By Dr Dennis Walker,  Researcher,

                  Monash Asia Institute, Monash University, Caulfield 3145. 

                   Email: --- dennis.walker@monash.edu

                   Phone: 9540 8441 (mornings).

PERCEPTIONS OF WW1 CONFLICTS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE _

1: THE WAR IN LEBANON.

   _The Functions of the Indigenous Martyrs_

            The formal execution or murder by some Turks of Catholic or Muslim Lebanese/Syrians soon before or during World War I could define in two ways the indigenous nation-community that the clericists would henceforth strive to achieve.  On one hand, if the items defined the Turks as Muslim and the victims as Christian, the events could alienate the Christian readership from not just the Turks but from Muslim Arabs of the Syrian interior and longer littoral.  In the other direction, if Muslim Arab victims were also perceived as covictims because of the literary Arabic they shared with the Maronites, then that could foster political community with wider Islamo-Arab populations --- and perhaps Lebanon’s affiliation to some pan-Syrian or pan-Arab entity.  

            Of the two possibilities, most items on pre-1918 Catholic victims that _al-Mashriq_ carried fostered Lebanonism, but sometimes in an incomplete way. _al-Mashriq_ published a retrospect in 1921 on the lives and execution of the two brothers Filib and Farid al-Khazin (from a feudal family).  It represented Filib al-Khazin (1865-1916) as from his youth having protested abuses of the Turks under the mutasarrif Wasa Pasha (governed Mountain Lebanon 1883-1892) from the Egyptian press.  Once the French Consul appointed Filib an honorary dragoman, the two brothers were emboldened to launch the newspaper _al-Arz_ (The Cedar) which fiercely defended not just Lebanon’s internationally-guaranteed autonomy but, perhaps equally, the ancient “sacred rights” (al-huquq al-muqaddasah) of the protector France in the homeland.   When Italy seized Libya from the Ottoman Empire, its armored cruisers sank two Ottoman torpedo ships in Bayrut harbor.  Filip’s lament at that time was that it had not been done by France, which alone among the Powers had the right to conduct such actions “in these lands”.  Clearly, the Ottoman central government one day might have more to fear from the pair than words or editorializing, but the early perspective of _al-Mashriq_ in 1921 was of a recent Ottoman system in which the printed page could muster immense political power in itself and thus had to be controlled or repressed.  The _al-Mashriq_ retrospect speculated that it was the publication by the brothers in several volumes of Arabic translations of the correspondence between the Powers establishing France’s maternal role and rights in Lebanon that made Jamal Pasha, the Turkish governor of Syria, decide to execute Filib and Farid.

            The martyrs who sacrifice their lives for the particularist homeland are simultaneously sustained by a Christianity acculturated to the Catholicism of Europe’s Latin peoples, eg. France.  The two brothers had expected from the first day of the sitting of the court that it would sentence them to death as it had all others. They were sustained in jail as they prepared themselves for their final journey to their Creator and that other “heavenly Homeland” by their regular reading of Thomas Akempis’ _The Imitation of Christ_, as well as prayer and meditation.  There was a touch of hagiography in some details of the last weeks of the al-Khazin brothers: for example their refusal to eat more than the needed minimum of the prison fare so that they could donate the rest to the poor.

              In regard to current political context and functions, the _al-Mashriq_ tribute was stylizing the death of Filib and Farid al-Khazin to make it of use in the mobilization of Maronite audiences to the side of France in the ideologically much less clear-cut situation that was developing as France’s imposition of her non-pious rule hit the Arabic culture, the political dignity and the solid, simple Christian religious values of the Maronites.  French mandatory rule was turning out to be not quite the expected liberation or Pan-Catholic conjunction with a Christian protector.  At least some Maronites had been showing signs since 1918 of now wanting to distance France by some sort of linkage to mainly Muslim Arabs in Syria’s littoral and hinterland with a polity to be centered around Damascus.  Ritual commemoration of model martyrs oriented to Latin Catholicism and to France could help contain such swings among _al-Mashriq_’s elite readership.

              Greater political openness to Muslims in a context of the reaction against France after 1918 would be no new thing for Maronites or Melkites.  Before 1914, various secular-minded groups (and Maronite Patriarch Ilyas Butrus al-Huwayyik before 1908 and CUP rule) had at points sought closer political relations with Turks and/or Muslim Arabs in the sprawling, potentially lucrative Ottoman Empire.  Such subversive precursors of alliance with the Arab lands at expense of France had to be excised from Lebanon’s history.  The Francophile particularists mustered the strong narrative of suffering and martyrdom for God and Homeland to nullify the plurality of pre-1914 Lebanese Catholic history and ideologies that had to be dealt with covertly.  For a range of Catholics, martyrdoms during World War I finally showed the impossibility of affiliating to at least some Muslims in a political community, with distancing of the West’s Christian powers, which integrative Ottomanism by some Maronites had already tried.

            In the _al-Mashriq_ retrospect, those martyred under Turkish rule during World War 1 decide what had been a long-running struggle for power between two ideological categories of Maronites.  Thus, following the 1908 Committee of Union and Progress coup in Constantinople and the hopes that a parliamentarist Ottoman polity could get off the ground, “the Turks and their tools [=some establishment or secular Catholics] became more enraged than ever against the two brothers because they were so effectively obstructing their realising of their wish to completely annex Lebanon to the Ottoman Sultanate”.  The (pre-WW1) memory that enraged the writer most was “the day that Lebanese faction rose up in the wake of the proclamation of the Ottoman constitution [after the CUP coup of 1908] to insist that Lebanon had to elect representatives to represent it in the [restored] Turkish parliament” in Istanbul.  In this, the secularist-Ottomanist faction among the Maronites was being manipulated by Turkish officials and politicians to “deny Lebanon its independence and thereby prevent the European states from intervening in the affairs of this land/these lands” (_hadhihil-bilad_).  The two al-Khazin brothers blocked “those of the other doctrine” with the “unrelenting” (but not very physical) war they waged in their newspaper _al-Arz_.  Their “logical” territorial nationalism (wataniyyah) presented legally airtight refutations: sending representatives to Constantinople would have violated Lebanon’s autonomy ("self-independence") granted under a Constitution guaranteed by the great powers.

             The holy blood of the saint-particularists whom Jamal martyred opened the way to dismiss those who had worked for a humane political community with Ottoman Muslims as materialist opportunists in contrast.  Yet these very denunciations underscored institutions and processes that had been operating to integrate Muslim Turks, Muslim Arabs, and Arabic Christians prior to the War and the martyrdoms.  Archbishop ‘Abdallah al-Khuri’s 1921 elegy denounced “public posts (_al-waza'if_) that make people remiss from serious work, inclining them to prefer personal interest over the collective interest.  Everyone knows how widespread this disease became in Turkey and Lebanon, leading to the degradation of people’s souls and the violation of people’s rights”.  But, the pure love of the two brothers for their homeland had made them spurn all posts the government offered to win their silence about its evil deeds.  The two brothers’ construction of patriotism (al-wataniyyah) only allowed them to court the protection of France which alone would actualize the homeland’s interest. 

            _al-Mashriq_ imaged that the blood of the martyrs ended any possibility of some humane political community with Turks.  For this, the Archbishop defined the group the two martyrs defended as Christian --- yet it did not so fuse the Turkish enemy with Islam as to include Arab Muslims.  The sufferings of Arabic, Syriac and Armenian Christians during World War 1 could activate ideas that would polarize those all together against Muslims in general or Islam.  But the anti-Turkism of 1920s clericist-Catholic Lebanese writings that reconstructed memories of WW1 repression, martyrdom and suffering to fuel a new nationhood could keep up some affiliation to the hinterland’s Arab Muslims.  A sense that Syrian and other Muslim Arabs had been colleagues with Lebanese Christians in a joint linguistic-cum-ethnic coalition against the Turks in the wide Ottoman Empire was still vivid in _al-Mashriq_’s 1922 tribute to “the two martyrs of Lebanon.”

             As soon as their interrogation began, Archbishop ‘Abdallah al-Khuri wrote, Filib and his brother knew that they were heading for the same fate as “an elite of the [leading] men of Syria and Lebanon who were detained with them, and who were driven either to Damascus (al-Sham) or to Bayrut for sentences of execution to be carried out against them --- figures like Shafiq al-Mu'ayyad and ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi whose bravery and preparedness to sacrifice their lives for the suffering homeland the Syrians will long remember.  By the blood of those heroes the land [or lands --- _al-bilad_] won title to be purified of the Turkish element” [=Ottoman phraseology] “and the corruptions it wrought”.  True, the Catholic writer remained aware of the separateness of faith of those recent allies.  However, he felt obliged to “richly praise the patriotism of our Arab Muslim brothers who  --- despite their religious bonds with the Turks --- were not deceived by their lying promises but kept up their fury at the injustices and terrible crimes they committed.”  Jamal Pasha’s ill-advised repression dug “a deep ravine that irreversibly separated the two [Ottoman] elements/ethnic groups (_al-‘unsurayn_)”.

             In this sector, the tribute to the two bearers of the standard of ultra-particularism and a sort of spiritual fusion with France, does have a sense of commonality in the face of the Turks at least that could blur the nation in Lebanon out into some wider Arab political nation.  The memorization of martydom here could activate the sense of al-‘Arab as a cherished wide classical community in which Father Luwis Shayku had stressed the membership and roles of many Christians.  This quicksilver margin of the tribute to the two al-Khazin brothers could veer either way --- to Lebanese particularism or to a wider Arab linguistic nationalism.  This was, though, a margin. FN[[Archbishop Abdallah al-Khuri, “Shahida Lubnan: al-Shaykh Filib wal-Shaykh Farid Qa‘dan al-Khazin”, _al-Mashriq_ June 1921 pp. 401-408.   There was a youthful radical, post-Christian element among the forces that called for Lebanon’s inclusion into Ottoman parliamentarism after 1908, but also “a group of the eminent/powerful/established figures” (_qawm min al-kibar_): see _al-Ahram_ editor Dawud Barakat’s obituary speech for Patriarch al-Huwayyik in _al-Huda_ 1 February 1932 pp. 4-5.  Thus, a section of the established Maronite feudal class was engaged with an Ottomanist integrationism which could slash the patriarchate’s power]]FN.

_Patriarch Ilyas Butrus al-Huwayyik versus Jamal Pasha_

                During his 1922 account of Armenian suffering and death that he witnessed, the Maronite Juzif Tawtal already termed Jamal, the Ottoman governor of Syria during WW1, as “Jamal Pasha the Murderer” ("al-Saffah"), the epithet that would henceforth accompany his name in Lebanonist and Arabist nationalist discourses FN[[Juzif Tawtal, “Hawadith Dayr al-Zur fi Zaman al-Harb” (The Events in Dayr al-Zur during the War), _al-Mashriq_ June 1922 p. 567]]FN.  

             During WW1, Jamal Pasha as governor of Syria was intent to modify procedures to symbolize a partial shift of power from the Maronite church and from Mount Lebanon’s autonomous institutions towards himself and the Ottoman central government. The Empire’s central Turkish authorities had abolished the capitulations; Jamal sent his troops into Mountain Lebanon and at one point imposed a blockade that starved many ordinary people there.  The food-blockade came at a high-point of a long personal trial of wills between him and the Maronite Patriarch Ilyas Butrus al-Huwayyik (appointed in 1899): Jamal’s troops were in the Jabal but he did not disarm the Maronite population, conscript them widely or prohibit them from leaving it: this suggests that he meant to let food flow in again if al-Huwayyik made some gestures of subordination, which the Patriarch inventively avoided as long or as much as he could.

             In early 1922, Archbishop ‘Abdallah al-Khuri published in the Jesuit-founded newspaper _al-Bashir_ a defence of stances that al-Huwayyik had adopted towards Jamal during the War.  al-Khuri conceded that a section of the Maronites felt that the Patriarch had shown weakness at one point of his protracted confrontation with the man who symbolized Turkish rule when in October 1916 he signed a statement to the effect that Jamal had treated the populations of Lebanon and Syria well, particularly the Christians.  [The well-attended demonstrations by Catholics after 1918 for a Greater Lebanon unit under French tutelage were in part upward pressure from Maronite populations that had been radicalized by the war-time suffering: it was not just that the Patriarch organized them].

             Yet, while ‘Abdallah’s 1922 memorization did not focus that aspect, it looks from his data that Jamal had been acting in geographical Syria without much control or monitoring from Constantinople.  ‘Abdallah, an intermediary for al-Huwayyik to Jamal, recalled the latter as seeking written statements from local Christian leaders to counter articles appearing in the French press in 1916 that “the Turks” were determined to starve the Christian people to extinction in Lebanon and Syria, “that he had set up gallows” --- the latter was the simple truth ---, “and that the Maronites were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the French so that they could join them and expel the Turks and turn their country into a French colony”.  Such international reports had apprised the CUP leaders away in the capital that Jamal had so alienated all the Syrians, the Muslims perhaps even more than the Christians, as to make their discontent threaten the Ottoman State’s hold in those lands.  Jamal Pasha’s repeated efforts to force Patriarch al-Huwayyik into rituals of respect towards the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Istanbul that all non-Maronite Christian clerics accepted were to assure his faraway CUP superiors that his provinces were non-rebellious and quasi-normal.

             Maronite clericist negotiators were concerned with their position and that of their populations before Turkish power.  During the discussions with Jamal on behalf of the Patriarch, ‘Abdallah replied that newspapers during wars strive to blacken the reputations of the enemy states.  But the numbers of Lebanese people really were falling because at least 50,000 had died in the famine and with Lebanon now on the threshold of winter much food would have to be brought in by its close or the country would lose half its population.  In al-Khuri’s narrative, the statement of good treatment from Governor Jamal that the Patriarch would now sign was the latter’s response to the existential crisis of Maronites in general that was now forcing him to negotiate and concede.

             None of the Catholic Lebanese sources in Arabic we scanned recorded that Jamal was rather pro-French culturally and that he may have regretted the CUP’s entry of WW1 on the German side FN[[Characterization of Jamal by liberal-Lebanonist historian Yusuf Mu‘awwad 21 May 2001]]FN.  For the Patriarch, and for his subordinate Archbishop ‘Abdallah in his 1922 commemoration, the connection with France was both a threat to the Maronites given the mood of the hard-pressed Turks, and a proud emblem of identity they flaunted in their face.  To aspersions of disloyalty to the Ottoman state, ‘Abdallah responded that France had out of “love” of the Christians established many institutions in Lebanon such as the theological college in which he had learnt.  The Maronites had duly loved her back, but, ‘Abdallah told Jamal, that love had far from fostered in him “any inclination on my part for my country to become a French colony”.  When Jamal voiced the same concern of loyalty to the Patriarch in a meeting on 21 July 1915, al-Huwayyik similarly put the relationship with benefactor France within a frame of the Maronites’ adhesion to the Ottoman State --- which may have been his real stance up to 1908.

            Jamal Pasha was concerned in 1916 with his deteriorating standing in Istanbul, or his place in world Francophone history or perhaps how he would fare before some trial by the Allies if they won.  He refuted at length images in the French press that could be construed to link him to an artificial famine.  He rhetorically asked Abdallah if he had sent the locusts in 1915 or stopped rain from falling in 1916 or organized the sea blockade by the Allied navies that cut off the flow of food and funds from the Syrian diaspora?   He now sounded eager to shower the Patriarch with grain, and did get the letter of commendation out of him that the Maronite side assumed would be understood in Europe and the Americas as having been coerced FN[[Archbishop ‘Abdallah al-Khuri, deputy of the Patriarch, “Safhah Ta’rikhiyyah Min Ayyam al-Harb” (A Page of History from the Days of the War), _al-Bashir_ 1 March 1922 pp. 1-2.  For al-Huwayyik on the Maronites’ loyalty before Jamal Pasha on 21 July 1915 see Yusuf Mu’awwad, “Exercise de dhimmitude: Patriarche Ilyas al-Huwayyik versus Jamal Pasha” (Paper: c. 2000) p. 8]]FN.

               ‘Abdallah al-Khuri in 1922 had characterized the non-Muslim Lebanese in religious terms as Christian vis-à-vis Jamal and the Turks. Going further, fairly secularist-liberal historian Yusuf Mu‘awwad (c. 2000) interpreted Jamal as motivated by a Muslim communalism seen as having persisted among elite Ottoman Turks amid sweeping Westernization: Jamal was trying to maintain the ancient pattern of relations of “dominant and dominated, people of the majority and those tolerated, Muslim and _dhimmi_” --- a late echo of themes in the Mandate-period early Kata’ib.  For Mu‘awwad here, the conflict was not originated by issues articulated by the two men such as new taxes or whether or not the Ottomans should disarm or conscript the Christians: rather, the Ottoman officer Jamal was mustering pressures and issues to bring the _dhimmi_ to heel and call him to order FN[[“Exercise” pp. 1-2]]FN.  Archbishop al-Khuri did not formally characterize Jamal’s maneuvers thus in 1922 soon after the events, but many Maronites in the 20th century saw such a dhimmifying ethos constructed upon Islam as determining the attitudes of Turks and Muslim Arabs to Lebanon’s Catholics.   Tendencies in early mandate-period Catholic memorization to denounce oppressive Turks in terms of Islam were contained by the sober al-Huwayyik’s lack of much animus against that religion, and by Lebanese Catholics and Muslims Arabs having faced Turkish ill-treatment together --- affinity that had to be highlighted to foster new Lebanonist or loose Arab political communities after WW1.  During his trials of will with Jamal, al-Huwayyik had tried to present himself as in some ways an intercessor-representative for Druze/Muslim Lebanese individuals as well as for the Maronite sect: the clerical archivist Fr Ibrahim Harfush retransmitted it in 1934, in a period in which Greater Lebanon’s Christians and Muslims had to be led to unifying images of their common past if the Lebanese state was to be viable in its coming independence.

                 But Jamal and his sometimes post-Muslim new Turkish elite had concerns apart from religions and sects.  Pro-France sympathies among a purposeful, compact population such as the Maronites amid a World War could provide a bridgehead against the Ottoman state.  His state-prescribed functions thus bound Jamal to find ways to contain Maronite clerical leaders, whatever the extents to which Francophone Turks of his type still believed in Islam.   One stake was the security, sovereignty and survival of a State that existed and was refusing to be dismantled.  No doubt, as a schizoid sadist, Jamal relished his power to exile the Patriarch from Lebanon at any time and harm humans who were Christian Lebanese.  On another plane, as an acculturated Muslim or post-Muslim, Jamal may have felt all he and his category of Turks had in common with Francophone elite Lebanese as against traditional Muslims.  After the suffering he had ran ordinary Lebanese through by manipulating the flow of food, a crestfallen Jamal --- so Fr Harfush’s 1934 memorization ran --- in a December 1917 meeting with al-Huwayyik confided his tensions with the German military, and seemed understanding of the Maronites’ preference for the French as mentors.   In this swing, Jamal was treating al-Huwayyik as a peer in a common Francophone culture that would promote modernity, and such a respect or admiration towards the Maronites may have always been latent in his pressurizing of their leader FN[[Yusuf Mu’awwad, “Exercise de dhimmitude” pp. 15-16.   Mu‘awwad based his analysis of the conflict between Jamal and the Patriarch on Michel Shibli’s biography of the Maronite Archbishop of Bayrut Mgr Butrus Shibli, _Tarjamat al-Mutran Butrus Shibli_ (Bayrut: al-Matba’at al-Kathulikiyyah 1929) which carried extensive passages from the Archbishop’s journals; and on church archivist Fr Ibrahim Harfush’s _Dala’il al-‘Inayat al-Samadaniyyah_ (Juniyah: Matba‘at al-Mursalin al-Lubnaniyyin 1934)]]FN.

             When facing Jamal Pasha, in his untiring post-WW1 drive for a Greater Lebanon under French direction against resistance from some secularist Maronites as well as Muslims, and in the analytical sweep of his Arabic theological and political writings and addresses, Patriarch al-Huwayyik today bulks large in any memory of Lebanon’s history. The liberal Lebanese nationalist Dr ‘Isam Khalifah, a Maronite, in 1997 historiography he also tailored to help bring all Lebanese back together after their 1975-1990 War so that they could take back sovereignty, focused on al-Huwayyik’s “resistance” to the war-time famine.   Khalifah stressed the Ottoman troops’ [war-imposed] exactions of livestock, wood and money from the Jabal populations, that Enver Pasha set out to suppress the Lebanese by inducing famine as the Turks already had suppressed the Armenians with “steel”, that the Patriarch tried to intercede for and get relief to local Druze/Muslims as well as Maronites during the famine, that he associated non-Catholic sects with his lobbying for expanded Lebanon, separation from Syria and the French mandate after the War, and that he wanted to minimize France’s new control.   Khalifah traced the complexly-attuned political skills with which al-Huwayyik mustered non-religious as well as Catholic sectors of the French establishment, and the Vatican, to help persuade France and the Powers to impose Greater Lebanon FN[[Dr ‘Isam Kamal Khalifah, _Shakhsiyyat Barizah fi Ta’rikh Lubnan al-Mu’asir_ (Bayrut: np. 1991) pp. 6-13, 15]]FN.  Gouraud’s 1920 proclamation of that state was the first of two crucial turning-points for the construction of Lebanese sovereign nationhood, yet current inclusive Lebanonist intellectuals and academics do not then proceed to celebrate al-Huwayyik as an icon-founder of Lebanon: his clerical function, and his long relation with the French, rule out acceptance by descendants of the Muslim populations that were incorporated by his efforts abroad more than by choice from them.

             The sufferings of Mount Lebanon’s Christians during World War I in the aftermath fueled support among Catholics for a mandate by France.  In the first item of the first issue in which _al-Mashriq_ resumed publication in January 1920, Shaykhu argued for France as the coming mandatory with reference to the war-time sufferings of the Christians of Mount Lebanon.  The break of five years that “the calamities” (=war-time conditions) imposed upon _al-Mashriq_ had been borne by its editors with [religion-inspired] _sabr_ (patience/resignation/endurance/steadfastness).  Although a Christianity-inspired ethos, Shaykhu’s language here was certainly, as ever, tinted by Islam and its classical Arabs at every turn  (“_al-sabr ul-jamil li‘ilmihim ann Allah ma‘as-sabirin” --- a straight collage by Shaykhu of the language of Qur’an  2:249, 8:46, 8:66, 12:18, 12:83!).  Now, though, the aesthetic links to Arab Muslims were outweighed by the recent sufferings and the Francophone links as Shaykhu and his readers entered the new era of “hopes” that was transforming the world (“al-‘alam al-jadid”, “inqilaban ‘aziman”).  Shaykhu hailed the Allies for having “entered the havoc of the war to defend civilization and the rights of the weak peoples and to break the yokes holding down those that had been enslaved”.   France “in the time of its war did not lose sight of our experience” and had spirited through “vast sums that saved from death thousands of people who were tottering with hunger”.

                Shaykhu’s editorial viewed Turkish repression and ill-treatment of his group during the war as a heightening of a long-standing struggle in which France had for centuries been the “refuge” of the Empire’s suffering [Christians].  France’s protection had won for “the remnants of Christianity in the [Ottoman] East” capitulatory privileges that reduced their sufferings but made the Turks envious.   Shaykhu here had half-insight that the relationship with imperial France itself sparked some repression from the Turks who wanted to maintain their state or empire, but he could not grasp the manipulative economic motives of France’s expansion when he depicted her as always shedding her blood “for every noble principle” in the “purity of her intentions”. 

             This editorial said that France offered relief from early after the Turkish collapse to “those in need from every sectarian group”.  But its overall presentation of France as acting in West Asia to promote as well as protect the Catholics there could alienate Muslim Arabs incorporated into the expanded homeland-unit from not just France but those Catholics who allied to her FN[[Luwis Shaykhu , “Tahiyyat al-Mashriq li-Qurra’ihi” (The Greeting of _al-Mashriq_ to its Readers), _al-Mashriq_ January 1920 pp. 2-3]]FN. 

             Shaykhu’s harsh binary oppositions here of (a) local Christians and a France that alone can modernize them against (b) Muslim Turks are intelligible in terms of the contraction of the Lebanese population during World War I, and the destroyed economy that that disintegration had bequeathed.  

             In one fleeting item, Shaykhu did connect “the famine [caused by] the Turks” and post-War clashes between some Shiite Arabs and some Maronite and other Christians in Southern Lebanon.  The wartime “famine has turned into the war of the sharp swords” of those shedding torrents of “the blood of our murdered Christian brothers” in Marja‘yun, Akkar, Tyre [all incorporated into Grand Liban] and the areas of Mar‘ash [Southern Turkey: massacres of Armenians 1890, 1917] and Cicilia.  This pan-Christian twinge at least of Shaykhu could conflate the Turks who systematically harmed his people and other non-Arabic Christians during World War I into various sets of local [Arab Muslims] who were more small-scale in the harm they did.  Shaykhu was disturbed, though, that the French “second mother” was taking a long time to crush these [Arab Muslim] enemies as a deterrent example FN[[Shaykhu, _al-Mashriq_ June 1920 p. 477]]FN.  This item fused France with Lebanon’s Catholics, and indeed a range of Christian populations scattered over the Middle East, but failed to name the enemies it lumped together as all “the Muslims”.

              The context of items after 1920 about Turkish or Muslim hostility or atrocities in WW1, and France as a consequent protector was the growing reaction against France and in favor of community with Muslim Arabs among educated Maronites.  Interpretations of WW1 were important motifs mustered in these disputes.  Some writers in the Catholic-clerical _al-Bashir_ itself, and in the quasi-secular _Lisan al-Hal_, were calling for the Arabic language to be given the central place in local administration and education, not French.  These calls fitted in with politicized attacks upon the French mandatory in the Lebanese parliament. The mandatory power’s imposition of French made Druze deputy Amir Fu’ad Arsalan characterize the overall French-Lebanese relationship as like France’s treatment of sub-Saharan Africans in her colonies FN[[“al-Majlis al-Niyabi: Muwazanat al-Dakhiliyyah” (Chamber of Deputies: Budget of the Ministry of the Interior) _al-Bashir_ 16 November 1922 pp. 1-2]]FN.   _al-Bashir_ countered with an apologia for France’s colonial administration in black Africa, citing (a) the consequent gratitude to France the Africans showed by their loyal combat in World War 1, and (b) the profits France permitted Lebanese traders in her sub-Saharan African colonies FN[[“Law Sa'al al-Amir Arsalan” (Had the Amir Arsalan Asked), _al-Bashir_ 18 November 1922 p. 3]]FN.  The total French empire community was the core of the humane camp of Entente nations that had been fighting in the macro-history of WW1.

The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on this August 26 removed the sword of the alleged Syrian chemical weapons from its sheath and let the snow ball of this subterfuge for a military aggression on Syria roll unchecked, raising the stakes from asking whether “it will happen” to “when” it will happen, promising that President Barak Obama “will be making an informed decision about how” to take on Syria and warning not to make a “mistake” because Obama “believes there must be accountability,” making clear that a U.S. – led military action is in the making and imminent.

A 20 – member UN independent commission of inquiry, headed by UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Angela Kane, and led by the Swedish scientist and the veteran “inspector” for the UNSCOM and UNMOVIC inspection regimes in Iraq, Ake Sellstrom, arrived in Damascus on August 24 for a fourteen - day mission to investigate whether or not chemical weapons were used in Syria.

The fact that this UN mission is in Syria in response to an official request sent by the Syrian government to the UN Security Council on March 19, 2013 to investigate the first chemical attack, which was launched then from the positions of the U.S. – sponsored armed gangs fighting the Syrian regime on the government – held northern town of Khan al_A’ssal, as well as the fact that the U.S. for five months opposed such an investigation unless the UN adopts it as an “inspection” mission all over Syria, are self – evident enough facts to leave no doubt about the real intentions of the United States.

The timing of the reported chemical attack in the eastern suburbs of the Syrian capital on August 21 coincided first with the arrival of the UN investigators in Damascus and second with launching what the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) codenamed the “Reinforcement of the Shield of the Capital” (RSC) military operation to root out the armed gangs operating in the same area, consisting of al-Qaeda – linked Islamists, but mainly of the Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. listed as a terrorist organization last December.

In view of the progress of the RSC operation, following a series of other successful operations by the SAA since their strategic breakthrough in al-Qusayr in June this year, which sealed off the borders with Lebanon through which rebels used to infiltrate, it was noteworthy that the American, French, British and German leaders as well as their Turkish, Qatari and Saudi Arabian allies demanded an immediate “ceasefire,” allegedly to allow and facilitate the mission of the UN investigators; alternatively, if the RSC operation did not stop, the Syrian government was accused by them of “systematically” destroying the evidence.

The Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallem in his press conference in Damascus on Tuesday reiterated what his government had previously confirmed: The RSC operation will continue.

The Declared Goal

The U.S. – led threats of an imminent military action was the only option left for the western backers of the rebels in Syria; their declared goal is to stem the accelerating successes of the SAA and to return the balance of power to the status quo ante.

When the 18th Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey, before the reportedly chemical attack last week, admitted that the Syrian army was “gaining momentum,” he did not “think it’ll be sustainable,” not because he was drawing on the facts on the ground, but most likely because he was privy to what was in store with his co- decision makers in Washington.

Maintaining a “balance of power” on the ground is a U.S. precondition to engage in and allow negotiations to solve the Syrian conflict peacefully. The U.S. cannot co – host with Russia the repeatedly postponed Geneva – 2 peace conference on Syria unless the military status quo on the ground is deprived of the gains won by the SAA.

Therefore, the U.S. is impatient to give “enough time” to the UN investigators to finish their mission with conclusive or inconclusive evidence, as requested by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki - moon on Wednesday. The UN envoy for Syria, al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, on the same day said that the military solution of the conflict is “impossible,” but his appeal for a peaceful solution fell on deaf ears in Washington, where plans are being worked out by leaps and bounds for an imminent military strike.

Such a strike would only exacerbate the conflict, which al-Ibrahimi on August 23 said it “is undoubtedly today the biggest threat to peace and security in the world.” 

Would Obama decide on military action to take place while the UN investigators are still in Syria? The U.S. disrespect of the UN has several precedents to make the answer in the positive a realistic probability.

Time will tell however, some say within days, but if it takes place it will be an insult to the United Nations and the world community that will further hurt the international credibility of the United States, which is now pressured into military action as a “face saving move” presumably to save the credibility of its leader who has drawn publicly a “red line” on the use of chemical weapons in Syria at least five times during the last year.

Obama Gives in

Obama, the former professor of constitutional law, who as recently as August 22 warned in a CNN interview that “we have to take into account considerations” like a “U.N. mandate” supported by “international law” and “clear evidence,” seems ready now to strike without any respect to the three factors, which they only can give legitimacy to any U.S. – led strike against Syria.

The UN mandate and legitimacy cannot be provided by a decision taken by the NATO, which is led by the U.S. A selective “responsibility to protect” pretext for a unilateral U.S. - led intervention militarily cannot replace the UN charter and international law. A fig leaf political approval of an attack on Syria from the Arab League, which is now no more than a U.S. rubber stamp, cannot provide Obama with any credible “Arab” justification for a war on Syria; similar approvals in Libya and Iraq were counterproductive examples. Obama cannot draw on artificial legitimacy to justify what will be no more than a flagrant violation of international law and UN charter to cover up what will be merely a bare – to- all - to - see aggression.

Moreover, Obama seems even ready to bypass a U.S. constitutional obligation to consult with and get the consent of the Congress, now in a month – long recess until September 9.

According to the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) has collected nearly three dozen signatures of House members to a letter he intended to send to the White House to remind the president that military action without a congressional vote “would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.”

Obama told CNN: “Sometimes what we’ve seen is that folks will call for immediate action, jumping into stuff that does not turn out well, gets us mired in very difficult situations.”

Writing in the Los Angeles Times on August 27, Kathleen Hennessey, Michael A. Memoli and Christi Parsons said that the poison gas attack in the suburbs of the Syrian capital on August 21 was “testing” Obama’s views “as no previous crisis has done;” unfortunately Kerry announced Monday that the U.S. president has failed this test.

However, Kerry’s statement in his news conference in Washington Monday, which was described by mainstream media as “emotional” and “highly charged,” sounded like an official declaration that Obama had done with whatever “considerations” might prevent him from taking a decision to strike, even if he risks to get “mired in” exactly the “very difficult situations” he has been trying to avoid.

It was a declaration that Obama has at last given in to the warmongers who have been leading a media blitz that has been beating the drums of war on Syria for two and a half years now; Kerry only added “chemical fuel” to it.

Kerry Mobilizes Passive Public 

On the one hand, Kerry’s statement was emotionally highly charged with the intention of defusing a mounting pressure for action that was exacerbated with the reported chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus.

On the other, its emotionality was intended as a prelude to mobilize a passive public opinion for a possible imminent military action against Syria.

Several recent polls showed that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict, let alone militarily. In this week’s Reuters/Ipsos survey, only 25 percent of Americans said they would support U.S. intervention if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces used chemicals to attack civilians, while 46 percent would oppose it. About 60 percent of Americans surveyed said the United States should not intervene in Syria’s civil war, while just 9 percent thought Obama should act. A Pew Research Center poll taken June 12-16 found 70 percent of Americans opposed Obama’s decision to provide arms to Syrian rebels in response to smaller-scale chemical weapons attacks there; 68 percent said the U.S. military is “too over-committed” to get involved in the Syrian conflict.

If Kerry’s intention was to mount pressure on Syria, the country’s foreign minister Walid al-Muallem on Tuesday declared Syria will not yield to “blackmail” and its only option is to defend itself with whatever means are available, some of which will be a “surprise,” he said.

However, Kerry’s statement sounded not a message to Syria per se as much as it was a message to American, European and Arab warmongers, who ever since the Syrian crisis erupted have been lobbying his administration to take action against Syria long before the first chemical attack was launched from the positions of the U.S. – sponsored armed gangs on Khan al_A’ssal five months ago.

Investigating a Forgone Conclusion

In view of the Syrian government’s confirmation of the use of chemical weapons, Kerry’s statement on Monday that it “is real, that chemical weapons were used in Syria,” and the confirmation of their use by the Syrian so called “opposition” and its western and Arab sponsors, their use is already a forgone conclusion.

Is it not surprising and a waste of time then to send the UN independent commission of inquiry to investigate a forgone conclusion that all parties take for granted as a fact!

Kerry quoted Ban Ki - moon as saying last week that “the U.N. investigation will not determine who used these chemical weapons, only whether such weapons were used.”

If the investigators’ mandate is only to confirm what is already “is undeniable,” in Kerry’s words, why were the UN investigators stripped of the mandate of determining “who” used the chemical weapons in Syria, if not to leave it up to the U.S. & partners to decide in advance as a prejudged conclusion that “There's no doubt who is responsible: The Syrian regime,” according to Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday, to be consistent with their plans for a regime change in Damascus, and let the truth go to hell.

* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com

 by Dr Dennis Walker, Researcher,

 Monash Asia Institute/PSI, Monash University Australia,

                                    

                               I have for the last ten years been writing on computer a series of three books covering the whole 19th century and twentieth-century history and cultures of Lebanon's Catholics --- primarily the Maronites.  I did the basic research for this book from microfilms of Catholic newspapers in Arabic, notably _al-Bashir_,  that I read in the Department of Middle East Studies at Melbourne University from 1971-1974.  I have since 2002  visited Lebanon five times to gather data and fill in gaps for my book, living in the German Orient Research Institute in Bayrut and in Dayr Ghusta doing my research under Rev Dr Yusuf Azzi.

                               I am due to travel by air to Beirut on 15 September 2013 --- in three weeks! --- to complete the first volume of my three-volume study of Lebanon’s Catholics.  I will spend eight weeks in Lebanon (unless too many exploding bombs delay my departure!).  The published book should total 350 pages.  It will be titled _Lebanon’s Catholics to the End of the Ottoman Period and the Coming of French Mandatory Rule_.

1:  _CONCERNS AND STRUCTURE OF MY BOOK ON LEBANON_

                          My first book, the first volume of the three, will be titled _Culture and Community Ideas among Lebanon's Catholics, 1850-2000_.  I must stress that my study will focus on Arabic and French high cultures and intellectual discourses among the Maronites.  Thereby, it will pull discussion somewhat away from the factional-political and economic dimensions, and International Relations, on which recent historical works about the Maronites published from the West since 1980 have concentrated.

                    Volume I will contain five chapters:

          CH 1: The Maronites in the Ottoman Period from 1800 to 1918 [concentrating on the post-1900 period].  This chapter will assess (1) the spread of missionary  institutions and the French language in the 19th centyry, (2) the Maronite clergy's development of Arabist scholarship and creative literature (_Adab_)  and Catholic theological learning and journalism in Arabic, (3) the crystallization of radically modernist and anti-clerical ideas among intellectuals influenced by freemasonry and French anti-clericalism and (4) the modernization and integration of general Lebanese society under the Ottomans.  However, my discussion will direct some attention to events in 1860 and suffering of the Lebanese during World War 1.   

          BK  2: France's Imposition of her Limited Rule on Lebanon after World War 1 and Early Pan-Catholic and Particularist Ideas among its Catholics under the Mandate.  The Maronite Church's role in the mobilization of local and international support for the creation of Greater Lebanon.  France's role in establishing modern infra-structure and the evolving Maronite merchant class' developmentalist concepts of economic affiliation to the French Empire and West Europe in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Ottoman rule.  The main conservative pan-Catholic intellectual examined will be Fr Butrus Ghalib, author of the 1923 book _Sadiqah wa Hamiyah_ that reviewed the Lebanese Catholics' whole historical relationship with France and West Europe.  However, I am giving some coverage of early crude motifs of Phoenician identity in the 1920s.

          BK  3: Social Change and Arabist, Syrianist, and anti-Clerical/Modernist Ideas among Lebanese Catholics in the 1920s.  Anti-French cultural identifications among Lebanese Catholics in the 1920s.  This Chapter will primarily be an impressionistic view of the rapid changes in Lebanese society and culture under early French mandatory rule.  I hope to draw a lot of the data from Maronite belles-lettres of the period.    

          BK. 4: The crystallization of ideology.  The Widening roles of the Maronite church under the leadership of Patriarch Ilyas Butrus al-Huwayyik, the Father of Lebanese Independence. Amin al-Rayhani as a modernist and a Pan-Arab, but with close attention to counter-critiques of him from the Maronite high clergy.  That should give a richer context of Catholic civil society as a whole, and the development of religious Lebanese particularist nationalism in reaction to wider Arab linguistic nationalism.

          BK 5: The foundation of Lebanon’s political parliamentary democracy and private-enterprise economy.

 _APPROACHES OF MY PLANNED THREE-VOLUME SERIES_

          My post-modern study of the modern Christian Lebanese to 2010 will seek out inner dividedness or many-mindedness in the psyches of many Maronite politicians and intellectuals.  Lebanon was a meeting-place for the whole Middle East and between the Arab World and the West.  Maronite personality has beeen formed out of a multiplicity of cultures: (a) standard high Arabic dating back to pre-Islamic Arabia; (b) colloquial Arabic which voices a recent post-classical ethos defined by place (Lebanon/the Fertile Crescent); (c) Syriac and Syriac Christianity; (d) Latin Catholicism; (e) French and the post-Christian radical secularism that flourished in France's intellectualism and republican polity; (f) Anglo-Saxon cultures associated with globalizing modernity since World War II and (g) the neighboring entity of Islam whose Arabic discourses Lebanese Catholics constantly overhear.  This diversity of influences in the make-up of Lebanese Catholics greatly explains the divergent --- or complex --- attitudes of their writers.  Most Lebanese Catholics have wanted some sort of community with the West, but the studies in Western languages have missed the tensions and cultural depersonalization this too often entailed.  Not all quality Maronite discourse has always closed meaning or dichotomized (a) the Maronite entity as an affiliate of the West against (b) the Arabo-Muslim world in the radically separated way that a substantial school of Lebanese politicians/writers, and some Western scholars, has.  I aim to show the protean diversity of Maronite discourse before 1950 in order to present the problems and divisions, but also to show successes by the Maronite ethos in balancing commitments to (a) Lebanon, (b) the wide Arab World, (c) the West and (e) bilingualism and high Arabic.

          My book will draw somewhat more from high literature than political communications.  I also want to shift the focus from the three small elites of politicians, writers and entrepreneurs to the day-to-day life and ethos of wider sectors of Catholic populations.  Ordinary people do have their own rueful and iconoclastic perspectives.

          I want my book to be different from the other histories of Lebanon written in Western languages.  The way that I hope to do this is by mixing images and passages from Catholic Lebanese high literature into the discussion of historical, political and ideolological issues. I want my 350-page book that goes up to 1925. and the subsequent two volumes, to give a sense of the personal lives and thoughts  of Catholic individuals.

                   _The West_.

          The ongoing responsiveness to the wide Arab World was inherent in Lebanon's geographical position and international role as an economic as well as cultural junction between East and West.  This link-role, though, equally entailed ongoing, changing, evolving relations with not just France but a widening range of Westerners and their cultures.  I shall accordingly trace the mixed and ambivalent, shifting, attitudes of various categories of Maronites and Melkites to France after 1935 in the period of her imperial decline and her destruction as a great power by Nazi Germany.  I want to measure and assess how close Maronite writers and observers could get to realistic understandings of France's society and culture on their own terms --- beyond use of France as an instrument to secure the interests of a Maronite people vis-a-vis hinterland Arabs and Muslims.  I believe that my further research in Lebanon will show that the fundamental strains and difficulties for integrating the Maronites' special Catholicism with secular aspects of French society and thought remained in the period in which Lebanon achieved independence, despite the much more West-tinted and secular nature of Lebanese society by 1939 compared to 1918.  I shall try to evaluate the increasing focus of Lebanese Catholics on Anglo-Saxon societies, cultures and states: the geopolitical context is the role of the British in Lebanon's achievement of independence, and the attempt by the Kamil Sham'un administration to ally with America against the camp of Arab nationalism through the Eisenhower Doctrine.  As always in my book, though, I shall be pulling my discussion over into works of high literature in Arabic and French, and the lives and perceptions of ordinary Lebanese.

               _Economics_.

          The economic stance remained fairly constant under Bisharah al-Khuri and Kamil Sham'un: most Maronite intellectual leaders wanted the newly-independent country to develop a radical laissez-faire capitalism that few Western states followed by the 1960s.  The deflationary, free monetary structure and flexible foreign exchange and low tariffs that the Lebanese state fostered after 1945 were an economic liberalism original to Lebanon at a time when the Western states were moving to greater intervention by their governments in economic matters.  Lebanon in the 1950s and 1960s anticipated the whole world's deregulation and globalization of economies in the 1980s and 1990s.  Rather than an uncritical Westernism, it is these points of originality that to my mind make the twentieth century history  of Catholic Lebanon truly worth studying.

2: MY SECOND AND THIRD BOOKS ON LEBANON’S CATHOLICS:

      _Tensions and Conflicts between Christians and Muslims_

          Much literature published about Lebanon in the West has focused on political tensions between Lebanese sects in government and parliamentarism, fighting between those Lebanese sects, and conflicts between categories of Lebanese Christians and intervening foreigners.  My own focus will shift somewhat to those factors that, by the early 1970s, were working to integrate as well as polarize the Lebanese groups: the somewhat unsatisfactory Lebanese state might have survived with reforms had not the Palestinians and Israel confronted it with problems beyond any reasonable capacity.  I do not intend to quote Muslim Lebanese much in my Maronite-centric book: to the extent that I do, I will assess pan-Arab word-games of still underprivileged Sunni sub-groups in the independent Lebanon polity as mostly a protest rhetoric for getting into a mainstream whose Maronite establishment had long been a covert model for Sunni malcontents.

          On the whole, my book will stress interesting successes of independent Lebanon's state and society in integrating a new multi-sectarian national community.  The new Lebanese state did not lift ordinary Sunnis to parity with the quickly-progressing Maronites, but its expanding state educational system did make even poorer Sunnis literate.  Thus, the Sunni sect's prospects were improving in the free-wheeling economy.

      _The Kata'ib and the Quwwat Lubnaniyyah_

          My book will attempt a revisionist account of the evolution of the Kata'ib from 1936-1995 that will be culture-orientated in contrast to John Entelis' organizational focus.  I will give prominence to the Catholic-Christian drives of the Kata'ib, and to the Party's perceptions of its interactions with the Maronite clerical hierarchy, and its images of Western countries and Western cultures.  Entelis and other analysts have focused on the Kata'ib's roles in different periods as a rallying-point during polarization between Lebanese Catholics and Muslim Arab forces.  While I will of course take due account of such themes in Kata'ib discourses, I will also seek formulations in them that are fairly open or constructive to outside Arabo-Muslim states and high cultures.  (The early Kata'ib had some good interactions with pre-1952 Egyptian and 'Iraqi pan-Arabs).

          Above all, I want to scan the Kata'ib's French and Arabic publications in mandatory and early independent Lebanon for evidence of its function as a framework from which new rising Catholic strata could assert themselves against established rich, powerful Catholic groups.  The early Kata'ib definitely had this anti-establishment role as a rather anti-parliamentary paramilitarist youth movement (1936-1942).  In its period of party-paramilitarism synthesis in the developing Lebanese national state and its institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the Kata'ib moderated its early protest functions.  Its main activity was directed to increasing its representation in parliament; and in 1958, while standing against pan-Arabism, it was closing ranks with other Maronite and Christian groups.  Yet, after 1975, the Kata'ib produced a new off-shoot that tried to take over or sweep away the old Maronite parliamentarians and their party-structure.  Thus, the Kata'ib has been a forum or matrix for attempts to radically restructure and reintegrate Maronite society that have to be researched.

          The final section of my book will have in it a review of the motifs and proto-ideology of the new Catholic micronationalism that developed around the Lebanese Forces in the context of sieges and evacuations in Mountain Lebanon in the 1980s.

                  I have been receiving data and resources from the Lebanese community here on the development of Lebanese society and intellectual cultures from 1975 to today.  I appreciate this help that the Maronite and Melkite communities in Australia have given me in order to help me to help them by producing English-language books on their history that will help a new generation here who cannot read Arabic understand the country of their forefathers, Lebanon.

                   Any very modest financial help from Lebanese Austra\lians towards my expenses in Lebanon will be welcome and acknowledged in my printed book.  I’m going at my own expense into a Lebanon I like and which the tourists are leaving.

                  Dr Dennis Walker,  Researcher,

                  Monash Asia Institute, Monash University, Caulfield 3145.

                   Email: --- dennis.walker@monash.edu

                   Phone: 9540 8441 (mornings).

John13/15: "The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them".

Lebanon and its free patriotic citizens, all over the world will remember today 23/13 with pride, honour and pain  Sheik Bachir's 31 presidential Election anniversary . The "Dream" leader Sheik Bachir Gemayel was elected president for Lebanon on 23 August/1982.

Sadly Sheik Bachir was assassinated by Syrian agents before he was able to assume his presidential responsibilities because these stone age terrorists feared his honesty, nationalism, devotion, determination, courage and strong will.

Sheik Bachir who successfully led the Lebanese Christian resistance against the PLO and the Arab dictatorships, fanatic regimes and their terrorist organizations is seen as a unique national and patriotic hero in many Lebanese eyes. He is still considered to be a remarkable leader that they love, adore and cherish. God bless his soul.

Sheik Bachir was extremely faithful, devoted to Lebanon's cause of freedom, committed to the Lebanese rights and dignity, never compromised on his solid and transparent national stances or cajoled or appeased on the account of his Lebanese holy cause.

With strong self confidence, self respect, dignity and fear of Almighty God he continuously witnessed for the truth no matter what and openly and loudly uttered what must be said. He loved both his people and his country and accepted with no fear or hesitation to be a sacrifice on their alter.

Thirty years after his departure his dream, vision, and leadership role model are still vivid and alive in the souls hears and minds of many Lebanese in Lebanon and all over the world.

The Syrian Bathist assassins who are now killing and murdering their own people, were able to kill his body, but definitely failed to kill his dream in a sovereign, free and independent Lebanon.

Thirty years passed and the free Lebanese still strongly believe in Bachir's dream and are struggling with courage and faith to make it happen and become a reality. By God's will and blessings they will achieve this goal no matter what the sacrifices will be.

Sadly the majority of the current corrupted and deviated Lebanese officials, religious and political leaders are dead in the eyes of the many free Lebanese, while in reality these leaders are still alive and breathing.

Meanwhile Bachir who was assassinated 3o years ago is still alive in the hearts and minds of many patriotic Lebanese.

Those criminals and terrorists who killed Bachir, killed only his ash body, but failed to kill his dream or his the deeply rooted love in the hearts of the Lebanese

Every Free and Patriotic Lebanese is Bachir, and that's why Bachir is still alive as well as his dream.

Long Live Freedom

The internal crisis in Egypt has indulged the country in its most critical foreign relations test since these relations were shaped by the U.S. sponsored Camp David accords and the peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

An indicator is the warnings against travel to Egypt from east and west, which are exacerbating the rapidly shrinking tourism industry. Stopping production in Egypt by industrial giants like General Motors, Toyota Motor Corp. and Suzuki Motor Corp. is a second indicator. Summons of foreign envoys to Egypt by their governments, which invoked similar Egyptian reciprocal summons, is a third indicator. A fourth was cancelling the U.S. military’s participation in next month’s Operation Bright Star in Egypt and delaying the delivery of four fighter jets to the country. Suspension of the sale of military equipment used for “internal repression” by the EU was a fifth. Threats to cut or suspend aid to Egypt by the U.S. and EU was another more important indicator.

In the immediate proximity, and three days after the ouster of the elected president Mohammed Morsi on July 3, the Peace and Security Council of the fifty – four member African Union decided “to suspend the participation of Egypt in AU activities until the restoration of constitutional order.”

On August 20, South Africa, a leading member of the AU as well as the BRICS five – member association, issued a statement to remind the “interim government” in Cairo that its “principled position is based on the Constitutive Act of the African Union, where any unconstitutional change of government – whatever the premise – is specifically rejected” immediately.

So far, the AU reaction is ironically the only concrete international diplomatic measure taken in defense of the western widely trumpeted rule of law and democracy. The African “sphere” is traditionally only second to the Arab one as a cornerstone of Egypt’s foreign policy.

However, Denmark announced the suspension of aid to Egypt. The UK Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday announced the suspension of all British joint programs with the Egyptian intelligence services and the export of “some” items to Egypt. Germany’s development minister, Dirk Niebel, said Monday that Egypt will get “no further pledges this year” of aid from Berlin and added he has decided “that we won’t negotiate this year” on any debt relief for the country. A day earlier, Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that her country would halt previously approved arms shipments to Egypt, but as part of a coordinated EU response.

Most likely the U.S. allies’ final reaction will wait until the U.S. administration ends its open –ended stance, but while U.S. allies follow in its footsteps, the U.S. rival world powers grudgingly dealt with the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as the leaders of the “Arab Spring” changes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya as a fait accompli; the removal of the Egyptian MB from power is a welcome development. 

Ahead of their meeting in Brussels last Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that “no options would be off the table” at the meeting of his counterparts of the EU 28-member countries. Presidents of the European council and European commission, Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, warned jointly on Sunday that further escalation could have “unpredictable consequences.” The European Union threatened that it will “urgently review” its aid to Egypt, but, like the U.S. threat, it’s just a warning that has yet to materialize.

The EU and its member states last year pledged a combined 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) in loans and aid for Egypt.

Russia, China on Sidelines

Meanwhile, Russia and China are waiting on the sidelines to invest in what could evolve into a historical turning point in Egypt’s foreign relations.

The Kremlin maintained what a writer in “Asia Times” described as a “stony silence,” until August 19 when the foreign ministry in a statement urged “dialogue” among “all” political players “without any foreign interference,” but the Egyptian embassy in Moscow said that Cairo counts on Russia’s assistance in “this trying time, as it used to in the past.”

In 2010 the volume of trade and economic cooperation between the two countries amounted to $2.1 billion. The number of Russian tourists visiting Egypt in 2010 alone was estimated to be 2,855,723, making it the number one country in providing Egypt with tourists.

Similarly China remained relatively quiet. On August 15, the foreign ministry in a statement said the country was following “closely the situation in Egypt,” urged “maximum restraint” and “dialogue” to “restore order and social stability.”

Unofficially, Wang Jilie, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a State Council affiliated think tank, said that the Egyptian military “had no choice” but to “control the situation,” otherwise “the credibility of the interim government and the military would be undermined.”

In 2011, Sino-Egyptian trade rose to US$8.8 billion, a 30 percent increase from 2010, according to Xinhua. Last year it rose to US$9.5 billion.

U.S. Regional Strategy Unraveling

Short of designating the ouster and detention of Morsi a “coup” and short of condemning the dispersal on August 14, by what critics described as an “excessive use of force,” of two MB – led sit – ins in Cairo’s Raba’a al- Adawiyah and al-Nahdha squares, as an Egyptian copy of the Chinese “Tiananmen Square” in 1989, the un-decisive United States has put itself and Egypt in their most testing foreign policy dilemma.

The United States is finding itself swaying between “cutting” its aid to Egypt and “reprogramming” it and because it is torn between its foreign policy rhetoric of democracy and the more realistic benefits of stability, Washington stands now reluctant to proclaim the involvement of the Egyptian military in the removal of Morsi a “coup.” U.S. allies are held hostage to this U.S. ambivalent position.

The bipartisan Working Group on Egypt, quoted by the Washington Post on August 15, demanded a shift in U.S. policy towards Egypt; the group considered President Barak Obama’s “failure” to cut aid a “strategic error.”

However there is a strategic U.S. asset that successive administrations have considered an incomparable “vital” interest outweighing this “strategic error.” Egypt expert at the London School of Economics, John Chalcraft, had this explanation: The U.S. military aid “is a strategic rent that comes to Egypt in return, above all, for the ongoing Camp David Peace Treaty with Israel. So the significance of it is political and geopolitical, more than it is economic.” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, on August 21, confirmed this justification for her government’s ambivalent stance, though indirectly: "We have seen our aid to Egypt as something that is vital for our own national security purposes, for regional stability.”

No surprise then the United National Security Council (UNSC), in its “emergency” meeting on August 15, which was urged by Turkey and jointly requested by France, Britain and Australia, had nothing to say more than urging the parties in Egypt to “exercise maximum restraint.”

Egypt is the largest and strategically the most important Arab country, where the U.S. regional strategy could make or break.

Strategically, the internal crisis in Egypt has put the U.S. strategy of courting “moderate” Islamist political movements on the brink.

In his inauguration speech in January 2009, Obama signaled his intention to seek a fresh understanding with Islam and Muslims. Within a few months his “intention” had unfolded as a strategy that culminated in the end in an “understanding” with the MB, the oldest, largest and perceived as the most moderate among the Islamist movements.

On June 4, 2009 in Cairo, Obama declared: “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.” A few days later in Istanbul he confirmed: “"The United States is not and will never be at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical … America's relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot be based just on the opposition to terrorism. We seek broader engagement."

His allies in Qatar and the Islamist leaders of the ruling Justice and Development party in Turkey joined forces and played a detrimental role in swaying the U.S. towards this conclusion.

The MB was born in Egypt. Eighty five years later it has proved a survival. It developed into an international organization in more than eighty countries in which the Egyptian Muslim Brethren are still playing the leading role. With their assumption of power in Egypt’s 2012 elections, their offshoot ruling now in Turkey, their Palestinian offshoot Hamas ruling in the Gaza Strip, the leading roles their brethren are playing in the governments of Tunisia, Yemen and Morocco, the leading roles they are playing in the opposition in other Arab countries, and with the sponsorship of the financial magnet of Qatar, the MB has become a power per se to be reckoned with.

Following the Qatari and Turkish examples, the U.S. perceived in it a potential ally and planned its regional strategy accordingly.

With the removal of Morsi and the MB from power in Egypt, this U.S. strategy is unraveling now.

U.S. Allies Divided

The MB has received a very strong blow in its Egyptian heartland together with a burgeoning MB – U.S. regional “understanding.”

A regional U.S. sponsored Egyptian – Turkish – Qatari axis that could stand rival to the Iran – Syria alliance is at risk of becoming a past tense plan.

The U.S. regional allies stand now divided between the pro – MB led by Qatar and Turkey and the anti – MB led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The regional front against Iran of the U.S. – sponsored “moderates,” who are united in their efforts to enforce a ‘regime change” in Syria, is weakened as well.

While Syria is feeling relief, Iran joined its regional rivals in Qatar and Turkey as well as Cuba, Venezuela, the U.S. and the EU in condemning “the massacre of the population” according to a statement by its foreign ministry. The new Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday noted “how people’s votes are forgotten and downtrodden.”

America's abrupt role reversal from an anti-Islamist crusader to a champion of political Islam has antagonized two of the U.S. closest Arab allies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE who promptly emerged as the major political and financial backers of the military – supported interim government in Egypt; on the second day Morsi was removed, they contributed $12b to Cairo.

Rejecting foreign interference in “Egypt’s internal affairs,” Saudi King Abdullah, in a statement read Friday on Saudi television, declared that what was happening in Egypt was “an Arab affair.” His foreign minister, Prince Saud Al Faisal, during a recent visit to Paris pledged to compensate Egypt for any cut in western aid, saying: “We will not achieve anything through threats.”

Obviously, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, who contributed $12b to Cairo the second day Morsi was removed, do not see eye to eye on Egypt with their strategic allies in the U.S. and EU; their position will for sure weigh heavily in their final stance.

Some commentators described as “hysterical” the Turkish reaction, which led Egypt to accuse Turkey of interfering in its internal affairs. On Tuesday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel was involved in the “military coup” that removed Morsi from power; the White House denied the accusation. Earlier he accused Saudi Arabia and the UAE of being partners to the “Egyptian coup.” He had called on the UN to condemn the “massacres” in Egypt and described the developments in the country as a “conspiracy against the Muslim world targeting Turkey” in particular.

Turkey is a looser in Egypt’s latest developments. Ankara is watching its leading regional role through an alliance with Egypt cut short abruptly and replaced by the revival of the Saudi regional leadership through the same alliance. Relations are expected to get worse between the three regional heavy weights.

No Business as Usual

The U.S. is leading the western condemnation of the crackdown on the MB and urging an “inclusive” political process that would make them an integral part of any future restructuring of the ruling system.

This line of U.S. thinking is creating an international environment that is fueling the MB defiance, which would inevitably perpetuate the violence and the crisis, the interim government in Cairo says.

This is exactly what leads the U.S. – led west to a collision course with the incumbent interim government, who accuse Morsi and his brethren are of leading a year – long effort of exclusion of all the other political players. The MB exclusion policies are said to be the major factor that led to the demise of their rule. The new rulers insist on inclusion of the MB on their own terms.

They accuse the world’s condemnation of their “excessive use of force” as a contribution to what some of their commentators say it is a “war of attrition” waged by the MB against the Egyptian state, its interim government and defense forces.

More than 100 army and police officers were among no less than one thousand people killed since July 3rd. Michael W. Hanna, an expert on Egypt from the New York-based Century Foundation, was quoted by AP on Monday as saying: “Sure civil war is a possibility.”

Obviously, Egypt’s post – Morsi rulers do not share the U.S. and European view of the MB as “moderates” who could be “included.”

U.S. bilateral relations with Egypt seem about to head to a turning point, but for sure at least there is "no doubt” that Washington “can't return to business as usual” with Cairo as Obama told CNN on August 23.

* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com

What is happening in the land of Egypt these days is just a duplicate of what is happening in the Syrian territory and what happened in the lands of Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia and is still happening.

Arab Spring or the real name for it “Arab Ruin” is a disaster and an aggressive war on the people of these countries and a public and licentious threat to the rest of the Middle East that has been announced by US administration headed by President Barack Hussein Obama. It used an Islamic faction and Muslim countries as a tool to suppress and kill the people of these countries, be it those upon whom the plan has been activated against or those awaiting activation.

This planned sabotage of the area aiming to break up and divide its countries is not new, but is as old as the rule of American presidents before Your Excellency, Mr President Obama, as you know. Yet it seems that their consciences have woken up after finding out the extent of the devastation and death and destruction which will be unleashed upon the people of this region, and so they did not bear this responsibility in front of the American people who have reached this power and greatness. They stood in the face of tyrants and liberated nations and people and provided them with security and safety.

The fact is that former President George W. Bush had made a mistake in his war on Iraq. This error occurred due to lack of insight and vision of the military leadership and the US administration at the time that they broke down the military force and the police and left the country without a link, and so civil war spread among the Iraqis whose blood flowed and is still flowing, and ruin prevailed, where brother is killing his brother and civil war permeated in Iraq with chaos and lawlessness, and where discipline and linkage has no presence at all. The Iraqi people are the one suffering and are helpless.

Mr President Barack Hussein Obama, you have done the same thing that former President George W. Bush did in Iraq, and have applied it to countries in the region with the difference that George W. Bush used American forces, and Your Excellency used American money to hire a faction that has no belonging to any country nor has any guarantee in the implementation of your dream in protecting Israel, and assisting you with the safe exit from Afghanistan. This faction, of course well known to Your Excellency and the Western world, is the group of non-Brothers and non-Muslims with factions of Jihadist Islamists.

If the dream is achieved, then there will be a transfer of al-Qaeda and other Jihadists from Afghanistan to the Sinai Peninsula, which will be divided between Israel and Hamas and a thousand and one jeer to Egypt and the Egyptian people. You have done this in Syria and used the same faction that promised you they would carry out all that you order them to do, as your hands are very generous and they accept it, thanking you for your good choice.

The Egyptian people, who had just got rid of military rule through the departure of their last ruler in the person of former President Hosni Mubarak, were deceived. This was your chance to involve the Brotherhood and give the green light for them to make it into a fortress for them to execute from inside it the Brothering of Egypt and seize all its institutions with the fragmentation of each of the judiciary, police and army establishments, because they are strong institutions and there is fear of leaving them to turn against them and cause the failure of their plan aiming at, as previously reported, the full control of Egypt and the Egyptian people, and then they would start in realising their biggest dream of an Islamic Caliphate whose capital would be Jerusalem.

For a whole year, the Shura Council failed to represent the entire spectrum of the Egyptian people, and began preparing a constitution that had nothing to do with Egypt and the Egyptian people, but only works for the immunity of the Brotherhood in the name of religion so that they have the upper hand on Egypt and the Egyptian people. As for the presidency, speak unabashed, the elected president through “fraud and bribery” was not qualified to take such a position, either on form or substance. He brought shame upon Egypt and its reputation among societies whether Western or even Arab. His welcoming at every visit to any of those states was not worthy of a head of state such as Egypt.

He clearly demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that he is not a statesman, but just a puppet in the hands of the most powerful man in the group “Khairat al-Shater” who was the de facto ruler administering Egypt’s huge affairs from his office and moving the president however he liked, and not the general guide Badie and naturally Dr Mohamed Morsi.      

A full year, in which the president was ousted by the legitimacy of the Egyptian people, failed in providing the minimum of safety and security for Egypt and Egyptians. A full year in which the Egyptian people tasted, at the hands of the deposed and his gang, all the colours of humiliation and disgrace and were deprived of their right to life. Their nourishment was stolen and were deprived of clean drinking water, and he did not show any care about the importance of the Nile waters to Egypt and Egyptians, and so led Ethiopia to work on the construction of the Renaissance Dam which would be a real disaster upon them.

No solar, no electricity, no loaf for living nor dignity. And so the people in whose hands are all the authorities rebelled and decided that he should depart, and so it was. Naturally, Your Excellency President Barack Hussein Obama, what the Egyptian people did has caused you some concern and disappointment in the probability of failure of your project and the achievement of “Arab Ruin”. It is also normal to have your insistence of the continuity of the presence of the Brotherhood in power because they arrived at it through electoral legitimacy represented at the ballot box in which Dr Morsi won by only 51%. And so your administration began to condemn what the Egyptian people did on 30 June 2013 and 3 July and 26 July of the same year, and accused the Egyptian people and its armed forces that what they did was not an act of democracy but a coup over the authority.

Mr President Barack Hussein Obama, I have sent you an article titled "An Open Letter to President Barack Obama", in which I talked about democracy, which does not apply in the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and allotted for you 10 examples of what is happening on the ground in Egypt, which proves without any room for doubt that the Brothers do not know or understand neither democracy nor legitimacy, and I will convey to your Excellency 5 of 10 examples I mentioned in my message to you, for which I received a reply from your administration of its arrival while retaining the non-response right. No doubt that Your Excellency is well informed and knows what is happening on the ground in Egypt, where you want for this faction to apply democracy. I will continue my statement in the form of questions about democracy, as they apply to the Egyptian people, inquiring of Your Excellency if that democracy is actually the democracy that  you seek to activate with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Group and the rest of the groups of radical Islam in Egypt.

* Does democracy, Your Excellency, mean that the president elected (????) is a president for one faction of the people and not to all the people?

President Morsi has shown that he is the president for his family and tribe of the Muslim Brotherhood; and that the group used the Salafist Group as a scarecrow to intimidate the people by their toughness.

* Does democracy, Your Excellency, mean to marginalise women, who are half of society, and are to be chased and raped and prevented from their right to work and forced to stay at home for serving and pleasuring man only?

* Does democracy give the right to the president elected (????) to sell and rent his antiquities, heritage and homeland - his Egypt?

* Does democracy neglect the interests of the country by those who have been elected (the People's Assembly and Shura Council) and expected (parliament), which Your Excellency is asking to involve the people in the next election to support democracy, noting that the group is working on empowerment of all aspects of the state and its institutions to allow them to brothering Egypt?.

* Does democracy, Your Excellency, mean to leave the country in a state of destructive chaos in which we find the strong eliminating the weak., where the method of bullying is used on Christians by attacking their property (houses - lands - work - shops and churches) and displacing them after burning their homes and seizing their property, and the kidnapping of their daughters and forcing them to leave their religion and becoming Muslims, and the kidnapping of children and asking parents to pay a financial ransom. All this is happening to Christians without the slightest attempt of officials, headed by the Prime Minister and President of the Republic to punish the perpetrators?

What do you think, Mr President Barack Hussein Obama, of the practical opinion of the Brotherhood on democracy, including what I have clarified to Your Excellency in what I have quoted to you?

Mr President Barack Hussein Obama, when you assumed the "first period" of managing the affairs of the greatest country in the world, I wrote an article titled "Obama, the Hope" and published your photo on the cover of the annual issue of "future" magazine which is published in Australia. My article could be summarised by saying that your assumption of this position is the hope for me and for everyone who suffers from persecution as that suffered by African Americans previously in America that one day one of us shall manage the affairs of his country, which continues to suffer from discrimination due to race, colour and religion.

But Oh loss! Your Excellency President Barack Hussein Obama, your latter action during your administration of the affairs of the greatest country in the world and its compassionate and good people, from upholding and encouraging a terrorist group, with all the sense that this word carries, has changed a lot of the love of the people for you personally and the respect for the country of freedoms and democracy and hope in some may have shifted unfortunately to what I mentioned as  the title of this article that is directed to you personally: 

Mr President Obama: You were the hope and you have become a disappointment.