Talking to Hamas
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 9, 2009

A report in The Guardian currently receiving wide attention in the blogosphere says:

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure I should mention that as well as running this site, I am involved in Conflicts Forum, an organization that seeks to promote an engagement between Western governments and major movements in political Islam such as Hamas.

Secondly, in The Guardian‘s headline “exclusive” I would pay particular attention to one word in the opening sentence: “close.” Washington is full of people who can reasonably claim to be “close” to the transition team.

Thirdly, there have been conflicting reports on who Obama will pick as his Middle East envoy. CBS’s Marc Ambinder said he had word that Richard Haass would get the position. Ambinder later said, “Perhaps I was premature about Haass. But maybe not… stay tuned.” Other reports say that Dennis Ross will get rolled out as a prize piece of Clinton memorabilia and serve as Obama’s “dead-hand on the wheel” (Augustus Norton‘s choice phrase).

Fourthly, the likelihood of The Guardian‘s prediction turning out to be true may well hinge on who gets this key appointment.

Fifth, the fact that The Guardian ran with its weakly-sourced report could well have the effect of turning this into a self-unfulfilling prophesy.

Journalists who like to imagine that a reporter can somehow insulate himself or herself from the risk that they affect the thing they are reporting about, are deluding themselves. In this day and age, media coverage is inextricably bound together with the events being reported.

The editors of The Guardian might pause to consider whether a thinly-sourced “exclusive” that might promise a one-day spike in web site traffic was really worth running if it actually ended up serving to obstruct a delicate political process that is more likely to happen, the less we currently read about it.

Wars against ideas always fail
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 5, 2009

Israel will lose its war against Hamas.

How do I know?

Because Hamas is a movement which even if it has highly destructible physical nodes is nevertheless tied together within a missile-proof conceptual space.

The only things that bombs and bullets can destroy are human lives and property. That’s why the Israeli-American claim that this war is being fought against Hamas and not the people of Gaza is a shallow lie — it is plainly evident that Gaza itself is under attack.

The so-called “terrorist infrastructure” also happens to be a governmental infrastructure. The effort to topple Hamas (an effort that the Israeli government in its duplicity and double-talk continues to deny it is making — witness Shimon Peres claiming that Israel does not want to crush Hamas, merely teach it a lesson) is in serious jeopardy of making Gaza completely ungovernable.

Once this is over, will the residents of Sderot be able to slumber peacefully knowing that they live on the doorstep of anarchy?

And when Hamas has finished counting its dead, will those in its ranks who until recently were voices of pragmatism, favoring political engagement, be capable of or even willing to try and make themselves heard?

Israel’s drive to annihilate its enemies is borne out of a seemingly irrepressible arrogance. Yet ultimately nothing gets destroyed — it merely goes through a process of transformation.

The question Israelis should now be asking themselves is this: What are we helping Hamas become?

Israel demands that Hamas recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist. It is a farcical demand.

Someone has you pinned to the ground, is pressing the barrel of a gun against your head and says to you: “I’ll talk to you, but only if you recognize my right to exist.” At this moment, who is challenging whose right to exist?

Israel presents an existential threat to Hamas — not the other way around. It’s plain for the world to see.

However, the difference between Israel and Hamas is that Hamas does not fear its annihilation. That has nothing to do with glorifying “martyrdom”; it’s because the movement is much more durable than its constituent parts.

Surf’s up… while the bombs fall
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 28, 2008

President-elect Obama has an excruciating dilemma: If he opens his mouth, he feels compelled to lie; if he says nothing, he ends up looking like an ineffectual, indifferent coward. The only thing going in his favor is that his current moral torpor is shared by the majority of Americans who look at the Middle East and simply say, “Oh my, there they go again. The Jews and the Arabs just don’t know how to get along. Isn’t it a shame, but what can we do?”

To reinforce this comforting sense of helplessness, The Huffington Post‘s Karin Kloosterman – “a member of the press” in Israel – kindly published President Shimon Peres’ statement to the press on why Gaza now reeks from blood and explosives.

Peres begins:

It is the first time in the history of Israel that we, the Israelis, cannot understand the motives or the purposes of the ones who are shooting at us. It is the most unreasonable war, done by the most unreasonable warriors.

From that disingenuous opening there follows a litany describing how Israel, in all its saintliness, has done everything it could to improve the lives of those who live in Gaza.

No mention of course about the fact that Israel – with international support – chose to disregard the democratic will of the Palestinian people when they elected a Hamas-led government in 2006. No mention that the siege on Gaza has been condemned by the UN as collective punishment that “constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Before Hamas assumed power, Gaza was notoriously lawless. Under Hamas’ governance, law and order – even with such civil niceties as traffic control – have been established. But because Israel has been “pelted” – yes, that’s the apt term that’s used in the Israeli press – by Qassam rocket fire ever since Israel broke the truce on November 5, Israel is now engaged in Operation Cast Lead which is systematically destroying Hamas’ security structure in the name of preventing rocket fire. Oh, and never mind that most of the rockets were being launched by members of Islamic Jihad.

Just so that we can be sure that in the dwindling days of his tenure, Ehud Olmert is not being impulsive (no rerun of the 2006 war on Lebanon — that’s a relief!), Haaretz provides a highly informative description of the operation that was being planned even before Israel and Hamas entered an Egyptian-brokered “truce”. In front of all their critics who cried out that a truce would simply give Hamas time to rearm, Olmert and Barak can now grin with satisfaction, knowing that the truce was a ruse that Israel could use while it gathered intelligence in preparation for its next war. As Mechi Fendel, mother of seven in Sderot said: “What’s been happening in Gaza is fantastic” — although she still intends to vote for Netanyahu.

Now Kadima has demonstrated its willingness to start a new war, Israelis can be assured that Likud will remain committed to continuing the war — no matter who’s in the White House.

Does it matter who’s in the White House? (I’d still like to imagine so.)

And as the Arab world now vents its frustration at Israel’s brutality and the duplicity of its autocratic rulers, many observers will be taking note that — as Haaretz pointed out — two days before launching the operation, Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, went to Cairo to inform President Mubarak what was about to happen.

This might explain why Egypt is now engaged in its own propaganda campaign portraying Hamas as unwilling to let casualties be taken to hospitals in Egypt. Perhaps Hamas is holding back victims, but it would not be hard to understand their anger at a country that remained silent when forewarned of an attack and only rushed to “help” once it was too late. Indeed, this report suggests that Egypt has a deep level of complicity in the Israeli operation.

Egypt collaborated with Israel by deliberately misleading Hamas and allowing Tel Aviv to deal a blow to the movement, a report claims.

Citing diplomatic sources, the London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi reported Sunday that Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman had deceived Hamas into believing that Israel would not launch an attack on the Gaza Strip in the near future.

According to the report, the misinformation lured Hamas into not evacuating its security compounds and headquarters.

Suleiman convinced a number of Arab leaders that Israel was intending to launch only limited operations into the Gaza Strip to mount pressure on Hamas ahead of signing a new ceasefire agreement, the report added.

So, back in Hawaii, what’s a president-to-be to do in the midst of this ugly mess?

Carry on surfing.

What happened to the fierce urgency of now?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 27, 2008

Suppose the scenes now unfolding in Gaza were happening in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. President-elect Obama would not have his chief national security spokesperson Brooke Anderson telling the press that he was “monitoring” the situation, mindful that “there is one president at a time.” Obama himself would be speaking in person about the unthinkable horror of what was being inflicted on Israel.

But the dead and wounded are not Israelis — they’re Palestinians. And so today is a day for international handwringing mixed in with the occasional absolving from guilt for those who can do no wrong.

Once Obama takes office, is he going to find the political courage that he clearly lacks right now? His current willingness to duck for cover suggests that when it comes to Israel, the prevailing view across the Middle East — that it makes little difference who occupies the White House — is well-founded.

Strategic terrorism
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 7, 2008

The attack on Mumbai has been likened to 9/11. India’s BJP likes the comparison and seem to think that India should follow in America’s footsteps with a similarly muscular response. Others fear the comparison since they recognize that such a response would be just as ill-conceived as the war on terrorism.

The question of whether the attack should or shouldn’t be compared to 9/11 is a question that commentators can wrestle over. The crucial issue right now is that a consensus be developed on why the attack happened. Now, as so many times previously, such a consensus is hard to arrive at because the perpetrators of the attack are employing strategic ambiguity. That means it serves their needs that their opponents remain unclear about the attackers intentions.

The effect of this ambiguity is to provoke a confused response that can be laid out on parallel and contradictory emotional spectra. One contrasts strength and weakness — this is the hawks’ spectrum. The other contrasts calm and irrationality — this is the realists’ spectrum. Both hesitate to clearly postulate why the attack happened, fearing that an explanation will be portrayed as an excuse.

This is a mistake. What would be far more useful at this point would be to proceed on a working theory about the intentions behind the attack and then develop a response based on that theory.

In the case of the Mumbai attack there is already an emerging consensus on why it happened: in order to provoke a confrontation between India and Pakistan. Who wants to see such a confrontation? Lashkar-e-Taiba and its allies who have been getting pounded by the Pakistani army in the tribal areas and anticipate the heat being taken off if Pakistan’s army redeploys to the east.

In the latest twist — and it’s a twist that reveals the strategic brilliance of the plan — Taliban and other tribal forces are now pledging to set aside their differences with the Pakistani government and to fight alongside Pakistan’s military in defense of the homeland, united against a threat from India. The offer comes from Maulvi Nazir, head of a powerful Pakistani Taliban splinter group in the tribal area of South Waziristan. And as The Washington Post notes:

That promise of assistance has not gone unnoticed in Islamabad.

In a briefing with reporters after the Mumbai attacks, several top officials of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, said they welcomed the offers of support from Nazir and Taliban leaders such as Baitullah Mehsud.

Now The News International reports:

Tribesmen of Mohmand Agency on Saturday warned India against attacking Pakistan.

Addressing a Jirga of different tribes at the Hujra of agency councillor Malik Muhammad Ali Haleemzai, the elders vowed that seven million tribesmen would fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Pakistan armed forces to foil nefarious designs of the enemies.

Malik Muhammad Ali, former MNA Malik Fazal Manan Kodakhel, Malik Israel Safi, Malik Nusrat Tarakzai, Malik Khaista Gul Tarakzai, Malik Zaman Khawaizai, Malik Manzoor Musakhel and others addressed the Jirga.

“We are ready to sacrifice our lives for the defence of Pakistan and never allow anyone to harm our homeland,” the elders pledged.

They suggested the government should convene an all parties’ conference to find an amicable solution to the ongoing strife in the tribal areas.

No doubt Pakistan’s civilian government officials view such offers with a healthy dose of skepticism — given the bombing campaign that, along with economic turmoil, has been pushing Pakistan towards collapse in recent months. But the claims of Pakistani patriotism now coming from tribal and jihadist leaders are likely to resonate strongly with ordinary Pakistanis who view the fight in the tribal areas as America’s war.

But for the Mumbai attack to serve its strategic aim of rebalancing power inside Pakistan, it needed to be cloaked in the disguise of international jihadism. By targeting Westerners, Jews, and the symbols of India’s commercial prosperity, the reaction the attack could be expected to provoke was one that focused on the issue of terrorism and Pakistan’s unwillingness or inability to control the extremists in its own midst.

But the other way of looking at this is to see it as an act of strategic terrorism. If the Indian government can persuasively unmask the strategic aims of those for whom it remains an indispensable enemy, then it can surely more easily argue why it must not now rise to the bait.

Thoughts on the Mumbai attacks
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, November 30, 2008

Was this India’s 9/11? The best way of answer that is to try and imagine if this had happened in New York City.

I suspect that three days of carnage like this would have been even more deeply traumatic for New Yorkers than were the actual 9/11 attacks — and I also think such an attack could have gone on for a lot longer. The gunmen would likely have had higher quality weaponry (easily available on the US gun market) and security services would have been much more cautious than their Indian counterparts in trying to avoid civilian casualties. The 24-hour cable network news coverage would have been breathtakingly sensational.

The intelligence failure: Predictably, this is being described as India’s intelligence failure — wrong. This is America’s intelligence failure. If the US intelligence apparatus with its global reach and its heightened focus on Pakistan didn’t see this coming, let’s not delude ourselves by imagining that it would have been thwarted in the event that the target had not been India, but had been closer to home.

Pakistan. The reflex for India to blame Pakistan is so habitual it has the effect of provoking the opposite reaction among observers, namely, to conclude that the Indian government must be intent on shifting attention away from its domestic problems. In this case, however, this type of political analysis does not stand up against the evidence. The evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of Pakistan.

We know that some or all of the attackers landed by dinghy and came off a trawler believed to have originated from Karachi. They were heavily armed and supplied with large quantities of ammunition and most importantly had not only the ideological zeal to embark on a suicidal mission, but the combat training to engage in several days of fighting. Not only that, but they carried multiple forms of identification and had been provided with detailed intelligence. For instance, according to security analyst Sunil Ram (listen to his analysis that follows a short AP video news report here), the attacks occurred during a security “trough” in the days immediately following a relaxation of security levels at Mumbai’s hotels. Having entered the Taj hotel they were able to quickly secure the CCTV control room through which they could monitor the whole building and they were able to fend off the Indian commandos from this strategic position.

The Sunday Times reported:

RR Patil, the deputy chief minister of Mumbai’s state government, said there was “proof” that the terrorists were on the phone to someone in Pakistan during the attack.

“All phone calls made by them were tapped. They were being instructed from outside regarding their movement inside the hotel – whether to go upstairs or come down or make a move left or right,” he said…

Kasav [the sole surviving gunman], who speaks fluent English, told investigators he and his fellow terrorists had trained at a camp at the Mangla dam between Pakistani Punjab and Pakistan-held Kashmir.

The group had travelled in pairs to Karachi where they boarded a boat. They had been told not to talk to each other on the journey.

Strategic implications. This is what seems to clinch the argument that this was an operation that not only emanated from Pakistan but was most likely conceived by elements inside the ISI.

At face value we have what looks like the kind of nihilistic mayhem that we’ve come to expect from individuals whose ideological zeal is far stronger than their affiliation to a localized political cause.

In fact, what we witnessed was a major move on President-elect Obama’s chessboard of foreign policy even before he’d had a chance to lay a finger on any of the pieces.

The Obama team has made it known that it wants to push for reconciliation between India and Pakistan so that Pakistani forces focused on Kashmir can be freed up to operate in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan. The effect of the Mumbai attacks has been to accomplish the opposite as Pakistan now readies its forces to defend the Indian border.

As Tony Karon writes in The National:

Police work typically begins with the question of motive, and this is plain: a ratcheting up of Indo-Pakistani tensions, possibly even threatening confrontation along traditional fault lines in Kashmir and elsewhere. The beneficiaries of an escalation of tension would be all those whose interests are threatened by Indo-Pak rapprochement – al Qa’eda and the Pakistani Taliban elements coming under sustained attack by Pakistani and US forces along the Afghan border; and hard-core elements of the military and intelligence community whose political DNA is orientated towards confrontation with India.

Not only would the Islamist militants want to reorient the Pakistani military away from counterinsurgency and towards confrontation with India – their common enemy – but so would elements in the military and intelligence services, who are hostile to deploying the army against the Taliban and who see the jihadi proxies as a key element of a continuing strategic rivalry with India.

Provoking India would not only realign the interests of the Pakistani military and the Islamists, it would threaten US efforts to reorient the Pakistani military towards domestic counterinsurgency, and to broker a deeper rapprochement with India – a development US analysts believe is key to resolving the conflict in Afghanistan.

Will Obama be able to raise the dead?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, November 8, 2008

Anyone who tuned in on time for the president-elect’s first news conference yesterday and who happened to be watching it on a live feed was in for a wait. Those who, like me, hoped that punctuality might signal the creation of a wonderfully efficient administration were in for a disappointment since it was close to 3pm before the scheduled 2.30 briefing kicked off. Even so, the wait was worth watching if only to witness so many journalists fuss and fidget. Instead of being late, maybe Obama was off stage waiting for a signal that the press was ready.

First, Obama’s heavyweight team of economic advisers filed out. (Note to Rahm Emanuel: If you’re going to position yourself as Obama’s left hand man in the future and you want to avoid looking like an elf, make sure you’re not standing in front of Paul Volcker.)

Then Obama’s statement about the economy. Hot damn! This president is going to be serious. Is everyone ready?

Most of all, is the press ready?

Everyone assembled had hours to pick and carefully phrase their prepared question in the event that they might be lucky enough to fire it off. One such was the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Lynn Sweet. She managed to pack four questions into one and with this scattershot approach managed to solicit what in the eyes of our illustrious media must have been deemed the most valuable gleanings of the day. And as she pitched for the human interest angle, as well as asking about dogs and schools and reading material, she asked:

Have you spoke to any living ex-presidents?

Why specify “living”? you could hear Obama thinking. But whereas President Bush in a situation like this would have probably come out with a condescending quip designed to humiliate the questioner, Obama, while unable to stop himself from calling attention to the question’s clumsy phrasing, simply made light of it with his own somewhat clumsy joke:

In terms of speaking to former presidents, I have spoken to all of them that are living. Obviously, President Clinton. I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances.

Oh my god! The president-elect in his first news conference made a boo-boo. What does this portend for the next four years?

Hopefully, plenty of others — levity might be in short supply.

The release of a statement on a swift apology to Nancy Reagan seemed like an unnecessary campaign-mode piece of damage control. In this case, an apology could simply have been offered in private and Mrs Reagan at her discretion could have chosen whether to make the communication public.

More importantly, Obama needs to challenge the press. Rather than fastidiously trying to rectify every trivial mistake, he should make press access commensurate with the value extracted from his time. The better the quality of questioning, the longer the press conference.

If there are gaffes along the way, let’s just enjoy them. After all, the conviviality that distinguishes as social animals depends on our ability to playfully laugh at one another.

But while the seriousness and intelligence of our newly elected president are beyond dispute, what seems far less certain is whether the press corps has an interest and capacity to meet Obama on his own turf by asking intelligent questions.

America’s first Buddhist president
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, November 7, 2008

Pssst! Did you hear? Obama’s not a secret Muslim — he’s a Buddhist.

No, this isn’t the latest internet rumor, nor is it intended to become one, but if it turned out that our next president had a secret identity, the discovery that he was a Buddhist would merely seem like confirmation of so many tell-tale signs.

A practitioner of the “Middle Way” who mindfully treads the path between extremes; someone who understands that clear-eyed awareness requires an inner stillness, unruffled by turbulent emotions; someone who discerns truth in the complex web of inter-dependent relations; someone who recognizes that individual well being and our collective destiny are inextricably bound together — you don’t need to know much about Buddhism as a doctrine or a religion to see that in the psychological, social, and philosophical outline I just described, there’s a familiar ring. It sounds a great deal like you-know-who.

How is it that at the end of one of the longest of political campaigns, after a relentless struggle during which attacks rained down like showers of arrows and then finally at a moment that marks a turning point not only in the history of this nation but for the whole world — how is it that such a moment could be met with the equanimity that Barack Obama displayed on the night of November 4, 2008?

To say that Obama is “cool” is to invest that phrase with way more meaning than it was meant to carry.

Calm, serene, self-assured — none of these phrases quite captures the poise that Obama has displayed over the arc of his presidential campaign or in its fulfillment.

His deft maneuver is that he knows how to reach into the future without stretching out of the present. His understanding of possibility interlocks with his experience of actuality.

This is a perspective and way of being that most people stumble around. It requires a depth of self-knowledge or psychological groundedness sufficient to allay self-doubt. And it requires a fluid form of confidence that has not settled into the mold of a rigid personal identity.

Obama knows his own mind without being confined by it.

*

The fact that Obamamania has produced supporters who seem more like devotees is a phenomenon which understandably raised concerns among many observers during the campaign. At the same time it provided another window into Obama’s character.

In a real personality cult, adulation and self-aggrandizement feed upon one another. The beloved and his lovers participate in a collective narcissistic feedback loop.

The only way someone can remain impervious to the insidious effects of the idealized projections of others is by being convinced that in spite of all appearances to the contrary, being at the center of massive attention does not place one at the center of the universe.

When Obama says this is not about me, it’s about you, he really means it. Were it not so, the corrupting effect of so much unalloyed admiration would by now be all too evident.

The paradox of Obama’s arrival at the pinnacle of power is that while so many around him are reveling in a giddy mix of elation, relief, anticipation and amazement, the man at the center of what has become a global fascination is fully engaged yet quietly detached.

Even though Obama is no saint and is just as vulnerable as anyone else to the intoxicating effect of power, he has managed to get this far without being seduced by a mania that, in part, helped elevate him to the presidency.

As he said on the night of his election:

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington — it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didn’t do this just to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor’s bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you — we as a people will get there.

*

Does all of this add up to evidence that the president-elect is a secret Buddhist? Of course not. Let’s simply say we just elected a leader whose understanding of himself brings a rounded intelligence and rooted vision rarely seen in a position of such extraordinary power.