{"id":503,"date":"2007-02-08T20:14:44","date_gmt":"2007-02-09T03:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/?p=503"},"modified":"2007-02-08T20:14:44","modified_gmt":"2007-02-09T03:14:44","slug":"rules-for-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/08\/rules-for-the-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Rules for the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five US helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the past 3 weeks. Four Marines were killed today and the number of Americans killed in Iraq is now above 3,100. Today I heard that Hamas and Fatah have decided for the next day or so to stop killing each other in Gaza but the likelihood of that happening is low to say the least. All of this stryfe makes me think of a recent Thomas Friedman column at the end of the year where he updated his rules of Middle East reporting which work equally well for diplomacy.
\nFor example, rule 14 is especially striking to me after my recent non-UN sponsored fact finding mission to Israel: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: \u201cGreat powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.\u201d
\nAfter the jump, please read the rest. They are really<\/em> thought provoking.
\nVia Neu
\nFor a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes vanished last summer. So, I\u2019d like to offer President Bush my updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they\u2019ll help him figure out what to do next in Iraq.
\nRule 1: What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn\u2019t count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.
\nRule 2: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq should have to take a test, consisting of one question: \u201cDo you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?\u201d If you answer yes, you can\u2019t go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, Korea or Germany \u2014 not Iraq.
\nRule 3: If you can\u2019t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don\u2019t try to explain it at all \u2014 they won\u2019t believe it.
\nRule 4: In the Middle East, never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person doing the conceding. If I had a dollar for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat, I could paper my walls.
\nRule 5: Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over before the next morning\u2019s paper.
\nRule 6: In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away.
\nRule 7: The most oft-used expression by moderate Arab pols is: \u201cWe were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it\u2019s too late. It\u2019s all your fault for being so stupid.\u201d
\nRule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas \u2014 like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It\u2019s the South vs. the South.
\nRule 9: In Middle East tribal politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, \u201cI\u2019m weak, how can I compromise?\u201d And when it\u2019s strong, it will tell you, \u201cI\u2019m strong, why should I compromise?\u201d
\nRule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don\u2019t want to play that role, Iraq\u2019s civil war will end with A or B.
\nRule 11: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel\u2019s mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can\u2019t understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera\u2019s editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: \u201cIt gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about seven million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West\u2019s problem is that it does not understand this.\u201d
\nRule 12: Thus, the Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.
\nRule 13: Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs\u2019 first priority is \u201cjustice.\u201d The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in endless tribal wars. For Iraq\u2019s long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For us, democracy is all about protecting minority rights. For them, democracy is first about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.
\nRule 14: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: \u201cGreat powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.\u201d
\nRule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can\u2019t want it more than they do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five US helicopters have been shot down in Iraq in the past 3 weeks. Four Marines were killed today and the number of Americans killed in Iraq is now above 3,100. Today I heard that Hamas and Fatah have decided for the next day or so to stop killing each other in Gaza but the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[330,410,500,533,640],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-israel","tag-mideast","tag-politics","tag-religions","tag-thomasfriedman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}