Center for International and Regional Studies

Barbara Stowasser Lectures on Concepts of Time in Islam
2010-10-25 08:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Moscow)
Barbara Stowasser, Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, was invited to Doha to deliver aFocused Discussion on the subject of “Time Sticks” and concepts of time in Islam, to Georgetown faculty and staff.

Stowasser began the lecture by noting that “time is essential to the very structure of Muslim communal life. Time of ritual and worship of Muslim obligation are regulated according to celestial events – both lunar and solar.” She studied how the hours of the five daily prayers of Sunni Islam are controlled by the movement of the sun as well as its absence, and how these rituals have been reconfigured in today’s globalized world of regimented time-keeping. The Islamic calendar, she argued, has been instrumental in holding the Islamic world together over geographic distances and over many centuries.

In order to calculate prayer times in the pre-modern era, it was common to use “time sticks.” These, Stowasser said, are simple astronomical technologies that use shadow-length to measure daylight hours. They were part of religious knowledge and practice in all pre-modern societies, including that of the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chinese, the Greeks, and the Romans. Unfortunately, she said, very few of these have been preserved in the Muslim world, but are prominently described in the literature.

Stowasser explained the difference between the notion of “seasonal time” that was used in the past and our modern conception of “abstract time.” In a world where the day is divided into abstract, standardized, and equal hours, “the five Islamic ritual prayers endow the day with a specific pulse that remains a vital sign of time perception in Muslim societies,” as these prayers are pegged to the older tradition of seasonal time and unequal hours. For millennia, other than those who resided on the equator, Stowasser argued, human patterns of living and working were organized around local astronomical time that differed along shorter and longer hours of daylight throughout the year.

Examining prayer times and standardization problems that arise as a result of geographical latitudes, Stowasser argued that they vary in length depending on their position between the equator and poles. Since “Islamic prayer times depend on terrestrial latitudes, this requires that prayer times should be defined in terms of shadow increase, not shadow length, which varies according to degree of latitude,” she said. Thus, shadow length in Mecca and Medina would not correspond with shadow lengths in other latitudes. “In the classical hadith, the historical and the normative are intertwined,” said Stowasser, and so, over time, the five daily prayers were negotiated and then established.

Surveying different historical periods, Stowasser said that in the Islamic world, the beginning of a new day started at dusk, and so was in keeping with the mechanisms of the lunar calendar. With the advent of the mechanical clock in the fourteenth century, time gradually became standardized across the nations. In the modern era, in order to coordinate regional time for the establishment of railroad and telegraph systems, longitudinal calculation was required to organize different time zones separated by geographic distances. “Technological progress has meant chronographic and calendrical standardization that eventually took on global validity. The Islamic prayer times are now regionally computed, often by electronic means,” Stowasser said. Moreover, “technology has also created the concept of linear time; a relatively recent Western invention that is replacing or is poised to replace the multiple subjective and situation specific times of the past […] The new form of clock-based time is producing a new form of global psychology where time equals punctuality, efficiency, and economic rationality.”

In conclusion, Stowasser said that “by way of early conquest and expansion, the Islamic realm fell heir to several much older civilizations that had long traditions of scholarship in the theoretical and applied sciences. From an early date, the science tradition was integrated into an Islamic world view,” said Stowasser. Currently, we are faced with Eurocentric and Western-enlightened critiques that claim pre-Islamic civilizations were profoundly mistrusted by an ever stricter Islamic orthodoxy. She argued, however, that the pre-modern Islamic texts do not support this critique. “In the Islamic world today, the Western calendar provides a global point of reference, even where the Islamic year reigns supreme,” but, she said, in some areas of Yemen and Saudi Arabia, “the old system has survived and created a system of double time-keeping.”

During the past several decades, Stowasser’s research and publications have focused on Islam and gender, which has made her one of the early pioneers on this topic in the West. Among her publications is Women in the Qur’an, Traditions and Interpretation and she co-edited and contributed to the volume Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity. At Georgetown, Stowasser developed and taught all the graduate courses on Qur’anic tafsirand introduced the study of Islam and gender into the curriculum. Stowasser was the former Chair of the Department of Arabic (now the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, in Georgetown College).

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator

Iraq in the Balance: Security and Democracy After the U.S. Troop Withdrawal
2010-10-19 08:00 - 18:00
In light of the United States’ withdrawal of troops from Iraq, CIRS organized a panel discussion to analyze the political upheavals that have taken place in Iraq and to gauge the possible outcomes. The panel took place on October 19, 2010, at the Intercontinental Hotel in Doha and featured Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Laith Kubba, Director of Middle East & North Africa at the National Endowment for Democracy, and Rend Al-Rahim, Executive Director for The Iraq Foundation.

Anthony Cordesman began with an overview of the current security and military operations in Iraq. Addressing the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, he said that “the U.S. now has four Advisory and Assist brigades in Iraq. These are full combat brigades” that provide military assistance to Iraqi forces. The U.S. continues to fly aircraft over Iraq to provide satellite intelligence and there are major airbases in neighboring Kuwait, military facilities in Qatar, fleet headquarters in Bahrain, as well as other naval capabilities in the area. “Withdrawal,” therefore, “is relative,” argued Cordesman. The United States will continue to play a role in Iraq, but “when the new Iraqi government comes to office, it has to define what the strategic partnership agreement means,” he said.

The U.S. Transition in Iraq: Iraqi Forces and the U.S. Military Aid from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Currently, Iraq is importing and building up its military capabilities to aid in its counter- insurgency operations. However, Cordesman warned, “even if you delivered equipment tomorrow, Iraq does not have the facilities – the training and the background – to make that equipment effective. There is probably no worse way to acquire military equipment than to rush large amounts into a force that isn’t prepared.” To this effect, the United States is providing military advisory missions and is assisting with the purchase of military equipment and trainers. “This, in part, is driven by the fact that Iraq remains under a major budget crisis and will remain in that crisis for at least two to three years,” he said.

In terms of the ongoing threat of violence, Cordesman argued that, despite media portrayal, the levels of violence have decreased and have become concentrated in certain areas. He said that “the patterns of violence are not easily measurable,” but, in comparison to Afghanistan, there is greater stability. There remains a worrying level of outside interference, foreign support, and importing of illegal weapons for extremist purposes from Syria and Iran, which back Sunni and Shiite causes respectively.

In conclusion, Cordesman argued that, in future, “you cannot develop effective police without an effective judicial system and jails, and you cannot develop either one without an effective government presence in the field.” The United States will continue to support Iraq and give aid depending on how much Iraq needs or allows. Cordesman said that he has often heard Iran being described as the hegemon of the Gulf, but, to put things into perspective, “in the last five years, ignoring Iraq, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries have spent more than ten times as much on defense as Iran, and more than seventeen times as much on arms imports.”

Iraq and the Military Balance in the Gulf from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Rend Al-Rahim gave the second speech in which she outlined the current precarious position in which Iraq finds itself. She argued that “we are, in fact, in a situation where Iraq is verging on tipping in one direction or another.” Indeed, “the next four years are going to indicate what Iraq is likely to be as a state.”

During her talk, Al-Rahim focused on three essential questions. The first concerns whether Iraq will remain one country, or whether it will become divided along ethnic and religious lines. The second question wonders whether democracy will become the prevailing governing ideology, or whether Iraq will revert to its historical system of autocratic and authoritarian rule. The third and final question asks whether Iraq will become a functional state that is able to maintain security for its people and deter external threats and pressures.

The answers to these questions, Al-Rahim said, can be defined by the problems that arise from constitutional and political challenges in the country. There are a variety of problems associated with Iraq’s constitution. She noted that “the constitution was written in a period of about three months, but, most importantly, it was written without the participation of the Sunni community who boycotted the process and refused to participate in the negotiations that produced the constitution. They were eventually persuaded to ratify the constitution.” Al-Rahim noted that “because of the haste with which the constitution was written, it is riddled with internal contradictions, ambiguities, lack of clarity, and is essentially, an unbalanced document that does not have a fully-fleshed conception of what the state is and how the state is going to function.” Indeed, “if the Iraqi federal government was to follow the constitution today, literally and strictly […] it would not be able to provide internal security – the article about security specifically says the federal government is in charge of Iraq’s security against external threats; it does not talk about internal threats.” Al-Rahim argued, “to the extent to which the Iraqi government functions, it is functioning extra constitutionally.”

There are two major areas – internal and external – where there are serious political challenges, Al-Rahim argued. The first of these is “the reductionist approach to Iraqi society that began in 2003 that was adopted by the U.S. administration” and this is the view of Iraq as being divided into Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions that have their own conflicting agendas. She argued that “this is neither an accurate, nor a healthy description of Iraqi society.” The second problem is the unease with which Iraq is identified within the region and how it relates to neighboring countries. Al-Rahim questioned whether Iraq can actually identify itself as an Arab country given the sizeable Kurdish and Shiite populations that do not consider themselves Arabs.

Finally, Al-Rahim argued that because of these constitutional and political variables, “there is still no common agreement among the political elite about what Iraq is or indeed what Iraq should be.”

The third and final speaker was Laith Kubba whose talk centered on the question “what impact will the U.S. withdrawal have on Iraq’s role in the region?” He also questioned whether the country would be able to stabilize after the withdrawal, especially with the prospect of civil war looming on the horizon.

For the eighty years before the invasion, Kubba argued, Iraq was a balancing force in the region and “maintained a strong position among the Arab countries; it was quite influential and independent.” However, “with the invasion in ’03 that order inside Iraq ended,” he said, and it has become a weak state that no longer poses a threat to its neighbors, or to the international community.

Kubba outlined the current trends that are driving the Iraqi political scene, both internally and externally. He argued that for a combination of economic and political reasons, the U.S. significantly reduced its troops. “Back in ’08, as Obama was elected, there was the dawn of a new policy on Iraq.” The focus has now shifted back onto the Iraqi government as “the perception of a diminishing U.S. presence throws the ball back to Iraqi players.”

Externally, a weakened Iraq will change the nature of the power balance in the region. “When the U.S. invaded Iraq, it more or less warned the neighbors not to interfere in Iraq; Saudi Arabia was kept in check; Syria was kept at bay; Turkey, for reasons of its own, decided not to cooperate. So, effectively, Iran was in a position to do what it wanted because it had no working understanding, or working relationship with the U.S. and it has built a very complex presence inside Iraq” that has made it extremely influential on a number of fronts, both culturally and militarily. Importantly, “As its neighbors look at Iraq, can they be indifferent to what sort of order is emerging in Iraq? The answer for Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Saudi Arabia is a definite ‘no.’” What happens in Iraq will have a direct influence and impact on their security and interests. Until Iraq becomes autonomous and independent, neighbors will have opportunities to influence the country.

Looking to the future of Iraq, Kubba said that there are two competing visions. The first perceives of Iraq as a modern state that has a clear citizen-state relationship irrespective of communal loyalties. He argued that despite the upheaval caused by the U.S. invasion, “the most positive outcome is that Iraq has set itself up with an electoral system” and there is now tremendous pressure on the government to take the public’s demands into account – something that Iraq has not experienced in a long time. The second vision sees Iraq as a weak and fractured state that has strong ethnically divided communal centers or provinces. The various factions will be encouraged to overlook political agendas in favor of sectarian ones. Finally, Kubba argued that “the new order is yet to materialize; we are still in a transitional phase in Iraq and I think it will take a while before the new order is shaped.”

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator

Migrant Labor in the Gulf - Working Group III
2010-10-10 18:00 - 2010-10-11 18:00
On October 10–11, 2010, CIRS held its third and final meeting of the “Migrant Labor in the Gulf” working group. Each participant submitted a draft paper in advance of the meeting. The goal of the meeting was for those taking part to critique each other’s work and advise the authors as they prepare a final draft for submission to a planned edited volume titled Migrant Labour in the Gulf (Columbia University Press/Hurst, 2012).

CIRS launched the “Migrant Labor in the Gulf” initiative in 2008. The working group is composed of experts in the field of migrant labor who hail from a variety of different academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, history, and political science. The working group is also composed of the four CIRS Research Grant awardees: Andrew Gardner from the University of Puget Sound/Qatar University, Arland Thornton and Nathalie Williams from the University of Michigan, Susan Martin from Georgetown University, and David Mednicoff from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

The participants adopted different perspectives on migrant labor. Some focused on macro trends that drive migration and define labor patterns within the GCC and among sending countries. In addition, several participants employed ethnographic methods to analyze the lived experiences of the migrants themselves.

The term “migrant labor” was historicized in order to analyze how the relationship between the citizen and the migrant in the Gulf has traditionally centered around the question of labor. Connections between the Gulf and other parts of the world were built around the pearling industry, trade, kinship relations, and religion. Migrant labor is usually depicted as a transient activity, and although many laborers are indeed short-term employees, this masks the fact that there are long-term and more culturally and socially-integrated forms of labor that exist in the Gulf. Importantly, historicizing migrant labor in the Gulf is useful in pointing out all the actors that are often excluded from discussions. Racialized hierarchical systems can be attributed to British colonial relations, and the establishment of the multinationals and the oil industry in the region.

Further, the participants examined the issue of gender in relation to migrant labor. Migrant labor in the Gulf tends to be highly gendered, where construction work and public sector work is dominated by males, and domestic work is performed by females. In general, and not just in the Gulf, domestic work falls outside of the purview of a country’s labor laws because domestic work is not considered part of the market economy. However, the participants argued that including domestic work within the framework of labor was not necessarily a solution to the problems associated with this type of employment. Here, the participants agreed that migrants should not be examined solely in terms of labor, but their social relations, political beliefs, and social formations should be examined as well.

Another key discussion was based on GCC states’ nationalization plans. The researchers spoke about the importance of not overlooking these schemes as the development of local human resources is a main target for most Gulf nations in the future. There has been little research regarding these nationalization schemes because of the difficulties of their implementation. As the Gulf strives toward knowledge based economies, long-term development is regarded as the responsibility of the national workforce. Although the nationalization strategies of the GCC countries differ, nationalization policies are geared towards breaking decades-long dependence on foreign labor in both the public and private sectors. In future, lower illiteracy rates, better global technological connectivity, and more women in leadership roles all pave the way for increased diversification of the Gulf economies.

The working group addressed other significant issues such as the ‘kefala’ system, human trafficking, illegal migration, and regional regulation efforts. The participants relied on a variety of data sources, including in-depth interviews, field observation, survey research, as well as demographic and other statistical data. The edited volume will be the first of its kind to be produced within the region.

Click here for the working group’s agenda
Read about the working group’s first and second meeting
Read more about this research initiative

Participants include:

Attiya Ahmad, Wesleyan UniversityZahra Babar, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMary Breeding, The World BankJane Bristol-Rhys, Zayed UniversityJohn T. Crist, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarAndrew Gardner, University of Puget SoundMehran Kamrava, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarPardis Mahdavi, Pomona CollegeSusan Martin, Georgetown UniversityDavid Mednicoff, University of Massachusetts–AmherstSuzi Mirgani, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarCaroline Osella, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonFilippo Osella, University of SussexKasim Randeree, Oxford UniversityHélène Thiollet, Sciences PoArland Thornton, University of Michigan, Ann ArborNathalie E. Williams, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator

Birol Baskan on the 2010 Turkish Referendum
2010-10-06 08:00 - 18:00
Birol Başkan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Government at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered a Focused Discussion on the topic, “Turkey at the Crossroads: The Last Referendum and its Implications” on October 6, 2010. Başkan’s talk focused on how the September 12, 2010, referendum in Turkey left the country at the crossroads of choice. Did Turkey move towards a more liberal democracy or towards religious authoritarianism? The decision to vote “yes” or “no” was considered to be a decision between “Islamism” and “secularism” in Turkey, he argued.

The 2010 referendum mainly revolved around making constitutional changes to the judiciary and the outcome was that “21 million people said ‘yes’ and 15 million people said ‘no.’ So, the referendum was in favor of the amendments introduced by the Justice and Development party,” Başkan said.

These changes are historically significant. Exactly thirty years ago, the professor said, “the 1980 military coup in Turkey left incredible scars on Turkish historical memory:” The parliament and various political parties were closed down, and political leaders were arrested, expelled, tortured, and killed. During that turbulent time, “the Turkish military destroyed all the societal networks – the leftist and the nationalist groups in Turkey – and, unintentionally, prepared the ground for Islamic revivalism.” As a result of the coup d’état, the 1982 constitution was enshrined, which, Başkan argued, “established the foundation of the contemporary political system in Turkey.”

The agenda regarding the establishment of the constitution, according to Başkan, had two basic objectives: “to insulate the high echelons of the state against political influence and to set boundaries around political action and discourse.” In order to achieve these, the government played a secondary role in making appointments. For example, “In making military appointments, military promotions, and military expulsions, the government was a junior partner of the supreme military council,” he said. The constitutional court could thus act with impunity and had closed down 21 political parties, which is a record in Europe.

The problem with this type of a governance structure is that it lacks democratic legitimacy and so “the judiciary does not feel obliged to follow what the society wants, but only serve the higher interest of the state.” As such, “the Turkish state in all high level appointments in the judiciary and the military is a self-regulating institution.” In other words, it has a democratic façade.

In 2007 there was a referendum that didn’t attract so much international media speculation. In this referendum, the people voted for Turkey to make a transition from a parliamentary system to a semi-presidential system where the public elects the president. Başkan argued that “the October 2007 referendum added considerable strength to the democratic legitimacy of the appointment system in Turkey by making the president popularly elected, and the September 12, 2010, referendum paved the way for the possibility of a broad sector of judges and prosecutors to rise to the top. This will dilute the ideological rigidity of the Turkish judiciary” and much more democracy-loving personnel can hopefully rise to the higher echelons of the country’s governance.

In conclusion, Başkan said that these reforms raised once again the question: “Where is Turkey heading?” Currently, “Turkey has made a huge leap towards liberal democracy,” but, he said, “this is not enough. Turkey should introduce stronger measures to improve freedoms and rights” such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. For many years, the Turkish legal education system had been extremely successful in “training men of law who feel obliged to serve the state and the regime, not the society,” but in future, “Turkey needs to train democracy-loving and democracy-respecting generals, judges, prosecutors, and state university professors” in order to complete the transition towards becoming a full liberal democracy.

Başkan received a B.A. in International Relations and in Economics from Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1998 and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2006. Başkan taught at State University of New York-Fredonia in 2006-2007 and at Qatar University in 2007-2010. His research looks at the roles religion, religious institutions, and grassroots religious groups play in creating, maintaining, undermining and destroying political order in the Middle East. He recently completed a book manuscript contracted to Syracuse University press. Currently, he works on several projects, one of which is a book project analyzing the role of religion in state and nation building in the Gulf. At SFS-Qatar, Başkan teaches courses on comparative politics, religion and politics, and methodology.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator

Mary Ann Tetreault on Education in the Gulf
2010-10-04 08:00 - 18:00
Mary Ann Tétreault, the 2010-2011 CIRS Visiting Scholar and the Una Chapman Cox Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at Trinity University in San Antonio, was invited to deliver the October CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on the subject “Who Am I? International Education and Identity in the Gulf.”

The lecture was based on the phenomenon of transplanting foreign universities – particularly from the United States – into the Gulf. Tétreault pointed out that there were two interesting aspects to the American education model that has been established in many Gulf states. The first aspect is that “the model that is being transplanted to the Gulf is a model that Americans seem to have backed off from – it’s too expensive.” In America, high quality education is not something that is provided for all; many connect higher education solely to jobs rather than to human development, and see higher education as wasteful as job prospects for graduates decline while salaries and benefits shrink. The second aspect revolves around the question of compatibility. Tétreault asked: “How compatible are the values of American education with societies in the Gulf? And how can we get some compatibility between what is a questioning and interrogating educational philosophy and one where people memorize, accept, and have a much stricter view.”

During her research, Tétreault argued that she first had to gauge people’s expectations of universities and educational systems. Students attend university for a variety of different academic and social reasons; university faculty have certain expectations of their students; and the public too is an important stakeholder. Traditionally, “universities are funded by taxpayers and by the public in general and so the public has expectations too – what are these kids learning? Are they going to be able to graduate and go out and get jobs? Will they contribute to the growth of our society?”

Tétreault’s research focused on the American University of Kuwait (AUK), where she taught and conducted focus groups and interviews with students, faculty, and administrators for four months in spring 2010. Using AUK as her case study, the main research question that structured her project was “What is the contribution of these American universities to education in the Gulf?” At AUK, Tétreault observed that there was a great deal of negotiation that took place between the American values of the university and the Kuwaiti cultural mores that existed in the broader society. She noted that there was a significant amount of friction between these two ideals. Other contentious issues between American and Kuwaiti values center on questions of censorship; gender; and academic freedom and autonomy.

Tétreault concluded by saying that there are serious compatibility issues between the effects of an American-style education and the Gulf society it is being transplanted into. Long-term issues such as the question of academic freedom, censorship, and the role of women in society are just some of the cultural clashes that are occurring and may have long-term effects in the future. In her findings, Tétreault did, however, observe that AUK does display many features of American education that are valuable to students and the larger community. For example, faculty devotes a significant amount of time to students, and there is a great deal of attention paid to student development. Tétreault concluded that the students who go to AUK do internalize American values: “they think they should be independent, they think they should be autonomous, and they think they should be able to go out into the economy” and find opportunities as Kuwaitis who are both American-trained and compatible with their own society.

Mary Ann Tétreault’s publications include books and articles about democratization, social movements, gender, oil markets, war crimes, international political economy, world politics, and American foreign policy. Her regional focus is the Gulf, with an emphasis on Kuwait about which she has written many articles and two books, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Economics of the New World Order and Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait. Her forthcoming co-edited book, Political Change in the Arab Gulf States: Stuck in Transition, is scheduled to be published in December.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, Publications Coordinator

Professor Westbrook Lectures on Education and Market Transition in Viet Nam
2010-08-30 08:00 - 18:00
On August 30, 2010, Daniel Westbrook, an economics professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered the August CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on the topic of “Education and Market Transition in Viet Nam.” Westbrook first traveled to Viet Nam in 1993 to spend a semester teaching at the National Economics University in Hanoi under a program sponsored by the Ford Foundation; he returned to the Ford Foundation program during the 1995–1996 academic year. Professor Westbrook also spent a year at the Fulbright Economics Training Program in Ho Chi Minh City during 2001–2002. More recently, he worked on Viet Nam as a “case study for looking at the effects of marketization on returns to education.” This is an ongoing research project that centers on the question: “How has the payoff to education evolved during Viet Nam’s market transition?”

To provide context for his research, Westbrook explained the role of education in the economic development process. “The traditional view of economic development,” he said “describes a process where labor moves from agricultural activities to industrial activities.” Historically, policies based on this view tended to focus on heavy industry. Westbrook also described a more modern definition of economic development which gives a central role to human capital and “acquisition of increasingly sophisticated and productive ways of competing.” This model, he said, “envisions a world where developing countries’ abilities to compete in world markets depend very much on their acquisition of human capital.” Westbrook cited the role education played in producing the rapid economic growth the Asian tiger economies experienced in the latter part of the 20th century.

At the beginning of its transition period, Viet Nam was on the verge of starvation. Even though Viet Nam has enjoyed GDP growth rates of 7–8 % per year for over two decades, it remains very poor and there is much room for economic development to occur. Viet Nam’s education policies have been advancing along ambitious goals to support further development. “In order for people to invest in education,” Professor Westbrook explained, “they have to have an incentive.” It is generally understood that “education gives you access to better jobs and higher wages,” but this assumes the existence of labor markets sophisticated enough to compensate workers for their educational attainments. Viet Nam’s market transition experience provides an opportunity to examine the effect of improving markets on the returns to education. At the beginning of the transition period jobs were administratively allocated and market returns to education were weak. During the late 1980s, Viet Nam began its transition to a market-oriented economy. Professor Westbrook documented the degree to which greater labor market depth generated higher returns to education.

Professor Westbrook’s statistical work indicates that the impact of education in Viet Nam is substantial and significant. Moreover, the impact is larger where labor market depth is greatest. Thus, he concluded, “education pays off in a big way and this indicates a very strong incentive to acquire additional schooling or to invest in the schooling of one’s children.”

Daniel Westbrook received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1978 and joined the faculty at Georgetown at that time. He joined the School of Foreign Service in Qatar in 2008. His current research interests focus on applied micro-econometrics in economic development and on Vietnam. Professor Westbrook regularly teaches micro-economic principles, international trade, globalization, environmental economics, economic statistics and econometrics.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator.

View the presentation from lecture below:

Education and Economic Transition in Viet Nam 1993 -2006 from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Imam Feisal Lectures on Moderate Islam
2010-08-24 08:00 - 18:00
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a prominent Muslim leader in the United States and Chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, visited Qatar during a trip to the region sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. He was invited to the Georgetown University in Qatar campus on August 24, 2010, to talk about “Moderate Islam, the Muslim Community in America, and Inter-Faith Dialogue.” Mehran Kamrava, Interim Dean of GU-Qatar, introduced the Imam as a “peace-builder” and welcomed the audience “in the spirit of dialogue, discussion, and discourse;” pillars of Georgetown University’s mission in Washington, DC, and Qatar.

The Imam said that the Cordoba Initiative was a means of bridging U.S.-Muslim relations. He noted that a major initial task was to unpack these binary oppositional terms to reveal complexities at the heart of the problem between the “West” and the “Muslim world.” The “West,” he said, is much more than a geographical location; it is a political and ideological projection that has very real and long-lasting impacts on the world. As such, “bridging the divide between Islam and the West involves unpacking the sources of the problem, and looking at the opportunities that can be made.” The Imam argued that there is a misperception that Islam-West relations will take generations to fix, but, he said, “I am convinced that the so-called tension and polarization between the West as the United States, or the West at large and the Muslim world, can be fixed in a ten-year time-span if there is the will to do it and the resources put behind it.”

The causes of the divide can be analyzed in different ways, but the Imam identified four basic sources of the problem. The first of these is rooted in global political conflicts such as Israel-Palestine, U.S.-Iran relations, and the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The second revolves around a rapidly changing demographic occurring primarily in Europe, where Muslim populations are rapidly increasing. Imam Feisal argued that “because the native populations are declining, there is a sense that the identity make-up of the society is undergoing some permanent shift.” Thirdly, there are fundamental problems that arise as a result of theological interpretation and jurisprudence, where the West believes in secularism in direct opposition to how Muslim political communities are formed. Further, there are fundamental differences related to gender relations. These issues present challenges in the United States as well as Europe. Fourthly, the Imam argued that there are general misrepresentations of the ‘other.’ “The perception of each side is another issue where the media plays a profound role.” In the interest of a perceived fairness, the media usually polarizes issues further by insisting on two opposing sides to each issue. Not only this, the media – both the news and entertainment media – also tends to emphasize negative factors that generate equally negative reactions among audiences.

In conclusion, in order to solve these divisive issues, Imam Feisal argued that the resolutions must be “context specific” and that there is an urgent “need to look at the architecture of power” as Muslims living in the United States need to improve their understanding regarding how the country is structured. Therefore, he argued “it is important to understand how decisions are made, and to be engaged in that process.”

Imam Feisal is the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, an independent, non-partisan and multi-national project that works with state and non-state actors to improve Muslim-West relations. In this capacity, he directs projects that aim to heal conflict between Islamic and Western communities by developing youth leadership, empowering women, and engaging Islamic legal scholars in addressing the implications of contemporary Islamic governance. In 1997, he founded the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), the first Muslim organization committed to bringing American Muslims and non-Muslims together through programs in academia, policy, current affairs, and culture. As Imam of Masjid al-Farah, a mosque located twelve blocks from Ground Zero in New York City, he preaches a message of understanding between people of all creeds. Additionally, Imam Feisal sits on the Board of Trustees of the Islamic Center of New York and serves as an advisor to the Interfaith Center of New York.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator.

The Nuclear Question in the Middle East Working Group I
2010-05-23 08:00 - 2010-05-24 18:00
On May 23–24, 2010, a two-day working group meeting in Doha, Qatar took place, CIRS invited a group of scholars to discuss the “Nuclear Question in the Middle East.” The presentations took several different approaches ranging from theoretical deliberations, to practical implications, to historical narratives. During the course of the meeting, the scholars noted that it was important to define the terms in use, including the difference between nuclear exploration, nuclear acquisition, and nuclear energy options, as there are fundamental differences between these various programs. Although alluding to the constant overshadowing threat of a weapons program, civilian nuclear energy programs do not directly imply such a drastic development.

After giving situational and historical analysis, the scholars analyzed past, current, and future concerns regarding countries that have, or seek to acquire, nuclear capabilities. The participants talked about macro decision-making in relation to securitization across borders, and also analyzed how the individual characteristics of a state’s leader can influence a country’s abstinence from, or embracing of, a nuclear weapons program. As such, they relayed a direct correlation between domestic politics and the decision to go nuclear. In relation to regional politics, GCC states face a nuclear opponent in Iran and so may acquire nuclear capabilities as a direct response to this threat. Apart from the issue of securitization, the GCC states, although rich in hydrocarbons, have presented a strong case for why there is need for nuclear energy infrastructures as a means of engaging the global economy. The petrochemical industry in the Gulf is an intensively high-energy one that needs sources other than hydrocarbon, and these countries have the capacity and capital costs for making this happen

Among other issues discussed during the meeting were matters related to global security, regional mistrust, the prestige of gaining nuclear capabilities, and the role of NGOs and civil society groups in pressuring governments to abstain from nuclear energy initiatives. The scholars compared the domestic politics and the international relations for nuclear weapons acquisition. The participants also questioned the extent to which a single government can control such long-term and multi-institutional projects over decades.

The format of CIRS working group research initiatives is to convene two or three working group meetings a year to complete a variety of research projects. The first meeting is an introductory and brainstorming session where the scholars discuss the parameters of the initiative, offer themes and areas of research, and deliberate original questions and problems. The scholars then take the shared information and begin writing draft research papers, which are circulated among the group prior to the second meeting. At a subsequent meeting, scholars critique each other’s papers and offer possible alternatives for research. Towards the conclusion of the project, the papers are refined and then collected into an edited volume titled The Nuclear Question in the Middle East (Columbia University Press/Hurst, 2012).

Click here for the working group’s agendaClick here for the participants’ biographies Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants:

Zahra Babar, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarKai-Henrik Barth, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarKayhan Barzegar, Center for Middle East Strategic Studies; Islamic Azad University; Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International AffairsAlvin Chew, Gulf Research CenterAvner Cohen, Woodrow Wilson International Center for ScholarsJohn T. Crist, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMehran Kamrava, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMustafa Kibaroğlu, Bilkent UniversityThomas W. Lippman, Council on Foreign Relations and Middle East InstituteGiacomo Luciani, Gulf Research Center FoundationMari Luomi, Finnish Institute of International AffairsSuzi Mirgani, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMaria Rost Rublee, University of AucklandEtel Solingen, University of California, Irvine

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator

Fred Lawson Lectures on Alternative Explanations for U.S. Policy in the Gulf
2010-05-13 08:00 - 18:00
On May 13, 2010, Fred Lawson, Professor of Government at Mills College and the 2009-2010 CIRS Senior Fellow, gave a CIRSFocused Discussion on the topic of “Alternative Explanations for U.S. Policy in the Gulf” to a group of Qatar-based diplomats, embassy staff, and Georgetown University in Qatar faculty. The lunch talk was held at the Four Seasons hotel in Doha.

Lawson’s lecture delivered an academic overview of American foreign policy toward the Gulf region. He noted that while diplomats and politicians around the world “are busy carrying out the practice of diplomacy and the practice of international relations, there is a whole army of scholars sitting at colleges and universities in the United States trying to understand what is going on and trying to explain international relations.”

Lawson stated that “American foreign policy toward the Gulf has changed dramatically over the last three decades.” From the 1940s to the 1980s, the American presence, especially its military presence, in the region remained minimal and unobtrusive, but during the 1990s, this situation was spectacularly altered and the American military presence became a major feature of many Gulf states. The U.S. presence was not only larger, but also more overt, and culminated in large-scale military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

American scholars, Lawson said, have tried to explain this dramatic shift by proposing three different theses. The first of these, and the most widely accepted, is that “the United States is trying hard to solve problems of security in a world that has no overarching authority structure,” and so acts in its own self interest. This explanation is often called a “realist perspective,” and assumes that most, if not all, aspects of U.S. foreign policy represent a response to changes in the strategic circumstances in which the country finds itself due to changes in world affairs. From this perspective, in order to understand American policy toward the Gulf, there needs to be an analysis of international events that have led to a larger U.S. military presence in the region. Lawson said that a common explanation is that “during the 1990s, both Iraq and Iran had the capability to disrupt oil supplies to the international market,” thereby threatening U.S. interests and prompting greater military engagement in the region. But, he cautioned, there are far more compelling reasons for the activation of regional U.S. military engagement, including the strategic rivalry between the United States on one hand and the People’s Republic of China, India and Japan for influence in Central Eurasia and the steady weakening of U.S. dominance in the international economy.

The second explanation for U.S. policy emphasizes the United States’s unique ideological and historical characteristics, or “strategic culture.” This explanation, Lawson said, assumes that “the U.S. respects the principles of limited and representative government, values the individual liberties of citizens, and believes that the market offers the best way to organize the economy.” Therefore, policy toward the Gulf is fundamentally shaped by these concerns. During the 1980s and 1990s, both Iran’s and Iraq’s authoritarian governing structures represented forms of rule that were directly antithetical to the United States’s liberal principles and values. As a result, Lawson argued, “the United States conceives of itself as having an obligation to bring the advantages of limited government and market economies to others.”

The third, and final, outlook characterizes America as an empire that is interested in expanding territorial control and cultural influence around the world. This is a different notion of “empire” from the traditional one, Lawson said, in that, in the Gulf as in other areas of the world, “the U.S. is invited to take responsibility” in order to establish regional orderliness. The decentralized global U.S. military presence reflects the peculiar command structure of the American armed forces, which consists of a “network of regional commands around the world,” he said.

In conclusion, Lawson argued that these three explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but that different aspects of American foreign policy can be linked to each of these lines of argument.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Herbert Howe on Dilemmas of Humanitarian Military Intervention in Africa
2010-05-03 08:00 - 18:00
Herb Howe, Visiting Associate Professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and expert in African military conflicts, presented his lecture, “Boots on the Ground, Eyes on the Sky: Dilemmas of Military Humanitarian Intervention in Africa” on May 3, 2010 in the final CIRS Monthly Dialogue of the 2009-2010 academic year. In addition to his two decades teaching at Georgetown University, Dr. Howe spent time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria and worked for both the U.S. government and as a consultant for NGO’s. He is the author of a book on African militaries entitled Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States.

Focusing on the tangled moral and political implications of armed peacekeeping efforts from a largely American perspective, Howe enumerated the complicating factors that must be considered when launching a humanitarian mission, including the forces of public opinion and concerns for the preservation of national sovereignty. “Boots on the ground” versus “eyes on the sky” served throughout the talk as a metaphor for the change in the prevailing ideology of peacekeeping on the continent. The former refers to an on-the-ground troops and equipment approach to assistance seen in the American efforts in Somalia in the 1990s and in various UN peacekeeping missions in Africa such as MONUC in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while the latter reflects the shift towards the training of African soldiers and sharing of satellite and intelligence capabilities in lieu of the deployment of troops to troubled regions.

Howe pointed to the issue of sovereignty as the foremost challenge in an international intervention of any kind, calling it one of the most fundamental principles of the modern nation-state.

“It is a Pandora’s Box if you start messing around with sovereignty,” he said, observing that once nations or organizations interfere in the domestic activities of states, complicated questions of the rights of governments versus responsibility to humanity arise. The violation of national sovereignty by Western powers is an especially touchy issue in Africa, where bloody battles for independence remain fresh in many minds. In situations of humanitarian intervention, outside action is justified by the idea that, according to Howe, “If you don’t act responsibly, we have the right to come in against your will and change the situation and help the people.”

The idea of a humanitarian intervention for the sake of national interest was also explored, with Howe posing the question of whether or not the spread of certain values was reason enough for an intervention.“Should this be part of our national interest,” he asked, “to safeguard these values not just for Americans and Canadians but for people around the world? Are they universal rights that people have?”

Howe also delved into the impact of domestic politics on international humanitarian interventions, pointing to the impact of negative American public opinion during the war in Vietnam and Somalia, and raised the controversial idea of allowing a war to run its own course, theorizing “war will kill a lot of people, but once that war finishes you may have a better, more durable, peace than if you try to intervene. Intervention gives people a chance to reload, it may prolong the suffering, and the post-conflict situation will be more problematic.”

To close his talk, Howe offered scenarios on what future military humanitarian interventions in Africa might look like, focusing largely on the development of an African Standby Force, consisting of soldiers from nations around the continent but aided by Western countries. Already, he pointed out, the United States has trained around 70,000 African soldiers and is offering intelligence and technological support. Because African countries have more at stake in conflicts in their own region, Howe said, there is a greater chance that their interventions will be more successful that Western-led attempts: “We’re giving them the specialized skills and they’re contributing what we don’t have—political will and commitment.”

Despite the promise that such cooperative military humanitarian interventions hold, Howe surmised that dilemmas would continue to arise, largely centered around the troubling question of whether or not Western governments would be able to ensure the responsible use of their military technology.

“Once you transfer that technology you may lose control over how it is used,” Howe said. “Is this helping the solution or leading to greater problems?

Professor Howe became interested in the topic of Africa when he served with the U.S. Peace Corps in Nigeria during the Biafra war. He subsequently freelanced in southern Africa during the liberation wars for the Philadelphia Inquirer and then taught “African Militaries” at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service for twenty years. Author of “Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States,” he holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Article by Clare Malone. Malone is a Student Affairs Officer at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

Mehran Kamrava International Lecture
2010-04-26 08:00 - 18:00
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Dean Mehran Kamrava speaks about “A 2020 vision of the Middle East”

Click here to download an MP3 of Kamrava’s speech

In its inaugural International Lecture, CIRS travelled to the Kingdom of Bahrain on April 26, 2010, to offer insights and dialogue with people in the neighboring GCC state. In this unique Public Affairs Program, CIRS emphasized the objective of providing a forum for exchange of ideas with other communities in the Gulf region and beyond. The distinguished speaker, Mehran Kamrava, was introduced to the audience by GU-Qatar Alumna Haya Al Noaimi.

Kamrava is Interim Dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies. He lectured on the topic of “A 2020 Vision of the Middle East,” where he introduced and analyzed several key trends he sees that have the ability to shape the future of the Middle East over the next ten years. Kamrava said that, “as students of the Middle East, and as citizens of the region, often times we dwell on the past.”

Outlining the evening’s lecture, the four primary areas that Kamrava focused on were related to 1) the nature of the state that currently exists across the Middle East; 2) the role and the nature of the relationship between the United States and the region; 3) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and 4) trends occurring in the Gulf region, including the events unfolding in Iran and Iraq.

Turning to the first area of discussion, or “the state of the state” in the Middle East, Kamrava argued that there are a number of different political dynamics that are currently being played out in the international arena. There are a number of different state formations and governance models that range between the democratic, the non-democratic, and the many other models in between these two opposing spectrums. In the Middle East, there are democratic models of governance that vary in their viability and vibrancy; “some democracies are somewhat more cosmetic, or at least have much more limited political parameters around them – you might call them pseudo democracies,” of which Turkey, Israel, and Lebanon are good examples, Kamrava said.

The Middle East also has several states that are non-democratic as they attempt to exclude the public from any political participation through the instrumentalization of repressive mechanisms. There are other political systems in the region that are thoroughly non-democratic, but try to appear democratic. Many of these non-democracies, Kamrava argued, “try to be inclusionary and inclusive insofar as the population is concerned – the streets become democratic theaters.”

Discussing the United States’ relationship to the region, Kamrava argued that since WWII, there have been four primary features that have guided American foreign policy towards the Middle East. These include, guaranteeing the safety and security of the state of Israel; guaranteeing access to Middle Eastern oil at reasonable prices; containing regional threats to American interests across the region; and, “after the Cold War – or once Iraq invaded Kuwait – there was a fourth aspect and that was to station military forces in the region directly because regional allies, at least insofar as the United States saw them, turned out to be unreliable for American policy calculations,” Kamrava argued. Expounding upon American military presence in the Middle East, he said that if one looks at a map, it becomes clear that “across the Middle East, there is a very strong American presence” in the form of large and easy to mobilize military bases. To this effect, Kamrava said, “the big question is: does it look like, at any time in the foreseeable future, even in the next ten years, the American military is going to disengage from the Middle East?”

These features of American foreign policy, Kamrava said, are instrumental to the third area of discussion regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “America’s alliance with Israel is certainly key in the way that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has unfolded historically and also currently,” he said. Projecting his views on the situation, Kamrava said that “as we move forward, we can see a continuation of this unending ‘peace process,’” especially in light of the encroachment of illegal Israeli settlements and rapidly increasing population growth. With this knowledge in mind, and by looking at the sobering facts on the ground, he posed an uncomfortable question to the audience by asking “does it still make sense to talk about a Palestine?”

Looking into the future, Kamrava posed three possible models for what future political turns Palestine might take. The first of these is the “Tibetan model,” where Palestine’s objective to be an officially recognized sovereign state all but disappears as it becomes subsumed under Israel. In this model, “although there is a Palestinian identity, there will not be a Palestinian state,” Kamrava explained. The second and opposite possibility is for Palestine to take on the “East European” or “Central Asian” model, which is for it to emerge as a distinct state in the future. The third, and final, model is for Palestine to become a disparate amalgam of reservations and entities that are landlocked and isolated from one another with little economic and political power.

Finally, turning to the Gulf region, Kamrava projected that, politically, “I don’t think much is going to change, at least insofar as states are concerned” in the GCC, but it is very difficult to predict what will happen in Iran over the next few years. He added that “the regional superpowers [Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt] are not going to be as dominant in dictating regional foreign policy.” Indeed, “we will see a continued ascendance in the economics of the Gulf region, particularly smaller countries like Bahrain and Qatar.” The region will see a new set of powers that, because of their economic wealth, policy agility, and elite cohesion, will become more prominent in shaping the future of the GCC, the Middle East, and beyond.

In conclusion, Kamrava summed up his prognosis for the Middle East of 2020 by saying that “what we will continue to see in the region are American ‘footprints,’” in the form of U.S. military bases, as well as “a continued domination of Israel.” He also noted that “I don’t think there is going to be a wave of democracy sweeping across the region and that is because oil-based economies will continue to exist throughout the region.” As a final thought, Kamrava said that he was optimistic that we will see “the continued enrichment of human capacity and human capital in every country of the Middle East.”

Dr. Mehran Kamrava is Interim Dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and Director of Georgetown’s Center for International and Regional Studies. He is an expert in comparative politics, political development, and Middle Eastern politics. He is the author of nine books, including, most recently, Iran’s Intellectual Revolution and The Modern Middle East: A Political History Since the First World War.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Mirgani is the CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Robert Fisk on Western Journalism and the Middle East
2010-04-20 08:00 - 18:00
Robert Fisk, award-winning journalist and Middle East Correspondent for The Independent newspaper, gave the annual faculty-appointed Distinguished Lecture on April 20, 2010 on the subject of “State of Denial: Western Journalism and the Middle East.” GU-Qatar student Amna Al-Thani introduced Fisk to a capacity audience of 800 guests at the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha.

Fisk began by noting that on September 11, 2001, he was contacted by various news agencies who repeatedly asked him “who did it?” This, he said, was very telling of the state of Western journalism as they would not ask the obvious question of “why did this happen?” Fisk argued that “when you have an ordinary crime on the street, the first thing the police do is look for a motive. But when we had an international crime against humanity in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, the one thing journalists were not supposed to do was look for a motive.”

In today’s terror driven discourse, Fisk said, delving into the background historical reasons for why such attacks happen is considered synonymous with an apology for terrorist activity. This is challenging because it would open up a problematic discourse that questions the relationship between the United States, the Arab world, and Israel.

In Western journalism, Fisk argued, “what we were confronting, especially in the United States, was the parasitic, osmotic relationship between journalists and power.” Because the United States administration refers to the Israeli “occupied territories” as “disputed territories” and the Israeli “wall” is referred to as a “security barrier,” this language is picked up by the popular press and becomes the sanitized language of journalism. “By failing to use the real words, we de-semanticize the conflict,” said Fisk. “Through our journalistic cowardice, we make it easier for those who suffer to become the aggressors and those who are the occupiers to become the victims,” he argued. Journalists become complicit in conflicts when they subscribe to this type of reporting.

The worst example of this sanitization of conflict is television, where producers will not allow scenes of death or violence, thus concealing the reality of war from the public. Viewers of television in the West are not given the opportunity to see for themselves the effect of wars. Fisk argued that “our leaders, all of whom at the moment have zero experience of real war – the journalists do, but not our leaders in the West – they are able to present to the public war as a bloodless sandpit, war as something primarily to do with victory and defeat rather than death.”

Currently, Fisk argued, there is a wall of fortresses that divide the world into West and East. There are British, US, and Western European military posts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, as well as in a variety of other strategically located regions. “It’s a kind of iron curtain across the Middle East,” he said.

Western governments say that they want to export democracy, but, Fisk argued, the voices on the other side say they want nothing more than justice. Currently, the enemies of the Western world are predominantly Islamist. He said that “we don’t even largely reflect upon what I suspect is one of the principle frustrations that exist in this region: that Muslims have kept their faith and we have not.” He continued by saying, “what has happened is that a people who have kept their faith are now largely dominated socially, economically, politically, and, usually, militarily, by a people who have lost their faith. How do you explain that to yourselves?”

In conclusion, Fisk said: “I think the West should always be encouraged to send its teachers, and its educators, its builders, its engineers, its bridge-builders, and its scientists to the Muslim world, to learn as well as to help and teach. But, militarily, we have no business being in the Muslim world.”

Earlier in the day, Fisk was invited to the GU-Qatar campus to speak informally to a group of faculty, students, and staff. He answered questions related to the effects of technology on journalism.

A prominent journalist and the Middle East Correspondent for The Independent in the UK, Robert Fisk has won numerous press awards for his work including being named the British International Journalist of the Year seven times and receiving the Amnesty International UK Press Award twice. He has lived in the Middle East for over 30 years, and has reported on the 1979 Iranian revolution, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Chatila massacre, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. He is one of a few western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, which he has done three times, and is also a best-selling author, whose books include The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East and Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War. Robert Fisk holds a PhD in politics from Trinity College Dublin and holds 12 honorary degrees from other universities.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Mirgani is the CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Michael Nelson Lectures on Preparing for the Next Digital Revolution
2010-04-12 08:00 - 18:00
In partnership with ictQatar, on April 12, 2010, CIRS organized a Distinguished Lecture featuring Michael Nelson, Visiting Professor of Internet Studies in Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture, and Technology Program. Nelson, an expert in the areas of business, culture, and technology, lectured to an audience of 450 people on “The Cloud, the Exaflood, and the Internet of Things–Preparing for the Next Digital Revolution.” Nelson gave an overview of the future of the internet by delving into the policy, technology, and business decisions that are shaping how the technology will be used.

Nelson drew on his experiences working for the United States government, and his contribution to the Obama campaign specifically, by highlighting the strategic use of words in order to make or break certain initiatives. Language, he said, can be used tactically to shape policy decisions. In order to think about the future of computing and the internet, Nelson shared with the audience, eleven key words that sum up the discourse. The first word that he offered was “people,” and this, he said, “is the most important word because it is what defines how technology develops.” The development of new hardware and software used in computing is growing at an accelerated rate and is surpassing the pace at which people are learning to use these technologies. Currently, there is a growing gap between the progress of new technologies and the people able to operate them.

The second word Nelson offered was “vision,” and this referred to what kind of future people foresee for technology. He argued that “we are entering the third phase in the development of the internet, and this phase is as profound, revolutionary, and transformational as the World Wide Web was ten or fifteen years ago.” This next phase is only just now being defined; “over the next two or three years, we are going to make critical decisions about how the internet evolves and how it is used,” Nelson argued. Importantly, decisions made in the business sector will either open up new possibilities or curtail existing ones.

Through the third word, “Cloud,” the cost of technologies has been lowered significantly. “The ‘cloud,’” Nelson said, “is really a different way of doing computing” that developed out of academia and research institutions that needed to store large quantities of data remotely. Cloud computing involves outsourcing to a third party or provider. Organizations like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are at the leading edge of the development of this technology.

Nelson’s fourth word was “game changer,” which emphasizes how these new cloud computing services will radically change the way computing is done. The first phase of computing was based on the notion of individual computers working independently of others based on software and data, the second phase developed when computers were plugged into the web giving access to the world, and the third and current phase is the cloud, which means that individual computers do not have to be tied down to their own software and data, but can operate remotely by accessing data from other computers. This new mode of operation is defined by Nelson’s fifth word: “Many-to-many.”

Nelson’s sixth offering was the word “things,” which referred to the sharp increase in technological applications and gadgets. He said that “it’s not just about computers and people anymore; it’s about a hundred billion devices.” Indeed, Nelson said “today, about one and a half million PCs and a few hundred million smart phones plug into the internet.” Because of these tools, we are now dealing with an “exaflood.” This is the seventh prominent word in Nelson’s lecture, and refers to the huge increase in the amount of data available on the internet. “We all know what a megabyte is, and a gigabyte, but if you take a billion gigabytes, you get an ‘exabyte,’ Nelson remarked.

This increase in the amount of raw data led to Nelson’s eighth word “collaboration,” which refers to how people can work together to make sense of it. “Social media is, of course, one of the leading edge applications for enabling new types of collaboration. For a lot of people in their teenage years, Twitter and Facebook are actually replacing e-mail,” he said. This is inspiring ‘crowd sourcing,’ which is a means of rallying people from all over the world to sort data. “In the last twenty years, we have gone from having a scarcity of data to having an overwhelming amount of data,” Nelson explained. In fact, “the reason President Obama is in the White House is because of these technologies and because of the ‘cloud’ […] The campaign used social media to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to get them involved in the campaign and to get millions of people to give money,” he said.

“Consumerization” was Nelson’s ninth word, and defines the upgrade of digital technologies in the workplace as people begin to blend their work and home technologies. “This is the trend we see now where people are bringing into the workplace incredibly sophisticated tools and software applications that they use at home,” such as social media capabilities, he said.

The tenth word was “predictions,” and refers to a vision of what the internet will make possible in the near future. One of the predictions that Nelson offered was that “within five years, 80% of all computing and storage done worldwide could happen ‘in the cloud,’” but it is more likely that it will take a decade. Another prediction he suggested was that “within five years, 100 billion devices and sensors could be connected to the net,” but this too will most probably happen within ten years’ time. For these changes to happen there needs to be substantial changes in technological usage, cultural shifts, and policy implementations.

These necessary changes led to Nelson’s eleventh, and final, word, “policy.” He argued that “policy is often fifteen to twenty years behind the technology, and if that policy is not well designed, it can hold everything back. So, governments have a critically important role to play and I am very glad that Qatar, and the Qatari government, is focused on this.”

Concluding the lecture, Nelson gave three possible scenarios for the future of computing. The first of these is the ‘clouds scenario’ wherein a variety of organizations operate different forms of ‘clouds,’ using different technologies that are purposefully incompatible. The second is the ‘cloudy skies’ scenario where different organizations operate different technologies, but agree upon methods of interoperability. The third, and most desirable, possibility is the ‘blue skies’ scenario where different clouds, run by different organizations, all use common standards that make flexibility and interoperability the norm. Finally, Nelson said that “we are now less than 15% of the way through this incredible change” and so it is up to the users to demand the changes that they would like to see happen in the future.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Mirgani is the CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Judith Tucker on Globalization 18th Century Style
2010-04-07 08:00 - 18:00
Judith Tucker, Professor of History at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and former editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, gave the April 7, 2010 Monthly Dialogue lecture on the topic of “Globalization 18th Century Style: The Adventures of Salim the Algerine.”

Tucker introduced her biographical research on the elusive historical figure, Salim, and noted that the project was still in progress as she sifts through a variety of historical data, chronicles, travelogues, letters, among other eighteenth century materials in order to construct a narrative of the man’s life. Tracing records of Salim’s various forced and unforced journeys across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, Tucker said that she was captivated by this extraordinary “drama of connections among far-flung regions and the displacement of what we might consider a hapless victim of globalization eighteenth century style.”

Tucker first came across Salim, who has gone down in the historical record as “Salim the Algerine,” by examining a collection of Appalachian tales and privately owned records. According to Tucker, the records tell of a man who was born the son of an Ottoman official and a local woman from Algiers. On his way home to Algiers from time spent studying in Istanbul, Salim was abducted by Spanish pirates in the western Mediterranean in the mid-eighteenth century, transferred to a French cargo vessel heading to the port of New Orleans, and then sold into slavery to work on a local plantation. Within a year, Salim escapes and flees northwards, only to be captured by the Shawnee in the Ohio valley. He escapes once more and comes close to perishing in the woods before he is rescued by an English settler on a hunting expedition. The English settler takes Salim in and lodges him at his home in West Virginia until he recovers his strength and learns enough English to tell his story and express his desire to return home to Algiers. His hosts sent him to Williamsburg, the local colonial capital, and he receives the patronage of local gentry, who help sponsor his repatriation, and he makes his way to London. At this point in the historical narrative, Salim disappears for a few years but resurfaces again back in Williamsburg after returning from time spent in Algiers. Tucker explains that he is now recorded as a changed man who has suffered great disappointments. He settles in Virginia, is again taken under the wing of the local gentry, and acquires the reputation of a harmless eccentric who hovered on the edge of sanity and then drifts into obscurity. “The story seems to have it all,” Tucker said, “piracy, slavery, captivity, and redemption.”

One chapter of the story that puzzled her, Tucker said, was “why Salim enjoyed a certain social success among the Virginia gentry.” The reason, she said, was probably due to the fact that Salim was well educated and had knowledge of Greek, which was a sign of gentry, elitism, and nobility.

Tucker noted that there is no doubt that Salim existed, but much of the story remains obscure and its truth may never be determined. She argued, however: “whether I find additional material about the historical Salim or not – and I’m still looking – I think that this is a story well worth telling, particularly for today’s audiences, because it brings the history of eighteenth century globalization into a different focus.” If globalization is “more the subject of multiple conversations than it is of systematic or fixed lines of contestation,” Tucker said, then globalization is not merely a modern-day phenomenon based on virtual networks of instantaneous communication and technological feats, but is evident through the global connectivities traced through stories such as that of Salim. “Historians,” she said, “have found globalization a useful concept for understanding longer-term transformations” and, indeed, “the eighteenth century was a very important period for shaping the global as we inhabit it today,” she said.

Globalization, Tucker argued, can be defined as having three broad dimensions. The first of these is material, which is defined by the physical movement of goods and people through increasingly efficient transportation systems that “shrink the globe.” The second dimension is what can be defined as the spatio-temporal, which refers to the intensity and speed of global connectivities enhanced by new infrastructures, institutions, and norms. The third is cognitive and cultural, which is defined by the flow of ideas, tastes, and desires into a global imaginary leading to “the dominant understandings of the design and destiny of the world as a whole.” But, Tucker said, it is important to note that “the globalization debate, in fact, to date, as has often been pointed out, is Eurocentric in a variety of ways. It has often been told as the story of European expansion at the expense of other perspectives.”

“Viewing the story of Salim through the lens of globalization,” Tucker argued, “lends nuance and complexity to the eighteenth century globalization narrative in all its dimensions – its material, spatial, temporal, and cultural.” Indeed, “the story of Salim is unthinkable outside of the global frame” she said. “If the phenomenon of globalization is about the physical movement of people and goods on a global scale, then Salim is surely an excellent example of both: a person who is transformed into a good and then catapulted out of his Mediterranean world into a global transatlantic space.” However, Tucker argued, the story complicates the norms of European expansion as “Salim was not incorporated into the global economic system as part of the established patterns of labor recruitment, but rather as the by-product of a struggle for regional control that has to do, ultimately, with the contested globalization of the Mediterranean.”

Tucker argued that “the complex situation in the Mediterranean in the time of Salim reminds us that the material patterns of globalization were established in ways more far more fluid, contested, and uncertain in outcome than we sometimes think.” She noted that “the Salim story of globalization is a far cry from the tale of the benign spread of Enlightenment ideas.” Rather, “it could be told as the story of a major displacement and marginalization of the cosmopolitan Arabo-Islamic heritage, to which Salim was an intellectual heir.”

During her research, Tucker encountered different versions of the Salim story, each re-told towards a specific cultural project. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the story becomes one of Salim’s conversion to Christianity and is tailored to fit within the specific “global imaginary” of the time, lending to enhanced dichotomies and conflict between Christianity and Islam. “The revised Salim story serves to bring him into line with what looks like a global imaginary of the spread of Christianity – an adjustment of the Salim story that signals a transition in the nineteenth century to a less eclectic and a more parochial engagement with the global,” Tucker concluded.

Judith Tucker (PhD, History and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University) is Professor of History and former Editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Her research interests have focused on the Arab world in the Ottoman period, women and gender in Middle East history, and Islamic law, women, and gender. She is currently working on a project that explores globalization and the Middle East in the eighteenth century. She is the author of many publications on the history of women and gender in the Arab world.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Mirgani is the CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Open-Sea Piracy in the Modern World: Perils and Prospects
2010-03-21 08:00 - 18:00
On March 21, 2010, CIRS convened a Panel presentation on the topic of “Open-Sea Piracy in the Modern World: Perils and Prospects.” The panel was made up of Pottengal Mukundan, Director of the International Maritime Bureau, Roger Middleton, Consultant Researcher working for the Africa Programme at Chatham House, and Daniele Archibugi, Research Director at the Italian National Research Council.

Click here to download an MP3 of Piracy Panels’ discussion

Pottengal Mukundan headed the panel presentations with an overview of the current situation regarding pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia. He reported on statistical data collected by the Piracy Reporting Center located in Kuala Lumpur. The Center compiles information on attacks against vessels and acts as a catalyst for governments to respond to the growing problem. Mukundan reported that in 2009, there were 406 attacks, 49 vessels hijacked, over 1,000 crew taken hostage, and 11 crew members killed. He argued that “in today’s world, this is unacceptable.” Because all types of vessels – large and small, commercial and private – have been attacked, Mukundan explained that, contrary to popular belief, ships are not being targeted in advance. These are opportunist attacks.

View the presentation from lecture below:

The Challenges of Piracy Today from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
“What we are seeing [in Somalia],” Mukundan said, “is an unprecedented criminal phenomenon.” As with any crime, unless there is a firm push-back, the criminals will extend the frequency and audacity of their attacks. Pirates are now ranging 1,000 nautical miles out to sea in their mother-boats and small vessels and are attacking much larger, and better equipped, ships and tankers. In many instances, these vessels are seized by the pirates and sailed back to the coast of Somalia where they are held until a ransom is paid. “These vessels are held for anywhere between six weeks and three months on average,” he said.

Mukundan argued that “the deterrent to crimes is usually enacted by the state. In Somalia, it is not possible because it is a failed state. There is no national law enforcement agency and there is no judicial system,” so taking action against these criminals has become very difficult, particularly when these criminals are bringing vast sums of money into the local economy. Much of this money provides revenue streams for local militias. He argued that what is needed in this situation is to try to change the risk/reward balance for the pirates. It is little wonder, Mukundan said, that the crimes are so rampant when the rewards are so great, the risks so negligible, and the economic outlook of Somalia so dire.

Apart from the problem of how to deter the pirates, there remains the problem of what to do with them after they are caught. There still needs to be better coordination between countries and law enforcement agencies regarding the criminal prosecution of pirates. Currently, Somalia has bilateral relations with Kenya, but Kenya has reached its capacity in this regard.

In conclusion, Mukundan argued that piracy is not just a governmental problem; it is a public problem because all commercial goods that people consume on a daily basis come via sea routes. Therefore, Mukundan said, there is good reason for all governments to allocate resources to deal with this very prevalent problem.

View the presentation from the lecture below:

Wy Somalia Works for Pirates from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Continuing the debate was the second panelist, Roger Middleton, who placed Somali piracy within a historical context and argued that the current situation is a result of the many failed political formations that the country has experienced. Middleton noted that although the problem of piracy is rampant in Somalia, “it is worth remembering that piracy is not, by a long distance, the biggest problem in Somalia, but it is a means of engaging the world’s attention on what is one of the most difficult political situations in Africa.” Piracy is just one example of the myriad political and structural deficiencies that Somalia faces.

The political, economic, and geographic conditions in Somalia create the ideal situation for pirates and criminal networks to thrive on a major naval trade corridor. Middleton explained that, since at least the 1970s, Somalia has been at war with itself and with its neighbors leaving 3.5 million people in desperate need of aid. This is compromised by criminal acts of piracy and corruption, and is further compounded by the fact that “external actors do not always have the best of intentions when they come into Somalia.” Indeed, Middleton argued, “the failure of the international community to effectively prevent illegal fishing in Somali waters certainly has fed into the hands of the pirates in terms of giving them an excellent public relations tool.”

The war in Somalia, Middleton argued, was originally an attempt to liberate the country from a dictator, but this quickly evolved into an economically-motivated warlord struggle. Currently, he said, the war has taken yet another turn and there are areas of Somalia that are being governed by groups like Al-Shabaab who aim to impose fundamentalist ideologies. These factions are further fueled by an abundance of easily available illegal weapons. Middleton said, “when the regime of Siad Barre fell in the beginning of the 1990s, the barracks and the armories were opened and onto the Somali market flooded hundreds of thousands of weapons.” Somalia has become one of the major entry points of illegal arms into Africa.

Middleton argued that it was important to point out that piracy is a criminal act and not one of terrorism, contrary to numerous media reports. The reason why piracy has become such a sensationalist media topic is because “there is real paucity of good intelligence about what is going on in Somalia,” and this has fed into the international community’s general fears about terrorism.

In conclusion, Middleton urged the international community to address the humanitarian and political problems in Somalia with just as much focus as it gives to piracy. “Piracy,” he said, “is just one example of what happens if you do nothing about Somalia’s internal problems.”

View the presentation from lecture below:

Pirates in the Gulf of Aden from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Daniele Archibugi concluded the panel with a presentation on how European countries view piracy and their responses to it. Archibugi noted that the social and cultural struggles taking place at the heart of the piracy debate are often forgotten by policy-makers who focus on the broader political and macro-economic implications, leaving little room to discuss the daily effects of piracy.

Somali piracy is interesting, Archibugi said, because the perpetrators are usually poor and disenfranchised people, not the organized criminal networks one would expect to pull off such daring feats against large commercial oil tankers. The political situation in Somalia has meant that the international community, made up of powerful states, utilizing modern warfare technologies such as satellites, weaponry, and navies, is rendered powerless in the face of a much lesser enemy. “It is surprising to see that the new holy alliance to fight 1,000 illiterate boys is so far unable to address the problem,” he said.

The international community’s inaction regarding the political situation in Somalia has generated a failed state, increased poverty, and the conditions which encourage piratical acts. The cost of this inaction, Archibugi explained, is far greater than the resources the business sector and tax payers spend in the United States and Europe to pay for navies to patrol the Gulf of Aden. Paying insurance premiums, hiring private security firms, and agreeing to ransoms do not solve the problem, but avoids it in order for daily business to continue. To skirt the problems of imposing international law on a failed state, ship owners and insurance companies have opted to settle matters privately with pirates. This is an option that is more profitable and preferable to European corporations in comparison to the drawn-out negotiations otherwise necessary to solve the problem in the long-term.

Currently, Archibugi argued, both piracy and war crimes could potentially be treated as part of the same universal jurisdiction discourse. He said, “in my view, and according to my scale of values, I would nominate war crimes as a far greater crime than piracy. I would like to see […] that the same rules and the same legal procedures applied to pirates are applied to war criminals.” Archibugi continued by saying, that the reason why all the international community’s energies’ are focused on piracy and not war criminals is because “war criminals are the powerful and the pirates are the powerless.”

Because piracy is a crime that has garnered much media interest, the international community pays close attention to what happens to the pirates after they are caught. If the arresting country is European, it must insist that the pirates be tried fairly and placed in jails that meet European human rights standards. Archibugi argued that piracy has, therefore, opened up discussions about forcing pirate-receiving countries to better their standards and living conditions in jails. The legal frameworks for conducting such novel international trials, Archibugi said, have yet to be put into place. “Somali piracy tells us that global governance is very fragile,” he said.

Archibugi concluded by arguing that the problems of piracy should be addressed on land and not at sea. “At sea it is very difficult to trace them and it is very difficult to fight them, but not on land.” Indeed, he said, if the international community manages to help recreate a federal state in Somalia, it will eventually be possible to control the coast and eliminate piracy, and, above all, to provide a decent life to the Somali population.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Mirgani is CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Paula Newberg on Moving Pakistan and Afghanistan Away from War
2010-03-11 08:00 - 18:00
The Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University in Washington DC, Paula Newberg, gave a lunch lecture on March 11, 2010 titled “Reconciling Past and Future: Moving Pakistan and Afghanistan Away from War?” to a group of Qatar-based diplomats and Georgetown University in Qatar faculty and staff.

Newberg’s talk focused on the current situations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and how best to overcome their shared political instabilities. Under the patronage of presidents Zardari and Karzai, Pakistan and Afghanistan have recently become engaged in renewed discussions about short-term and longer-term prospects for peace. Both presidents have their own interests in trying to re-establish some sense of peace in the region, primarily for their own countries. Newberg explained that although Pakistan and Afghanistan’s relationship to one another has been relatively fraught, both are now confronted with the common problem of extremism. But, she warned, although there is agreement that this is a critical issue, what counts as “extremism” is different for both countries. Newberg argued that, in this situation, “violence breeds nothing less or more than uncertainty.” Extremists, she noted, have become very agile, flexible, and sophisticated at how to keep all parties insecure and uncertain. When attacks happen, people in both countries assume that government is responsible for the volatile condition of the state.

In attempting to solve their internal political problems, Newberg noted that Pakistan and Afghanistan also have very different ideas about what constitutes an appropriate form of intervention. Both countries do, however, agree that one common problem is one of resources. There is the common belief, therefore, that either an injection of money or military might will reduce the volatility taking root in both countries. Newberg noted that, historically, neither of these resources has had the desired effect on the region. The problems these countries face are so entrenched in territorial and regional disputes, and questions about the efficacy of their respective sovereignties, that foreign assistance will not be able to solve them.

Words such as “reconciliation and reintegration” have been introduced into the political discourses of both countries. Newberg argued that there are tens of thousands of NATO forces aided by a small number of Afghan forces attempting to control and reintegrate a small but agile enemy in the form of the Taliban. However, she said, this strategy is difficult to maintain: many citizens of both countries believe that reconciliatory policies suggest that outlawed factions can be legitimized, whether as opponents or allies. Newberg noted that “if you have, like in Afghanistan, a very weak state with a very weak government, then it is almost as if the so-called enemy of the state has determined that they are strong enough to be considered rightful negotiators.”

Newberg concluded the lecture by noting that, in order to set about true political change, there needs to be serious strategic reforms in the structures of both countries, especially in Pakistan. She argued that “Pakistan, more than almost any of the former British colonies, has hewed into a state structure that so much resembles what it inherited from the British that it becomes almost useless for a modernizing, rapidly-growing, proto-industrial society.” Pakistan, Newberg explained, still relies on a centralized system, where the budget is organized from the center and then devolves to the provinces in an inequitable manner. She argued that “this means that some people’s citizenship is devalued and other people’s citizenship is overvalued.” The only way to change this is to reconfigure the structure of governance in the country by introducing an equitable taxation system and building local governances from the bottom up. Newberg concluded that until such time that this structure is altered, problems of governance and foreign policy will be replicated, over and again.

Paula R. Newberg is the Marshall B. Coyne Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD). A scholar and practitioner with wide-ranging experience in multilateral and nongovernmental organizations. Dr. Newberg specializes in issues of democracy, human rights, and development in crisis and transition states, and has served as a Special Advisor to the United Nations in various regions, including multiple postings in Afghanistan. Dr. Newberg was a senior associate position at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she co-founded its Democracy Project and chaired the South Asia Roundtable, and was a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution.

A former foundation executive, Dr. Newberg taught at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University for many years, and publishes extensively on issues including law and constitutionalism in Pakistan, insurgency and human rights in Kashmir, and international assistance to war-torn Afghanistan. A graduate of Oberlin College, Newberg received her doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Mirgani is CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Attiya Ahmad on Islamic 'Conversions' of Migrant Domestic Workers in Kuwait
2010-03-08 08:00 - 18:00
Attiya Ahmad, the 2009-2010 CIRS Postdoctoral Fellow and cultural anthropologist, delivered a Monthly Dialogue lecture on the subject of “Explanation is Not the Point: Islamic ‘Conversions’ of Migrant Domestic Workers in Kuwait” on March 8, 2010.

Ahmad began the lecture by explaining that the anthropological approach toward research topics is to examine the underlying machinations of seemingly casual everyday discourses and activities. She described the task of the anthropologist as recognizing, and then addressing, the unseen complexities of everyday events. Ahmad noted that “through ethnographic methods, anthropologists research peoples and societies as well as underlying economic relations, social processes, and cultural understandings that often are ignored, elided, or taken for granted.”

Whilst conducting preliminary fieldwork in Kuwait on the subject of Islamic movements, Ahmad learned of migrant domestic workers of varying ethno-national origins who were developing new-found Islamic pieties and taking shahada – the Islamic testament of faith. This she discovered is a wide-spread phenomenon in Kuwait, and one that attracts a variety of opinions and debate as to why these domestic workers decided to become Muslim – much of it skeptical. Ahmad explained that “over the course of conducting fieldwork, I came to recognize, in turn, that my interlocutors’ – these South Asian migrant domestic workers that I was researching with – articulations and experiences differed with how others understood them.”

Ahmad conducted long-term ethnographic research, which in part consisted of documenting the everyday activities of female domestic workers resident in Kuwait. She noted that in addition to her own observations, her research findings also account for the ways in which her interlocutors make sense of their everyday lives. Ahmad explained that “the reason we approach our research this way is not only to develop deeper understanding of everyday phenomena and events, but also to document the experiences of peoples and places that are often ignore or considered to be unimportant.”

Ahmad gave background information about the situation of migrant domestic workers in Kuwait. Of varying ethnic, education, and linguistic backgrounds she noted that in Kuwait “these women share a common set of experiences – whether cooking, cleaning, or caring for children or the elderly. The gendered labor they perform is crucial to Kuwaiti’s social reproduction.” Around 90% of Kuwaiti households employ some form of domestic labor, and yet these domestic workers occupy a marginal position within the legal structures and kinship networks of the country, as many studies have shown. Yet, Ahmad argued, scholarship on the exclusion of domestic workers from the social and political life of Kuwait often overshadows other dimensions of these women’s migration experiences in Kuwait – becoming Muslim being one such example.

These women, Ahmad explained, discussed their new-found pieties in terms of their daily activities and intimate relationships within the household, or what one of her interlocutors referred to as “house talk.” Domestic workers experiences of developing new pieties and an interest in Islam were marked not by the extraordinary, but by the everyday. Punctuated by few if any dramatic events, miracles, or visions, domestic workers’ experiences demonstrate the slow, unexpected infusing of incipient Islamic sensibilities, affects, awareness and practices into the folds of their day-to-day relations and activities. Their experiences thus underscore the household as a site of confluence between the affective and immaterial labor related to domestic work and Islamic ethical formation.

As such, Ahmad realized that “rather than focusing on reasons or explanations for why they were converting to Islam – a question that other in Kuwait were preoccupied with – my interlocutors were intent on the question of what their becoming Muslim entailed, and how their new-found pieties were developing through the Kuwaiti households within which they lived and worked.” Thus, Ahmad argued, “the term ‘conversion’ failed to capture the particularities of their experiences. I came to realize that far from an abrupt rejection or transformation of their previous religious traditions, and their lives, domestic workers’ experiences of becoming Muslim are processual. They are characterized by a gradual re-engagement and re-working of their lives through Islam.”

Concluding the lecture, Ahmad explained that there is much public debate about why these women are converting to Islam – much of it speculative and suspect. But if more time is spent examining, scrutinizing, and paying attention to domestic workers’ own articulations, the household becomes a site “through which they come to develop new-found Islamic pieties, and through which they develop new forms of subjectivities, and ways of being in the world.”

Attiya Ahmad recently completed her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University in the US. Based on over two years of fieldwork conducted in Kuwait, Nepal, and Pakistan, her research focuses on South Asian migrant domestic workers in Kuwait who have converted to Islam, a project that points to the importance of the household as a cosmopolitan space and site of confluence between Islamic reform and dawa movements, and the feminization of transnational labour migration that marks our contemporary period. Dr. Ahmad’s work brings together scholarship on Islamic studies, globalization, diaspora and migration studies, economic anthropology, and political economy.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Suzi is CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Daniel Stoll Lectures on the Jordan River and the Johnston Plan
2010-02-08 08:00 - 18:00
Daniel Stoll, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered his lecture, “The Jordan River and the Johnston Plan: Lessons for the Obama Administration?” on February 8, 2010, as part of the CIRSMonthly Dialogue series. Dr. Stoll, an expert on the United Nations and multilateral organizations as well as U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, formerly served as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State.

Stoll spot-lighted the issue of water scarcity in the Jordan River basin and its relation to the on-going Arab-Israeli conflict. According to Stoll, “In the West Bank the average individual has access to only 50 liters of water a day. That’s below the World Health Organization recommended amount of 150 liters per day.” He cited strained resources as one of the most persistent problems facing the embattled region and pointed to the U.S.-led Johnston Plan of the 1950s which sought equitable allocation of water to all parties as a possible template that the Obama administration might use to manage the situation today.

The president’s 2009 speech at Cairo University, the appointment of George Mitchell as the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, and his address to the UN General Assembly in September 2009 are all signals, according to Stoll, that Obama and his administration are willing to actively engage on Middle East issues. The great strain that has been placed upon the Jordan River to sustain various populations remains contentious. Stoll pointed out that the problem is not a solely environmental one, noting, “I think it would be impossible to develop a water strategy without recognizing the broader political implications of the conflict, in particular those final status issues of refugees and borders.”

The demands currently placed on water from the Jordan River are far outstripping its sustainable usage rate; by the time the river’s flow reaches its endpoint at the Dead Sea, 90% of its water has been extracted. Agriculture, though only a uniformly minor proportion of GDP in the region, places the largest strain on river resources due to the preponderance of water-intensive crops grown in the region, such as citrus fruits and bananas. In Jordan, 65-70% of water allocated to the nation is used for farming, likewise 70% of the water available to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is used on crops, while Israel expends 65% of their allotment similarly. A population boom in Jordan and the Palestinian Territories has not helped the already-strained water resources, nor has the inefficient infrastructure used to distribute water in the region.

The most controversial dimension of the water scarcity issue in the region centers around existing inequities in both consumption and cost of water. It is estimated that Israeli settlers use six times more water than Palestinians; the imbalance, Stoll predicted, will play a significant role should the two parties move towards a solution to the conflict through the creation of a Palestinian State. He pointed to the current inequity in the cost of water, which is complicated by government subsidies, “When people do pay for the water, there’s a real imbalance. Palestinians generally pay more than twice what is charged to Israeli households while Jewish settlers in the occupied territories in particular receive water that is highly subsidized by the Israeli water authorities.”

According to Stoll, the Obama Administration could look to the Johnston Plan, developed during the tenure of Dwight D. Eisenhower with the help of his Middle East envoy, Eric Johnston. In an attempt to settle close to 100,000 Palestinian refugees, the U.S. worked to bring together Israel, Jordan and Syria with the help of the United Nations to line up hydroelectric projects, to develop Lake Tiberius into a reservoir, to build a series of canals and irrigation schemes throughout the region and to divide the flow of the Jordan River between the three nations to allow for sustainable settlement.

Though the talks broke down, partly due to suspicion of the U.N. on the part of both the Arabs and Israelis, Stoll said he believes the plan provides a helpful framework for resolution of the water issue, though lessons can be learned from the past. More specifically, Stoll said that the parties should look to find water sources not just from surface resources, but from ground water and treated waste water. They must also engage all regional entities—the Palestinians were notably left out of talks surrounding the Johnston Plan, and they should work towards compiling more comprehensive and reliable data on water resources in the region in an effort to reduce waste and inefficiency.

Stoll concluded his talk by voicing his hope that contemporary efforts to resolve the water scarcity issue would be more successful than the Johnston Plan with the help and resources of multilateral institutions such as the U.N., the World Bank, and the E.U. and cooperative efforts such as the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee, which Stoll hopes can become a “mechanism for conversation and dialogue.”

Dr. Stoll is Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at Georgetown University-Qatar. Prior to joining SFS-Qatar, he held a number of positions at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), including Assistant Vice Provost for International Initiatives as well as Adjunct Professor of Political Science. From 1988 until 1998, he was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, with foreign postings in Baghdad, Iraq and Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include the role of multilateral institutions in the international system, as well as U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He is co-editor of and contributing author to, The Politics of Scarcity: Water in the Middle East.

Article by Clare Malone

Thomas L. Friedman Lectures on the World is Flat 3.0
2010-02-01 08:00 - 18:00
Thomas Friedman, Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times, delivered a CIRS Distinguished Lecture on the subject of “The World is Flat 3.0.” The lecture was an extension of the themes in his 2005 book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. An audience of over 1,400 people attended the event held at the Four Season hotel.

Friedman began by clarifying what he meant by saying that “the world is flat.” He recounted that he came across this metaphor when he traveled to Bangalore and realized the extent to which “outsourcing,” as a business strategy, was being conducted in India. Through telecommunication technologies and the internet, India was able to connect to and service hundreds of companies around the world. Friedman recalls that this is where he heard the phrase “the global economic playing field is being leveled,” for the first time. This phrase, he explained, was the inspiration for his book.

Friedman noted that three different types of globalizations have occurred throughout history. The first was “globalization 1.0,” which lasted from 1492 to the 1800s. Transportation technologies, colonial projects, and geographic know-how “shrunk the world” in terms of geographical reach paving the way for sustained international trade. During this period, according to Friedman, “the main agent of globalization was the nation-state globalizing for Empire, or for resources, or for power.”

The second phase of globalization was what he labeled “globalization 2.0,” which began in the 1900s and ended around the turn of the twenty-first century. “That era of globalization,” Friedman argued, “was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets, for labor, and for resources.” The activities related to this phase further broke down the barriers of international borders, trade, and cross-cultural connections.

The third and current phase of globalization began around the year 2000. Friedman noted that “what’s really new, really exciting, and really terrifying about this era of globalization is that it is built around individuals. What is really new about this era is that we now have individuals that can compete, connect, and collaborate globally as individuals.” This, he said, provided equal opportunity for everyone to take part.

Friedman described several “flatteners” that made this current globalization platform possible. The first of these was the invention of the personal computer, which “allowed individuals, for the first time in history, to author their own content” in digital form. The second “flattener” occurred on August 9, 1995, when the Netscape browser went public ushering in what has become known as the “dot com boom.” This, Friedman said, ignited the “dot com bubble,” which funded the necessary infrastructure for global internet access. A further “flattener” was a revolution in connectivity. When computers became a popular technology, they were operated by a variety of different software types that were incompatible, which debilitated work-flow. However, when transmission protocols became streamlined, “that made everyone’s computer and software interoperable,” and allowed people to collaborate globally on the same projects without hindrance.

When all of these “flatteners” are combined, Friedman explained, the digital revolution’s power becomes apparent: an individual can create digital content, upload it to the internet, and have other people from other countries collaborate on it. Production is not hierarchical; individuals now have the ability to create and collaborate in vast decentralized networks. To “horizontalize” is to move away from stocks of knowledge towards more flexible flows by tapping into more brain power and collaborative networks worldwide. What happens in a flat world is “we all have to learn how to horizontalize, and take advantage of this platform” to become the most productive. Friedman proclaimed that this shift, from vertical to horizontal, “is the most fundamental transformation in human interaction since Gutenberg invented the Printing press.”

Citing several survival skills for succeeding in a flat world, Friedman noted that the first of these is to adhere to the motto “whatever can be done, will be done,” and will be done more efficiently. The second is to understand that “when the world is flat, the most important competition, going forward, is between you and your own imagination.” Further, Friedman explained, “one of the great survival skills in the flat world, maybe the most important for a student, is the ability to learn how to learn” this is important, he argued, because “what we know now gets out of date so much faster, so it’s actually not what you learn, but your ability to learn how to learn.”

In a digitized world, Friedman concluded, information about anything or anyone can be shared with everyone. He argued that “in a world where everyone is a potential paparazzi, columnist, reporter and filmmaker, everyone else is a public figure,” meaning that “how” a person acts becomes important as there will be digital records of every action.

During the “question and answer” session at the conclusion of the lecture, an audience member asked how it was possible for everyone to take part in this flat world when only a small percentage of the world’s population is privileged enough to have access to the internet. Friedman addressed this point by saying that a flat world does not mean an equal world, but does go some way in leveling the economic playing field for those who do take part. Earlier in the day, Friedman was invited to visit the Georgetown University Qatar campus where he spoke informally to a group of Georgetown University students, faculty, and staff.

As a journalist, Friedman has won three Pulitzer Prizes. His latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America (Sept. ‘08), is a #1 New York Times bestseller. His previous books include The World is Flat;Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism; The Lexus and the Olive Tree; and From Beirut to Jerusalem, which won the National Book Award. He appears in his own segment, “Tom’s Journal,” on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and is a frequent guest on programs such as Face the Nation and Charlie Rose. His TV documentaries includeSearching for the Roots of 9/11, The Other Side of Outsourcing, and Addicted to Oil.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Suzi is CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Political Economy of the Gulf Working Group I
2010-01-23 17:00 - 2010-01-24 03:00
On January 23–24, 2010, CIRS held the first of its “Political Economy of the Gulf” working group meetings. The “Political Economy of the Gulf” is a CIRS research initiative that examines key aspects of the Gulf’s contemporary economic and political situations and the region’s long-term transition from an oil-based economy to a knowledge-based one. Ten prominent Gulf specialists with expertise in various aspects of the Gulf’s political economy participated.

One of the most significant aspects of the Gulf’s political economy is the prominence of so-called rentier states. Working group participants considered the relationship between rentier economies and the development of democratic models of governance. In extreme cases, rentierism reduces political participation, but consequently leads to regime stabilization.

The role of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) in Gulf economies has received much attention. Unfortunately, as participants noted, data regarding the exact size of SWFs in GCC states is insufficient, unreliable, and largely speculative. Gulf states’ SWFs are used for general long-term investments that follow international indexes; for smaller strategic investments into specific projects such as bauxite mines and technology companies; or for investing in tools to develop local industries.

The working group also considered Islamic banking systems and how they fit within contemporary Gulf states’ overall financial infrastructures and capital markets. Particularly, the differences between Sunni and Shi’a Islamic banking principles in the GCC states and Iran were examined. In either case, Islamic banking has become a popular and profitable business strategy for Gulf countries.

One presenter assessed the prospects of a monetary union among GCC states. Some economic consequences of such a merger include the removal of exchange rates, increased trade among members, and improved international credibility for GCC financial markets. A successful monetary union would also enhance the Gulf’s international bargaining power. However, the group also questioned the viability of a GCC monetary union in light of pressure exerted from a variety of external forces.

A general theme running throughout the meeting was the diversification of Gulf state economies, with a special emphasis on the move away from oil and gas toward knowledge-based economies with thriving financial centers based on management of assets. Educational institutions and intellectual property industries are of particular importance to this new economic philosophy and infrastructure.

Also under examination during the working group meeting was the rise and fall of the “Dubai Model” of diversification, and how this differed from past strategies that the state has employed. Despite the recent problems that the government of UAE has experienced, the general understanding, both locally and internationally, is that this is a temporary hiccup in Dubai’s life cycle. Although devoid of oil wells, Dubai has managed to attract oil wealth and carve out a niche for itself as a fully-functional financial hub.

Participants identified demographic and economic circumstances that will likely affect the Gulf’s political economy in the future. The consequences of differences between Iran’s population pyramid and those of the Gulf for future economic development were considered. Also, drawing from trade statistics and market data, some participants assessed the prospects of trade integration among the states of the GCC and how this will affect their trade relations with the rest of the world. Free Trade Zones within Gulf economies were considered especially significant in this regard.

The research initiative is expected to run for a year with at least one more meeting taking place in 2010 at which the participants will present papers. Eventually, these papers will be revised and published as an edited volume titled The Political Economy of the Persian Gulf (Columbia University Press/Hurst, 2012).

Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants include:

Alexis Antoniades, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarZahra Babar, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarKai-Henrik Barth, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarSven Behrendt, Carnegie Middle East Center in BeirutMary Breeding, Georgetown University, Washington, DCJohn T. Crist, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarChristopher Davidson, Durham UniversityNada Eissa, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarSteffen Hertog, Sciences PoMehran Kamrava, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMassoud Karshenas, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonSuzi Mirgani, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarHamid Naficy, Northwestern University in QatarDjavad Salehi-Isfahani, Virginia TechGanesh Seshan, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarJean-François Seznec, Georgetown University, Washington, DCKristian Coates Ulrichsen, London School of EconomicsDaniel Westbrook, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarRodney Wilson, Durham University and Qatar Foundation’s Qatar Faculty of Islamic StudiesNicola Zaniboni, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator

Robert Lieber on Why the Declinists Are Wrong About America
2010-01-11 08:00 - 18:00
Robert Lieber, Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, delivered the January CIRS Monthly Dialogue on the topic of “Why the Declinists are Wrong About America.”

Lieber examined the recurring nature of comments regarding America’s decline, both at home and abroad, and argued that critics have been predicting the fall of the United States for decades. The current financial crisis and its impact on American economic and geopolitical power has again stoked these criticisms, but, he said, the United States has been through far worse in its history, and has managed to overcome even greater obstacles.

Reviewing the history of the various setbacks that the United States has experienced, Lieber noted that “declinists’ proclamations about America have appeared ever since America’s founding.” Further down the line, in the 1930s, America experienced its worst financial crisis and a total economic collapse. During these years, a quarter of the American work-force was unemployed and there was a significant drop in the GNP. This, he said, was a profound crisis that prompted many public intellectuals to wonder whether the “liberal democratic model” could survive.

The power of the United States as a world leader was again questioned in the 1950s after the Soviets successfully launched the Sputnik satellite, “which was the first man-made object in the history of humanity to leave Earth’s orbit.” This act showed that the Soviets had mastered rocket propulsion and “had the capacity to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles,” triggering a concern that America had become stagnant and was falling behind in terms of scientific prowess.

Similarly, the leadership of the United States was condemned in the 1970s after the withdrawal from Vietnam, the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, and the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. In the 1980s and 1990s, the United States was often compared, unfalteringly, to Japan, which was revered internationally as a model of economic development and success. Lieber argued that “it can be instructive to compare current arguments and prescriptions of the new declinism with the ideas of earlier eras.” Current declinist statements, Lieber explained, are the product of exaggerated and ahistorical claims. In particular, they reveal “a lack of appreciation for the robustness and staying-power of the United States.”

Examining current declinist pronouncements, Lieber argued that there are two propositions that are widely asserted. The first is that the United States, as a society, in terms of its economics, political power, and its ethos, is in decline domestically. The second proclamation is that due to globalization in the context of a multi-polar world, a counterbalancing of power is taking place and America’s world role has diminished and it is becoming “one among equals.”

During the Bush administration, and in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, the United States was regarded as having lost not only its hegemony, but also its legitimacy. The enfeeblement of the United States has been attributed to “military overstretch,” and its involvement in two costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lieber responded to these criticisms regarding exorbitant military costs by arguing that “the total cost of the American defense budget today is somewhere around 4.5% of Gross Domestic Product – a GDP of 14 trillion dollars. In absolute terms, it is an enormous amount of money,” but, he said, “in relative terms, by historical standards, it is modest.”

The current challenges that the United States faces, Leiber explained, include an aging population, which will put enormous pressures on the infrastructure of the country, especially in relation to the healthcare system and social security; a continued dependence on imported oil; political polarization; deficits in the annual budget; huge national debt; as well as the future problems that will be faced in relation to the rise of China.

Lieber concluded by arguing that “America’s problems are real, and it would be absurd not to recognize those, but I would also add that we’ve always had problems,” and the United States has overcome them by fostering an exceptional environment for entrepreneurialism. “America’s competitiveness, its scientific research infrastructure, its universities, its commitment to competition and free markets, and its efficient capital markets are all important factors.”

In order to assert that declinist proclamations are exaggerated and hyperbolic, Lieber noted that “since the early 1970s, the U.S. has represented somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of world economic activity,” and its economic growth has far outpaced the rest of the world.

During the public Q&A session after the conclusion of the lecture, Leiber was asked whether America’s unilateralism and preemption, which in the Bush era led to a decline of America’s stature around the world, a noticeable rise in anti-Americanism, and an erosion of American soft power globally, suited America’s interests. He responded by asserting that “internationally, the U.S. plays a role that no other country can, or will, do in meeting the world’s most urgent and deadly problems.” The principal problem to avoiding America decline at home and abroad, Lieber said, is less a material one, than it is one of political institutions and political will.

Robert Lieber is an authority on American foreign policy and U.S. relations with the Middle East and Europe, and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. He has also taught at Harvard, Oxford, and the University of California, Davis.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Suzi is CIRS Publications Coordinator.

President of Slovenia Offers Encouraging Words on State of Democracy
2010-01-10 08:00 - 18:00
On January 10, the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Danilo Türk, spoke at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Qatar). The lecture, hosted by the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), drew students, staff and faculty from across Education City and focused on the state of democracy in our world.

President Türk began his discussion recalling his last visit to Qatar where he had met a group of students from SFS-Qatar and had been impressed with the interest they showed in issues concerning democracy. The president noted that although there is certainly much more that needs to be done to strengthen democracy on a global level, it is clear that much progress has been made in the past three decades, particularly in Europe. “Through this progress,” Türk stated, “the world has learned some important lessons.” First, Türk emphasized that democracy must come from within and cannot be imposed from abroad. However, he noted that democracy can and should be assisted internationally in a way that is respectful of international principles and standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In evaluating successful democratic transitions, Türk suggested that a democracy’s efficiency and legal quality should be examined. A democracy that does not adequately and efficiently address the electorate’s expectations poses a threat to the success of that process.

Furthermore, “democracy and rule of law go hand in hand and a democracy cannot flourish without respect for the rule of law,” added Türk.

Türk described human rights as part of the legal fabric of democracy. “Human rights will continue to represent the foundation of democracy,” he said. To this end, Türk asserted that human rights need to be ensured in all democracies albeit in way that is compatible with different political traditions and culture. Türk then recounted Indonesia’s successful democratic transition as an example of a process that worked for Indonesia since it came from within. “The model of Indonesia worked because it was Indonesian, and cannot be replicated exactly elsewhere,” stated Türk.

The president maintained that other parts of the world had to find their own solutions and that the process of democratization is ongoing, even in mature democracies. “Europe has seen democracy for quite some time, people think that it is irreversible but it is not,” he said. Türk called specific attention to the challenges many democratic European countries were now facing with regards to integrating immigrant communities, particularly those from Muslim countries. He then suggested two key guidelines to help facilitate this process. First, he said, one has to ensure that immigrant communities have access to education and employment. Second, according to Türk, immigrants must be ensured the opportunity for upward social mobility.

Although Türk acknowledged there have been setbacks and periods where democracy has suffered, he concluded on an optimistic note. Such setbacks, he said, “should not detract us from the progress that has been made. We now have to ask how to make democracy more effective and more prevalent in the world.”

Mehran Kamrava, interim dean at SFS-Qatar lauded President Türk’s insights and said, “our students are fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from a scholar on democracy and human rights who has engaged in diplomacy at the United Nations and ultimately became the political leader of his country. I hope that SFS-Qatar students are inspired to pursue their full potential.”

Migrant Labor in the Gulf Working Group II
2010-01-09 08:00 - 2010-01-10 18:00
On January 9–10, 2010, CIRS convened the second of three planned working group meetings on “Migrant Labor in the Gulf.” Scholars from Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Gulf region assembled in Doha to discuss particular aspects of migrant labor. Among the participants were CIRS Research Grant recipients: Andrew Gardner of Qatar University, Arland Thornton and Mansoor Moaddel of the University of Michigan, Mary Breeding of Georgetown University, and David Mednicoff of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The CIRS initiative and grants program expand the depth and breadth of original scholarly research on migrant labor in the Gulf.

The working group participants hailed from a variety of disciplines including, anthropology, political science, legal studies and public policy, and statistical demography. The scholars analyzed the broad historic, post-colonial, and diasporic origins of migrant labor to the Gulf. They examined issues related to the host and sending countries; questions of citizenship, identity, and gender politics; demography and migratory processes; policy regulations; economics and remittances, and nationalization of local labor markets, among larger issues of long-term social change.

The participants reported on empirical research they had conducted among migrant populations in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, as well as in Nepal, a key country of origin for labor migrants in the Gulf. While there are some common elements of the experience of migrants across the Gulf, the group emphasized the need for case-based research because of striking differences across migrant labor communities. They highlighted differences between domestic and industrial labor; high income and low income workers; physical and linguistic boundaries; the reconstruction of social identities and senses of place; as well as the cultural and social practices of local and migrant communities.

The group rejected characterizations that “exceptionalize” the Gulf, i.e., that assume its labor migrants are unlike those in all other societies. On the contrary, the group believed that the concerns of migrant laborers are chronic to labor systems all over the world.

During the discussions, the participants narrowed down the overall themes of the initiative and outlined the missing areas of scholarship that need to be addressed during the project. Many noted the lack of consensus about terminology in current scholarship on migrant labor. Throughout their discussions, they parsed the socio-political implications of terms like “migrant labor,” “foreign worker,” “guest worker,” and “non-citizens.” Some scholars argued that “temporary labor” in the Gulf does not actually refer to temporal transience as many of these workers have lived and worked in the Gulf for years, and even generations. The notion of transience is therefore better conceived as a matter of ease of turn-over, rather than duration of work assignment.

The two-day meeting also involved assigning specific paper topics to all the discussants. The papers will become the bases for chapters of an edited volume titled Migrant Labour in the Gulf (Columbia University Press/Hurst, 2012). The first working group meeting took place on May 16–17, 2009.

Read more about this research initiative

Participants and Discussants include:

Rogaia Abusharaf, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarAttiya Ahmad, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarZahra Babar, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMary Breeding, Georgetown University, Washington, DCJane Bristol-Rhys, Zayed UniversityJohn T. Crist, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarAndrew Gardner, Qatar UniversityJennifer Heeg, Texas A&M University in QatarMehran Kamrava, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarPardis Mahdavi, Pomona CollegeDavid Mednicoff, University of Massachusetts–AmherstSuzi Mirgani, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarMansoor Moaddel, University of Michigan, Ann ArborMahmood Monshipouri, San Francisco State UniversityCaroline Osella, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonFilippo Osella, University of SussexKasim Randeree, Oxford UniversityUday Rosario, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in QatarRodney Sharkey, Weill Cornell Medical College in QatarHélène Thiollet, Sciences PoArland Thornton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Suzi is CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Kai-Henrik Barth on Nuclear Ambitions in the Gulf
2009-12-06 08:00 - 18:00
Professor of Government Kai-Henrik Barth delivered the December 6, 2009 CIRS Monthly Dialogue on the topic of “Nuclear Ambitions in the Gulf.” He focused on nuclear proliferation concerns associated with ambitious goals to introduce nuclear power in the Gulf states, with an emphasis on the United Arab Emirates.

Barth’s presentation was divided in five parts. First, he emphasized the “puzzle” at the heart of the debate: why would Gulf Cooperation Council states, with their massive oil and gas reserves, seek to develop nuclear power? Second, he assessed the proliferation risks of nuclear power; third, he highlighted the Gulf’s strategic context, emphasizing GCC’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program; fourth, he analyzed the UAE’s nuclear effort; and, finally, he concluded with some policy recommendations.

Looking at nuclear power developments throughout the world, Barth said that “there are thirty states that have nuclear power stations and, in total, there are 436 nuclear reactors in operation. In the last couple of years, more than forty other states have requested assistance from the IAEA” to develop new programs. Barth said that “in the short time period from February 2006 to January 2007, thirteen countries in the region announced plans to use nuclear power.” These are countries in the greater Middle East and include all Gulf states with the exception of Iraq.

Barth argued that “investment in nuclear energy in the Gulf appears to be motivated by security rather than economic reasons.” The timing of the 2006 GCC nuclear policy announcement is significant because it suggests that nuclear ambitions in the Gulf are a response to three developments: a growing concern about a weakening role of the United States in the region, especially after the 2003 Iraq war; the rise of Shia confidence after the Israeli-Lebanese conflict of 2006; and, in particular, concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. Barth maintained that the Gulf’s nuclear projects can be explained as “being primarily about security and driven by a concern about Iran’s nuclear program.”

In terms of the dangers of nuclear proliferation, Barth noted that regardless of the stated peaceful intentions of civilian projects, there always remains the possibility of a nuclear weapons option down the line. Uranium enrichment facilities, for example, can be used to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, but also for nuclear weapons. Equally, the chemical reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel separates plutonium, which can be used for nuclear weapons. Barth argued that “the history of many nuclear weapons programs highlights the close relationship between civilian and military applications of nuclear power: military programs often benefitted from technology acquisition and expertise gained in civilian counterparts.” Although International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards are put in place to prevent this from happening, the threat is always present, Barth said.

Emphasizing the strategic context of nuclear programs in the Middle East, Barth noted that the threat of Iranian nuclear ambitions dominates the region. Highlighting the current status of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, he said that “the Gulf states and the greater Middle East have enough reasons to be concerned.” In addition, “the Iranian missile program doesn’t help to alleviate concerns in the region.” Barth added that “the relationship between the UAE and Iran is in a delicate balance; it is a rivalry, they are close neighbors, they are key economic partners, there is a long-standing territorial dispute over three islands in the Gulf, and, on top of this, the UAE hosts the largest Iranian expat community. So, it is a very complicated, interwoven relationship.”

Barth emphasized the UAE’s nuclear capabilities by arguing that “the UAE has the most ambitious national nuclear program in the GCC,” with two large nuclear power plants expected to be operational by 2017. Barth posed the questions, “is energy a viable or plausible explanation in the UAE case? And is there really a shortage despite all the oil and gas wealth?”

In response to these apprehensions, the UAE government maintains that “the UAE is concerned about energy security and it needs energy diversification.” Further, because water and electricity in the UAE are subsidized, “energy consumption rates in the Emirates are exceedingly high.” The UAE calculates that energy supplies will fall short of the growing demands over the next few decades. Indeed, according to official UAE estimates, “by 2020, the UAE will need 20 gigawatts of additional electricity production capabilities.” The UAE claims that nuclear energy is one competitive option to produce electricity. According to an official UAE energy policy document, the UAE had considered and rejected coal, primarily because of CO2 emissions; equally, while the UAE is pursuing alternative energies such as wind and solar power, officials concluded that their base-load energy production capabilities are limited. Barth argued, however, that the suggested economic advantages of nuclear power in the UAE are doubtful at best: high capital costs and the uncertainty of oil and gas prices make pursuing a nuclear power option in the Gulf economically very risky. According to Barth, optimistic assumptions about cheap electricity through nuclear power in the Gulf are questionable. He argued that while the UAE has legitimate energy concerns, security concerns vis-à-vis Iran are significant drivers of the UAE’s nuclear ambitions.

In conclusion, Barth relayed some policy recommendations that “provide energy security for GCC countries without provoking a nuclear proliferation cascade.” He proposed that nuclear supplier states should not sell nuclear power reactors to any country without stringent IAEA safeguards. He favored a worldwide moratorium on enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, in the Middle East in particular. Finally, Barth argued that ultimately, “nuclear power still has major problems and its relationship with nuclear weapons has not been erased and I do not see any future where it will be erased.”

Kai-Henrik Barth is Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. From 2002 to 2008 he was a member of the core faculty in Georgetown’s Security Studies Program (SSP) on the main campus, where he also served as Director of Studies for the last three years. Dr. Barth’s current research focuses on the causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation, with a particular emphasis on Iran. He has also begun to investigate the nuclear aspirations of the Gulf States. His publications have appeared in Physics Today and Social Studies of Science, among others, and he is the guest editor (with John Krige) of a special issue of the journal Osiris on Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs (University of Chicago, 2006).

Article by Suzi Mirgani,CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Hanan Ashrawi on the Future of Palestine
2009-12-01 08:00 - 18:00
Professor and Palestinian political activist Hanan Ashrawi shared her insights on the Palestinian struggle when she lectured on “The Future of Palestine” in Doha, Qatar. The lecture was hosted by the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Ashrawi is the Founder and Head of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy-Miftah, and an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for the Jerusalem District.

SFS-Qatar student Lina Abduljawad introduced Ashrawi to an audience of 400 people at the Diplomatic Club in Doha. Ashrawi noted that the title of her talk, “The Future of Palestine,” was deceptively simple but that such simplicity was not representative of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is mired in various historical, economic, political, and ideological battles that fracture and divide the Palestinian people on a daily basis. In order to know where a nation is headed, she explained, it must come to terms with the past and must go through a “historical redemption,” which is an important part of any reconciliation process. Ashrawi explained that Palestine not only needed international political recognition, but was also in need of its history to be affirmed and recognized as legitimate and one that has been unfairly violated.

Ashrawi noted that Palestine is in a struggle for “devolution of occupation and evolution of statehood,” but that the exact opposite is occurring and is leading to what she terms “the deconstruction of Palestine.” This, she said, is the worst type of humanitarian crisis, as it is a deliberately crafted one. Ashrawi gave details of the daily economic, political, and physical restrictions and challenges that the average Palestinian must endure under Israeli occupation, including the inability for many children to attend schools, and for many adults to reach their lands or places of work. She noted that physical restrictions in the form of checkpoints and the infamous “wall,” ironically, not only restrict the lives of Palestinians, but also prohibit the Israelis form viewing their own horizon, and are, effectively, imprisoning both communities.

In conclusion, Ashrawi called on the international community, and especially Arab countries, to take responsibility for the state of Palestine. She welcomed new ideas and gave several possible solutions that, if honored by all parties involved, will lead to a peaceful existence in the Middle East.

During the question and answer session, Ashrawi gave recommendations for the future and how to begin to work towards a viable and longstanding peace. She called for unconventional approaches to solve the crisis, such as United Nations involvement as a caretaker and mediator or requesting the presence of international ground troops to protect Palestinian rights. Ashrawi argued that the most important aspect of any attempt at conflict resolution was to redress the asymmetrical power relations between the two communities.

Earlier in the day, Ashrawi was invited to speak at an informal luncheon meeting at Georgetown SFS-Qatar, She took questions from Faculty and discussed the nature of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict and how it might be resolved. In answer to a question regarding how the new U.S. administration might impact the conflict, she noted that, in order to break away from past failures regarding the Middle East peace process, Barack Obama and his administration need to surround themselves with a new team of knowledgeable people and expert policy-makers. This was important in order to formulate a new approach and to create refreshing ideas about how to engage with the problem. It is important, she said, not to resuscitate old teams of experts who have been involved in past mediation efforts, as their energies and ideas are spent. According to Ashrawi, “this is the most important advice to give any new administration.”

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Gulf Gas Development: A Rational Development Strategy
2009-11-11 08:00 - 18:00
On November 11, 2009, Justin Dargin, a Research Fellow with The Dubai Initiative at Harvard University and a Fulbright Scholar of the Middle East, was invited by CIRS to deliver a lecture on “Gulf Gas Development: A Rational Development Strategy” to Georgetown University in Qatar faculty and staff. The lecture focused on the basics of the Gulf Gas/Power Sector and how the countries of the GCC are facing the current energy challenges.

Dargin maintained that “the Gulf region is home to some of the largest natural gas reserves: 23% of global total” but because there is “only 8% of global production,” there is great future potential to tap into these reserves to facilitate increased production. Qatar, he said, is the world’s number one Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) exporter since 2006. “With the exception of Qatar,” Dargin noted, “every GCC member is facing a gas shortage.” By developing its natural gas sector, Qatar’s industrial development program rivals the traditional oil production projects of its neighbors.

Gulf Gas Development: A Rational Development Strategy from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Over the last few decades, the Gulf states have experienced a tremendous injection of wealth to their local economies. This has had major effects on the infrastructure and population of the countries and all the related demands that these expansions entail. Currently, there is a “demographic explosion” of imported labor that far outstrips local populations and “a major push for industrialization” combined with a “need for desalination projects.” Because the GCC is growing at an unprecedented pace, various developments are needed to sustain the future of GCC infrastructure and economies. In this respect, Dargin argued that “the GCC will need to add 60 gigawatts (GW) of additional power between 2009 and 2015, which represents 80% of current capacity.”

Going through case studies for each Gulf state, Dargin pointed out how the “gas crunch” has affected these countries’ individual economies. Saudi Arabia is experiencing problems because “recent OPEC quotas prevented it from supplying additional gas to the domestic sector, thus increasing the reliance on liquid fuels,” and in Kuwait, the UAE and Oman, “there will not be enough gas to meet the demand increase,” argued Dargin.

The ramifications, Dargin noted, is that the domestic price paid for gas and electricity is too low, which “distorts investment and consumption decisions. It dampened interest for regional trading in favor of global LNG export.” He further added that “the main obstacle between the two regional suppliers, Iran and Qatar, and the regional consumers, Kuwait, UAE and Bahrain, has been pricing issues.”

Concluding the lecture with the future prospects of the energy sector in the GCC, Dargin said that there are, currently in the initiation phase, various ambitious projects being set up to exploit natural resources and to “stimulate domestic production.” Some of these initiatives include establishing domestic gas production facilities and investment in renewable and alternative energy plans such as “the GCC Nuclear plan, various solar and wind initiatives, and the Masdar Initiative.”

Dargin is a specialist in international law and energy law, and is a prolific author on energy affairs. He specializes in carbon trading, the global oil and gas market, the legal framework surrounding the Gulf energy sector, and Middle Eastern geopolitics. Dargin is the author of “The Dolphin Project: The Development of a Gulf Gas Initiative” (OIES Press January 2008), and the author of a book, entitled Desert Dreams: The Quest for Gulf Integration from the Arab Revolt to the Gulf Cooperation Council (forthcoming 2010).

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator.

John Crist on Global Trends in Protest
2009-11-10 08:00 - 18:00
John T. Crist, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar and an expert on social movements and peace and conflict studies, delivered his lecture, “From Gandhi to Twitter: Global Trends in Protest,” before a packed house of students, faculty, staff, and community members on November 10, 2009 as part of the CIRSMonthly Dialogue series.

Crist focused on the changing nature of social protest movements in the face of rapid globalization. He pointed to the shift away from activism directed at specific states towards movements and protests that transcend national boundaries.

Using the iconic anti-colonial protests led by Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian subcontinent during the early twentieth century as an example, Crist outlined the traditional state-targeted methods of social activism as a precedent for today’s increasingly borderless transnational protest movements. Contrary to popular perception, Gandhi’s emphasis on nonviolent civil disobedience delivered only partial success, according to Crist. However, nonviolent tactics were invaluable in creating broad popular support for the Indian National Congress. The group was, according to Crist, “the main vehicle that Gandhi and the Gandhians used to disseminate their ideas and their tactics of nonviolent action.” The Indian National Congress came to be recognized as the de-facto opposition government in colonized India, wielding great leverage because of its power as a social movement that mobilized millions against British rule across many constituencies.

Protest trends in the twenty-first century, Crist posited, have reflected the seismic influence of globalization, with interest groups from around the globe banding together to coordinate action. “The single-most important trend in social movements is the move away from the state as the principle target for protest activity,” Crist said. “This, of course, is the result of the power of globalization.”

The increased availability of funding sources, ease of travel, low cost of communication through technologies like the internet, and high-profile transnational forums such as the United Nations, have enabled issues groups to bring their protests to the international stage.

Crist noted that an unprecedented number of transnational coalitions that work to promote their coordinated initiatives and messages in multiple countries are currently being formed. A prime example of the new protest mold is the 350 Campaign, which is an environmental initiative that calls itself “a global grassroots campaign to stop the climate crisis.” According to Crist, on October 24, 2009, the group held concurrent events in 181 countries around the world, including in Qatar, to promote climate change advocacy. It seeks to provide its environmental allies in governments and organizations across the globe with leverage to prompt policy change. Global protest movements such as the 350Campaign hope that their coordinated international efforts will garner the attention of leaders in many nations while at the same time galvanizing local groups to continue their activities.

Crist also touched on the power that new technologies such as SMS-messaging and Twitter have had on grassroots activism. He pointed to the role that Twitter and texting played in orchestrating protests following the Iranian elections of June 2009. Through “tweets,” Iranians were able to send out instantaneous updates about unfolding events to help bolster their struggle, as well as to communicate with the international media outlets that have been barred by the Iranian government. The power of Twitter to influence the actions of the protestors on the ground as well as the international political structure were striking, according to Crist, who asserted that Twitter “had become, overnight, a tool for dramatic social change and a sticking point in U.S.-Iranian relations.”

Ending the lecture, Crist pointed out that not all modern grassroots protests facilitated by these new technologies are successful. Recent political protests in Moldova organized through the social networking site Facebook and through text messaging turned violent. In the absence of strong leadership with a clear message or strategy, Crist said, grassroots protests facilitated by communication technologies can easily become counterproductive or even destructive.

Dr. Crist is Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He received his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Social Science from the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

He taught courses in sociology, peace studies, conflict resolution, and research methods at the M.A. in Conflict Resolution Program on the Georgetown University main campus, the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Maxwell School at Syracuse University, the Peace Studies Program at Colgate University, and the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of America. Professor Crist published journal articles and book reviews on social movements, nonviolent action, and the policing of demonstrations. He edited a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography on ethnographic fieldwork in war zones and post-conflict settings. As a fellow of the Albert Einstein Institution, he conducted extensive archival research in England and India on the politics of nonviolent mobilization during the Gandhian anti-colonial struggle in India.

Article by Clare Malone. Clare is a Student Affairs Officer at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

Europe and the Gulf Region: Towards a New Horizon
2009-11-04 08:00 - 18:00
Christian-Peter Hanelt, Senior Expert on Europe and the Middle East at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, was invited by CIRS to give a lunchtime Focused Discussion entitled “Europe and the Gulf Region: Towards a New Horizon” to Georgetown University–Qatar faculty and staff on November 4, 2009.

Hanelt focused on the current relations between Europe and the Gulf region. He maintained that the GCC was an important political partner, energy supplier, and, in its efforts to diversify, a crucial investor in the European Union. “The EU and the Gulf,” he said, “are islands of stability” that are surrounded by economic and politic turbulence.

Advocating for the importance of strengthening ties within the European Union, Hanelt noted that those countries that are party to the Euro currency were significantly less affected by the recent global economic crisis than those that maintained their own currencies. The current reforms proposed by the Lisbon Treaty, Hanelt said, will undoubtedly affect the ways in which the European Union is structured, its future expansion, and its relationships with its neighbors as well as with the larger international community. Issues of European Union expansion to include Turkey are of particular significance in the years to come and will have direct consequences on its relationships with the Middle East and the Gulf.

Currently, the EU works with Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries in various state-building and soft power initiatives and Qatar’s prolific conflict resolution plans, he said, are of particular importance to its rapport with the European Union.

In terms of possible future collaborative projects between the EU and the Gulf, Hanelt predicted that the most important areas of synergy will be on issues of sustainability and the setting up of mutually beneficial agricultural, solar, and energy plans. Hanelt said that “both the GCC and the EU depend on functioning global markets and there is a need for more cooperation and dialogue on how to work together in the G20.”

In looking at the future of EU-GCC relations, Hanelt suggested that the EU and the GCC could collaborate on a variety of free trade agreements such as those that have been negotiated between the GCC and the United States. Other areas of accord could involve higher education initiatives, research, and dialogue on issues of regional security challenges.

Article by Suzi Mirgani, CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Water, Energy, and Climate Change in the Gulf
2009-11-02 08:00 - 18:00
CIRS organized a panel presentation on the issues of “Water, Energy, and Climate Change in the Gulf.” The panel, chaired by the Interim Dean of GU-Q Mehran Kamrava, was made up of Professor Tim Beach of Georgetown University, Professor Sharif Elmusa of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, and Mari Luomi, a researcher at The Finnish Institute for International Affairs and a PhD candidate at Durham University. All three experts approached the panel topics from their unique disciplinary perspectives of geoscience, environmental politics, and political science respectively.

Click here to download an MP3 of the panel discussion

Tim Beach gave the first presentation in which he illustrated the state of the world’s biodiversity in the current ecological climate and how its degradation relates directly to issues of diminished resources and, ultimately, to issues of human rights. He argued that “the world and the Gulf are faced with solving two ends in the equation of water.” One aspect of the politics of water is to maintain ecosystems and the other is to provide adequate amounts of water for direct human needs and uses. Currently, with increases in global population numbers and temperature levels, there is a water deficit in many parts of the world. Beach maintained that “in the last hundred years or so, about half of the world’s wetlands have disappeared.”

Currently, “wetlands cover 6% of the world, but provide a disproportionate amount of the ecosystem services to humanity and form hotspots for biodiversity” as they have a high net primary productivity, Beach said. “Currently however, he noted that “wetlands face continuous threats,” and there are many areas of disappearing wetlands around the globe due to human agricultural and farming projects as well climate change effects. Beach argued that wetlands, marshes, and mangroves are some of the most important areas for ecosystem services such as fish, wildlife, and soil habitats. Critically, from an environmental economic perspective, apart from being habitats for endangered species and spawning grounds for fishing industries, Beach explained that “wetlands are natural water quality improvers” and so, in the long run, their worth per hectare is far greater than prime farmland. As such, “wetlands are natural carbon sequestration areas” that need proper maintenance for their full potential to be activated. As a final thought, Beach argued that water is a basic human right that needs to be protected through United Nations declarations and supported through development programs in the impoverished areas of the world. Human interactions with wetlands do not have to be degrading, but it is possible to learn from various tribes in South America who have a symbiotic and long-term sustainable relationship with these areas. Sharif Elmusa gave the second presentation on the subject of “debating water and oil wars” in the Middle East. He argued that water wars, although long predicted, have not come to pass, but what we have instead are wars over oil. The reason for this, he argued, is because water is of regional significance, it is not a resource sold on the world market. The primary reason there is international political interest in the dearth of water is that it could lead to the disruption of oil supplies. Countries with valuable resources – ones that can be appropriated and sold on the world market – are more likely to suffer violent conflict than countries that do not, and oil qualifies as one of these finite and highly sought-after resources. Elmusa explained that these resources do not only underlie armed conflicts, but help in the prolongation and intensification of existing ones; “you cannot understand what is happening in Iraq today, without understanding the role of oil in the civil war that is taking place,” he said. In this regard, Elmusa, quoting Gary Wills, said that the United States has had two long-standing and active interests in the Gulf area and its fossil fuels. One goal “is to guarantee the secure supply of oil to the industrialized countries, and the second is to prevent any hostile power from acquiring political or military control over those resources.” Historically, “any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region was regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America,” he added. This entrenched mindset was translated into the two American-led wars involving Iraq. While 9/11 may have triggered the 2003 war, as some have claimed, it would not have happened without the prior fixation on “securing” the oil supply from the region. Elmusa noted that although “water is scarce and is going to become even scarcer because of rapid population growth, urbanization, and global warming,” he speculated further on why wars were fought over oil rather than water. Water, he argued, flows across countries, but oil does not. To get oil, you must go to the source.

If however, a war was to be waged over water, it would happen among the downstream Arab states, the reason being their dependence on the geography and the distribution of power in each basin. Syria, for instance, cannot go to war with Turkey over the Euphrates River because Turkey is much stronger militarily and because taking over the origins of this watercourse would entail domination over millions of Kurds. However, Syria and Iraq could find themselves engaged in military confrontation if Turkey does not release enough water for the two states. The same could happen in the Nile basin between Egypt and Sudan, because Egypt cannot project its military away from its immediate borders to Ethiopia, the source of the bulk of the Nile’s flow. But this, he said, depends on the unknown future of Sudan itself.

In conclusion, Elmusa explained that avoiding water or oil wars in the future requires that we stop thinking of these wars as political possibilities, and begin thinking innovatively of viable alternatives.

The third and final speaker, Mari Luomi, presented a political science perspective of the pressures and potential sources of threat that climate change poses to the Gulf monarchies. She argued that “climate change itself is envisaged to have different kinds of negative consequences that could potentially be destabilizing for the countries of the Middle East.” Although this was the case, Luomi warned that discussing climate change within a strict security framework could lead to emphasizing adaptation measures over mitigation as well as shifting approaches to the problem from multilateralism to unilateralism and responsibility from the individual to the state. She argued that “the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, particularly the four OPEC member states – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar – perceive climate change mitigation as a threat to their economies.”

The negative consequences of climate change affect the physical, social, and economic aspects of any country or region. The physical consequences include temperature and sea-level rise, changes in precipitation, and intensity and frequency of natural disasters. Social consequences include problems with food and water security, migration, and instability and, finally, in terms of economic consequences, “the cost of delayed action to fight climate change will be higher than that of prompt action,” she said.

With regards to the Middle East, Luomi explained that there is a dearth of historic data recording past weather patterns and climate change effects, but because of the region’s water scarcity, and pockets of political instability, it is considered to be one of the most vulnerable areas in the world. However, in the international negotiations on climate change, the OPEC countries have concentrated in emphasizing the potential negative consequences that policies and actions of the industrialized countries to mitigate climate change might have on their oil revenue in the long term.

In terms of responsibility for alleviating climate change, she noted that “although it is indisputably the industrialized states that bear the responsibility for climate change, and should take the lead in fighting it, developing states will have to understand that the battle can only be won if everyone participates according to their capabilities.”

Concluding the final presentation, Luomi explained that climate change presents the Gulf countries with opportunities that could be actively exploited. She argued that “there are tangible financial benefits to be gained through decarbonizing Qatar’s energy economy by exploring energy efficiency, solar energy, and carbon trade.” To this effect, new ministries for the environment are being set up in many Gulf states that try to project new images of themselves as an energy-efficient and sustainable countries by investing in a variety of alternative energy projects and initiatives.

Finally, because there is a regional leadership vacuum in the Gulf and in the Middle East, “Qatar should, among other things, seek to develop technologies and solutions related to natural gas, which is widely seen as a transitional fuel,” Luomi said.

Panelist Biographies

Tim Beach holds the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environment and International Affairs and is Professor of Geography and Geoscience and Director of the School of Foreign Service’s Program in Science, Technology, & International Affairs (STIA) for 2009-2010. He was the Director of Georgetown University’s Center for the Environment from 1999 to 2007. His research focuses on soils, agriculture, environment change and geoarchaeology. He also teaches courses in physical geography (climatology, hydrology, geomorphology, and environmental management) and how these relate to international management and policy in the STIA and environmental studies programs.

Sharif Elmusa is Visiting Associate Professor at Georgetown University in Qatar from the American University in Cairo, Egypt, where he is an associate professor in the Political Science Department. He teaches courses on sustainable development; global environmental politics; technology and culture and industrialization; and the everyday politics of Palestine. His research and writing covers environmental politics, including hydropolitics, resources conflict/ cooperation, culture and the natural environment.

Mari Luomi is currently a Researcher at The Finnish Institute for International Affairs and is completing her PhD on the energy security and climate change attitudes of small Gulf states at Durham University.

Article by Suzi Mirgani. Suzi is CIRS Publications Coordinator.

Mahmood Mamdani on "Mass Violence and Reconciliation"
2009-11-01 12:00 - 13:00
On November 1, 2009, Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, gave a lecture to Georgetown students, faculty, and staff. The event was sponsored by the Georgetown University-Qatar Culture and Politics (CULP) program, headed by Professor Rogaia Abusharaf, the Georgetown University-Qatar African Society student club, and the Arab Democracy Foundation. Mamdani began the lecture by explaining that much of his recent work focuses on issues of mass violence and reconciliation, such as the historical events that took place during the apartheid era in South Africa, the genocide in Rwanda, and, more recently, in Darfur. In order to contextualize these events during his research, he noted that he began by examining various human rights organizations and their writings and, he said, became increasingly skeptical about the data and the means of presenting these findings to the international community.

Over the years, Mamdani said, many of the most respected human rights organizations have developed formulaic patterns of research, the purpose of which is to identify the perpetrator, first and foremost, and then the victim. At the heart of this approach, he said, is a demand for punishment and for these atrocities to be treated as crimes. Mamdani explained that “if you look at conflict situations in the African context, what you confront is not just a set of events, but you confront a cycle of violence – an ongoing cycle of violence.” When the Rwandan genocide is placed in this context, the victim and perpetrator trade places as each side has a victim narrative, he argued. Human rights literature advocates punishment as a means of ending cycles of violence, but the core issue itself, why the violence arose in the first instance, is not fully addressed. There are two ways of approaching the core issues of any conflict situation, Mamdani said. One way is to blame the perpetrator as an explanation of the violence and to point to the psychology, identity, or culture of the perpetrator as being the reason for conflict. He argued that “the tendency to define victim and perpetrator in absolute terms has lent itself to a demonization process and, ironically, one of the worst tendencies in the human rights movement, which drives it to demonize perpetrators, undercuts it.” He argued that “the framing in terms of crime and punishment, basically says that the only solution to violence is more violence – the only difference being, theirs is bad violence and ours is good violence; ours is the violence meant to stop violence.”

Currently, the paradigm of how to deal with mass civil conflict is a result of the Nuremberg trails, which maintained that “political orders are not a sufficient excuse and that every individual and state official must take full responsibility for what they have done.” He added that “the Nuremberg model was based on two assumptions: one assumption was that the conflict has ended – there is a victor and, therefore, crimes can be de- fined, identified, and punished under the rule of the victor.” The second assumption “is that perpetrators and victims will not have to live together.” But in the case of South African apartheid, neither of these assumptions held true, “there was no victor” and “there was no Israel for the victims” as both oppressor and oppressed had to live alongside each other after the cessation of apartheid. In this instance, there was a need to “decriminalize” the oppressors and their policies, and “treat them as political adversaries.”

South African apartheid was a problem of “the definition of political society.” Indeed, “in this context,” he argued, “part of the challenge was the founding of a new political society; a foundation which would lay the basis for the rule of law.” Therefore “part of the trade-off was that there would be no criminal trials.” Mamdani said that “the focus was on political justice, not criminal justice” and that is why “the South African model is more relevant to the kind of post-colonial conflict in African situations, which is actually about the foundation of a new political order.”

Concluding with his thoughts on the situation in Darfur, Mamdani argued that through modern movements such as the Save Darfur campaign, there has been a tendency to “commoditize” the conflict through celebrity publicity, a dramatization of events, and an emotional appeal to the international community, rather than addressing the political problems and explaining the issues.
