In January, 2011, Al Jezeera disclosed confidential documents shedding light on details of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks known to have been tightly supervised by Washington. The information pertaining to the 2007-2009 period proved to be of particular interest to the Arab and perhaps to the rest of the world. It transpired that at the time Palestinians were ready to make concessions to Israel over issues they formerly even refused to discuss. They considered dropping the demand of full repatriation of refugees and their descendants and, moreover, ceding to Israel control over all, with one exception, parts of East Jerusalem. Palestinians seemed open to compromise even over the sensitive issue of the status of Muslim and Judaic shrines sited in Jerusalem. The talks actually promised to produce tangible results in resolving problems in such spheres as the disengagement, Jewish settlements, and security.
However, as the revelations made clear, hopes to have the problems resolved in the foreseeable future crushed due to fundamental disagreements over four major Jewish enclaves whose existence made the Palestinian territory discontinuous and gave Israel control over the region's cherished water resources. The collapse of the talks was also in part due to the lack of legitimacy suffered by the current Palestinian leadership with M. Abbas at the helm (Abbas's term expired in 2009 and at the moment the Hamas which is increasingly popular in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank is not easy to contain). In a milder form, the Israeli government is also facing the legitimacy problem following a series of scandals.
The CIS countries should be mindful of the pattern set by «the indefinite settlement» between Israel and the Palestinians. In the post-Soviet space, the build-up of negotiating formats ostensibly meant to help quell inter-ethnic conflicts is creating instruments which are instead used to influence the domestic and international policies of the new independent states.
It factors into the situation that the balance of forces in Transcaucasia has evolved over the past decades and that at the moment not only Moscow, but also Baku, Yerevan, and Tbilisi should be regarded as significant centers of power. Similarly to the Middle East, the regimes in South Caucasian republics are chronically unstable. Even in Georgia, the loudly advertised reforms had a mixed impact on the country's socioeconomic landscape. Armenia is becoming increasingly open to the US influence while the republic' socioeconomic problems are piling up at a threatening pace. As for Azerbaijan, the regime seems self-confident so far, but heated debates over hijabs and likewise themes along with arrests of the Islamic Party leaders may eventually be recognized as symptoms of serious domestic problems. ![]()
Armenia, 2008
Concern is creeping in that eventually the Caucasian and Central Asian republics, and perhaps also Ukraine, may follow the pattern of the Middle Eastern countries which are currently facing serial outbreaks of public unrest.It would be practically impossible to gauge the relative contributions of domestic and external factors to current escalations in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen. At least, one gets an impression that the seemingly spontaneous outpourings of mass discontent in these Arab States actually took a long time to prepare.
In 2003, Washington launched the deployment of infrastructures of the so-called Middle East Partnership Initiative comprising offices of US representatives in the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia, additional units within US embassies, etc. The objectives behind the activity were to establish links in the humanitarian sphere, to organize exhibitions, and to arrange journalists' and public figures' trips to the US meant to familiarize them with the democracy "in its original form". The Forum for the Future convened in Morocco in 2004 with then US Secretary of State C. Powell attending. The Forum's key idea was to shift the US focus towards various forms of direct democracy in Middle Eastern countries via the creation of networks of youth-oriented NGOs, the opening of opportunities to small and mid-size businesses, and the interaction of the corresponding diasporas in the US and Europe. Truly speaking, the social inequality, poverty, and other Middle Eastern ills largely grew out of the West's neo-colonial policies. For example the food assistance, while temporarily easing social tensions, in the long run weakened the recipients' agricultural sectors and exposed the rural populations to additional hardships. ![]()
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Egypt, 2011
The interventions by the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) aimed at a structural overhaul of the region's economies typically echoed with the worst consequences. Starting in the late 1970ies – early 1980ies, their programs were offered to economically embattled developing countries, drastic reforms – the downscaling of the state sector, financial austerity, privatization, and currency devaluation – being the loan eligibility criteria. In 1977-1984, a tide of protests and rebellions swept across Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, the countries which were the first to try out the IMF and International Bank of Reconstruction and Development reform packages.
Having surveyed the outcome of the implementation of the above programs, by 1990 the UN experts concluded that they de facto neutralized the efforts of a number of countries to improve their populations' living standards. In half of the cases, the decision to stop subsidizing food prices caused the consumption to fall below the accepted standards in the countries which received loans from international institutions. The structural reforms in the developing countries led to the formation of a population stratum known as the new poor, which comprised the state sector employees and those who lost jobs due to austerity measures. It is likely that these people and their children seeing no light at the end of the tunnel grew into the main driving force of the recent outbursts of public discontent which no doubt carry a hidden religious agenda. Other consequences brought about by the Western-induced reforms were unprecedented social stratification, widespread unemployment, rampant corruption, etc. ![]()
Iran, 1979
The revolution which led to the ouster of the shah in Iran three decades ago highlighted the inability of the Western intelligence services to manipulate the subsequent developments - Grand Ayatollah Khomeini had his own game in mind and promptly turned the country against the US. Now Washington is applauding what may be the eve of a new Islamic revolution in Egypt, the country ruled for three decades by US ally and Iran's foe H. Mubarak. It is hard to say at the moment how likely Egypt's London-connected Muslim Brotherhood is to follow the footsteps of their Shia predecessors... ![]()
Tunisia, 2011
Just a few years ago Jordan's Crown Prince El Hassan bin Talal remarked that the Middle East with its ruthless violence was sinking into chaos with little hope to ever overcome crises and stagnation.
The overhaul of the Middle East based on the West's "catch-up development" model ended with a collapse. Attempts to replay the model in the settings of Transcaucasia and Central Asia would imminently generate new conflicts, widen the socioeconomic gaps in the region's republics, and, in the long run, similarly cause a collapse. These days, a lot depends on the intellectual elite's ability to offer alternative developmental scenarios synchronized with local traditions and customs. |
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