Book Reviews on Middle Eastern Affairs
June 23, 2006, 4:20 pm |
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Middle East Quarterly*
Spring 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/950
* Cross-posted with permission
Addicted to Oil: America’s Relentless Drive for Energy Security. By Ian Rutledge. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005. 336 pp. $45.
Millions of people around the world subscribe to the idea that an insatiable thirst for oil motivated the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Rutledge presents Addicted to Oil as “an attempt to show why those millions are correct.” His historical narrative describes how decades of alleged collusion between U.S. automakers and Big Oil brought the elimination of the nation’s public transport infrastructure, creating an American society based on excessive driving and gas guzzling. This structure, he claims, created severe dependence on foreign oil suppliers with profound geostrategic consequences, the latest of which is America’s “defeat” in the oil war in Iraq.
While there is much merit to the claim that America’s dependence on foreign oil subjects it to grave risks, and that this dependence affects U.S. foreign policy choices, Rutledge’s populist argument that oil controls every facet of U.S. policy abroad makes the book akin to a printed version of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 911 rather than a scholarly study. He sees the U.S government hijacked by an “Axis of Oil” with strong personal ties to the oil industry and (strangely) interprets Washington’s support for Israel as “a crucial element in America’s plans for an oil Imperium” in the Middle East.
Despite his book being heavily sourced, the author does not provide a shred of evidence to substantiate his claim that the war in Iraq was about oil. Yes, Iraq is oil rich, and America needs a lot of crude, but if oil were the only interest, would not the cheapest and easiest policy be to turn a blind eye to Saddam’s brutality, lift the sanctions, and send the oil majors to drill there? Rutledge ignores such obvious arguments and instead pushes a convoluted anti-Bush and anti-neoconservative agenda. In doing so he misses an opportunity to address seriously the complicated and pressing issues related to oil dependence.
Gal Luft
Institute for the Analysis of Global Security
Among Warriors in Iraq. By Mike Tucker. Guilford, Conn.: The Lyons Press, 2005. 234 pp. $16.95, paper.
More than 500 journalists were embedded with U.S. military units as they rolled into Iraq in March 2003. Once Baghdad fell, many returned home even though the fighting was hardly over. During late 2003 and early 2004, Tucker, a former Marine infantryman, was embedded with coalition forces serving in two hotbeds of insurgency, Mosul and Fallujah.
Written as a narrative replete with dialogue, Among Warriors in Iraq has wide appeal. Tucker’s military experience is evident. He knows military hardware. Instead of describing soldiers with guns as generalist reporters might, he depicts his comrades carrying M-4 5.56 assault rifles, M.203 grenade launchers, and 40mm grenades.
Despite the occasional inaccuracy (the cease-fire lines defining areas of Kurdish rule are confused with the safe-haven with roots in the 1991-92 humanitarian relief program), Tucker has an eye for detail. He describes the dress of locals and the manes of horses sharing the “dusty rubble-strewn and sewage-ripe streets of Mosul” with U.S. foot patrols searching for hidden explosives. He describes the wares of the markets, the smiles of children, women’s fears, and the glares of some men as a U.S. patrol travels the back streets.
His description of Fallujah in the months prior to the April 2004 uprising and subsequent siege gives a historical snapshot of mosques blaring anti-American incitement and children abruptly stopping their interactions with U.S. soldiers. Narratives of patrols, interrogations of captured insurgents, and meetings with tribal sheikhs explain topics often missed by big-picture reporting.
But Tucker is less precise with his historical narrative because he largely accepts the revisionism of his Kurdistan Democratic Party interlocutors. “Hawlerr is the original Kurdish name for the Iraqi Kurdish city, mistakenly referred to in Arabic as Irbil,” he explains. Actually, Erbil was historically a Turkmen city. Only in the last half century has the traditionally rural Kurdish population flooded into the town, changing its demographics. He, likewise, makes the mistake of calling Mosul historically a Kurdish city.
Kurdish sympathies lead Tucker to make omissions. He criticizes the U.S. military for stopping a Kurdish advance on towns around Mosul following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime but fails to mention that the reason was Kurdish looting of Arab villages. Depictions of the tensions between Kurds and U.S. general David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne in Mosul, are accurate, though. Petraeus turned a deaf-ear to Kurdish (and Iraqi Arab) concerns about his empowerment of high-level Baathists and his forgiveness of those complicit in past massacres of civilians.
Among Warriors in Iraq is not the best narrative of combat in Iraq, but by covering the period after major combat operations, it fills a gap and is worthwhile to understand the risks U.S. soldiers take and the contributions they make on a daily basis.
Michael Rubin
Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict. By Edwin Black. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2004. 471 pp. $27.95.
Black’s fascinating account brings Iraq’s rich history vividly to life. The author has a wonderful ability to turn historical events, obscure to most Western readers, into a gripping story. He does this by giving the color of an important episode then racing forward to the next event he chooses to highlight–which makes Banking on Baghdad a great read but not particularly satisfying as a comprehensive history. A first part skips lightly from Hammurabi to the Mongol conquests and the Ottoman era, ending in the late nineteenth century. Next comes a detailed account of the pre-1914 great-power maneuverings to gain access to Iraq’s oil resources, carried forward with an equally detailed description of World War I and the chaos that marked the transition to British rule. The story then skips forward, first to the Iraqi dalliance with Nazis in World War II and next to the anti-Semitic persecution that led Jews to flee to Israel soon after that state was established. The last twenty-five years seem not to interest Black, as he devotes less than ten pages to them.
Implicit in his account are themes that Black should have spelled out more clearly. He paints Mesopotamia–the Land between the Rivers–as a place with a unique history, one not particularly tightly bound into an “Arab world.” He treats Islam as a rather small part of Iraq’s history while conflict over resources is central to his tale. His Iraq is more shaped by oil–and especially by disputes over oil–than by Shiism, which seems appropriate given that few Iraqis were Shiite until the mid-nineteenth century (and Shiism then was strikingly different from today, with little role for ayatollahs). That being so, the opening chapter set in Najaf as the U.S. troops arrive in 2003 is jarringly out of place: Black’s account is neither about modern Iraq nor about Islam’s impact.
The standard of scholarship is excellent with ample use made of primary sources although Black offers some questionable judgments on matters peripheral to his main story.
Patrick Clawson
The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.
Bulliet contends that Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis and “Islamophobia” are obscuring the common heritage that Christians and Muslims share. Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, he says, have impinged upon one another and influenced each other for centuries and cannot be understood in isolation from one another; an adversarial relationship is not a constant of history and is unnecessary today. Bulliet, like so many other followers of Edward Said, condemns those who hold that a clash of civilizations is upon us for pronouncing “against Islam the same self-righteous and unequivocal sentence of ‘otherness’ that American Protestants once visited upon Catholics and Jews.”
There is a fundamental inconsistency at the heart of this work: Bulliet recommends that instead of trying to bring Western values to the Islamic world, Westerners should cultivate respect for Islamic values. Then he confidently predicts that the coming decades will see new democracies flowering all over the Islamic world, without considering in any depth the fact that significant numbers of Muslims see democracy itself as a Western import, alien to Islam and unwelcome as a replacement for Sharia law.
Bulliet’s confidence that secularism will ultimately take root in the Islamic world despite its failure to do so up to now is rooted in his contention that Islam will eventually go through the same stages of development as did the Judeo-Christian tradition. In attempting to make his case, however, he hastily and superficially glosses over significant differences between the traditions–particularly the absence of a secular/sacred distinction within Islamic tradition. Likewise, he ignores or dismisses as “Islamophobic” analyses of just how deeply rooted within Islamic history and thought is a contempt for and adversarial relationship with non-Muslim traditions and cultures. Yet if his irenic vision is to become reality, Muslim reformers will have to acknowledge and confront these aspects of Islamic tradition, not deny or downplay their existence.
Robert Spencer
JihadWatch.org
Dancing in the No-fly Zone: A Woman’s Journey Through Iraq
Ditmars, a freelance writer, visited Iraq several times before Saddam’s fall, reporting for such media organizations as the BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and The New York Times. In Dancing in the No-Fly Zone, she chronicles her return in the wake of the 2003 war. As she flits from meeting to meeting with her prewar Iraqi contacts, she intersperses descriptions of post-Saddam Iraq with recollections of the prewar period.
Her account oozes with moral equivalency. To Ditmars, the U.S. government is no different than Saddam’s. “Now for every mass grave the Americans dug up, they had to contend with the specter of thousands of civilians killed during the invasion; for every ‘resistance’ bombing, the ghosts of all the Iraqis killed in the first Gulf War.” She treats as fact the old propaganda lie that sanctions killed 500,000 children. In the wake of Saddam’s fall, even Iraqi opponents of U.S. occupation have dismissed the veracity of such propaganda.
She appears unaware of how skewed her perspective is. She acknowledges Robert Fisk, the Independent Middle East correspondent famous for both leftist bent and questionable accuracy, and speaks favorably of sanctions-busting groups like Voices in the Wilderness, known to Iraqis more for their apologia of Saddam than for any help they provided the Iraqis. She dismisses criticism of the Arabic satellite station Al-Jazeera as the bailiwick of “right-wing Zionist groups.” Her throwaway statements may surprise: returning to a hotel room to find the television now gets BBC, Al-Jazeera, and other satellite networks, she writes, “I felt a pang for the Iraqi state television … I’d come to know and love.” The victims of Saddam’s tyranny may not appreciate her totalitarian-chic.
If Ditmars channels the views of Iraqis who saw Saddam’s rule as the golden age of Iraq, then Dancing in the No-Fly Zone provides insight into their perspective on the post-Saddam period. She bristles with anger at Bremer’s arrogance and ridicules the Green Zone. However, her work is of little value to anyone wishing to achieve a deeper understanding of Iraq. The late Steven Vincent’s Into the Red Zone[1] captured post-Saddam Iraq’s complexity and nuance far better. The only value of Dancing in the No-Fly Zone is to expose the misplaced sympathies and politicization of many journalists working for mainstream media organizations. Unfortunately, this will not change soon. As Ditmars observes, “My old Ministry of Information-appointed ‘minders’–so-called ‘guides,’ whom we’d once paid for the privilege of being spied on–were still at work, this time as fixers and translators for American TV crews.”
Michael Rubin
Economic Relations Between Egypt and the Gulf Oil States, 1967-2000: Petro-Wealth and Patterns of Influence
At the Khartoum summit in August 1967, when the Arab League rejected negotiations with Israel, three oil-rich states–Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Libya–guaranteed to provide Egypt with US$260 million annually in aid “until the results of Israeli aggression have been eliminated.” Feiler tells the story of what happened next, assembling a coherent tale from scattered and not always consistent sources. He shows that Egypt and the Arab oil states did have an intense economic interaction. In the eighteen years from 1967 until the price of oil crashed in 1985, the oil-rich states provided Egypt $14 billion in aid, $5 billion in investment (most of it politically motivated), and $22 billion in workers’ remittances through official channels. At its peak in 1975-77, the aid alone averaged more than 15 percent of Egypt’s national output.
Yet aid, investment, and remittances did not put Egypt on the path to sustained growth in the 1970s; to the contrary, Egypt’s economy remained in desperate straits, and its dependence on aid only grew deeper. Feiler documents Egyptian disappointment with aid and its bitterness over bearing what it considered an undue burden in the conflict against Israel–factors which played no small part in Sadat’s decision to seek a peace treaty with Israel. These factors also led Egypt to turn to the West economically. Indeed, as the slow turn began in the late 1980s, Egyptian economic performance began to improve. The accelerating turn after the 1991 Kuwait war, rather than the Arab aid in wake of Egypt’s role in that conflict, accounted for the country’s strong economic showing in the 1990s.
Feiler also shows that for all the talk about Arab solidarity and a joint stand against Israel, the economic flows appear to have been much more motivated by the particular national interests of each oil-rich country. For instance, Saudi aid was aimed by the strongly anticommunist kingdom to reduce Soviet influence in Egypt. Over time, the flow of funds to Egypt came more and more from remittances by Egyptian workers, whose low-cost labor was so useful to the oil-rich states, which at the time, were desperately short of workers ready and able to work in modern enterprises.
A minor quibble: Arab oil donors to Egypt included both the conservative monarchies of the Gulf and two radical states, Iraq and Libya–the latter of which is not in the Gulf at all. Feiler’s analysis would have benefited from more fully integrating into his story the two radical donors, which he only sometimes includes.
Patrick Clawson
The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq
The Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, Iraq, formally inaugurated Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani on June 14, 2005, as president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, formalizing northern Iraq’s de facto federalism. The nature of the region’s relationship with the Iraqi central government in Baghdad, however, remains ill-defined. The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq, a collection of essays derived from a December 2002 conference in Denmark and a September 2003 meeting in Washington, explores these unresolved questions.
O’Leary, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Salih, a lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, begin the collection with an essay exploring the denial and affirmation of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. Their discussion of the evolution of Iraqi Kurdistan through various Iraqi governments is detailed and well-complemented with maps. Their comparison of tactics used to address irredentist Kurdish nationalism falls short, though, because of their gratuitous antipathy toward Turkey and over-reliance on often-biased secondary sources.
Four essays on types of federation provide an excellent primer for Iraq’s constitutional debates. O’Leary examines forms of federation, contrasting U.S.-style “integrative” federalism with the Swiss-style “pluralist” variety. In integrative federalism, decision-making is majoritarian rather than consensual, and the central government is stronger. McGarry, a nationalism and democracy specialist at Queen’s University in Ontario, discusses lessons from the Canadian experience with “pluri-national” federalism. A third essay by O’Leary, with American University graduate student Karna Eklund and American University law professor Paul Williams, highlights debates regarding autonomy, resource sharing, and national versus regional militaries. A detailed additional chapter on children’s rights in various constitutions by a UNICEF consultant is out-of-place.
Three authors address the legacy of the Iraqi Kurdish past. Tel Aviv University historian Ofra Bengio charts the development of Kurdish autonomy in the wake of the 1991 uprising but also addresses what she calls the “Kurds’ Achilles Heel,” meaning their propensity for internecine fighting. Gareth Stansfield contributes an interesting essay on the benefits of the Kurdish political divisions: duplicated administrations trained more bureaucrats, and competing governments sought to outdo each other’s administrations. A contribution by Swedish development consultant Sophia Wanche on “Kurdish Perspectives on a Post-Saddam Iraq,” based on field research conducted in 2002, fails to address its topic and instead rehashes well-worn discussions of the implications of independence, autonomy, and federalism.
A final section on immediate issues undercuts the collection’s quality. Tennessee Technological University professor Michael Gunter’s examination of the implication for Turkey of formal Kurdish federalism also disappoints, as it rehashes history but does not address mutual security, trade, and Tigris River water allocation. Peter Galbraith, a paid consultant to the Kurdistan Regional Government,[2] lambastes the Bush administration, discounts Iraqi nationalism, misrepresents Iraqi Arab arguments, and is generally more Kurdish nationalist than many Iraqi Kurds.
Examining lessons learned from the U.S. military’s occupation of Iraq, Kings College research fellow Karin von Hippel points out the need for greater coordination between civilian and military planning and also urges nongovernmental organizations to abandon their hostility to the military.
The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq offers a mixed assortment. It helps elucidate the federalist debate but some authors allow their sympathy for the Kurds to trump their analysis. Missing is any treatment of Iraqi Arab or Turkmen perspectives on Kurdish federalism. Despite these weaknesses, the collection offers a useful handbook as Iraqis determine their future.
Michael Rubin
The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other
In The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs,” Brown University anthropologist Beeman laments that the “cultural dynamics” of the U.S.-Iranian relationship have for almost thirty years been beset by “mutual demonization.” He seeks to prove this assertion, not with careful factual analysis, but rather with reliance on the post-modern theoretical constructs so popular in universities today.
However, his research is careless. He constructs his thesis with sweeping statements unsupported by evidence. In explaining Middle Eastern mythological figures, he argues that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein modeled himself on ‘Umar, the third Muslim caliph (644-656 A.D.). But a study of Saddam’s monumental art shows Sa’ad ibn Abi Waqqas, an early Arab warrior who brought Islam to Iran, to be his model.[3]
Beeman stumbles over the most basic facts. Jerusalem is not “the second most sacred Muslim site”; Medina is. Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the Qur’an. He confuses recent history as well. He dismisses the accusation that Iran played a hand in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing as a result of “the desire of the George W. Bush administration to link all attacks on U.S. facilities to a global terrorist network.” But it was the Clinton administration that tied an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander to those who carried out the attacks.
Beeman dismisses the possibility that the Islamic Republic might sponsor terrorism. He accuses U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld of fabricating the charge that Al-Qaeda operated in Iran. But the 9-11 Commission documented significant Iranian complicity.[4] Likewise, to dismiss Iranian complicity in the Karine-A affair, he ignores the fact that the ship was loaded at an Iranian port, carried fifty tons of Iranian weaponry, and that both the captain of the ship and Palestinian Authority figures confessed to their part in the operation.
His footnotes are full of conspiratorial and faulty analysis. He wrongly suggests that “it is fairly certain” that the $3 million allocated by Congress to fund democratization in Iran was meant for the Mujahideen al-Khalq; in fact, it was earmarked for civil society groups operating inside Iran.
Beeman is even prone to fabrication: he argues that the American Enterprise Institute placed responsibility on Iran for faulty intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction but does not provide evidence to back that claim. He invents sources, citing a piece by this reviewer for the National Observer although I have never written for that publication.
He appears to have a special passion for condemning “neoconservatives” but uses the term carelessly, labeling as neoconservatives not only those policymakers and thinkers who seek to make democracy promotion a U.S. policy goal but also vocal opponents of U.S. democratization efforts. His criticism is often dishonest. He pillories “neoconservative” analysis marking ‘Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani as the frontrunner in Iran’s 2005 presidential elections. But in a Council on Foreign Relations interview prior to the election, he himself called Rafsanjani the “frontrunner.”[5]
The worst aspect of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs” is the moral equivalency underpinning the book. To Beeman, Washington’s complaints about Tehran are no different than Tehran’s rhetoric about Washington. But isn’t it possible that U.S. concerns about Iran’s terror sponsorship are real? Likewise, there is no U.S. corollary to Iran’s “Death to America” rallies and threats to “wipe [Israel] off the map.” Neither would many Iranians agree with Beeman’s apologia of Supreme Leader Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamene’i as a moderate consensus builder; nor would Iranian women recognize his assertion that their rights have improved.
The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs” is an embarrassment of polemic masquerading as a scholarly study. That Beeman is director of Middle East Studies at Brown University is another sad testament to the state of the field.
Michael Rubin
The History of Iraq
The History of Iraq is a Cliff’s Notes to Iraq’s past that, according to its foreword, seeks to provide “students and interested laypeople with [an] up-to-date, concise, and analytical history.”
Hunt, an attorney with no particular expertise in Iraq, indeed presents an easy-to-follow overview of Iraqi history, from the Paleolithic to the present. Most ancient dynasties–Kassite, Medean, Macedonian, Parthian, and Sassanid–merit no more than a couple of paragraphs. The Babylonians receive a few pages. Hunt condenses the first 800 years of Iraq’s Islamic history into eleven pages. Four centuries of Ottoman rule pass by in five pages.
The post-World War I British occupation and the early years of independence receive a little more attention. But accuracy takes a back seat to turn of phrase. In history, the devil is always in the details, and too often, Hunt gets the details wrong: Winston Churchill’s decision to convert the British navy from coal to oil occurred in 1911, not at “the turn of the century.” At any rate, oil was not a major factor at the time. Iraq did not begin exporting oil in earnest until 1934 with the start of production at the Kirkuk oil fields. Nor should problems of Iraq’s geography–chief among them lack of ports–be blamed on post-World War I arrangements. Kuwait was created in 1899, not in the wake of World War I. Nor, for that matter, did the British divide the Kurds into Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. The Iranian-Ottoman border was the product of a sixteenth century cease-fire between the two gunpowder empires. Blaming colonial powers may be trendy but, in cases such as this, it is counterfactual.
Other factual errors, many made in passing, mar the history. Palestine was not a belligerent power in Israel’s war of independence. Any Palestinian hope for post-partition statehood ended with the invasion of Gaza and the West Bank by the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Iraqi armies. The Yezidis–a pre-Islamic religious sect populating northern Iraq–do not practice a form of Zoroastrianism. Their belief in a cult of angels is distinct. Likewise, while many Kurds resent Saddam Hussein for Arabization campaigns in Kirkuk and elsewhere (an ethnic cleansing is not mentioned by Hunt), Kurds were not “ideologically aligned” with the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Ahmad Chalabi returned to Iraq months before, not in the wake of Saddam’s fall.
Omissions also mar the history. Discussion of Iraq’s historically important Jewish community–and the pogroms that led to its departure–is nonexistent. The Kurds receive only passing mention. The intellectual origins of the Baath Party are glossed over.
The History of Iraq may provide a bare bones outline of Iraqi history, but its omissions undermine its usefulness, even for the general audience. An encyclopedia article would be no less useful and, given the publisher’s inflated pricing, would give more bang for the buck.
Michael Rubin
HV Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist (Cass Series–Israeli History, Politics, and Society, 36)
Between 1947 and 1949, United Nations decisions changed the shape of the Middle East. The vote to partition Palestine into both Jewish and Arab states led to the birth of Israel and, soon thereafter, the battle for Jerusalem. Mandel works to elucidate the role played by H.V. Evatt, an Australian diplomat in 1947 who assumed the chairmanship of the U.N. Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestine Question.
Mandel explores Evatt’s enigmatic qualities, especially his dichotomy of character. Described by contemporaries as an “altruist” and “visionary internationalist,” Evatt was also seen as a “self-promoting and jejune amateur.” Those he worked with found him hard to trust: “the Arabs felt betrayed [by Evatt], the Jews frequently questioned his fidelity to promises, and the Americans and British were often mystified or outraged.” But Mandel portrays Evatt as unwavering in his commitment to partition, however inexplicable his reasons to contemporaries.
In 1947, Evatt knew little about the Jews, the Arabs, or Zionism, but he made friends and acquaintances on both sides of the debate over Zionism who influenced his views. He admired the former U.S. Supreme Court justice and staunch Zionist Louis Brandeis. In the end, Evatt came to be devoted to the creation of a Jewish homeland. He deemed the unity of Jews and Arabs not viable and thus took up the cause of partition.
At times, Mandel tries to conquer too much of both Evatt’s personal story and the broader events surrounding the birth of Israel. His exhaustive detail is edifying, but it obfuscates the exploration of Evatt’s role and motivation in both pushing the partition plan and shepherding through the U.N. a vote on the internationalization of Jerusalem. While Mandel is correct to emphasize the contemporary importance of the partitioning of Palestine, his decision to extend his discussion through the Oslo peace process dilutes the focus on what is otherwise a useful contribution to the history of Israel’s founding.
Suzanne Gershowitz
American Enterprise Institute
Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue, 1948-1953: Cooperation, Conspiracy, or Collusion?
Almost six decades after the U.N. partition of Palestine, ascription of blame for Palestinian refugees still resonates in Israeli academic discourse. Following the lead of Avi Shlaim, an Oxford University historian and “new historian,” post-Zionists have exculpated the Palestinians for heeding Arab calls to leave. Shlaim argued in a 1988 book that King Abdullah I of Transjordan and Jewish leaders colluded to force the partition of Palestine and, therefore, bear responsibility for the refugee crisis that followed.[6]
In Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue, 1948-1953, Haifa University professor Gelber decisively refutes Shlaim’s thesis by showing that the Israelis and King Abdullah did not aim to conspire against the Palestinians. He argues, rather, that, for the Israelis and Abdullah–who had deep-seated mutual interests and a long-standing bond–partition turned out to be the most viable solution to a thorny problem.
Relying on documents from Israeli and British archives (the latter of which include records of broadcast statements from Arab leaders), Gelber details the Zionist-Jordanian dialogue from the waning days of the British mandate through the 1948 war, to the Israeli raid on Qibya in 1953, which marked the end of the Israeli-Jordanian bond and Jordan’s reunion with the Arab coalition. Gelber explains the nuances of the diplomacy among representatives from Israel, the United States, Britain, the United Nations, Transjordan, and other Arab states. His analysis spans both the political and military issues that shaped the Israeli-Jordanian dialogue.
The coverage of Transjordan’s 1948 invasion of Israel sets the scene for subsequent examination of the tenuous occupation of the West Bank and the collapse of the Palestinian government in Gaza, which Gelber suggests had to do more with military than political developments. Several chapters examine the diplomatic efforts behind the first nonaggression pact and other attempts at peace from the end of the war through 1953.
Gelber highlights King Abdullah’s struggle in balancing his necessary relations with Israel with those he had with the broader Arab world, hostile to the Jewish state’s independence, while at the same time posturing himself as a representative of the Palestinians following the Egyptian subordination of Gaza.
Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue, 1948-1953 sheds light not only on an important historical episode, but it has historiographic significance as well. Too often, professors subsume scholarship to their own political agendas. It has become fashionable among many historians to substitute theory for research or omit evidence that undercuts their thesis.[7] Careful historical research such as Gelber’s grounds the debate about the early years of the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Suzanne Gershowitz
Jordan Since 1989: A Study in Political Economy (Library of Modern Middle East Studies)
Jordan since 1989 appears to be a typical academic political science tome, one dedicated to expounding obscure theoretical models of interest only within university walls. But the obligatory theoretical chapter is blessedly short–and surprisingly, the author presents his analytical point in plain English, and it actually is useful to understanding the story that follows. Knowles argues that since its creation in 1921, Jordan has always depended on gifts from abroad, but the source of those gifts increasingly shifted after 1989 from aid (distributed primarily by the state) to workers’ remittances (distributed mostly by the private sector). He argues that related to this change has been a change in how the Jordanian state asserts its economic influence, shifting from direct control (such as ownership of companies such as the airline, telephone, and electricity companies) to indirect methods (such as regulation).
Knowles provides a wealth of information about foreign flows into Jordan and about the state’s role in the economy, arguing that the two have been intimately linked. He shows the long history of aid dependence, climaxing during the oil boom in what Knowles describes as “dictator state, private sector dependency.” Then came the 1985 oil price collapse and the related Jordanian economic crisis, culminating in what Knowles characterizes well as an economic collapse in 1989. He documents the slow climb upwards, with (using his terms) 1985-89 being the “rhetoric years,” 1989-95, the “lost years,” 1995-98, the “foundation years,” and since 1998, “the action years.” He emphasizes the role of donors, led by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, in the new policies.
Strikingly absent from this account is much discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict or of the splits in Jordanian society between Palestinians and East Bank Jordanians. Knowles tells a convincing and full story without much reference to these issues, suggesting that perhaps they are not so important to understanding what is often said to be Jordan’s central challenge, namely, its weak economic base.
Patrick Clawson
Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia
Land Beyond the River provides one of the most vivid pictures available of the complex relationship between religion and society in Central Asia. Whitlock, a BBC journalist who lived in Tashkent, which she used as a base to report on the region, offers a highly personalized history of Central Asia. Her vehicle is exploring the lives of two “witnesses” whose lives stretched through the decades of Soviet rule: Muhammadjan Hindustani, a cleric from Kokand who lived out his life in Dushanbe, and Sadr-e Zia, an intellectual from Bukhara. She uses their own words, the memories of their families, and accounts of more recent prominent figures whose activities were in some way touched by one or another of these men.
Whitlock is an excellent journalist who developed relationships of great trust with the people who turned over their family materials to her. In the case of Sadr-e Zia, a lot of the material Whitlock used was being edited for publication at the time her book went to press, but she is more vague about the written record that informs her discussion of Hindustani. This is not surprising, given that the Tajik cleric was forced to work and teach in semi-secrecy until nearly his very last days, in 1989 when Mikail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost’ (openness) changed state attitudes toward religion.
Working in what must have been conditions of partial (or even near total) secrecy while living in Central Asia, Whitlock does not seem to have been given a full portrait of Hindustani, who actually played an even greater role in training many of today’s clerics and setting the tone for current religious debates than Whitlock credits him. For this reason, the book is more a fascinating keyhole through which to view hitherto virtually unknown lives than a scholarly contribution.
Martha Olcott
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out
In Leaving Islam, Ibn Warraq has assembled a compelling list of writings from individuals of Muslim birth who renounced their faith. It serves as a companion of sorts to his own personal statement, Why I Am Not a Muslim,[8] and opens a window into a usually hushed topic, revealing internal Muslim debates concerning history, faith, and culture.
The problem of dissent within Islam has been a troubling issue from the earliest moments of Muslim history. Although the Qur’an famously declares at 2:256 that “There is no compulsion in religion,” apostasy (meaning, adopting another belief or non-belief) is a capital offence. Hence, Muslims’ fear that dissent might be viewed as apostasy serves as an insidious weapon for political leaders. Often in collaboration with religious scholars, leaders use this tool to silence free thinkers and spread a blanket of totalitarian control over Muslim communities.
Despite the crucial importance of apostasy, it has not seriously been documented or investigated. Ibn Warraq’s breakthrough collection of essays offers a compelling and vivid insight into the minds of those individuals who have struggled with the faith tradition into which they were born, eventually departing from the belief of their parents and ancestors to become free of what they considered as oppressive or demeaning to living as rational and independent individuals.
The phenomenon of Muslims leaving Islam is about as old as Islam itself. Ibn Warraq handily summarizes some of the most notable cases from the early centuries of Islam, such as those eminent freethinkers Ar-Rawandi (c. 820-830) and Ar-Razi (865-925), or skeptical poets such as Omar Khayyam (c. 1048-1131) and Hafiz (c. 1320-89), or Sufi (mystic) practitioners among whom the most notable victims of orthodoxy were Mansur ibn Hallaj (executed in 922) and As-Suhrawardi (executed in 1191).
But the testimonies Ibn Warraq collects of contemporary individuals from across the Muslim world make for particularly fascinating reading. They offer insight into the biography and psychology of Muslims contending with a faith that they find irreconcilable with the requirements of modernity. The voices are those of men and women from Bangladesh and Pakistan, India and Iran, Tunisia and Turkey, Malaysia and Morocco. They are intelligent, aware of their past and tormented by present realities of obscurantism, dogmatism, and intolerance within Muslim societies.
Ibn Warraq is a courageous writer on Islam and a passionate defender of reason who continues to struggle on behalf of reason with a culture that seems to be at odds with reason. In this respect, his work, as in the preparation of this edited volume, is an indispensable tool for Muslims themselves so they can wage their struggle for enlightenment and reform of their faith tradition.
And here, therefore, lies the conundrum for those, be they Muslim or non-Muslim, who are concerned about the world of Islam and its relationship with others: the act of leaving Islam, however courageous on an individual basis, amounts to abandoning the reformist struggle needed within Islam.
Salim Mansur
University of Western Ontario
Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization Under Atatürk and Reza Shah
In the 1920s and 1930s, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Reza Shah sought to modernize Turkey and Iran respectively. Atatürk abolished the caliphate and Latinized the alphabet. Reza Shah imposed central control over the periphery, settled nomadic tribes, established secular education and judicial systems. Both imposed Western dress. In Turkey, Atatürk’s reforms lasted, transforming the county over time into a secular, Western-leaning democratic state. In Iran, reforms floundered under autocracy, and in 1979, the Islamic revolution reversed Reza Shah’s legacy.
Atabaki, a professor of Iranian history, and Zürcher, a professor of Turkish studies, have assembled a number of essays born out of a 1999 conference. The resulting papers are well organized into a coherent whole. Chapters limited to just Iran or Turkey are paired to enable readers to juxtapose each country’s experience in terms of political consolidation or military reforms.
Other chapters take a comparative tact, addressing issues such as dress or language reform in both countries. Boston University historian Houchang Chehabi, for example, examines the modernization of dress as a “textbook example of modernization from above.” In an age when too many academics succumb to the political correctness of condemning Westernization, it is good to see that he acknowledges there was a constituency for such reforms.
The editors republish an earlier article by John Perry, professor of Persian at the University of Chicago, comparing language reform in Turkey and Iran.[9] His study describes the creation of organizations to promote language purity and has many examples of their successes. He gives short shift to the Iranian debate about Latinizing the alphabet. While “never seriously considered,” the question of why such reforms were possible in Turkey but not in Iran would be valuable. Men of Order lacks a conclusion although the editors suggest that Atatürk had an easier job because he could build on Ottoman precedents. The omission of a chapter tying together the various essays undercuts an otherwise valuable addition to both Turkish and Iranian studies.
The essay on the foreign policy and legacy of an Iranian prime minister by Oliver Bast, a University of Manchester historian, is well-written and informative but is cursory on the question of comparative modernization. Its inclusion is distracting.
With a few exceptions—School of Oriental and African Studies research associate Stephanie Cronin being one—the authors rely on primary source material and so bring new detail to the historical narrative. However, the thickness of the narrative limits the reach of Men of Order to a reference for specialists rather than a resource for a wider audience.
Michael Rubin
Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed
As its title suggests, this book’s leitmotif is that peacemaking can succeed only if based on international law, and that Israel is responsible for the failure of the 2000 Camp David negotiations between itself and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) because its positions were inconsistent with international law. The justification presented by Helmick (a Jesuit priest, who makes no claim to a legal education) for his theory is both legally and logically flawed.
He argues repeatedly that U.N. Security Council resolution 242 requires complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice line, even though this resolution only requires withdrawal from occupied territories (but not all the territories), a wording long recognized as not requiring full Israeli withdrawal. This phrasing requires only that the two parties negotiate the location of a “secure and recognized” boundary, not necessarily the armistice line. In fact, the author himself, disregarding his main argument, proposes territorial changes in Israel’s favor in the boundary in the Jerusalem area.
Helmick also preaches the idea that, to be consistent with international law, any final Israeli-Palestinian agreement must include an Israeli commitment to permit the Palestinian refugees to relocate to Israel in accordance with U.N. General Assembly resolution 194, while expressing the hope that this step will not lead to the destruction of Israel, because perhaps not all 3.5 million Palestinians that call themselves refugees will choose to immigrate to Israel. In making this argument, the author ignores the small fact that resolution 194 is not part of international law, that the two parties specifically based the Oslo agreements on U.N. Security Council resolution 242 (and its companion resolution 338) but not on resolution 194 (or any other General Assembly resolutions), and that the relocation of Palestinians to Israel is wholly inconsistent with the Oslo agreements that were intended to create two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian, rather than two Palestinian states.
Negotiating Outside the Law is replete with embarrassing factual errors and bizarre assertions. Helmick calls the Palestinian intifada “a campaign of nonviolence,” and claims that Abu Nidal was an Israeli Mossad agent. He ludicrously asserts that prior to the Madrid conference, Secretary of State James Baker obtained a written commitment from Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to allow the PLO to have a recognized headquarters in Jerusalem. Hezbollah attacks on Israel, he suggests, were merely reprisals for Israeli attacks on their villages, and Helmick indicates that the notorious Hamas terrorist, Yahya Ayyash (the “engineer”), who orchestrated suicide bombings that caused the deaths of more than seventy Israeli civilians, restrained Hamas from suicide attacks. With that kind of twisted logic, no wonder that Helmick’s only other publication, an article summarizing his book,[10] was published in Counterpunch, an Internet magazine edited by Alexander Cockburn, who also published articles claiming that Jews spread anthrax and that the Israeli Mossad bombed the World Trade Center on 9-11.
Other than its flamboyant mistakes, Negotiating Outside the Law is supremely dull, consisting of a summary of the main peace process-related events that occurred from the mid-1980s through the post-Camp David conference, based almost exclusively on New York Times articles. Intertwined with this potted history are the full texts of long letters the author wrote during those years–primarily to his Palestinian correspondents–advising them on how to negotiate more effectively with Israel. His advice was not limited to the verbal; Helmick, who falsely claims the title of mediator, urged his Palestinian friends to open an intifada against Israel shortly in early 2000.
Joel Singer
Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP
Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews
It took the government of Israel nearly three decades to take significant steps to bring the Jews of Ethiopia to Israel, but when it did finally make a commitment to do so in the late 1970s, it carried out daring and dramatic operations. The story of Operation Solomon–how Israel evacuated more than 14,000 Jews in less than thirty-six hours–is the subject of Spector’s fascinating and well-documented history.
Following the first large-scale rescue in 1984, Israel learned that the Ethiopian Jewish population was far larger than previously thought. Their predicament became increasingly dire as Ethiopia dissolved into civil war. By 1990-91, thousands of Jews were identified by American activists who provided them humanitarian assistance and called on Israel to allow them all to come to Israel.
The Ethiopian government, however, saw its Jews as bargaining chips and did not want to let them go without extracting a price from Israel. Initially, it sought weapons but ultimately settled for a large payment of cash.
The U.S. government played a key role. Diplomats, Senator Rudy Boschwitz, and President George H.W. Bush all weighed in to secure Ethiopian permission to allow the Jews to leave. Spector does not give Bush the credit he deserves, presenting him as merely signing off on the requests of others rather than himself strongly supporting the rescue. This is an example of the one weakness of the book, which is that it is missing the historical context of the story, in this case, Bush’s direct involvement, when vice president, in negotiations with Sudan for the earlier rescue of the Ethiopian Jews.
Spector has interviewed many of the key players and done a good job of sorting out the relative influence of Israeli, Ethiopian, and American officials, activists, and Jewish organizational leaders. It is a marvelous story, and there is enough credit to go around, but Spector also reveals the underside, especially some of the petty jealousies, particularly among the Israelis, that hindered the rescue.
Mitchell G. Bard
American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise
The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege
In this massively researched, lucidly written, and cogently argued narrative, Levin tells the appalling story of what has been called the greatest self-inflicted wound of political history: Israel’s embrace of Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the Oslo accords of September 1993 and its dogged adherence to its obligations under them even as its “peace partner” was blatantly flouting its own.
The book has two parts. The first recounts Jewish political failure in the Diaspora, where Jews lived with a constant burden of peril; Levin presents this as the background for the self-deluding rationales that engendered Oslo. The second part traces the same perils in the history of Israel itself. Levin shows how a tiny nation, living under constant siege by neighbors who reject its very existence, was induced by its intellectual classes to believe that its own misdeeds had incited Arab hatred and violence, and that what required reform was not Arab dictatorship and Islamist Jew-hatred but the reform of (other) Jews. Reversing cause and effect, Israeli leaders blinded themselves to the obvious fact that it was Arab hatred and aggression that repeatedly led to Israeli occupation, not occupation that caused Arab hatred and violence.
Although Levin argues strongly that Israeli leaders like Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and the ineffable Shimon Peres hallucinated moderation in a murderous enemy, his book is not a polemic that excludes all opposing points of view; on the contrary, we get the fullest possible account–and “in their own words”–of those Israelis (and their American-Jewish supporters) who deluded themselves into believing that Oslo would bring a new heaven and a new earth. When the accords were signed in 1993, Minister of Education Shulamit Aloni announced that “no more parents will go weeping after the coffins of their sons,” and Israeli novelist and peace activist Amos Oz said confidently that “death shall be no more.” And all this because Arafat had–not for the first time–promised to renounce terror and recognize Israel’s “right to exist,” that used Buick he had already flogged several times over. By autumn 2000, and as a direct (and in Levin’s view entirely predictable) result of Israel’s endless unreciprocated concessions to Arafat’s demands, the country was faced with intifada II, “the Oslo war,” in which all Israel became a battlefield and getting on a bus or going to a cafe or a disco meant risking your life.
One of Levin’s most relentlessly pursued themes is the influence of Israel’s cultural elites on the governments of Rabin and Barak. In Israel (as in America) many intellectuals seem to subscribe to the motto, “the other country, right or wrong.” But if American leftist intellectuals are confined to universities and a few other institutions, in Israel they have come close to taking over the government. Israelis thus learned the hard way what Churchill said of England’s leading appeaser: “Mr. Chamberlain was faced with a choice between surrender and war; he chose surrender, and he got war.”
Edward Alexander
University of Washington
Palestine: A Traveller’s Guide. By Mariam Shahin. Photography by George Azar. Northampton, Mass.: Interlink, 2004. 500 pp. $27.95, paperback.
Shahin, described as journalist and author, has written a most curious guidebook. The genre normally aspires to help the traveler find his way, but this one has the grander aspiration to “search for all things Palestinian–past and present–in historic Palestine.” In other words, its goal is political, not touristic. The guidebook dimension is nominal with no street addresses, much less opening and closing hours, evaluations of hotels and restaurants, or other practical advice.
Perhaps the book’s strangest aspect is the pretense that Israel does not exist–symbolically eliminating the Jewish state in anticipation of the PLO, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad actually doing so. Thus, Jaffa fills up a chapter of twenty pages while the vastly larger city of Tel Aviv is barely mentioned, and then through gritted teeth. On the other hand, what Shahin refers to as the “massive and horrific” Wall (always with a capital “W”) has a chapter of its own.
Conceptualized as a propaganda tool, the guidebook contains more than its share of inaccuracies. The first page falsely informs that “Palestine is a Holy Land to Muslims.” The assertion that “archeologists have yet to verify the historic existence” of the Temple of Solomon is laughable nonsense. And Lord Balfour was hardly “of Jewish descent.”
More surprising are the candid assertions that spring up between the tired anti-Zionist tropes. Palestinians are said to include Jews as well as Muslims and Christians, a rare inclusion. The comparison of Palestinians in Jordan to Jews in the United States got me thinking. “Many Lebanese blamed the PLO and its policies for the destruction of their country” must have slipped in when someone was not looking. And one sentence required three readings before I could believe my eyes, stating that the Arab population of Palestine grew in the 1930s partly because “the British and Jewish capital infusion to the country created jobs.” That’s a thesis, first articulated by Joan Peters (and forwarded in this journal by Fred Gottheil) that anti-Zionist elements vehemently deny.
As I say, it’s a curiosity, an artifact unique to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Daniel Pipes
Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq
In April 2004, Shiite firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Jaysh al-Mahdi militia rose in revolt against the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Revolt on the Tigris tells the tale through the eyes of Etherington, a British political officer in charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) office in Al-Kut, the capital of the southern Wasit province.[11]
Rather than shed much light on Al-Kut, its political figures, and the complexity of the local society, Revolt on the Tigris offers inside baseball. Etherington describes his meetings with coalition administrator L. Paul Bremer, senior British representative Sir Jeremy Greenstock, and other diplomats. Local color is limited to a few short descriptions as Etherington hops from one coalition base to another. Overshadowing a one-paragraph overview of Al-Kut’s demographics are thirty pages describing his compound, equipment, and staff, e-mails he received, and his thoughts of the local Ukrainian detachment and military contractors.
Revolt on the Tigris reflects well the issues dominating CPA attention in late 2003 and early 2004. Etherington describes his mechanism to elect local councilmen and the implementation of gas rationing, which subsequently degenerated into rioting. But he offers little insight into local politics. While he refers to meetings with local officials, he mentions few Iraqis more than once, and these only in passing. When he decides, for example, to visit every local council in the province, the resulting narrative centers more upon the division of his day, conversations with his deputy, and the amount of water he drank than upon the content of the meetings. Questionable assumptions supplant local understanding. Etherington criticizes the coalition decision to disband the Iraqi army, but does he really believe that a predominantly Shiite province would have welcomed continued deployment of an army it viewed as an agent of oppression?
The description of Sadr’s revolt continues the narrative’s myopia. Etherington describes compound perimeter defenses, conversations with military officers, and his own weaponry, but makes little effort to understand the internal political dynamics that led to the revolt. His treatment of it is limited to a portion of one chapter. He offers no analysis of Sadr’s subsequent decision to join the political process, nor does he consider the motivations and planning that underpinned Sadr’s strategy.
Questions over Etherington’s objectivity as narrator also undercut his recounting the CPA’s governance of Al-Kut. An official assessment of what went wrong in Al-Kut placed blame on Etherington for, among other faults, “toning down” reports of Islamist activity.[12] Historians will find value in Etherington’s account, though, in that it illustrates the isolation of the CPA as it consumed itself with its own bureaucracy while remaining oblivious to Iraqi political developments outside its compound walls.
Michael Rubin
Sailors in the Holy Land: The 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah
The multi-month expedition undertaken by the U.S. Navy to the Holy Land and led by Lt. William F. Lynch in 1848 rates as one of the most exotic the service has ever undertaken. At a time when the navy consisted of only eleven thousand officers and men and in general stayed on well-worn routes, setting off to the Dead Sea, not for any military purpose but in search of Sodom and Gomorrah, ranks as a folly. But the mission had serious scientific purposes, was professionally executed, and provides to this day important information on the Jordan River and its associated lakes. (This author cited Lynch’s report at length in a 1988 article.)
Jampoler clearly took great pleasure in writing this very detailed account of the Lynch expedition, gamboling after topics that are not, strictly speaking, essential to his text (such as the marital infidelities of Lynch’s wife while he was at sea or the connection between the city of Sodom and the jailing of Oscar Wilde). He satisfyingly tracks down references, provides historical context, and gives those details necessary to make the nearly yearlong trip come alive. But the author’s focus is almost exclusively American, so that the Middle East of the time feels more like a colorful and unchanging backdrop than an alive and dynamic foreground. Any reader who would approach Sailors in the Holy Land from the point of view of learning about Palestine a century and a half back will be disappointed; for such readers, there is no replacing the accounts of the participants, including Lynch’s two books and those of other participants, John S. Jenkins and Edward Montague.
Daniel Pipes
Security, Reform and Peace: The Three Pillars of U.S. Strategy in the Middle East
Every four years, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy convenes a bipartisan group of statesmen, legislators, analysts, and experts to examine U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Through seminar discussions and travel, the Presidential Study Group, a who’s who of the policy world, examines pressing issues and offers policy recommendations to whomever may occupy the White House after the November elections.
The Presidential Study Group, always a good read, this year offers recommendations on three topics: security, reform, and peace. The report deals with broad themes such as energy security, training the new Iraqi security forces, and “coordinating strategy on Iran’s nuclear program with key European and Security Council powers.” While events will likely show both the European Union and United Nations to be insincere in their efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear program, the emphasis on energy security was prescient given the subsequent rise in oil prices.
Political reform, the report says, is developing a strategy to win the ideological war against Islamist extremism. It rightly calls on President George W. Bush to better use his bully-pulpit in this regard. While State Department pronouncements are frequent, their impact is limited. With the globalization of the media, many Middle Easterners look directly to the White House. Noteworthy is that while democracy is mentioned at several points throughout the document, it does not constitute a main topic, highlighting the continuing gap between the foreign policy elite and the Bush administration.
At the center of the group’s strategy for peace is support of Palestinian reformers and the encouragement of “orderly Israeli disengagement” from Gaza. Also, and again prescient given the subsequent Syrian-backed assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, it dedicates several pages to achieving reform in Syria and encouraging an end to its occupation of Lebanon.
One of the report’s most interesting features is the dissents that some group members offer. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright argues that the primary responsibility to win the “battle of ideas” should remain within the State Department and not the National Security Council, and she blames past failures on inadequate funding. Francis Fukuyama takes issue with the idea that Hezbollah and Hamas should remain foci of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, arguing, “Unlike Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah and Hamas have been fairly careful not to pick a fight with us directly.” (This ignores Hezbollah’s 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the most deadly terrorist attack against Americans prior to 9-11.)
Several Democratic advisors sought to downplay the notion of military action against Iran, arguing that hostile rhetoric might tie U.S. hands. Implicit in this suggestion is that Washington might be persuaded to allow Iran nuclear capability as part of a grand bargain. Former National Security Council official Flyntt Leverett urged greater engagement with Syria–a strategy with a long record of failure. Daniel Pipes dissented from a different perspective, taking issue with the idea that Israel’s unilateral disengagement would make a two-state solution more likely and also casting doubt on the wisdom of U.S. support for Turkey’s full European Union membership.
Michael Rubin
The Shahids: Islam and Suicide Attacks
Since the early 1980s, the world has witnessed many instances of the grotesque instrument of suicide bombings, spreading death, destruction, and fear. It is, therefore, essential to understand the terrorist organizations that adopt this method of waging war. Shay’s study on shahids (Islamic martyrs) is a timely investigation into this subject that should be widely read.
As Shay notes, suicide terror is not a new phenomenon, nor is it entirely located within the extremist culture of political Islam. Two of the most prominent individual victims of suicide bombings were Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister of India, killed in 1991 by a Tamil female bomber during a political rally in the midst of an election campaign, and similarly, Sri Lankan president Primadasa, assassinated in 1993.
Shay’s book includes a useful historical survey of Islamic suicide bombings taking the readers all the way back to the eleventh century Hassan as-Sabah in his famous fortress, “Alamut,” on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Sabah organized the secret order of the Hashshashin (Assassins), and his followers, for a while, terrorized centers of political authority across the Middle East in the midst of the Crusades. The Shahids also includes a compilation of recent suicide bombings for anyone wanting to review the record since 9-11. Although Israel has been the most often hit target of suicide bombers, most victims of suicide bombings these days are Iraqi Shiites.
The Tamil Tigers, waging war against Sri Lankan authorities to establish an independent Tamil entity on the island, were primarily responsible for being the first to employ suicide bombings as their weapon of terror. Other terrorist organizations such as the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK) in Turkey, the Chechen rebels in Chechnya and Russia, and jihadi groups based in Pakistan responsible for terrorist strikes inside Jammu and Kashmir within India, adopted the Tamil innovation of suicide bombings to sow fear in the mistaken belief that their respective causes can succeed as a result.
Shay has filled an essential gap in our understanding of suicide bombings as a modern political phenomenon and, moreover, armed with religious justifications when it comes to Muslim terrorism. His book begs the question, however, in what manner will Muslims repudiate both the politics of jihadi terrorism and the use of Islam to justify a crime that no religion worth its name can legitimate or defend. But that is a book only to be written when Muslims will have recovered their faith tradition from the perversions it has been subjected to by men in religious garbs such as Ayatollah Khomeini or the blind sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.
Salim Mansur
The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East
Rabinovich has greatly advanced the understanding of the Yom Kippur war. An increasing number of memoirs by the participants and the release of Israeli documents enable the author to piece together a much clearer picture of what happened. This book is written in a chronological, narrative style that is riveting, portraying the ferocity of the conflict, using the words and writings of Israelis from the private to the prime minister. This is accomplished in a seamless fashion, moving from the Golan front to the Sinai, from the soldier on the ground to the high command.
Rabinovich illuminates the glaring failures of some of the Israeli commanders, blinded by personal animosities and a deprecating view of the Arabs, whose courage and abilities in the war the author notes. He makes clear that the courage and initiative of Israeli junior officers and enlisted men turned the tide, despite, rather than because of, their higher command leadership.
He examines the near-fatal intelligence assessments by the Israelis with their ingrained belief that the Egyptians were not ready to attack. Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, Israeli intelligence maintained this assessment until the last day, allowing the Israelis to be surprised and nearly overwhelmed.
Rabinovich focuses on the human drama of the war but does not provide more than occasional glimpses of the Arab side. This is a function of the fact that there are few credible Arab sources available, particularly on the Syrian side. Although not intended as an academic strategic study of the war, much can be learned from The Yom Kippur War by specialists as well as the general reader.
Norvell De Atkine
Fayetteville, N.C.
[1] Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 2004. See “Brief Reviews,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2005, p. 93.
[2] The contributor biography included in the collection describes Galbraith as “an advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government and Kurdistan National Assembly,” p. 341. Senior Kurdish Regional Government officials told the author about the paid relationship in Baghdad, Feb. 22, 2004, Sulaymaniyah, Mar. 14, 2004, and Erbil, Nov. 3, 2004.
[3] See, Kanan Makiya, The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004).
[4] “Iran’s Link to Al-Qaeda: The 9-11 Commission’s Evidence,” Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2004, pp. 71-4.
[5] “Beeman: Rafsanjani Victory Probable, but Not Certain, in Iran’s ‘Real Election,’” Council on Foreign Relations, June 16, 2005.
[6] Avi Shlaim, Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine, 1921-1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
[7] Efraim Karsh, “Benny Morris’s Reign of Error, Revisited,” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005, pp. 31-42.
[8] Prometheus Books, 1995. See, “Brief Reviews,” Middle East Quarterly, Mar. 1996, p. 86. Writings of other Muslims and non-Muslims who either share Ibn Warraq’s perspective or have contributed to his work in general can be found at http://www.islam-watch.org/.
[9] John Perry, “Language Reform in Turkey and Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 17 (1985): 295-311.
[10] Raymond G. Helmick, S.J., “Coercive Agreements and the Disparity of Power,” Counterpunch, Dec. 18-19, 2004.
[11] See, “Al-Kut, Iraq: After-Battle Report,” Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2004, pp. 68-9.
[12] Ibid., p. 69.
[13] At http:// www.washingtoninstitute.org/html/pdf/PSG2005.pdf.
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