By Roula Khalaf
25 September 2007
Financial Times

Tash Ma Tash, the hit Saudi comedy series that runs during the holy month of Ramadan, has been poking fun at local life for the past 14 years, targeting the kingdom's stifling religious rules and ridiculing those who support them.

For the first time this year, however, the show has also taken aim at Saudi liberals, a growing but still shy minority that has been struggling to compete with the more powerful Islamists.

Israel's policies have made Gaza a giant prison. Now many Palestinians fear the same in the West Bank, writes Arab Media Watch adviser Chris Doyle.

24 September 2007
The Guardian

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

17 September 2007

My rather surrealistic trip from Beirut to London to Boston coincided with three rather sharply juxtaposed events in Lebanon, Great Britain and the United States.

In Lebanon, a chronically turbulent and mystifying political governance system remains stalled and immobilized, while masses of citizens are dissatisfied and worried. Meanwhile, the three top leaders of a north Lebanon-based Qaeda-style jihadist militant group (Fateh el-Islam) that fought the Lebanese army for over 100 days escaped the siege and the defeat of their followers. Mass political malaise and terrorism go hand-in-hand, in Lebanon and elsewhere.

In Great Britain, the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) released a report this week clarifying the global terror threat, stating that Al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself since September 11, 2001, and is able to carry out large-scale attacks against Western countries. It said that the American-led "global war on terror" is proving ineffective.

In the United States, following the Congressional hearings into the situation in Iraq, I encountered the fantasy world of the George W. Bush administration that keeps putting coins into a video game machine and blasting away at bad guys who seem to increase, rather than die away. But this is not a game: This is our world. The Bush administration's central argument -- that it must fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq before the terrorists strike the US heartland -- has now moved from its initial political dishonesty and wasteful self-delusion to the criminal stage of being a real menace to global stability and security because of its proven capacity to promote, rather than deter, terror.

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

8 September 2007

The United Nations is a creature of very mixed lineage, simultaneously undertaking some remarkable peace-keeping, conflict-resolution and humanitarian work, while using sanctions, threats, and boycotts to carry out the policies of powers that dominate the world scene -- especially the United States.

Is the UN the embodiment of hope, equality and decency for all human beings? Or is it the social services agency and military clean-up subcontractor for NATO?

The new Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, revealed the best face of the organization this week when he visited Sudan. He met with the government in Khartoum and also visited refugees in the shattered Darfur region, sparking a renewed commitment to October peace talks between Khartoum and several opposition, rebel and government-linked armed groups. The talks will be mediated by the UN special envoy to Darfur, Jan Eliasson. Ban and Eliasson embody the UN's reliance on respected and talented individuals who can speak to all parties in a conflict, in order to achieve peace, security, stability and basic rights for all.

At the same time, however, the UN is also a partner in the global politics of pressure, contention and debilitating double standards. Security Council resolutions in 2004 and 2005 imposed sanctions on some parties in Sudan, and the United States seems eager to pass more through the council. The UN in Sudan, therefore, is simultaneously applying Security Council sanctions, threatening tougher new sanctions, sending in over 20,000 peace-keepers, delivering significant humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced people, mediating peace talks, and raising the Darfur issue higher on the global agenda through actions like the secretary general's visit.

This is a fitting symbol of the UN's multiple and often contradictory roles in the world today, where it is asked to do an impossible series of tasks that respond to the needs and aspirations of very different audiences. The UN should thoroughly review its optimum role in a transforming world, because its existing contradictory policies risk damaging its credibility and efficacy for years to come.

By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

1 September 2008

The interface between politics, nationalism, identity, and religion in the Arab-Islamic world has undergone a series of significant evolutions in the past few generations. The Moslem Brotherhood has been a consistent and significant phenomenon in the region since its founding in Egypt in 1928, but in recent decades has been joined by more militant Islamist groups that have used force against their governments, or used terror tactics against domestic and foreign targets. Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group emerged in the 1990s as a global threat to an extent, and in recent years, especially since September 11, 2001, many smaller militant groups that emulate or share Al-Qaeda worldviews and tactics have sprung up throughout the Middle East and other parts of the world.

This recent proliferation of militant Islamist groups that use violence and terror as a basic tool is to my mind the most significant development of our age -- because it reveals the existence of a very extensive foundation of fundamentalist youth who provide a steady stream of recruits for movements like Fateh el-Islam, which has been locked in battle with the Lebanese army in north Lebanon for the past 100 days.