said Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar, the council's sole Arab nation.
A defensive US Ambassador John Bolton told reporters the council should not speak "just for the sake of speaking."
It was important "that we find something that we can come together on, to show that the council is united," he added.
Asked if it could come together on a humanitarian resolution that left a political agreement for later, he said, "I think the United States is prepared to pursue something very vigorously on the humanitarian front."
Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere of France, the council president for July, agreed it should focus for now on the humanitarian situation and told reporters council action could come by the end of next week.
Vijay Nambiar, head of a three-man UN team dispatched by Annan to the Middle East last weekend, said it was clear from talks with Israeli and Lebanese leaders that the time was not ripe for a formal ceasefire agreement anytime soon.
In the absence of a ceasefire deal, a quick end to the fighting would open the door to longer-term diplomatic efforts while reducing civilian casualties and helping relief workers reach people in need of food, medicines and other urgent aid, Nambiar told the council.
Annan, interviewed later on CNN's Larry King Live, said what he had referred to as a "cessation of hostilities" on Thursday could also be described as "a humanitarian truce."
This could "allow us to assist the people, allow the diplomacy to take hold, and it does not exclude a longer-term solution and a longer-term package that would ensure that we do not return to the previous situation," he said. "I sense there is quite a broad support among the council members for this."
Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman told the council his government would ease humanitarian access to Lebanon so relief agencies could deliver food, medicine and other emergency supplies to those driven from their homes by Israeli bombing.
"In spite of the very difficult situation on the ground, Israel is acutely aware of the humanitarian situation," he said. "I have just received official confirmation from Israel that ... a two-way in-and-out humanitarian corridor to meet the needs of those affected on the Lebanese side has been established."
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said he had formally asked the Israeli and Lebanese governments a day earlier to guarantee safe passage routes by land, air and sea into and out of Lebanon.
More than 500,000 people, over a third of them children, had been touched in Lebanon by the conflict and more than 100,000 Lebanese were now in Syria, most of whom needed assistance, Egeland told the council.
He was headed for Lebanon later on Friday to assess the situation on the ground. and planned to appeal to international donors on Monday for emergency funding to address the crisis.© 2006 Reuters, Click for Restrictions
 
Debate: "Democracy Is About More Than Elections"
Democracy in the Middle East
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/983
President George W. Bush has made democratization a central focus of his administration's Middle East policy. He declared during his second-term inauguration: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."[1] But how successful has this effort, known as the Bush doctrine, been? Elections in Iraq and the Palestinian Authority favored Islamists, many of whom embrace violence and consider liberal democracy anathema. Does the instability inherent in democratization undercut U.S. and European security? Is the U.S. government pushing democracy too quickly? Or not fast enough? On March 9, 2006, Patrick Clawson, senior editor at the Middle East Quarterly and deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, convened a roundtable to discuss U.S. democratization efforts in the Middle East. Joining him were Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny,[2] Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, Michael Rubin, also a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of the Middle East Quarterly, and Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
How Hard Should the U.S. Push Democracy?
Middle East Quarterly: Joshua Muravchik, in Exporting Democracy, you argued that democracy promotion should be a central theme, if not the central theme, of U.S. foreign policy. What is the advantage of democracy promotion given the risks that open elections might empower Islamist radicals in Middle East countries?
Joshua Muravchik: Democracies are more peaceful than non-democracies; they are friendlier to the United States than non-democracies. Democracy also encourages fulfillment of other important goals, such as development, good government, human rights, and so on. Passage to democracy in the Middle East may be fraught with danger. The Middle East has been a terribly problematic region for a long period of time. It is a region rife with extremism, fanaticism, violence, and hatred toward the United States and the West. But even though democratization may be a perilous passage, democratization offers long-term hope that the Middle East will become both more civilized and safer to live in.
MEQ: Daniel Pipes, you have been skeptical that democratization is worth the trouble that it causes us. Why do you feel that democratization is a misguided use of resources, time, and effort?
Daniel Pipes: I agree with the democratization process in principle as Josh delineated it. I applauded[3] the president's November 2003 speech.[4] Stability as an end in itself is a mistake. My problem is not with the principle of bringing democracy but rather the implementation. Democratization is a long, difficult process. The British required six centuries between the Magna Carta and the Reform Bill. Democratization in the United States took decades. More recently, it took Turkey, Taiwan, Chile, and Mexico decades. U.S. policy is pushing the Middle East to democracy too quickly in a spirit of "get it done yesterday." It would be better if elections in Iraq took place twenty-two years, not twenty-two months after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, as was the case.
MEQ: Is the U.S. government pushing the governments of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia too quickly towards democracy?
Pipes: The Saudi model, where democratization begins at a low level, with municipal councils, is a good one. It gives the Saudis ample time to get to learn the ways of democracy and to build the institutions of civil society. Begin with voting for dogcatcher, not for prime minister.
Are Elections Enough?
MEQ: Rob, you argue that the State Department should push hard on governments such as that of Hosni Mubarak, yet you have been quite discontent with the U.S. willingness to begin engagement with the newly-elected Hamas-led government in the West Bank and Gaza.
Robert Satloff: So far, the conversation has focused on elections as the principal element of democracy. I agree with much of what Daniel and Josh have said about the importance of pursuing democracy as a goal of U.S. foreign policy. Daniel's critique of the haste with which we are promoting elections has merit. But I would not only focus on the speed with which we promote elections as the principal element in judging our democracy project. Democracy is about much more than just elections. It includes all the elements of constitutional life from rule of law to minority rights to good governance. The latter especially needs special exploration.
U.S. policymakers should also examine the ground rules that govern elections. The elections in Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank and Gaza were anarchic. They were "Come as you are." If you come with a rocket propelled grenade or a machine gun, that's fine! But that is not the way democracy should function. In almost all advanced, and even not-so-advanced, democracies, there are ground rules for participation in elections. We cannot sacrifice these important elements of the electoral process in our haste to get elections going. It is not only speed but also the context of elections that is important.
Lastly, the U.S. government should not be indifferent to outcomes. The State Department should not focus only on the ground rules but not be concerned with whom the participants are and what the outcomes are likely to be. The U.S. government should have a strong interest in both defining the rules and in supporting those elements of society that share our basic outlook.
Pipes: Would you have excluded Hamas from the Palestinian elections?
Satloff: The issue is not exclusion but rather definition of ground rules. The White House should have insisted on the implementation of the requirements that are in the Oslo accords. After all, it was the Oslo accords that created the body for which the elections were held. The Oslo accords mandated that parties and candidates cannot participate if they advocate violence, racism, or non-peaceful means to achieve political aims. If a party wants to stipulate that it has given up that agenda, that's fine. But Washington did not even try. Alternatively, U.S. policymakers could have tied Hamas participation to the same demands Washington is applying to the Hamas-led government today—recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, and acceptance of previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements. It is absurd that U.S. policymakers did not make Hamas's participation in the 2005 political process conditional upon accepting the same requirements demanded of the Palestine Liberation Organization for the previous quarter century.
MEQ: If I can shift the grounds to Iraq, where Michael Rubin has much experience, I'm interested in your comments on a couple of themes brought up here about the appropriateness of foreign actors promoting one group versus another. Should the United States actively promote liberals in Iraq, and if we are going to be involved in that game, is it appropriate for the United States to say it wants to promote those who support its fundamental values?
Michael Rubin: I would adopt the formulation of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the Egyptian scholar. He speaks of a dichotomy between autocrats and theocrats. The autocrats control media; the theocrats control the mosques. Autocrats—rulers such as Mubarak or Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali—point to the theocratic alternative as reason for Washington to support their autocratic regimes. U.S. diplomats should break out of that trap by doing more to lay the groundwork to support the liberals who fall in between the two extremes but are weak.
Specifically with regard to Iraq, the State Department's insistence on maintaining an even playing field undercut liberals, for the arena included not only the United States and the Iraqis but also a number of anti-liberal interests who had no such qualms about evenhandedness. The Iranians promoted whom they wanted to win. What looks good on paper in a Washington boardroom does not always reflect reality. The U.S. government needs strategies not only to promote the outcomes it desires but also to shut down those opponents working to undermine U.S. interests and goals. Washington should not be embarrassed about trying to get the best outcome for U.S. allies and interests.
Democratization: Go Fast or Slow?
MEQ: Josh, what do you think about the go-slow approach and the idea that elections should be at the end of the democratization process instead of the beginning?
Muravchik: I am of two minds about the go-slow approach. If it can be done, fine. If there can be a five- or ten-year plan with a clear sequence leading to democracy, great. I do not know anyone in the Middle East who would not be happy with a ten-year plan to achieve democracy. But I am hard pressed to think of any place where that has actually happened. Freedom House has published a study in the last year called "How Democracy Is Won"[5] that looked at transformations. They found some sixty-seven countries that had been classified as "not free" and had some significant political change. They excluded any change too recent or in countries that are too small. If there was a political transformation, they looked at its outcome. They found that nonviolence correlated highly with a good outcome. When oppositions engage in violence, transitions end badly. One factor that surprised me was that the length of time of transition had no correlation with success; intuitively, this did not seem right.
The point that elections themselves do not make a democracy is true. Elections are a big part of democracy but far from being the whole ball of wax. Still, elections themselves have an educational and socializing effect. We have seen this in Iraq with the Sunnis who boycotted the first election and then found that their decision put them in a bad position. They said, "We'd better not do this again," and then turned out in large numbers in the next election.
Part of the democratization strategy is that as repeated elections breed accountability, people learn how to make wise choices and to carry on politics in a civilized way.
Pipes: The Magna Carta signatories did not realize a Reform Bill would eventually ensue; I do not think a plan is necessary. We should nudge the leadership; we should help the democratic forces and, in an unplanned way, press countries to democratize, as we did with Korea and Taiwan. Another example is the Helsinki Accords of 1975 that, unbeknownst to us, began the process that culminated in the democratization in eastern Europe. I do not see a time factor as necessary. But when you have a region such as the Middle East, which is so remote and unfamiliar to the counter-intuitive premises of democracy, it will take a great deal of time for democracy to succeed.
Must the United States Be Neutral?
MEQ: What about the idea that the United States should put its thumb on the scale to favor certain groups?
Muravchik: The U.S. government should not weigh in in the midst of an election campaign. That is bound to backfire. We had some positive experience in Europe in the 1940s where we did some things publicly, but most of our action was covert. Taking similar action today is not possible. There is much more scrutiny of covert action. Journalists like to expose these things. When they get exposed, they backfire. But outside election campaigns, the single most important thing that we can do is to find ways to support genuine democrats and liberals. This means not only support of political parties but also of NGOs, publications, and so forth.
Rubin: It is important to remember that even flawed elections can be a catalyst for democratization. In some of the peripheral areas in the Middle East, in eastern Europe, in the Caucasus, and in the former Soviet Union, it took the realization that the ruling parties had tried to throw the election to really mobilize the opposition. In Egypt, Mubarak pulled out all stops to marginalize his secular opponent Ayman Nour. Mubarak won handily, but now Nour's is a household name. In the next round of elections, Nour—if he is released from prison—will start from a higher base.
Satloff: Don't we degrade the term democracy when we bless election processes in which a terrorist group is as legitimate a participant as other political parties? In Lebanon, for example, where we wanted to keep the momentum of the Cedar Revolution going, we acquiesced to reversing the demand to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, which would have required Hezbollah's disarmament. Instead, we blessed a flawed process in which this terrorist organization participates and gets elected. We said, fine, this is democracy. We may not deal with the minister from Hezbollah, now, but the reality is we blessed the legitimacy of a terrorist group.
Rubin: You're right. The problem is we should not be blessing a lot of things. When Ambassador [Francis] Ricciardone got on Egyptian television and blessed the Egyptian elections, as flawed as they were, it undercut democratization. What we need to do is begin to alter the diplomatic convention in which we pay heed to the ruling party. We should point out specific election flaws so that our democratization policy retains credibility. We should create benchmarks for improvement. Likewise in the case of Lebanon, as flawed as that process was in which President Emile Lahoud received a third term, what was worse was when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Beirut and, for the sake of diplomatic convention, met with Lahoud, even though his third term was by most accounts illegal.
The Stability Debate
Satloff: There are several historians around the table. So let me add a word about the rhetoric of the administration, which I do applaud for changing how Middle Easterners think about these issues. The past six decades were not all bad. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. The communists never took over the Middle East. The Arab-Israeli conflict was successfully contained so that by the end of the twentieth century it had become a local conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and not, as was feared for decades, the source of regional conflagration. Those successes were due to dealing with authoritarian leaders, among other things. Not everything that occurred in the last half of the twentieth century is necessarily appropriate for the world today, but I do have a historian's disagreement with the president's characterization that the last sixty years of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East was fundamentally mistaken.
Pipes: Stability has value.
Muravchik: Rob, saying that sixty years was not so bad is an interesting point that sounds sensible, and I would not automatically disagree with it. But it sounds a little like [Francis] Fukuyama's current argument over how we should see where we find ourselves today.[6] Fukuyama says we overreacted badly to 9-11. He would say that 3,000 deaths were terrible, and that it was right to go after bin Laden, but that 9-11 was not something that should have propelled us into a fourth world war. The contrary view says that 9-11 was a cardinal moment in a larger trend of growing jihadism. Those who disagree with Fukyama would point to the fact that terrorists are growing more numerous, better trained, and better able to kill in large numbers. Countering this requires a big and long-term reaction on our part.
Satloff: I do not accept the Fukuyama thesis. I was making a simpler point: a different approach in the Middle East post 9-11 does not require rejection of the benefits of previous policies. Different eras, different policies. There is no reason to say retrospectively that we were mistaken all those years when, in fact, the top priority for the United States in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was different than it is today.
Do Elections Moderate Islamists?
MEQ: There has been some discussion about participation in elections by radical Islamists. I was intrigued by the Washington Post editorial of March 5, 2006, about the case for democracy. It says that "radical Islamism and others hostile to Western interests cannot be wished away …"
Satloff: But they can be killed.
MEQ: "… Over time, participation in elections is more likely than exclusion and suppression to moderate this political aim." Do you agree that elections will moderate Islamists?
Muravchik: There is no contradiction between wanting to kill radical Islamists and letting them participate in elections.
MEQ: Have elections and ruling moderated Islamists in Iran and Iraq?
Rubin: Elections are not going to moderate radical Islamists. If they derive legitimacy from God rather than from the people, there will be no inclination to moderate. Too often Europeans and Americans will mirror image their analysis of places like Iran in discussions of reformers versus hard-liners. But the ideology of the people at the top—men such as Supreme Leader ‘Ali Khamene‘i—does not moderate.
Daniel brought up a good point at a recent Middle East Forum event when he noted that twenty-five years ago, everyone accepted the inevitability of modernization; the idea of reversion to theocracy was seen as inconceivable, yet it happened. It is dangerous to assume that power will moderate radicals. This is why it is necessary to hold radicals and Islamists in power accountable. We cannot accept a one-man, one-vote, one-time-system. Rather than just let a thousand flowers bloom, as the State Department Iraq mantra now has it, U.S. policy should create a template upon which real, independent, and liberal civil society can bloom.
Policymakers must also overcome their idea that any U.S. support to Arab liberals would discredit them. This is condescending. Let the liberals decide to accept or decline U.S. support and then judge their efforts.
Muravchik: It may not matter whether elections moderate the radical Islamists or anyone else. The question is whether elections moderate the electorate. Islamists may not change, but if they cannot deliver, then voters may choose differently.
Pipes: But it was a long, extensive run with the Soviet Union until the population sent a signal that it was not getting what it wanted. What the Washington Post editorial points to is the "pothole theory" of democracy, the idea that by having to run schools, fix streets and the like, Islamists will moderate. Michael puts it in terms of God; I put it in terms of totalitarian regimes. It is possible for totalitarian regimes to run a system and still maintain their utopian goals. Mussolini made the trains run, Stalin plowed the snow, Hitler built the Autobahn, and the Iranians run women's sports competitions. That does not mean they abandon their purposes.
Turkey as a Model
MEQ: Doesn't the Turkish experience suggest the opposite? Didn't two decades of allowing Islamist participation in elections encourage their moderation?
Pipes. In a sense, they did moderate. The military forced Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan out in 1997 because of his radical edge. His lieutenant, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, learned from this experience and approached politics more softly and has done spectacularly well. But we are still very much in the middle of that story. Many signs suggest that while Erdoğan is very competent at governing, he is also clever in advancing an Islamist agenda. The Turkish experience does inspire optimism.
Satloff: Turkey can be seen in the framework of Hamas. Many commentators say that despite Hamas's election, the group does not really reflect the will of the Palestinian people. The Turkish case is clearer because the ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP] got 34 percent of the vote in contrast to the 45 percent that Hamas won. But, because of the Turkish system's 10-percent threshold, the AKP victory translated into more than two-thirds of the seats in the parliament—a constitution-amending majority. I do not see Western officials counseling intervention to save secular parties from the AKP leadership.
Pipes: The AKP party is not engaged in terrorism.
Satloff: Fair enough. There are a lot differences. Another is the role of the army as the guarantor of fundamental principles in Turkey. Nevertheless, Islamist parties in various countries can take advantage of election systems unique to those countries to amplify their weight beyond their actual numbers.
Rubin: Actually, the AKP shows how dangerous Islamists can be. Under it, there is a wholesale assault on the system from within. When Erdoğan was mayor of Istanbul, he quipped, "Democracy is like a street car; you ride it as far as you need, and then you get off," an approach he has aptly enacted as prime minister. He has purged liberals from the banking board and replaced every member of this technocratic institution with specialists in and practitioners of Islamist finance, many of whom spent their careers in Saudi Arabia. Erdoğan is replacing 4,000 out of 9,000 judges with Islamist-leaning individuals. He has refused to uphold Supreme Court decisions until he can change the judiciary. After failing to win the endorsement of the higher education council for his Islamist program, he founded fifteen new universities with fifteen new rectors to win their fifteen new votes.
Satloff: Let me throw out a different model. Given the profound threat posed by Wahhabism's tentacles around the world, I would be satisfied with a "Wahhabism in one country" solution. Let's insulate Saudi Arabia from the rest of the world. What it does to infect the rest of the Middle East and beyond is very damaging. Let us strike a deal with the Saudis to keep their dangerous, malevolent, and treacherous ideology contained within Saudi Arabia but also preventing its spillover to any other country. This may be unfair to millions of Saudis, but it is not a bad bargain for the hundreds of millions of people spared from this ideology.
Grading the Bush Administration
MEQ: Please, give one letter grade to the Bush administration on the democratization effort.
Pipes: I give the Bush administration an A for effort and for having the courage to break with six decades of a sterile, atrophied emphasis on stability. I give it a D for implementation. It has believed that democratization will work out with an ideological, almost theological, tenacity, ignoring the many signs of trouble. Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt are examples of trouble. (I do not place Saudi Arabia in this group because Islamists at the municipal level can be contained.)
Rubin: The problem with Saudi Arabia is that democracy is a chimera. Saudis have elected municipal councils, but these have no budgetary authority. Councilmen can vote, for example, in Jeddah to create a sewage system, but ultimately they remain dependent on the whim of the royal family to decide whether or not to do it.
Pipes: Exactly. I'm fine with that for now, with a model of very slow, very incremental learning the processes of democracy.
MEQ: The Kuwaiti parliament model over the last thirty years sounds like what you are advocating.
Pipes: Yes, I like the Kuwaiti model (and published a piece in this journal praising its virtues).[7]
Satloff: The Bush administration gets an A for making democracy a centerpiece of foreign policy, and I also give it an A for effort. But it gets an F for the actual process of translating that intellectual idea into policy. Islamists are now experiencing their greatest resurgence, in no small part due to the unfettered opportunities in places like Gaza and Lebanon thanks to the unconditional acceptance of flawed electoral processes by the Bush administration. Radical Islamists recognize that they can achieve power through means the administration is sanctioning, even if they do not adhere to democratic ideals.
Muravchik: I give Bush an A. I agree that the implementation has been poor, but I do not think that matters. Reorienting the policy is the main thing; everything else will fall into place. Democratization will ultimately undercut the Islamists in terms of the hold they have on the imagination of large segments of society. Bush may have spoken of changing the U.S. emphasis on stability, but what he did is more profound. He shifted U.S. policy away from cultural relativism. He does not tolerate terrorism, honor killings, and a variety of other kinds of practices that we find frightening and repellent. It is important to insist upon common standards of civilized behavior to be observed by Middle Eastern people as well.
Pipes: Decades of trouble sparked by destabilization does not bother you? Having Hamas legitimated in the Palestinian Authority is okay?
Muravchik: There has been no hope for peace for Israel and the Arabs because the Palestinians have not made up their minds, and they have wanted it both ways. They have wanted the benefits of peace and the benefits of war. That was an illusion encouraged by Arafat. This may be a necessary stage for the Palestinian public to learn accountability.
MEQ: Will the democratization policy outlive the Bush administration?
Satloff: The issue of how America and the West engage Muslim countries and the Muslim world—a term I do not like, because it plays into the hands of the Islamists, but will use for this discussion—will be the defining issue for the foreseeable future. In a narrower sense, advancing democracy in Arab and Muslim societies is becoming a staple of U.S. foreign policy and cannot easily be discarded by a successor president although there may be differences in implementation.
Rubin: An A for ideas, a C- for implementation. What troubles me most is the willingness of some of the implementers within the Bush administration to bestow legitimacy upon terrorist groups.
Satloff: C- is a passing grade.
Rubin: It strikes me as odd that some in the Bush administration are so willing to be cynical about Hosni Mubarak or Ben Ali making noises about democracy and yet are so willing to believe Hezbollah and Hamas on the same topic.
MEQ: Everyone agrees that the Bush administration democratization policy will have serious impact on the Middle East. Time will tell which grade it deserves.
[1] "President Sworn-in to Second Term," White House news release, Jan. 20, 2005.
[2] Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1991.
[3] Daniel Pipes, "Bush the Radical," The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 13, 2003.
[4] "President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East," remarks at the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, United States Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C., Nov. 6, 2003.
[5] Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2005.
[6] Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
[7] Kenneth Timmerman, "Kuwait's Real Elections," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 1996, pp. 53-8.
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