Hezbollah's Financial Crisis

Boeing’s 737 Max 8 : What’s Next for the Company Amid Safety Concerns

Moncef Marzouki: Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes Alliance Failed to Govern Tunisia

A Weekly Political News Magazine

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1739 - March - 15/03/2019

It’s That Time of Year Again

Issue 1739 - March - 15/03/2019

Your Guide to Ramadan 2019 TV Series www.majalla.com

Hezbollah’s Financial Crisis www.majalla.com

Editorial Like most things in life, religion can be used for manifest and latent functions. The manifest functions for religion include building communities, bringing peace of mind and helping humans make sense out of this strange and frankly cruel world. Most people who profess to a religious faith can attest that they associate religion with these virtues. It would nevertheless be remiss if we denied that there were those who use religion as means for insidious acts, these can be considered latent uses of religion. One such latent use of religion is othering a group belonging to a different sect, belief system or religion. This week’s issue of Majalla takes a look at political groups and organisations that have utilized religion as a means for its political goals.

One such group that uses religion for its political goals is Hezbollah.

Hanin Ghaddar writes in this week’s cover story on the financial constraints that the group is currently facing. The causes for its woes can be attributed to a number of factors including the increasing US sanctions on its main international donor Iran and the fact that the group spent a lot of recourses in its efforts to save the Assad government from crumbling in Syria. Ghaddar argues that the group used its anti-Israel rhetoric in the past to rally up support, but now that a lot of its fighters are underpaid it might be increasingly difficult to maintain such support.

Joseph Braude writes on Ayatollah Khamenei’s recent appointment of Ebrahim Raisi as head of Iran’s judiciary. The move drew criticism because of Raisi’s past association with mass executions of Iran’s political prisoners; as such the appointment showcases the government’s blatant apathy towards human rights. Moreover, Braude writes on Rouhani’s three-day visit to Iraq, which is widely believed to be part of Iran’s wide plan to circumvent US sanctions.

Brian Katz writes on how Hezbollah’s recent victories have made it a powerful force in the region. Firstly, the group’s involvement in protecting its ally in Assad has made its militias into a full fledged well trained military, moreover it successfully protected the anti-Western/ anti-Israeli axis that comprises itself, Assad and Iran. Furthermore, it’s alliance with the Free Patriotic Movement has proved to be beneficial as this alliance won a large portion of assembly seats, thus giving the group unprecedented military and political power. But, this power might lead to Hezbollah’s doom, since a weary Israel is edging closer to attack the group in the event that it feels threatened from it. Furthermore, current circumstances do not make a war against Israel an attractive prospect for Hezbollah.

On to lighter news, Soha al-Sharaqawish has written a rough guide on the upcoming Ramadan shows, as both veteran and up in coming actors, directors and writers aim to entertain audiences during the holy month.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

Consolidate in Tehran, Face 14 Hardliners International Pushback in Bid to Evade Sanctions

Issue 1739 - March- 15/03/2019

Are the Best Way to End 20 Negotiations the War in Afghanistan

32 16 Will Hezbollah’s Rise Be Its Downfall?

32 36 What’s Causing China’s Economic Slowdown

28 “Kurdistan’s Hiroshima”

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Can You Really Have a Work-life Balance?

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42 Homesick Art

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Every winter, as the Yenisei River in the south of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, freezes, a five-kilometre-long ice road appears, linking its east and west banks. Regional traffic services supervise the crossing point as cars drive on the thick ice. (Reuters)

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A man dressed in a toucan costume for the Cordao da Bicharada carnival in Cametรก, northern Brazil. The festival celebrates and works to protect the wildlife of the Amazon. (AP)

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New Zealand Mosque Shootings Kill at Least 49, Seriously Wound 20

terrorist attack,” Ardern said, call this “one of New Zealand’s darkest days”.

At least one gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques in the country’s worst ever mass shooting, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern condemned as terrorism. A gunman broadcast live footage on Facebook of the attack on one mosque in the city of Christchurch, mirroring the carnage played out in video games, after publishing a “manifesto” in which he denounced immigrants, calling them “invaders”.

New Zealand was placed on its highest security threat level, Ardern said, adding that four people taken into custody held extremist views but had not been on any police watchlists.

“It is clear that this can now only be described as a

157 Killed in Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Crash An Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed on Sunday, killing all of the 149 passengers and eight crew on board the ET302 flight. The Boeing 737 Max8plane was flying from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya, when it encountered an issue six minutes after take off. This comes just five months after a deadly crash off the coast of Indonesia involving an identical brand-new jet by Lion Air. The US became the last country to suspend the jet on Wednesday after intense international pressure as one nation after the other grounded the 737 Max. Until Wednesday, The Federal Aviation

Administration said that there was no basis for grounding the flight. China’s aviation regular was the first to order the grounding of all Max 8 planes on Monday. The authorities in Australia, Britain, France and Germany quickly followed suit, as did Europe’s aviation-safety regulator. The causes of both crashes, which at this point appear to be similar, are still under investigation and the official reports won't be published for months but similarities between the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes have focused attention on an anti-stalling system used in the new Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft.

Brexit Set to be Delayed After Chaotic Night for May

The United Kingdom’s divorce from the EU has sown chaos through May’s premiership and the Brexit finale is still uncertain with options including a long delay, exiting with May’s deal, a disorderly exit without a deal or even another referendum.

The British parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to seek a delay to the March 29 exit date enshrined in law. May says she wants to minimise any delay to just three months, but to achieve that she will need parliament to back her deal at the third time of asking early next week. An often chaotic set of votes in parliament this week has shown that none of the alternatives - such as leaving with no deal, a referendum or allowing parliament to decide how to leave - can muster a majority among lawmakers yet.

Trump Vows 'VETO!' After Bipartisan U.S. Senate Rebuke on Wall The U.S. Senate on Thursday rebuked President Donald Trump by voting to end his border emergency declaration, as 12 Republicans joined Democrats to deliver a second blow in as many days to the president, who quickly pledged a veto. The 41-59 vote was a bipartisan repudiation of Trump’s decision to circumvent Congress and take money

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the way for a U.S. troop withdrawal that Kabul fears could weaken its own negotiating position.

Iran's Rouhani Signs Trade Pacts in Iraq to Help Offset U.S. Sanctions

already designated for other programs and redirect it to pay for his U.S.-Mexico border wall, which he promised to build during his 2016 campaign.

In the first two years of his term, the Republicanled Congress mostly accommodated Trump, which spared him from having to use his veto pen. With Republicans showing increased willingness to defy him, Trump promised a change. “VETO!” he tweeted shortly after the vote.

U.S.-Afghan Tensions Erupt Over Kabul's Exclusion from Peace Talks

Iraq and Iran signed several preliminary trade deals on Monday, Iraqi officials said, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani began his first visit seeking to bolster Tehran’s influence and expand commercial ties to help offset renewed U.S. sanctions. The deals, among them a plan to build a railway linking the neighbours, emerged soon after the start of Rouhani’s visit, meant to underline that Tehran still plays a dominant role in Iraq despite U.S. efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic. Rouhani and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Mahdi signed several memorandums of understanding, Abdul Mahdi’s office said in a statement. They included agreements on oil, trade, health, and a railway linking the southern Iraqi oil city of Basra and the Iranian border town of Shalamcheh. They had also agreed on measures to make it easier for businessmen and investors to obtain visas, Abdul Mahdi’s office said.

The United States and Afghanistan clashed publicly on Thursday over U.S. peace talks with the Taliban, with a visiting Afghan official accusing the chief U.S. negotiator of “delegitimizing” the Kabul government by excluding it from the deliberations.

The remarks by Hamdullah Mohib, a former ambassador to Washington who serves as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s national security adviser, drew a blistering rebuke from the State Department, which said they impeded U.S.-Afghan ties and the peace process. The feud thrust into the open tensions that have been building between the allies over U.S. efforts to forge a peace pact with the Taliban paving

Hundreds Surrender in Last ISIS Enclave as SDF Advance ISIS militants along with women and children surrendered in the hundreds to U.S.-backed forces in eastern Syria on Thursday as the jihadists lost ground in their last shred of territory. Many of the men were limping as they crossed out of the Baghouz enclave along a dirt path over a rocky hill, with weeping children and fully veiled women, dragging suitcases and backpacks behind them.

Some men trudged along on crutches with bandages wrapped around their legs. Women hoisted children onto their shoulders to get them up the hill, leaving strollers and blankets behind in the dust. Adnan Afrin, a commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said hundreds of people were emerging, adding to the many thousands who have streamed out of Baghouz in recent weeks. The militants surrendered during a pause in the U.S.backed assault to seize the final patch of populated ISIS territory - a self-declared “caliphate” that once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria.

Algeria Ruling Party Turns its Back on Bouteflika: He is “History" Algeria’s ruling FLN party showed more signs of turning its back on Abdelaziz Bouteflika as new protests against him began on Friday, with one senior party figure saying in an interview overnight the long-serving president was “history now”.

Bouteflika has reversed a decision to stand for another term after mass protests against his rule, but stopped short of stepping down and says he will stay on until a new constitution is adopted. He has been losing allies in recent days since returning from medical treatment in Switzerland. The remarks

by Hocine Kheldoun to Ennahar television late on Thursday were another major setback Bouteflika, who hoped to pacify Algerians by promising to take steps to change the political landscape dominated by the president and the ruling elite for decades.

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Hezbollah’s Financial Crisis In Wake of Sanctions, Hezbollah Appeals for Donations and Turns to Iraq 10

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By asking the community to donate to an organization that was effective during the time when Hezbollah was mostly involved in confronting Israeli occupation, is Hezbollah’s way of asking the Shia to be partners in its resistance against Israel. anniversary of establishing the Islamic Resistance Support Association, Hassan Nasrallah praised the major Resistance funders, stressing that even the minor financial contributions can be game-changing when they accumulate and underscoring the efforts of all the members of the Islamic Resistance Support Association.

He pointed out that due to the huge financial support from the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2006, Hezbollah resistance was not in need of popular donations but that the US financial war imposes a new strategy, calling on the resistance supporters to back it financially.

A NEW STRATEGY

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

(Reuters)

By Hanin Ghaddar * Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria has depleted the group’s resources. Salaries increased, services – mainly health services – became in demand more than ever, and more significantly, the community had to suffer more isolation and unemployment challenges.

Moreover, the US sanctions on Iran is amplifying Hezbollah’s financial capabilities, to the extent that Hassan Nasrallah himself had to admit it.

On March 10, and during a ceremony held on the 30th

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Nasrallah knows that these donations are not going to compensate the loss of the Iranian finding, which according to recent sources have reached 700$ million annually. Nasrallah also knows that he could no longer deny the financial crisis that is hitting its organization due to the US sanctions. Therefore, admitting to the crisis is better than ignoring it and thereby risking the frustration within the Shia community to translate into a collective uproar.

The Shia community have been complaining about financial difficulties and lack of services for years, and Hezbollah has been promising a positive change for months, in addition to assurances that the US sanctions will not hurt the party or the community.

However, knowing that these promises are not going to be fulfilled, Hezbollah decided to take a new direction: involve the community and make it all about resistance.

Hezbollah knows that the only thing that the Shia can still respond to is the concept of resistance. They also know that a military kind of resistance is no

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longer desirable, due to the losses it will bring to the organization, the Shia, and the Lebanese in general.

Therefore, a financial resistance looked like a better solution.

Hezbollah decided to make the Shia feel that they are partners in their war against the US and Israel – a war that is besieging Hezbollah and Iran financially and making it very difficult to continue with their expensive endeavors. By asking the community to donate to an organization that was effective during the time when Hezbollah was mostly involved in confronting Israeli occupation, is Hezbollah’s way of asking the Shia to be partners in its resistance against Israel.

But would it work? Not necessarily. This organization has also been sanctioned by the US, and many Shia cannot afford to be seen donating money to a sanctioned entity, risking sanctions themselves. Some donors will still give cash anonymously but the businesspeople with the big checks will hesitate.

MORE COMPLAIN As it is unlikely that this financial crisis will be resolved anytime soon, and the Shia frustrations will only grow.

Hezbollah has brought many of its fighters from Syria back home, mainly those who are on a contractual basis and are no longer needed. Hezbollah does not feel obligated to pay them now that they are back home. In addition, employees of Hezbollah’s media, education, medical, and military systems have complained of deep pay cuts. But more significantly, fighters and their families are beginning to complain about lost wages as well—a largely unprecedented development. Married fighters are reportedly receiving only half of their salaries (which normally range from 600$ to 1,200$ per month), and single fighters are receiving only 200$

As the Lebanese state cannot be considered a sustainable source of funding, Iran and Hezbollah are looking towards Iraq, and the financial opportunities it could presents.

per month.

This indicates that Hezbollah’s financial crisis will only get worse, and the donations they can get via the Islamic Resistance Support Association are not going to compensate for all the losses.

Although Hezbollah is looking at the Lebanese state and its ministries as a new source of its funding and services network, Lebanon is in a dire financial crisis itself and there’s no telling if the CERDRE aid is going to be delivered or not, as it is strongly tied to reforms that are very difficult to implement. Hezbollah will find it more difficult to tap into state funds, knowing that the international community is watching carefully and monitoring Hezbollah’s actions and operations within the Lebanese state.

Eventually, the Shia community will tire of this new resistance endeavor, and food on the table will become a more important priority.

THE IRAQ OPPORTUNITY As the Lebanese state cannot be considered a sustainable source of funding, Iran and Hezbollah are looking towards Iraq, and the financial opportunities it

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Iraqi President Barham Saleh (R) and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani review the honour guard at the Presidential palace in Baghdad on March 2019 ,11. (Getty)

could presents.

A number of sources close to Nejaf and other Shia leaderships in Iraq mentioned that many of the salaries allocated to the PMF – mainly those who joined the Iraqi Army – are going straight to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

These sources indicate that many of the PMF positions within the army are fictitious and were created as ghost positions for that particular reason. This is similar to what former Iraqi Prime minister did with the many ghost salaries he acquired himself.

In addition, Iraq and Iran signed several preliminary trade deals on Monday as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani began his first visit to Iraq. Many saw this visit as an attempt by Iran to expand commercial ties to help offset renewed U.S. sanctions.

Rouhani and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Mahdi signed several memorandums of understanding, Abdul Mahdi’s office said in a statement. They included agreements on oil, trade, health, and a railway linking the southern Iraqi oil city of Basra and the Iranian border town of Shalamcheh. They had also agreed on measures to make it easier for businesspeople and investors to obtain visas.

A senior Iranian official accompanying Rouhani told

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Reuters news agency that Iraq was «another channel for Iran to bypass America›s unjust sanctions» and that his trip to Baghdad would «provide opportunities for Iran›s economy».

According to Iraq Business News, the Secretary of Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce Hamid Hosseini said the obstacles to banking interaction between the two neighbors have been settled and the bilateral trade exchange is normal. A large number of technical and engineering projects worth 7 to 8 billion dollars which Iranian private sector companies were carrying out in Iraq have remained unfinished since the rise of the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group in 2014, the official said, hoping that Rouhani’s trip would help address the issue.

In February, governors of the central banks of Iran and Iraq signed an agreement to develop a payment mechanism aimed at facilitating banking ties between the two neighboring countries.

If Iran manages to use Iraq’s financial arena and banking sector to ease the financial crisis, Hezbollah too will benefit from it. * Hanin Ghaddar is the inaugural Friedmann Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute.

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Hardliners Consolidate in Tehran, Face International Pushback in Bid to Evade Sanctions

by Joseph Braude

Khamenei appointed a hard-line cleric, Hojatelislam Ebrahim Raisi, associated with mass executions of While Ayatollah Khamenei consolidates control of the political prisoners in the late 1980s, to head Iran’s Iranian judiciary for the hardline camp and President judiciary. The move drew condemnations abroad: Rouhani visits Iraq, Israel and the UN expose Iranian U.S. Deputy State Department spokesman Robert maritime efforts to evade oil sanctions and cooperation Palladino called it a “disgrace … The regime makes a mockery of the legal process by allowing unfair trials with North Korean arms manufacturers. and inhumane prison conditions.”

HARDLINER TIED TO MASS EXECUTIONS APPOINTED TO HEAD JUDICIARY

On March 6, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah

Raisi’s star has been rising since at least 2016, when Khamenei appointed him to head the Astan Quds Razavi foundation, which manages the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad. Raisi’s second major promotion in

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Raisi’s second major promotion in three years has prompted speculation that Khamenei may be grooming the -57year-old hardline cleric as a potential heir apparent.

U.S. sanctions. As one Iranian official put it, «Iraq is another channel for Iran to bypass America›s unjust sanctions imposed on Iran. This trip will provide opportunities for Iran›s economy.”

Some observers also view the visit as an attempt

by Rouhani to recover lost standing within Iran, following calls for his ouster after the U.S. reimposed sanctions last year.

SANCTIONS EVASION DRAWS IRE OF ISRAEL, UN

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a joint press conference with his Iraqi counterpart at the Presidential palace in Baghdad on March 2019 ,11. (Getty)

Also on March 6, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued an unusual challenge on Twitter, suggesting that the Israeli navy might play a role in thwarting Iranian attempts to smuggle oil in evasion of US sanctions: “Iran is trying to circumvent the sanctions through covert oil smuggling over maritime routes, and to the extent that these attempts widen, the navy will have a more important role in blocking these Iranian actions.” He also urged Western powers to intensify their efforts to combat Iranian clandestine activity: “I call on the entire international community to stop Iran’s attempts to three years has prompted speculation that Khamenei circumvent the sanctions by sea, and of course, by may be grooming the -57year-old hardline cleric as a any [other] means.” potential heir apparent.

Nearly a week later, the UN reported that it was ROUHANI VISIT AIMING TO TIGHTEN investigating two North Korean missile and arms companies suspected of illicitly operating in Iran in TEHRAN’S HOLD ON BAGHDAD violation of international sanctions. The UN report On March 10, President Rouhani arrived in Baghdad noted that the Presidents of KOMID, which exports for a three-day visit, apparently aiming to expand ballistic missile equipment, and Green Pine, which economic ties. Rouhani’s agenda reportedly includes sells conventional arms, recently traveled to Iran. plans to extend a railroad from Kermanshah, Iran to According to Hugh Griffiths, coordinator of the UN Basra in Iraq, as well as new visa rules to facilitate panel assessing sanctions on North Korea, both Iranian business travel to Iraq. The visit is widely are “extremely active in Iran” and engaged in cash seen as part of a broader Iranian strategy to evade couriering for suspected illicit activities

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Will Hezbollah’s Rise Be Its Downfall?

The Group Is Stronger Than Ever- Israel Could Drag It Back Down

By BRIAN KATZ* It’s not often that Hezbollah finds common ground with U.S. leaders. But in February, Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese party and paramilitary group’s top official, made an exception. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had warned that Hezbollah was growing “more powerful.” Nasrallah agreed, and for good reason.

Fresh off victories on the battlefield in Syria, with a vast weapons arsenal in Lebanon, a political ally in power, and committed allies across the region, Hezbollah has more military and political power today than at any point since its founding in 1985.

Yet this new strength has brought with it new troubles. Hezbollah’s unchecked expansion in the Levant has not only brightened the U.S. spotlight on the group’s activities but set off alarm bells in

Israel. Major Israeli military strikes inside Lebanon—a first since Israel went to war against Hezbollah in 2006—are now a distinct possibility.

Hezbollah, already balancing a number of domestic and regional obligations, is not keen on another major conflict. Yet the group is in a bind: with every step it takes to brace for a possible Israeli attack, such a confrontation becomes more likely. Hezbollah’s actions in the months ahead will show whether it can walk this thin line. Failure could spell disaster—for the group, for Lebanon, and for the region.

THE SPOILS OF WAR Hezbollah is just emerging from a years-long campaign of

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Politically, the group now holds a de facto veto over state policy and can keep rivals such as Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri in check.

Meanwhile, the war in Syria has transformed the group’s military from a defensive guerrilla force into a full-fledged army. vis-à-vis Israel, building military facilities and weapons infrastructure.

The fight in Syria absorbed much of Hezbollah’s manpower, but smaller expeditionary missions fanned out to other hot spots. The group joined Iran in deploying trainers and advisers to support Shiite militias fighting ISIS in Iraq. In Yemen, Hezbollah and Iran came to the aid of the Houthi rebels in their fight against the country’s government and a military campaign led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Hezbollah advisers remain in Yemen, building up Houthi military capabilities and pulling their Gulf adversaries deeper into the quagmire.

A United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) vehicle patrolling in the southern Lebanese village of Adaisseh on the border with Israel is parked next to a poster showing Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah on December 2018 ,9.

(Getty)

military adventurism in the region. In 2013, the group began sending thousands of fighters into Syria, where they defended the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime against opposition forces as well as the Islamic State(ISIS), the alNusra Front, and other terrorist groups. Because Syria—the linchpin of the anti-Western, anti-Israel “axis of resistance” formed by Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria—acts as a thoroughfare for Iranian weapons for Hezbollah, the war was an existential matter for the group. In 2017, Hezbollah fighters helped the Assad regime retake Aleppo. Later, they pushed east toward the Iraq border and the Euphrates River valley, blocking the advance of U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab forces. Moving southward from Damascus to the Golan Heights, they defeated remaining opposition forces and strengthened axis capabilities

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A relatively quiet domestic front has helped Hezbollah maintain its deployments abroad. From 2013 to 2015, a series of attacks by ISIS and the al-Nusra Front in Beirut and along Lebanon’s border with Syria threatened to destabilize the country, but Hezbollah and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) successfully expelled the groups. On Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, tensions occasionally flared up between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but the situation never escalated. All the while, Hezbollah gradually established itself as Lebanon’s main armed actor, unmatched by the LAF or rival militias.

The group’s political star rose during the same period. For over a decade, Hezbollah had maintained an alliance with Lebanon’s largest Christian party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM). The party’s founder, Michel Aoun, assumed the presidency in 2016.

With a sophisticated political and media apparatus, Hezbollah and its FPM-led alliance won decisively in national assembly elections last year, capturing an unprecedented number of assembly seats and cabinet ministries.

Victorious on foreign battlefields and at the ballot box, Hezbollah has emerged from the region’s turmoil stronger than ever.

Politically, the group now holds a de facto veto over state policy

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and can keep rivals such as Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri in check. Meanwhile, the war in Syria has transformed the group’s military from a defensive guerrilla force into a full-fledged army. With six years of experience across a spectrum of military landscapes—from urban warfare in Aleppo to mountain warfare along the Syria-Lebanon border and rural clearing operations in eastern Syria—Hezbollah’s 20,000 to 30,000 active-duty fighters arguably form the most battle-hardened and effective Arab army today. If it blends its defensive capabilities in southern Lebanon with the offensive capabilities it gained in Syria, the group could be capable of both repelling Israeli incursions and launching attacks into Israeli territory.

Hezbollah has further evolved into a regional player to be reckoned with. Expeditionary war taught it how to deploy and sustain forces abroad. In the process, the group built an arc of allies stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon.

The result is not only military interoperability but ideological bonds between axis members who now understand themselves as brothers-in-arms against Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf allies. Shiite allies, such as Houthis in Yemen and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, view Hezbollah leader Nasrallah as inspirational and his group’s maturation into a military, political, and socioeconomic heavyweight as a model to emulate.

AN UNBEARABLE THREAT Officials in Israel have watched Hezbollah’s transformation— especially its successes in Syria—with growing alarm.

Hezbollah’s push into southwest Syria, in tandem with the paramilitary arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, allowed it to build bases abutting the Golan Heights. With Iranian support, the group has cultivated Shiite militias from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria, all willing to join Hezbollah in a war with Israel. For Israeli officials, the coming confrontation would be not the “Lebanon War” but the first “Northern War,” spanning Lebanon and Syria.

Hezbollah could also bring the fight directly to Israel. Earlier this winter, the IDF carried out a six-week operation to destroy several Hezbollah tunnels stretching from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, but it conceded that more secret passages likely remained undetected. Gadi Eizenkot, then the outgoing IDF chief, described the tunnels as “Hezbollah’s Operation Barbarossa,” a

In the end, Hezbollah’s recent victories may be its undoing.

reference to the Wehrmacht’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Even more worrying, in Israel’s eyes, are Hezbollah’s efforts to domestically produce precision-guided munitions. The group already owns a formidable arsenal of drones, long-range rockets, and short-range surface-to-air and antiship missiles. Now Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah, with help from Iran, is converting “dumb” rockets into highly accurate missiles using small and hard-to-detect GPS guidance kits. Such precision weaponry, if produced on a mass scale, could erode Israel’s technological advantage in air defense and enable Hezbollah to hit Israeli military and civilian targets with pinpoint accuracy.

Israeli leaders, watching these changes unfold, may decide that the costs of inaction are too high. Ever since its 2006 war against Hezbollah, Israel has avoided major strikes inside Lebanon for fear of unwanted escalation with uncertain consequences. Instead, it has carried out air strikes against Hezbollah and Iranian targets inside Syria, repeatedly hitting convoys and weapon depots. Now Israel might conclude that only direct strikes against Hezbollah’s home base will contain the group. Some statements by senior Israeli military officials already seem to point in this direction.

DAMNED IF YOU DO...

How would Hezbollah respond to an Israeli operation against, say,

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Huthi militiamen hold posters bearing portraits of Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah (L) and Shiite Huthi rebels' leader, Abdulmalik al-Huthi (R), during a gathering by Huthi militia to show their support to Hezbollah following the Gulf states' announcement declaring the group a terrorist organization, in the capital Sanaa, on March 2016 ,3. (Getty)

With Iranian support, the group has cultivated Shiite militias from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria, all willing to join Hezbollah in war. suggest that Hezbollah might respond proportionally with an attack on an Israeli military facility with few or no casualties. Yet these tit-for-tat exchanges leave ample room for miscalculation and misperception, and what one side sees as a proportional response, the other might consider a drastic escalation. In 2006, it was a deadly Hezbollah raid on IDF soldiers that provoked Israel to go to war—a reaction that, Nasrallah later conceded, he in no way anticipated. Thus, conflict could quickly escalate even if neither side wants an all-out war.

Nasrallah likely knows that in such a war with Israel, Hezbollah could at best fight the IDF to a draw. Such a stalemate would entail immense destruction—to the group, its Shiite base, and swaths of Lebanon. Moreover, what begins as a limited conflict could descend into regional war: Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Syria, for instance, could ensnare the Assad regime, Iran, or Russia. Likewise, Hezbollah rocket barrages against the IDF, Israeli leadership, or civilian communities could trigger calls for U.S. intervention. its rocket-to-missile conversion sites? On the one hand, the group is already spread rather thin. Its rise has come at a heavy cost in blood and treasure. Hezbollah suffered thousands of casualties in Syria and was left with the financial burdens of caring for the wounded and the families of “martyrs.” Meanwhile, the risk of a resurgent ISIS means Hezbollah must keep troops in Syria and Iraq that it had hoped to withdraw. None of this makes war with Israel an appealing prospect.

On the other hand, the group’s leaders could hardly afford to tolerate an Israeli strike in Lebanese territory without some kind of retaliation—especially given Hezbollah’s role as vanguard of the anti-Israel coalition. Yet the very steps necessary to deter Israel from taking significant action and ensure the group can retaliate if Israel does strike may provoke Israel and thus make war more likely—a classic case of the security dilemma.

Consider the issue of military equipment: advanced weapons are Hezbollah’s only chance against Israel’s high-tech military and formidable defenses, but those acquisition efforts are precisely what could trigger Israeli action. Nonetheless, Nasrallah will likely conclude that Hezbollah must continue building an ever more sophisticated and voluminous arsenal to counter Israel.

If Israel were to strike, Hezbollah would face another conundrum: how to deliver a response forceful enough to deter further Israeli action but not so destructive as to invite further escalation. The informal “rules of the game” developed over the past decade

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A FRAGILE DÉTENTE A crisis can still be averted. In all likelihood, Nasrallah understands that a destructive, protracted war would jeopardize everything Hezbollah has achieved at home and in the region. But this awareness alone is not enough. The international community needs to press Hezbollah to curtail its most provocative activities, such as its production of precision munitions and construction of cross-border tunnels. UN forces in Lebanon can facilitate dialogue between Israeli and Lebanese officials to calm heated tempers. Countries with ties to both sides, such as Russia, could do their part to lower the risk of unwanted escalation by serving as conduits for back-channel communication.

For now, the mutual understanding that the 2006 war would pale in comparison with the destruction a new conflict would wreak has kept both sides from direct war. But there is no guarantee that this détente will last. In the end, Hezbollah’s recent victories may be its undoing.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com. * BRIAN KATZ is Visiting Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Negotiations Are the Best Way to End the War in Afghanistan Why Talking to the Taliban Is the Right Move 20

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The Taliban has not ruled out talking to the government, but it insists on first reaching an agreement with the United States on ending what it calls the “occupation.”

York Times reported, “The Trump administration has ordered the military to start withdrawing roughly 7,000 troops from Afghanistan in the coming months.” The U.S. government and the Taliban are reportedly close to agreement on a partial framework of a peace deal. Now it is the turn of strategists in Washington to worry about the wrong thing. They fear that the Trump administration is repeating the mistake made by the United States in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan: negotiating a troop withdrawal that leads to the collapse of the U.S.-backed government or a civil war.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, for example, described the negotiations as a “surrender.”

The negotiations do not represent surrender. Nor are they the reason that the United States is aiming to withdraw its troops; that has long been Trump’s intention. Negotiating in the shadow of a predetermined decision to withdraw may not be the best way to run a peace process, but the real danger is that, regardless of the negotiations, Trump will order an unconditional withdrawal and cut the assistance that sustains the Afghan state.

THE PATH TO PEACE

Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani and US President Donald Trump shake hands before a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly on September 2017 ,21 in New York City. (Getty)

By Barnett R. Rubin* In 2012, while I was serving as senior adviser to the State Department special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, I met in Istanbul with a group of Iranian scholars and former diplomats. After listening to the Iranians protest the United States’ purported plans to establish permanent bases in Afghanistan, I told them that they were worrying about the wrong thing. Their problem was not that U.S. forces would stay forever; it was that, sooner or later, they would leave, and the Iranians and their neighbors would once again be stuck with a problem that they could not solve.

Sure enough, that time is coming. In December, The New

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s current policy of negotiation constitutes a break with the South Asia strategy that Trump announced in August 2017. In the speech laying out the strategy, he hit all of Washington’s war-drunk high notes: “the men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory,” he said, warning, “a hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum for terrorists.” “In the end,” he promised, “we will win.”

Most important to Trump, as always, was not to be his predecessor: “Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on,” he said.

“America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out.”

The strategy was also supposed to change “how to deal with Pakistan,” which, the president said, has “sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people.”

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“That will have to change,” he said.

There was, however, never any “plan for victory,” and Pakistan’s behavior did not change. If Trump’s decision to withdraw was dictated by “conditions on the ground,” it was only because his strategy had failed to alter those conditions.

The U.S. military had defined government control over 80 percent of the population as the benchmark for success, but in January, the U.S. Department of Defense Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction reported that from August 2017 to October 2018, the proportion of the Afghan population living in areas under government influence or control remained constant at 64 percent. “Conditions on the ground” had not improved since the start of the Trump administration, when General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States and the Afghan government were in a “stalemate.” Two years later, Trump’s South Asia strategy had not moved the stalemate any closer to victory. A devastating National Intelligence Estimate issued in August 2018 reported that, if anything, the Taliban was gaining ground.

Although Trump is hardly known to accept intelligence estimates at face value, this one confirmed that his original instinct to pull out had been right. Some in the administration, most likely led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, convinced the president to try negotiations before a unilateral withdrawal. Pompeo hired Zalmay Khalilzad, a seasoned Afghan-American Republican foreign-policy figure who had worked on Afghanistan in the Reagan and both Bush administrations. As special representative for Afghan Reconciliation, Khalilzad was given a few months to negotiate a deal before Trump pulled the plug.

A negotiated solution was always the only way out of Afghanistan, but the military insisted that the United States and the Afghan government should negotiate only from a “position of strength,” which was always just over the horizon, defined by a Soviet witticism as an imaginary line that recedes as one approaches it. The longer the United States waited for the position of strength, the weaker its actual position became, so when Trump finally accepted the inevitable, Washington was hardly in a position to impose terms.

Kabul and Washington had hoped that military success would force the Taliban into direct negotiations with the Afghan government. But there was no such success, and the Taliban, which reached agreements with the government in 2001 and

2004 only to find the United States unwilling to accept them, had concluded that negotiating with the Afghan government without an agreement with the United States was pointless.

The Taliban has not ruled out talking to the government, but it insists on first reaching an agreement with the United States on ending what it calls the “occupation.” The choice facing Washington in 2018, therefore, was between direct negotiations with the Taliban and no negotiations at all.

Now the two sides are reported to be close to an agreement under which U.S. forces would withdraw and the Taliban would guarantee that any future government in which they participate would join the fight against international terrorism. Some critics worry that the United States will remove its troops in return for nothing but unenforceable promises by the Taliban. According to negotiators, however, the agreement would rely not on trusting the Taliban’s promises but on carefully sequencing the components of the agreement and insisting on monitoring mechanisms. The best counterterrorism program would be a political agreement that stabilizes Afghanistan, puts an end to incentives to mobilize terrorist support, and closes ungoverned spaces that terrorists can exploit. The putative agreement specifies, as Khalilzad tweeted in January, that “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and ‘everything’ must include an intra-Afghan dialogue and comprehensive ceasefire.” Those internal Afghan talks, Khalilzad also tweeted, should be conducted

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President Donald Trump delivers remarks on Americas military involvement in Afghanistan at the Fort Myer military base on August 2017 ,21 in Arlington, Virginia.

(Getty)

The United States could catastrophically reduce its military and financial assistance with or without negotiations—but the negotiations provide the only path to stability after the inevitable withdrawal.

by a “national, inclusive, and unified #Afghan negotiating team,” and he met with groups of women and youth to illustrate what he meant.

That intra-Afghan dialogue is where Afghans, with international backing, can defend their rights. The relationship of the troop withdrawal to the dialogue is yet to be agreed upon, but the U.S. and Afghan position is that any timetable for withdrawal should be linked to the implementation of the political settlement, not just to a calendar.

HISTORY’S WARNING Trump could still upend this framework and opt for a unilateral withdrawal and aid cuts. Such a decision could well lead to the collapse of the Afghan government, a scenario that recalls the end of the Vietnam War. The Paris Peace Accords, reached in January 1973, provided for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Vietnam within 60 days. Although they included provisions for a cease-fire and a political settlement, these were to take place after U.S. forces left. The United States failed to make its withdrawal conditional on either, and so neither happened. The South Vietnamese government nonetheless survived for over two years. Only in 1975, when a war-weary U.S. Congress cut off all military and financial aid to South Vietnam, did Saigon finally fall.

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A similar story played out after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Under the Geneva Accords of 1988— negotiated by Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, and the United States—all Soviet troops would withdraw from Afghanistan by February 1989, and Pakistan and the United States would stop providing aid to the mujahidin based in Pakistan by May 1988.

Yet the accords made no provision for a political settlement within Afghanistan. When the deadline for cutting off aid to the mujahideen arrived, the United States and Pakistan asserted that they would continue to support the mujahideen for as long as the Soviet Union supported the Afghan state. The Soviets withdrew on schedule anyway. Over two years later, in September 1991, the United States and a collapsing Soviet Union agreed to stop providing aid to their clients. The Soviet Union collapsed in December. Short of money to pay his armed forces and feed Afghanistan’s urban population, Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah resigned and fled in April 1992. According to a UN peace plan, an interim government formed abroad was meant to replace him, but fighters inside Afghanistan had no stake in that agreement. The country collapsed into civil war.

Such a scenario could play out again in Afghanistan. The United States could catastrophically reduce its military and financial assistance with or without negotiations—but the negotiations provide the only path to stability after the inevitable withdrawal. Trump must allow his negotiators and the Afghan government to take the time they need to reach a deal that links the implementation of the withdrawal agreement to an Afghan political settlement, and he must maintain the flow of aid needed to keep the Afghan state functioning. * BARNETT R. RUBIN is Associate Director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and former Senior Adviser to the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Moncef Marzouki: Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes Alliance Failed to Govern Tunisia Former Tunisian president said “Troika” had achieved its goals and refused to confirm he is running in the presidential elections.

by Boubaker bin Omar Tunisia- Mohamed Moncef Marzouki was the first democratically elected president of Tunisia after the January 14th Revolution in 2011. A neurologist by profession, he spent many years defending human rights during the dictatorship of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, which was toppled by the Arab Spring uprising. He founded the Congress for the Republic party but in 2015 he launched a new political party named al-Irada (the will).

In an interview with Majalla, Marzouki analysed his tenure as president and the “Torika” alliance, he assessed the causes of the present-day bipolarity in Tunisia, flagged concerns about the state of the media and detailed the priorities of his al-Irada party.

Q- Where are you living since leaving the presidential palace and how do you spend a typical day?

Since I moved into the presidential palace, I vowed not to become a prisoner of it. For this reason, once I finished my work every Friday evening, I would return to my normal environment in Sousse to spend the weekend at my house and reading books.

This is what I did during my three years in office.

When I left the palace in January 2015, I returned to my house.

I was conscious of the importance of preserving my normal lifestyle and to not become distant from my family, friends and people around me so nothing has changed in my life since leaving office.

Q- Several years ago you established the al-Irada Party. Why this party, and what are its goals and priorities? And why did you leave the Congress for the Republic Party (CPR) which you

headed when you ran for the presidential elections in Tunisia in 2014?

I ran in the 2011 elections as leader of the Congress for the Republic Party (CPR). I won and became part of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA). I then assumed the presidency because my party came second after the Ennahda Party, and we made a power-sharing agreement.

Unfortunately, however, political conflicts led to division. When I ran for the presidential elections in 2014, I reached the second round in the race where I ran against the current President, Essebsi. I received 1.4 million votes while my party (Congress for the Republic), received 120,000 votes in the legislative elections. This paradox clearly demonstrated that the majority of my supporters are not from my party. So, the idea of establishing a new party that brings together the largest number of my supporters came up and the Movement of the Citizens Party, which was later named al-Irada, was established.

I believe this party has a future. I’ve noticed that people are very interested in the present and are overloaded by day-to-day problems that are caused by the lack of planning for the future.

If our predecessors had planned for 50 years in advance, for example, as many countries do, we could have avoided what we are experiencing today. Therefore, we decided to look beyond conflicts and circumstantial tensions and think and plan for the next 50 years. We prepared a document titled Tunisia 2065, which includes major reforms required in sensitive sectors such as health, education, culture and economy by adopting a new way of thinking. We have begun to build the foundations of the

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project which covers the next 50 years because the party takes a deeper and more long-distance approach than the other parties.

As for the position of the party in the political scene, and according to the French perception that divides parties into right and left wings - an old and outdated concept – al-Irada is a rightwing because it adheres to the Arab Islamic identity. Right-wing parties, however, usually have their own positions when it comes to economic and social issues but my party is leftist in this regard as it focuses on economic and social issues. But it also focuses on rights and freedoms, which are characteristic of centrist parties.

In conclusion, al-Irada is a right-left-centrist party, which affirms that such classifications have become outdated.

Q - Since your time in office ended, during which you were part of Troika alliance (the unofficial name for the alliance between the three parties (Ennahda, Ettakatol, and CPR), your relationship with the Ennahda Party have worsened. What is the main reason behind this disagreement?

My party members and I believe that Tunisia has the right to break with the old system of the Socialist Destourian Party, which was headed by former president Habib Bourguiba, and was later renamed the Democratic Constitutional Rally under Ben Ali. The party’s leadership and members were the reason behind the people’s revolution in 2010. They played the role of the counter-revolution after the fall of the regime in January 2011 and are today pushing towards the perpetuation of the system of corruption and tyranny. For all these reasons, we saw that just as Russia could not have progressed without abandoning the Communist Party, and Germany would not have advanced if it

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Bipolarity and ideological differences between Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes parties are raised as a cover for their failure had not left behind its Nazi past, we have chosen to break with the old system, associated with the period of tyranny, and move towards a system that adopts a new way of thinking and practices and believes in democracy and freedom.

However, because the Ennahda Party is keen to maintain security and stability and preserve national unity, it chose to go along with the old system and form an alliance with it. While, for our part, we see this old system as the biggest reason behind the instability faced by Tunisia, and it pushed people to storm the streets and protest, and it will certainly do this again if it gets the chance to rule the country. Thus, the main reason behind our disagreement with the Ennahda Party is its attitude towards the old system.

Some people might describe me as a revolutionist, but history proves that you cannot build something new out of something old. They now want to build the new system using the same old methods, and the evidence is in the results of the agreement between the Ennahda Party and Nidaa Tounes. Nevertheless, the outcomes under “Troika” were better than those achieved under the Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes’s alliance as we wrote the

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constitution and achieved better economic indicators and figures.

Q -How do you evaluate your tenure and what did you do for Tunisia?

When we took power as a tripartite alliance in 2012, the corrupt media launched a terrible war against us. It was said to be the most difficult period in the history of Tunisia and that we failed while the figures proved the opposite. The value of the Tunisian dinar, for example, has now dropped considerably compared to when Troika was in power, and so is the balance of payments.

The country’s debt has increased, people have become frustrated and freedoms have decreased. Thus, the comparison is in favour of our governing years from 2012 till 2014 compared to recent years.

In addition, judging a leaders’ performance is usually based on an assessment of the extent to which they have achieved their goals and whether they have succeeded in their duties. Troika was not required to solve all economic and social problems. Instead, it governed for a specific period in which we were asked first to draft a new constitution for the country, preserve national unity and restore power to people. All these goals were achieved as a new constitution was written, and it was a consensual constitution, national unity and security were preserved in Tunisia unlike in many other countries and power was restored to people by organizing free, fair and democratic elections in autumn 2014.

We achieved these three goals and handed over power to those who won the elections Some criticized us because we did not address the social file (poverty, unemployment, purchasing power). This is normal because the expectations of revolting people are major, and we could not have achieved better than we did under the difficult circumstances at the time.

Q- Why did you lose in the presidential elections?

Everyone knows that I have been subjected to a systematic and intensive media attack and despite the enlistment of the media against me and despite the corrupt money, the difference of votes between Essebsi and I was slight. I can say that my defeat in the elections was an honourable one.

Political stability is needed to achieve economic development We wish our Algerian brothers all the best, and we support all their decisions.

Q- How do you read the political scene today?

It is widely acknowledged that the political parties that have presented themselves as having solutions to all the country’s problems have failed to establish social stability and achieve the desired economic growth.

Essebsi and his Nidaa Tounes party’s promises to achieve prosperity have not been realized despite leading three successive governments since 2014. All indicators in Tunisia are in decline today, and Tunisia has been added on the money laundering blacklist. Torture has also returned to the headlines, bloggers have been arrested and the psychological situation of a large sector of the Tunisian people has deteriorated. Therefore, I say that the current governing system has failed. It is still struggling with many problems and they only have seven months left in power until the upcoming elections which they will be defeated in if the elections are not manipulated. And since I know them well, I am afraid they will not allow the elections to be held, but people will not accept any electoral fraud to happen.

Q- Can you not see that bipolarity between Islamists and modernists has turned the conflict between them into an ideological one and that people’s real problems have been sidelined?

I see the opposite. The real problems are now dominating the scene and they are mainly related to purchasing power, the hike in prices and the cost of living. When the ruling class feels it is unable to control this, it resorts to bipolarity to distract people.

The best proof of this is the rise of the gender equality issue while we are at the peak of the governing system’s political crisis and its inability to manage the country›s problems. Thus, bipolarity and ideological differences between Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes parties are raised as a cover for their failure.

Moreover, when I was the president, the heads of the three

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governments I worked with were not members of my party, yet we did not disagree. While the heads of the current executive authority– Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and President Essebsi ‫ ـ‬are fighting although they both are from the Nidaa Tounes party.

Q- How do you rate the compatibility of the Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes parties?

Compatibility exists between those who have the same project and the same goals and have a common history. But Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes don’t have the same principles, history, objectives or intellectual or political background. So, their relationship can be described as a deal between two parties that want to form an alliance with one another to achieve specific goals. The alliance between Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes does not serve the country but serves the two parties’ interests.

Q - A significant percentage of Tunisians are frustrated with the political class because of the low level of political discourse and the absence of democratic conflict. What is your opinion in this regard?

They have all the right to be frustrated, and the low level of political discourse is due to the corrupt media system, which is controlled by partners in corruption. This media intentionally wants to discredit politicians, parties and the political discourse to alienate people from politics and elections and leave the political scene open for the corrupt, and this is dangerous and scary.

Q- Who do you think is responsible for Tunisia’s current difficult economic and living conditions, and what are the solutions?

Parties and politicians are the ones responsible for the country’s current conditions because they lied to people and promised them prosperity, and nothing has really been achieved on the ground.

I think the main reason for these economic difficulties is due to the unstable political environment. The economic machine can only move in a stable political environment. After the revolution, seven governments were formed, a rate of one government almost every year. This change in governments prevents stability.

Tunisia will only be able to end its economic crisis and achieve positive results when it achieves political stability.

Q -What could threaten the elections scheduled to take place later this year?

The major threat facing this year’s elections is electoral fraud.

The biggest problem now is the absence of a constitutional court, which we hope is formed soon.

There are also the problems of corrupt money, the media being under the control of one party, and the low-level political discourse that could affect the upcoming elections.

Q- How will the al-Irada party participate in the upcoming legislative elections? And will it form allies with some other political forces?

Our party will participate in all the electoral elements, and we will announce our lists and candidates’ names before summer. We are also talking with some parties about the possibilities of forming alliances and presenting joint lists, and we will participate in individual lists composed of members of the al-Irada party in a large number of bodies.

Q - Will you run for the 2019 presidential elections?

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My mistake was underestimating the extent of the old system›s ruthlessness, its severity and the threat posed by the counter-revolution.

It is too early to talk about that now. I can’t confirm my candidacy or deny it. I don’t want to announce my final decision now since I am still discussing this issue with a number of political parties.

The final decision will be taken and announced before the end of summer.

Q - You recently said that you made mistakes during your presidency but that they were made in good faith. What were these mistakes?

Every human being makes mistakes and this is normal. What not normal is not to be asked about these mistakes. My mistake was underestimating the extent of the old system›s ruthlessness, its severity and the threat posed by the counter-revolution. We were tolerant of it while it was fighting us by spreading lies and rumours. This happened in 2014, but we will take new measures this year, and we won’t repeat the same mistakes.

Q - How do you rate freedoms in Tunisia today?

There has been a major decline in freedoms. Some bloggers are in jail now, and the Tunisian press is ranked very low compared to many other countries. The reality is generally scary. We will fight alongside people to prevent further decline.

Q - What is your opinion on the declared war on corruption and corrupt individuals?

This war is not serious since those who are fighting corrupt individuals have come to power through corrupt money. They are fighting their opponents while they are from a party that is formed of many corrupt people, and they are supposed to be tried first.

I proposed a draft law to question politicians about their wealth and influence. I sent it to the parliament, but it was not approved until I left office Q - What are Tunisia’s priorities in the next phase?

I hope that the current phase passes peacefully so that we have the chance to hold elections in the autumn in which a group of honourable politicians win.

Q - What is your view on what is happening in Algeria?

We wish our Algerian brothers all the best because what affects them affects us, and we hope that the country remains stable and it›s people united. We also support all of their decisions.

Q- What about the situation in Libya?

The situation in Libya is a matter of concern, and we support holding talks between Libyan parties to resolve this complex issue. We are also with the legitimacy and with the Government of National Accord (GNA). We support this government and hope that Libya will emerge from its crisis as soon as possible.

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“Kurdistan’s Hiroshima” The Halabja Massacre 31 Years On

By: Fayrouza Ramadan Zada It has been 31 years since that bloody Friday which oversaw the diabolical massacre of Kurds living Halabja, one of the cities of Iraqi Kurdistan. Also known as “Kurdistan’s Hiroshima”, the Halabja massacre is one of the many atrocities that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s army committed throughout its history. The massacre is classified as both a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Halabja is located 15 kilometers from the Iranian border and 225 kilometers from Northeastern Baghdad. On March 1988 ,16 the city was counting down to Nawruz and the Hijri New Year. But instead of festive cheer, the city’s inhabitants were greeted with attacks from the Iraqi army.

The massacre lasted five hours and was one of the 8 stages of Saddam Hussein’s Anfal Genocide campaign.

The genocide was a long and calculated operation which aimed to ethnically cleanse Iraq from its Kurdish population. Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, aka Chemical Ali, was the head of the operations, which resulted in the murder and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Kurds in Iraq. Days before the massacre, Iranian forces seized the Kurdish regions of Halabja, Said Sadiq and their surrounding areas. As a result of Iran’s actions, Saddam Hussein ordered Ali Hassan al-Majid to plan a large chemical attack on the city of Halabja. The purpose of the attack was two-fold, first Saddam Hussein wanted the massacre to serve as a lesson and warning for the rest of the Iraqi citizens and second he wanted to retaliate against Iran’s military operation and thought that Iraq’s Kurds would conspire with Iran against him.

Isa Buzzyar is an Iranian Kurdish demining expert

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who spoke to us about the massacre. According to him Chemical Ali had claimed that both the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) headquarters and leader at the time (Jalal Talabani) were located in Halabja. Moreover, Chemical Ali also claimed that the PUK was aiding Iran.

Buzzyar also spoke of the Iraqi colonel pilot, Aden Mustafa Hamid, who refused to take part in the massacre.

His heroic dissent resulted in his execution, but this Christian Iraqi did not die in vain as he became a hero for the Iraqi Kurds, so much so that a statue of him was erected in Halabja. Omar Khawer is another hero from the massacre as his famous photo of him hugging a child to protect him from deadly weapons spread all across global media outlets.

Prior to the chemical attack, Halabja suffered non-stop heavy bombardments from Iraqi forces for two days.

The bombardment was designed to weaken any Kurdish resistance and prevent anyone from taking refuge in underground shelters. Initially, the people in Halabja thought that this was one a normal bombardment like any other as they had grown accustomed to the military attacks from Hussein’s army. But, soon a yellow fog would fill Halabja’s skies; a fog that smelled of rotten eggs, apples and rubbish. Minutes later the birds in the skies fell on the ground, soon after Halabja’s citizens and livestock would also fall to the ground. A myriad of chemicals was released on the Kurds; among such agents were cyanogen, VX, sarin, tabun and mustard gas. This cocktail of toxic nerve agents caused many different symptoms on the victims: some started to loudly and hysterically laugh and then subsequently fall to the ground; some instantly collapsed and started vomiting green liquid before going into a coma, some people got boils, burns and swellings on their skin.

The gas had terrible effects on the animals as well as many of them developed pale skin and others’ eyes were horrifyingly gaping as if their eyeballs would pop out of their sockets.

No one saw any means of escape from this hell, all they could do was cry and wail: “The gas! The gas!” The horrors of this genocide became more apparent after images of the gas attack were published. After which, people all over the world saw painful photos showing elderly men and women who died in a matter of seconds while trying to find a hiding place to save themselves, photos of mothers and fathers clutching on their babies and children, doing anything they could to save them.

“I was a child at the time but I remember when a group of residents from Halabja came to Iranian border cities and the Islamic Republic established tents for families of the victims,” Isa Buzzyar told Al Majalla. Exact statistics on this crime against humanity don’t exist, but media outlets and non-governmental organizations, such as the Halabja Disaster Victims Organization, have reported the deaths of 5,000 people and the injury of nearly 10,000 others.

Thirty years on since that bloody Friday, the Kurds of

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There were photos of mothers and fathers clutching on their babies and children, doing anything they could to save them.

Halabja are still feeling the trauma and after effects from the attack. For instance, many Kurds were diagnosed with cancer years after the attack, others developed respiratory problems and infants were born with multiple congenital malformations or genetic disorders.

The leaders of the Islamic Republic took this attack as an opportunity to launch a smear campaign against Saddam Hussein as they wanted to expose one of his many crimes against his own people. They would not allow families of victims to go to Halabja to bury them, instead they sent journalists and photographers from their news agencies to document and record the atrocity for the history books.

Isa Buzzyar agreed with this sentiment as he told us: “The foreign policy wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was the first body to go into Halabja after the chemical attack.

Saddam Hussein attacked Halabja because of cooperation between Kurdish and Iranian forces. Iran didn’t allow any other body to go into Halabja so that it can photograph the aftermath of the attack and send their experts to take samples of the toxic chemicals used”.

Every year Kurds in Northern Iraq and all over the world remember this bloody massacre. However, during the last decade, the Iranian government has taken steps to prevent Kurdish activists and students from holding workshops or programs observing the anniversary of the massacre.

The same cannot be said about Halabja as many groups and activists do their part to properly remember the attack and the victims that suffered from it. For example, a group of women in Halabja raise money every year to help disenfranchised women in the city and help raise their morale. To do this, the group uses the money it raised to establish educational and cultural workshops that teach women in the community various skills such as computing, sewing and speaking the English language. The charity also forms women’s sports teams that give Halabja’s women (especially those who lived through the difficult decades of the 1970s and 1980s) an outlet to ease their grievances and trauma.

The Halabja massacre is still very much entrenched into Kurdish collective memory as it is often said that Kurds can never read the Quran in its entirety as they always fall into a silent sadness when they reach Surah Al-Anfal.

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Boeing’s 737 Max 8: What’s Next for the Company Amid Safety Concerns

by Yasmine El-Geressi This week was supposed to mark the ceremonial debut of “the largest and most efficient twinengine jet in the world”- Boeing’s new long-haul 777X jetliner. Instead, the American aerospace’s plans were thrown into disarray and its share prices fell by %15 after its new Boeing 737 Max 8 jet crashed in Ethiopia on Sunday, killing all 149 passengers and 8 crew aboard. This comes just five months after a deadly crash off the coast of Indonesia involving an identical brand-new jet

by Lion Air.

Aviation experts say that there isn’t conclusive evidence so far to link the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes and have cautioned against drawing comparisons between the two, particularly as there are still unanswered questions about the causes of the Lion Air crash. “It is much, much too early to know if there are any similarities other than it was the same aircraft type on ascent.

Until we know that we are speculating and that is not helpful.” Andrew Charlton, the managing director at Aviation Advocacy, told Majalla.

Still, Boeing is facing mounting pressure.

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Although it is too early to know how long the grounding will last what the fallout will be, the news is not good for Boeing and the threat to the company’s reputation and financial health is growing.

In a statement, Boeing said it "continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max" but had suspended all 371 of its global fleet "out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public".

Trump’s action, which the president said was based on “new information and physical evidence that we’ve received,” raised new questions about Boeing’s and the FAA’s hitherto defiant stance and whether the company and its regulator were playing down serious issues with the plane.

Some pilots and aviation experts say Boeing and the FAA have not been fully forthcoming in addressing persistent problems with complex automatic adjustment software called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS.

Rescue team collect remains of bodies amid debris at the crash site of Ethiopia Airlines near Bishoftu, a town some 60 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 2019 ,10.

(Getty)

TECHNOLOGY UNDER SCRUTINY The US became the last country to suspend the jet after intense international pressure as one nation after the other grounded the 737 Max. Until Wednesday, The Federal Aviation Administration said that there was no basis for grounding the flight. China’s aviation regular was the first to order the grounding of all Max 8 planes on Monday. The authorities in Australia, Britain, France and Germany quickly followed suit, as did Europe’s aviation-safety regulator.

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The technology under scrutiny is part of the flight control software on both the Max 8 and the Max 9. If information from the Ethiopian Airlines crash suggests the software might have been a factor in the disaster, the consequences for Boeing could be severe. It has already begun a costly and complex redesign of the flight control software.

The day before the Lion Air crash, the pilots who flew the same airplane reported problems with the angle-of-attack sensor, which tells pilots the angle of the airplane as it passes through the air.

Maintenance workers at Lion Air replaced the sensor, and the plane was put back in service to fly as Flight 610. Until this point, Boeing had not included a warning about the function of MCAS in the flight manual for the MAX8- nor as part of the training of pilots converting from earlier

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model 737s to the new model.

After the Lion Air crash, American pilots' unions raised concerns over the MCAS system and claimed they had received insufficient training to retake control in the case of a malfunction.

According to an FAA database reviewed

by Politico pilots in the United States have complained at least five times in recent months about problems controlling the Boeing 737 Max 8, and some of the incidents appeared to involve the MCAS system.

In one documented complaint, a pilot said the plane's downturn triggered the ground proximity warning system, which is designed to alert pilots when their planes are in immediate danger. The complaint states an alarm sounded “don’t sink, don’t sink” before the captain disconnected the autopilot and manually adjusted the plane to climb.

Another pilot called the flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient” and said, “all airlines that operate the MAX must insist that Boeing incorporate ALL systems in their manuals."

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR BOEING? Although it is too early to know how long the grounding will last what the fallout will be, the news is not good for Boeing and the threat to the company’s reputation and financial health is growing.

Some pilots and aviation experts say Boeing and the FAA have not been fully forthcoming in addressing persistent problems with the MCAS.

The 737 has been Boeing’s bestselling product for decades and is considered one of the industry’s most reliable aircrafts. The company’s future depends on the success of the fuel-efficient 737 Max 8, the newest version of the jet. Investors are concerned because of how important the Max 8 is to the company’s revenues. If these planes have to be grounded for months or years that could cost Boeing a lot of revenue and profit.

China is Boeing’s most important market which is why China’s decision to ground all Max 8 jets operated by its airlines is so significant. Boeing had predicted that China will soon become the world’s first trillion-dollar market for jets. By 2037, they had predicted that China would need 7,690 commercial jets to meet its travel demands.

Jefferies expected the 737 Max 8 to generate about 32$ billion for Boeing in 2019 and in the investment bank’s worst-case scenario -- a software problem causing a full grounding and

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The technology that is under scrutiny is the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system or MCAS. It is part of the flight control software on both the Max 8 and the Max 9. on the back of Boeing’s woes with the shares at record highs, and up over %3 since last Friday, in anticipation of more orders for their A320 model,” he added.

This point was backed by Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. “I believe that whatever the problems are will be temporary in nature provided Boeing acts quickly and decisively once the problems are known.” But Boeing still has to work with investigators to come up with the definitive causes of both accidents, Harteveldt says, how they differ or mirror each other "and then determine what can they do . .

Is it an engineering problem? Is it a software problem? Is it a training problem?’’ halt to deliveries of the plane -- could cost Boeing about 5.1$ billion, or 5 percent of the company’s annual revenue, within two months," according to the Post.

The two deadly accidents raised questions and public alarm about the safety of the aircraft.

Aviation expert Andrew Charlton said to Majalla that the public should feel confident Chief Market Analyst at CMC Markets, Michael in the airline industry: “Recently, A380s were Hewson, wrote that although the damage thus grounded after a Qantas incident, B787s after a far has been fairly limited, the two crashes wiring issue. The industry does the right thing, “could well blow a large hole” in Boeing’s quickly.” forecasts. “With the sale of 737 MAX 8’s a key component in the company’s growth prospects “Consumers should be confident such steps are for 2019, and expected to contribute up to %30 taken. The impact on the industry is slight in the of the company’s profits, the ongoing lack of long run, if potentially bad in the very short run if confidence in the aircraft, as countries line up to your flight is rescheduled.” ground the aircraft, is likely to see that percentage Asked whether he would have any hesitations significantly reduced.” boarding a Boeing 737 Max 8, Charlton said: If the cause of the crashes and not resolved “Living in Europe, there are not many of the quickly and uncertainty turns into cancelled aircrafts around so I am not sure I would be orders, Boeing’s problems could well go from bad able to do so. Countries around Europe are now grounding them voluntarily so it will be quite hard to worse, Newson wrote. to fly in them. I have no doubt that the industry “As things stand Airbus shares have risen sharply will behave responsibly.”

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US Policy Towards Lebanon Analysis of US Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield’s trip to Lebanon began before his visit had ended.

Usually the Assistant Secretary of States visits are centred on issues related to Israel in the event of a security breach, for example, the issues surrounding the tunnels Hezbollah have been accused of digging, gas or the demarcation of the border, particularly in the gas fields that are shared between the two States which are the subject of a dispute.

In his recent visits, Satterfield decided to only meet the founders of the March 14 movement. Hence, there are many interpretations and analysis concerning his mission and what it means, with some wanting to make use of the visit for their domestic benefit by pointing to a change in US policy towards Lebanon, all the while knowing that it has remained largely consistent over the past years. The US still distinguishes between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state which is why the administration continues to provide support to official Lebanese institutions including the army, security forces and even local municipalities through the US Government Aid Program.

Even in the matter of Lebanese banks, the administration acts with great caution, as it did with the Lebanese Canadian Bank when did not impose sanctions on the Central Bank and hold it responsible for money-laundering schemes tied to Hezbollah. It turned a blind eye and allowed the sale of the bank’s assets, and agreed to a settlement of 150 million dollars which the bank forfeit to the US as a fine for bypassing US sanctions on Hezbollah.

President Trump's administration didn't object the appointment Hezbollah-aligned Lebanese minister even after the uproar it caused and only warned Hezbollah not to exploit its newly gained position in the Lebanese cabinet and channel funds from the state to fund the militant group. It is therefore clear that US policy toward Lebanon fluctuates between intensifying pressure on Hezbollah by draining its sources of funding abroad and limiting the pressure to avoid chaos in Lebanon. This makes for a very complex policy due to the overlap of the two sides.

But recent developments in Lebanon involving a Hezbollah opposition group which is subject to the will of the party have confused US policy toward Lebanon. From the election of Aoun as President to the approval of a strange electoral law and the formation of the government, Hezbollah was able to impose its agenda on the country and all major political parties were responsive on the pretext that they want to maintain stability and prefer political settlements to confrontations. Critical voices were raised home and abroad citing Iran’s hold over Lebanon through Hezbollah.

The first to object to the accusation that Lebanon is under Iranian control were the founders of the March 14 movement. Perhaps the clearest expression of this position came from the President who following the UK government’s decision to add the political wing of Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organizations said to the British Minister of State for the Middle East Alistair Burt: ”Hezbollah's expansion in the region does not mean that its influence on Lebanese politics goes beyond its capacity as part of the Lebanese people and its representation in the government and parliament.”

Satterfield's visit comes as preparations are underway for a possible visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the purpose of motivating opponents of Hezbollah to make this distinction more pronounced in political discourse, especially after recent political developments in which Hezbollah's control over decisions in Lebanon was revealed.

Sources which met with Satterfield told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that he informed leaders that the US does not want to involve Lebanon in the sanctions because the country should not pay the price for the lack of distinction between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state. It was reported that he said Lebanon cannot bear the responsibility of others’ actions but that the Lebanese government should not allow Hezbollah to benefit from public money through its role in the cabinet to circumvent the sanctions.

The US and Europe have a unified view in their approach of the Lebanese file, as Europe fears that any tension in Lebanon will result in a flow of Syrian refugees.

US policy in the region in general and Lebanon, in particular, did not prevent Hezbollah from growing its influence, especially at home, and even weakened its opponents. American policy in Iraq and Syria in Obama's era and even under Trump relied somewhat on the help of Iran and its militias in the ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This gave Tehran influence in both capitals and led Tehran MP Ali Reza Zakani, who is close to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to announce the cities are under the control of his country. And so on the one hand, the US-Iranian partnership is in a fierce fight against ISIS both Iraq and Syria, while on the other hand there are harsh US sanctions - a contradiction that is not conducive to results the US wants, which is to reduce the influence of Iran and its militias.

Will the United States change its strategy in the region?

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by Elie Fawaz

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conomy

What’s Causing China’s Economic Slowdown And How Beijing Will Respond

by Christopher Balding Last year, China experienced its slowest economic growth in nearly three decades. The trouble seemed to start in the fall. Wage growth has cooled. Surveys show that companies in the manufacturing sector have begun shedding jobs. And imports are down, hurting other major exporting economies.

There’s more than one reason for the slowdown.

A rapidly aging population, a falling birth rate, a tightening Federal Reserve, and a slowing global economy have combined to put the brakes on China’s economy. Yet Beijing cannot risk a recession. The Chinese government will not allow growth to slow significantly, even if that means storing up problems for the future.

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The Chinese government will not allow growth to slow significantly, even if that means storing up problems for the future. which was enacted in 1979. The decline in growth rates owes in part to this demographic winnowing.

Rising wages pose another problem. Chinese wages now match or exceed those of most other emerging market economies, making China a less attractive destination for foreign companies. On top of that, high living costs and administrative burdens have reduced the flood of rural peasants into cities to a trickle. The average disposable rural income in 2018 was 14,617 Yuan a year, low enough to make moving to the city prohibitive when the average price of an apartment in urban areas is now 14,678 Yuan per square meter.

Forces that drove Chinese growth in recent years are withering. China once relied on a trade surplus to boost growth, but today the country’s account is effectively balanced. Investment in fixed assets, such as factories, machinery, offices, and apartment buildings, was traditionally a major source of growth. But such investment fell as a share of GDP from 82 percent in 2016 to 71 percent in 2018, and a further drop is expected in the years ahead, as one in four apartments in China now sit empty and auto manufacturers are operating at just over 50 percent capacity.

Chinese police officers watch a cargo ship at a port in Qingdao in China›s eastern Shandong province on March 2018 ,8. (Getty)

PERFECT STORM

Some of China’s problems come from abroad. For years, the U.S. and Chinese economies have followed similar paths. Now, however, rising U.S. interest rates combined with slowing Chinese growth threaten to decouple the two economies. Interest rates on one-year Treasury bonds are now slightly higher than those on Chinese government debt, meaning that Beijing can no longer count on capital inflows from investors looking to get returns outside the low interest rate environment of the United States.

China’s problems stem primarily from decisions made years—in some cases, decades—ago. In the past, China benefitted from a growing workforce, which boosted GDP both by adding workers and because younger workers tend to be more productive than older ones.

But around 2012, the working-age population began to shrink, the inevitable result of the one child policy,

Since 2008, China has fueled its growth with debt. Now its manner of doing so has hit some stark limits. The country’s household and national debt have reached levels similar to those in most developed countries and debt is growing faster than nominal GDP. Those high debt levels make China an extreme outlier, as the most indebted large emerging-market economy. Most of the

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debt is held not by the government but by households and corporations, which pay higher interest rates. So the cost of servicing the debt now comes to more than 20 percent of GDP. In comparison, other countries with high debt levels, such as Japan and the United States, have debt servicing costs in the in the low-tomid single digits as a percentage of GDP. When Xi Jinping was reelected as Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017, China was approaching the end of a nearly twoyear debt fueled expansion. Throughout 2016 and 2017, Beijing inflated industrial prices, boosting a struggling corporate sector that had taken on too much debt. Xi began his second term with what is known as new total social financing, the broadest measure of financing growth in China, growing at an annual rate of 32 percent. But Xi seems to have recognized the dangers of continued rapid credit growth and taken steps to rein it in. At the end of last year, new total social financing was shrinking at a rate of 15 percent. But although Chinese banking regulators may be right to want to restrain credit growth, doing so has added to China’s economic woes.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT China’s economy depends on the policies set by the central government to an extent that few other economies do. The government’s formal and informal signals give firms and people their cues on everything, from which businesses to start to where to invest. If Beijing were to continue restraining credit growth,

The Chinese government’s legitimacy rests on its ability to deliver economically, so Beijing will continue to enact policies that enable growth, even if that growth is not healthy or sustainable.

true economic pain could set in.

Yet it appears Beijing has buckled. The credit taps are flowing once again. In January, total social financing hit an all time high of 4.6 trillion Yuan, a 52 percent jump from January 2018, previously the second highest month on record. January’s financing is equal to 24 percent of all financing in 2018 and 5 percent of Chinese GDP. Even if Beijing restrains credit growth for the rest of the year, the sheer size of January’s splurge is likely to keep overall credit growth higher than in 2018. Although credit growth was more restrained in February, new total social financing for the first two months of 2019 is still 25 percent higher than the same period in 2018.

China’s decision to boost lending is hardly surprising.

In recent years, the Chinese government has always stepped in to stimulate the economy during hard times, using the “Plunge Protection Team” to keep stocks buoyant, various bond swap programs to keep banks

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A worker cutting steel at a factory in Huaibei in China›s eastern Anhui province on May ,3 2018. (Getty)

lending, and stimulus packages to keep firms building.

A government that relies on its economic competence as its primary claim to legitimacy cannot allow a major downturn. As long as Beijing keeps lending growing faster than nominal GDP, the economy will likely continue to expand. Beijing seems willing to trade greater debt for higher growth.

long as credit growth remains robust, there is little risk of a significant downturn. As the economist Michael Pettis has argued, Chinese GDP has become an output rather than a measure—meaning that the government will do what is necessary to maintain the growth rate, and so the headline figure reveals little about the true state of the Chinese economy. Chinese growth may not be healthy or sustainable, but there is little risk that it will stop.

Yet Beijing’s efforts to stimulate consumption are hitting their limits. Chinese households now owe more money relative to their income than those in many developed countries, including the United States. That depresses consumption. Some research suggests that Chinese car purchases, for example, may not return to their previous levels until early in the next decade. Even basic purchases, such as phones and consumer durables, are stagnating as income growth lags.

When a recession strikes a democratic country, voters can kick out the governing party. In Chinavoters have no such option, which means that a recession could topple the entire regime.

Because the stakes for the Communist Party are so high, and because the party has the mandate and the resources to keep going, expect China to keep muddling through.

Chinese economic activity may not be strong, but as

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

2

Issue 1739 - March - 15/03/2019

It’s That Time of Year Again

Your Guide to Ramadan 2019 TV Series www.majalla.com

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THE CLAIMS IF EAST ISLANDERS THE PARTHENON MARBLES CARAVAGGIO’S SUPPER AT EMMAUS Bryn Haworth Museums are not the unassailably venerable institutions they used to be. Nowadays, they are coming under increasing pressure to give back many of their treasures on the grounds that these were taken away, possibly stolen or bought for a heap of beads, and that they belong to the nations from which they were carried off. From the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin to the Rosetta stone in London, the Egyptian authorities have laid claim to artefacts associated with their ancient forbears. A summit was held in 2017 to discuss returning the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.

Recently, a visiting delegation from Easter Island has called for the repatriation of one of its stone heads. Aboriginal groups demand that the body parts of their ancestors be sent home and, ever since they were shipped to England, there have been calls for the so-called ‘Elgin marbles’ to be returned to the Parthenon from which Lord Elgin ripped them. There has probably never been a more controversial time for the great museums of the old European capitals.

In a recent article in the Guardian, dated 20th February 2019 – as we shall see, this newspaper has been very thorough in its

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coverage of the issue – Alice Procter complained bitterly that museums were receptacles of ‘colonialist, imperialist fantasy’.

When not being an art historian at University College, Procter is an unofficial guide whose Uncomfortable Art Tours aim to acquaint people with the actual origins of the artefacts they see around them. Unsurprisingly, she is not very popular with the museum authorities. This, she claims, is because they are ‘anxious institutions, paranoid to the point of hostility’. All she asks is for the keepers of these antiquities to be honest about where they got their stuff, and how: ‘Let people respond, and actually hear the hurt and harm that your collections perpetuate.’

In a time of renewed debate about empire and the presumptions of cultural superiority in the West, it is easy to see why the museums feel embattled.

An ancestor figure 'moai' known as Hoa Hakananai'a stands at the entrance to the Wellcome gallery in the British Museum in London on November 2018 ,20. (Getty)

So where does art belong? In some cases, the problem arises from the relative ease of transporting the art. A canvas, for instance. When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, the culprit turned out to be an Italian who had spirited it away to Florence because, by his own account, the French had stolen it from there. In fact, if anyone had ‘stolen’ the Mona Lisa, it was the artist himself, who took it with him to France in 1516, after which he sold it to Francis, his royal patron. It would be enough to make any Italian patriot sick to learn that Leonardo was his own art thief. Then, to compound the error, the treacherous Leonardo proceeded to expire in the wrong place, thus posing the delicate question of who should commemorate his death five hundred years later. It is not enough to ask where paintings belong; the same question must also be asked of artists. On the 2nd February 2019, the Guardian reported: Negotiations have been stepped up this month to calm the row created when Lucia Borgonzoni, a League MP and undersecretary at the ministry of culture, suggested that her government would cancel the loan of some key paintings and drawings agreed two years ago with Italian museums, accusing France of trying to take centre stage in Leonardo commemorations and “putting Italy on the margins of a major cultural event”. To make her point, she added: “Leonardo is Italian; he only died in France.”

Surely it is but a matter of time before there are renewed calls for Mona Lisa to return to her native Italian climes, regardless of the fact she shows no obvious sign of pining for them.

The tone of this, the sour note of affronted nationalism, derives from a very different ideology to the slightly shrill tone of Alice Procter. These voices are actually from opposite ends of the argument, from the jingoistic on the one hand and the anti-imperial on the other. The museums are being attacked from left and right, with both ideologies threatening the museums’ claims to what Procter calls ‘a tidy, completist dream’. Curators must feel like they are walking along the sea’s edge – as the tide of history continues to ebb, so more sand gives way beneath their feet.

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When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, the culprit turned out to be an Italian who had spirited it away to Florence because, by his own account, the French had stolen it from there.

But what do they really have to fear? I shall look at three different examples of artefacts that are not (as so few are) where they began in life. Firstly, I shall consider a monumental stone figure that actually looks homesick for Easter Island. Then I shall return to the oldest controversy of them all, one that dates back to the moment the sculptures of the Parthenon were removed from Athens. In the second canto of ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, published between 1812 and 1818, Byron addresses Greece: Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed

By British hands…

These gorgeous, though definitely mouldering, stones have resided for two hundred years in Room 18 of the British Museum and are surely the most famous examples of homesick art in the world.

Finally, I shall consider an image by Caravaggio for which I have a particular soft spot. As a canvas it might as well be anywhere; I just hope, for purely selfish reasons, it stays put.

The Claims of the Easter Islanders One place that is definitely inaccessible to most people is Easter Island. Known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui, the island belongs to Chile, but is located thousands of miles from its coast in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, a weird landscape was first glimpsed by Europeans. It was populated by the most far-flung of Polynesian islanders. Almost treeless, the landscape was dotted with the giant heads of men carved from the local volcanic rock and transported (some say they walked) to their present positions, sometimes in a row, some with their eyes averted from the sea, some with no eyes at all.

These heads are disquieting. They have a haunting quality that makes them, once seen, hard to forget. Their faces are long and the brows are heavy. The lips of their mouths are pursed as though with grim determination. The expression is invariably

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sombre. It is as if they have long ago abandoned the full range of normal human emotions. They seem disenchanted by the world, their minds on higher things.

It is hard to believe that Salvador Dali had not seen one of these heads. Maybe he remembered it, without knowing where he had seen it, while he was painting Sleep. The head in this picture has the same look of profound severity. It is held suspended by a series of thin props that seem ready to snap under its weight at any moment. The face is abstracted, the eyes sunken in a pool of shadow and, most peculiar of all, it wears a kind of veil where its ear might be, a tiny curtain with vertical folds.

If you look closely at the Easter Island heads, they also have no ears, but some of them have a long flap where the ears should be. These flaps, longer than Dali’s little curtain, are equally mysterious. Like Dali’s head, and despite the fact they are carved from rock, there is a sense of suspension about these statues. In fact, a legend on the island maintains that they were transported across the terrain, not by vehicles of any kind, since there were none, but by an old woman’s sorcery. Nowadays there are theories, hardly more unlikely at first sight, that the statues were indeed ‘walked’ across the ground, by means of ropes, from the quarry to the long platforms on which they stand in rows. Some of them bear odd stones of a different colour on their heads.

Others have eyes, as if the feeble props of sleep have snapped and, rudely awoken, they survey the denuded landscape of their island. There is a theory that timber was used in transporting them and hence the deforestation of the place. But with Easter Island, as with its inscrutable heads, everything, including the history of its indigenous people, is as mysterious as a half-forgotten dream.

Ever since I discovered one of these heads – known as a Moai – near the back of the British Museum, I have loyally returned to it. Called Hoa Hakananai’a, it is uncertain what this means.

Some have translated it as ‘surfer’, ‘surf-rider’ or ‘master wavebreaker’. It has also, with a hint of retrospection, been called

It is maintained that the crew of the frigate HMS Topaze who were responsible for bringing all four tonnes of it (Moai statue) back to British shores, didn’t even think to ask permission.

‘lost-or-stolen friend’ and even ‘hidden friend’.

It is hard to imagine how one would go about hiding a sevenfoot basalt statue. Nonetheless, this colossus manages to remain inconspicuous in a museum filled with colossi. Once found, however, it is not easily forgotten. It has the same stern expression as its brothers back in the empty expanse of the Pacific. It also has strange nipples that few of the other statues share, perhaps because they lack a torso, and on its back are petroglyphs associated with the birdman cult on Rapa Nui. It has the same odd flaps where the ears should be and, lacking eyes, its empty sockets glare from under the heavy brows in eternal resentment at its surroundings. Homesickness: it’s an epidemic in today’s great museums.

So how did this statue come to be so far from home? How is it possible that some hundred and fifty years ago it was presented to Victoria who, in turn, gifted it to the British Museum? It is maintained that the crew of the frigate HMS Topaze who were responsible for bringing all four tonnes of it back to British shores, didn’t even think to ask permission. They simply picked it out as one of the best examples of the genre and nicked off with it. Those were the glory days of empire. At the time it must have seemed like a bit of a jape, the kind of story you could dine out on for years in the men only clubs of the metropolis.

In November of last year, a delegation from the island showed up

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The Rosetta Stone is displayed at The British Museum on November 2018 ,22 in London, England.

(Getty)

conditions,” a spokeswoman said. Sadly, a loan was not what the delegation had in mind.

Since then, the Guardian has reported further developments.

There are now fears that many of the statues on Rapa Nui are in danger of crumbling away under what has been called a ‘leprosy’ of lichen that affects the surfaces with white spots and turns them to mush. ‘The statues must also contend with coastal erosion, rising sea levels that will worsen with climate change, high winds and damage from freely roaming livestock, having withstood the elements for more than half a millennium’ (Guardian, 1st March 2019).

More to the point, the mayor of Easter Island Commune, Pedro Edmunds Paoa, has stopped asking for the statue to be returned. Instead, he has suggested Hoa Hakananai’a could act as an ‘ambassador’ and Britain could keep it in return for regular payments to ensure the upkeep of its faraway lookalikes. “We would win much more,” the mayor said.

Who knows, the museum may yet be able to resort to the classic Lord Elgin defence and claim they are preserving the piece for the world, just by keeping it tucked up in Bloomsbury. The best cure for homesickness is the knowledge that your ‘home’ has lately become a hostile environment. in that same metropolis and headed straight for the statue. Among them was the island’s governor, Tarita Alarcón Rapu, who made an emotional plea for the statue to be returned. “My grandma, who passed away at almost 90 years, she never got the chance to see her ancestor,” she said. Close to tears, she added “I am almost half a century alive and this is my first time.”

It might be asked why this particular statue is so sorely missed.

After all, there are almost nine hundred, some estimate over a thousand, such statues distributed across the island.

The first thing one learns with such cases is the need for basic human empathy. Without it, one wonders how we could ever attach value to art at all, unless we were bankers looking to invest vast reserves of cash in financially appreciating objects.

It is refreshing, given the venal state of the world’s art markets, to hear the way the governor talked about the Moai. “I believe that my children and their children also deserve the opportunity to touch, see and learn from him,” she told the Guardian (20th November 2018). “We are just a body. You, the British people, have our soul.”

For museum curators, it’s a pretty bad day at the office when someone comes asking for their soul back. However, the initial signs are that the distraught governor will be disappointed. The most the museum has been prepared to offer is a loan of the statue: “The museum is one of the world’s leading lenders and the trustees will always consider loan requests subject to usual

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The Parthenon Marbles On the 12th of July 2015, the Greeks were really up against it with the European Union. The country had voted against the terms of a further bailout in a referendum called by the new populist government and now there was open talk of a kind of fire sale of Greek assets to save the country from bankruptcy.

As the BBC’s ‘Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil’ reported, things had become so dire that ‘it had even been suggested they sell the Parthenon.’

It is worth noticing that ‘even’. It is as if the very idea was so shocking that no one dared voice it. Only a financier could be so brutish. The Parthenon. Almost instinctively, the idea of desecrating such a monument to the Athens of Pericles, to the first democracy in European history and to the art of Phidias, was enough to give any European the collywobbles. How could such a thing happen? And yet it is doubtful that, even at this moment of thinking the unthinkable, anyone seriously contemplated that the entire temple would be removed from the Acropolis and sent, like the old London Bridge, to some remote place never to be seen by impoverished Athenians again. No, the likely fate of this and various uninhabited islands was to be bought by a billionaire and turned to profit, rather like all the other state assets have been treated, ever since the rosy-fingered dawn of neoliberalism.

It never happened. The Greeks abandoned the struggle, accepted an even more punishing austerity package than the one they had

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rejected in their referendum, and the temple remained theirs, a ruin scarcely more tangible than the financial ruin they were left with.

Back before the Greeks had managed to cast off the shackles of the Ottoman Empire, however, they had not been so lucky.

Notoriously, before anyone had heard of bailouts and austerity packages, a Scot by the name of Lord Elgin, ambassador to Constantinople, really had carried large parts of the Parthenon away. That time round, the Greeks didn’t even see the proceeds from the sale as that, mostly in the form of bribes, ended up in Turkish pockets. To a certain outsider’s perception, it might look like the boldest, most audacious art theft of all time, but that would be to pre-judge the whole affair and, just possibly, make Elgin look more remarkable than he really was.

In his book ‘The Parthenon Marbles’, the late Christopher Hitchens, contrarian par excellence, denounces Elgin all over again, but there is surprisingly little of the spiky contrarian in Hitchens’ tone. Instead, he patiently unfolds the sorry tale of an ambassador to Constantinople who exceeded his brief and, with the aid of a so-called ‘firman’ from the Ottoman authorities and some dodgy accomplices, ravaged the Acropolis of its finest jewels.

The story has more than its fair share of ‘what ifs’. For instance, what if Elgin had left the marbles in place? Would they have survived? What if he had taken to Athens, as was briefly mooted, the painter Turner to record the ruins, instead of an ‘illustrator down on his luck’ by the name of Giovanni Lusieri?

This same Lusieri confessed in a letter to Elgin that, though he had managed to remove the eighth metope (a panel depicting a centaur carrying off a woman), he had ‘been obliged to be a little barbarous’. What if the other collaborators in the heist, a trustee of the British Museum by the name of William Hamilton

This, however, is an urgent issue for the museums. Boring as it may sound, and far from the airy-fairy meditations, their present trials may be summed up in one word: accessibility.

and a man of the cloth, the Reverend Philip Hunt, had been less compliant? Hunt at least seems to have been rather overkeen to please and proposed at one point to remove the entire caryatid porch of the Erechtheion. In the end, they made do with one caryatid. What if Elgin and his merry gang had never got their hands on the ambiguous permit (the firman) from Constantinople? What if the Turks had not been grateful to the British for Nelson’s victory at the battle of the Nile? And so the ‘what ifs’ proliferate.

Beyond all this, however, we have the simple fact that the heist worked and to this day, owing to an act of parliament from the time, the British Museum is obliged to refer to the marbles as Elgin’s. Controversy has attended the pieces from the very day they arrived here. Indeed, it’s such a long-standing issue, I only have time to pick out some of the choicest highlights.

One of the fiercest critics was around at the time of their removal.

Lord Byron, possibly history’s most illustrious philhellene – to this day, Greek sons are named after him – gave no quarter to his fellow noble lord, Elgin, who happened to be a Scot and therefore came from: A land of meanness, sophistry and mist, Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain’ (‘Curse of Minerva’)

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Employees arrange the painting ‹Supper at Emmaus› (-1600 1601) by Italian painter Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) at the Kunst Palast museum in Duesseldorf, 07 September 2006.

(Getty)

Keats’ phrase ‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness’ without thinking of the sound of the saw. Keats might well have seen, in the denuded building on the Acropolis, a bride that had been ravished.

Nonetheless, it is the Greeks themselves who have felt that wrong most keenly. A famous example was the redoubtable Melina Mercouri, Greek actress turned Minister for Culture, who spoke passionately at the Oxford Union in favour of returning the marbles. There is wonderful footage of her brief encounter with the Keeper of the British Museum at that time, Sir David Wilson, arguing with him on the museum steps. “You want to ruin the British Museum!” he cries. Later, he tore into the people who wanted to return the marbles, calling them ‘cultural fascists.’

Mercouri remained undaunted.

These few words from the Greek novelist, Nikos Kazantzakis, in his book ‘England’ (1939), have the authentic flavour of Greek disappointment. Kazantzakis was, after all, a great fan of English culture: ‘In her sooty vitals, London stores these marble monuments of the gods, just as some unsmiling Puritan might store in the depths of his memory some past erotic moment of blissful and ecstatic sin.’

Ah, meanness, that old canard. The dim view taken here of the Scottish climate was in contrast, of course, to the brightness and sublimity associated with the ancient cradle of Western civilisation. Byron tells Athena ‘thy plunderer was a Scot’ and even calls Elgin ‘a Pict’. He saw the damage to the Parthenon as being greater than that inflicted by previous barbarians, such as the Goths. It was almost certainly a reader of Byron, therefore, who scrawled these words on the wall of the Erechtheion: Quod non fecerunt Goti, hoc fecerunt Scoti. What the Goths had failed to do, the Scots had done. It was a Scot who had come, in this late chapter of the temple’s history, to tear chunks out of it and ship them away to dismal shores. Maybe Elgin thought he could make amends by building a Parthenon in Edinburgh, but the money ran out and it never got further than the few columns that can be seen today.

The story is not all terrible. Speaking of the way the marbles are now divided between England and Greece, Hitchens says ‘Let no one say that there have not been some excellent consequences of their separation’. Keats saw his heifer ‘lowing at the skies’ not on a Greek urn, but in the frieze from the Parthenon. Hazlitt hoped (in The Examiner, June 1816) that the marbles’ arrival in London might ‘lift the fine arts out of the limbo of vanity and affectation’.

Anyone who has the chance to linger with these objects can feel that sensation. Even in their ruined state, the works have a vitality that belies their antiquity. Nonetheless, it is hard to read

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Maybe this is based on crude national self-esteem on the novelist’s part. Essentially, it is ‘No sex please, we’re British’ versus the pure nakedness of Hellenic beauty. Thus, it is one unproven and unverifiable cliché meeting another. Yet the image lingers like a bad conscience.

For years it was insinuated that Greek people had no real claim to the marbles, that they were not the true inheritors of their own ancient civilisation, they were not even truly ‘Greek’ anymore and that, besides, they didn’t care. The single story that most aptly refutes these assertions dates back to 1821 and the Greek War of Independence. The Greeks had managed to besiege the Turks in the Acropolis, but were told that the garrison were melting the lead clamps of the buildings to make improvised bullets, whereupon a prominent member of the Greek army, Kiriakos Pittakis, had a quantity of lead bullets sent to the enemy ‘so that they might desist from their acts of destruction’. This must be a unique instance in the annals of military history of a besieging army supplying the other side with ammunition. Pittakis went on to become the first General Keeper of Antiquities of Greece.

The building of New Acropolis Museum has transformed this civilised, but no less bitter, dispute forever. Now that there exists a perfect modern home for the marbles, the British Museum has to abandon its claim to be protecting the stones. I won’t dwell on the little matter of the copper wire brushes once used (in the Thirties) to ‘clean’ them. That decision aroused the wrath of Jacob Epstein at the time. The essence of Hitchens’ argument has less to do with the ‘crime’ of holding onto,

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and maybe even abusing, the artefacts, and more to do with the opportunity to reunify them. This is necessary and right, because Athens retains half the sculptures and the Parthenon was intended as a unified work of art. It is this argument that applies uniquely to these works, long after the arguments about the ‘what ifs’ end in stalemate. It is ignorant to the point of imbecilic to speak, as one would-be peacemaker has recently spoken, of sharing the marbles between the two countries (see Florian Schmidt-Gabain, ‘My solution to the Parthenon marbles – let’s split them in half’, Guardian, 15th February 2019). The whole point is to display them in one geographic location, and for that the shadow of the Acropolis is the obvious candidate.

Thus, to the already existing categories of ‘restitution’, ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’, Hitchens added his own: reunification. As Nadine Gordimer underlined in her introduction, it is to restore a ‘narrative brutally interrupted’.

The new museum in Athens means that this is really no longer an argument for or against museums. It is an argument for one specific museum as opposed to another. I reckon, on balance, the Greeks have a better claim not only to the marbles, but to the arts of persuasion.

Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus Who would have the temerity to predict which way the art critic Jonathan Jones will side on issues of controversy? You can never be sure. I suspect this is because, like Boris Johnson, he writes a defence and a denunciation of the same thing. It’s what one was taught at school, you know; it’s the basis of the adversarial model for law; it’s called framing an argument. So, Jones writes the for and the against, then he throws them both (or so I suspect) up in the air and goes with the one that lands face up. If they both happen to land that way, or neither do, he throws them up again.

It’s a laborious process, but it means he has twice as many pieces to contribute to the tome they publish at the end of his career. He was always even-handed his fans will say, while his critics will carp that he could never make up his mind.

When it came to the most long-standing of all controversies, therefore, Jones wrote the usual two articles, pro and con. On this occasion, however, the way the two alternative arguments fell was most unfortunate, owing to the idiocy of the one that landed face up. In this piece he attacked the very notion that ancient Greece, a civilisation that flourished 2,500 years ago, is somehow the cultural possession of modern Greece, that its achievements belong to Greece in some narrow national way. If that were true, no one outside Greece would study

mathematics, philosophy or history, see a play, or do a scientific experiment – for all these fundamental human pursuits were invented by the ancient Greeks.

This is not so much damning the Greeks with faint praise as damning them with glowing recommendations. What did the Greeks ever do for us? Well, there was the mathematics, and the philosophy or history, and the drama, and…

Still, I can hear Jones’s emollient tones now, gently reassuring: “It’s okay everyone, calm down, I know what I wrote was silly.

I will publish the sensible piece, I promise, when this is all over, after I retire.”

One suspects that the basis for this kind of contemptuous attitude (when entertained in all honesty) is what Hitchens calls the ‘saloon-bar, dog-in-the-manger argument of “where will it all end?”’ To their credit, Hichens says, most of the British public do not share this anxiety.

That doesn’t mean we can recruit Hitchens to the current trend of calling for restitution, return and repatriation on a grand scale, to atone for our imperial sins and to empty the pernicious museums of their ill-gotten booty. Hitchens had no such object in mind, not least because it would have diminished the credibility of his argument for the returning the marbles, which he based on their uniqueness.

It is perfectly possible to hold these two thoughts in one’s head at the same time, though at risk of emulating Jonathan Jones: certain artefacts really do have an air of homesickness about them and ought to be returned to their homeland, while the vast majority of artefacts have no such incongruity and might as well be here as there. So it is that one can be grateful for the existence of certain artefacts in the places that fate or taste or money has placed them.

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Easter Island, Rapa Nui: Moais, typical statues from Easter Island, monolithic human figures.

(Getty)

To feel a tremor of guilt in such cases would be masochistic. It is right and proper that most beautiful objects stay where they are.

Let me give you an example. Whenever I’m lucky enough to find myself in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, I always head for Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus. I never tire of the painting’s bravado, strange as that word might seem to describe a religious scene, and I navigate my way around the rest of the gallery from there. I would hate to turn up one day and find it had been repatriated. It’s a strange image. It even has something to tell us about the whole issue of accessibility. But first, let me describe what fascinates me about it.

Rather than the usual blond young man with a fair beard, a distinctly plump Jesus dominates the picture. He has a chubby face and wild, unkempt hair. It’s almost as if Caravaggio has tried to demonstrate how easily Jesus could go unrecognised. But it is the subtle gesture of blessing he offers when the food arrives that gives the game away. His disciples, who met him along the way but have so far remained oblivious to his identity, are covered in confusion the moment the gesture is made. The one on his left might even be able to see a hole left by a nail in the palm of the young man’s hand. He opens his arms wide in astonished recognition, unconsciously replicating the crucifixion, while the other juts his threadbare elbow in our direction and seems about to leap to his feet, possibly knocking his chair over in the process.

All the time the innkeeper looks on impassively, unaware that he is seeing a ghost.

Each time I visit this picture there is something different that catches my eye. Sometimes it’s the characters. Sometimes it’s the still life of the food that Jesus is blessing, which Caravaggio renders with a kind of photographic intensity. Like the fleeting gesture that astonishes the disciples, the precarious state of the fruit bowl, perched on the edge of the table, threatens to change in the next instant, while mortality (which has been thrown into question by the dumpy stranger) remains stubbornly present in the very scrawny roast chicken.

I don’t know why this painting is where it is. I have no idea of its ‘provenance’, as the curators and art historians like to say. I only know that I will always find it here, in this same spot on the earth’s surface, like a still point in the universe. If I go in the week, maybe early or late in the day, I can even have it all to myself for the cost of a train ticket into the capital. It’s a supreme piece of visual magic by a true master of the dark arts, depicting what a former Bishop of Durham once mischievously referred to as “a conjuring trick with bones”. Chicken bones, to be exact; a still life, where life as we know it is static and nature is dead. The spirit alone has life here.

According to Luke, the central figure is an ephemeral apparition. Jesus disappeared soon after blessing the meal. We are catching a glimpse of a man who promised to rise from the dead and here he is. But for those who commissioned the painting, the question of where ‘here’ might be was of little

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interest. In a dingy interior, definitely not the kind we might expect from a Dutch painter, the figures are well lit as if they had a spotlight trained upon them from the left of the picture, and Jesus (to emphasise, perhaps, his corporeal solidity) casts a large shadow. There are no haloes. There is nothing that tells us this is Emmaus, apart from the title. The scene might just as well be outside Rome as a few miles from Jerusalem. The mundane setting is part of the message, as the main figure of the picture has transcended time and space.

There is a book, written in the Thirties by Carlo Levi (who was exiled from Rome by Mussolini) called ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’: ‘The title of the book comes from an expression by the people of Gagliano who say of themselves, ‘Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli’ which means, in effect, that they feel they have been bypassed by Christianity, by morality, by history itself—that they have somehow been excluded from the full human experience.’

Nothing about Eboli is significant – it is no more than a dull little town in the sticks – except for this one rumour about the place, the idea that Christ has never reached it. Eboli has a forlorn pagan air. Flyblown, frowsy, full of superstitions, its inhabitants behave as if they have never received the good news from Emmaus.

In Caravaggio’s picture, Christ has arrived in a place resembling Eboli. In fact, at this moment in human history the whole world is one big Eboli. It is not important when and where exactly Eboli is, as Eboli is everywhere, a vast conurbation of monotonous life and death, devoid of meaning. Yet here, in this Eboli, the reign of earthly time has been suspended and place means nothing any more. Something about the world has changed. This strange Emmaus-Eboli has been redeemed.

One day the painting itself will not be here. I’m not saying this because Caravaggio’s paintings are frequently the targets of art thieves. It will not be here because the world will not be here, yet the painting tells us that doesn’t matter. The whole subject of the painting is eternity. The world has already passed away. I know I’m in danger of sounding a little bit airy-fairy here. Besides, I am only fixating on the message of one particular artefact.

How could one impose this airy-fairy interpretation on all works of art? The end of the world may not happen as soon as some iconoclasts would like to think, and for as long as I am on the planet there is a fair chance that Caravaggio’s painting will stay, reliably, in the same spot.

Whether it belongs here, on the other hand, has never been an issue for me, but then why would it be? I live a mere half hour’s train ride away from Emmaus. This, however, is an urgent issue for the museums. Boring as it may sound, and far from the airyfairy meditations, their present trials may be summed up in one word: accessibility. If the Caravaggio painting is telling me not to give a fig where it’s located, fine, so long as I have the privilege of being able to go back for the reminder.

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It’s That Time of Year Again Your Guide to Ramadan 2019 TV Series

By: Soha al-Sharqawish Cairo- At the start of 2019, many Egyptian TV stars started filming for their upcoming Ramadan shows. As the Holy Month is just around the corner, Al Majalla has compiled a rough guide to this year’s the most anticipated series.

Sadly, a lot of prominent stars, such as Yehia El-Fakharany, Yousra, Laili Elwi, Mohammad Ramadan and Ghada Abdelrazek, will not appear in a show for this upcoming holy season.

On the other hand, a number of other Egyptian actors will be appearing on the small screen. Among said actors are Ahmed El Sakka, Mostafa Shaaban, Amir Karara, Mai Ezzidine, Ghada

Adel, Dina El Sherbiny, Ali Rabie, Mohammed Adel Emam and others.

Some actors, such as Yasmine Sabri, Reham Haggag and Bayoumi Fouad, will be playing protagonists in their shows, a milestone in each of their respective careers. It should also be noted that most of this year’s series are comedies and have a focus on Upper Egyptian or “Sa’idi” themes.

Comedy isn’t the only thing we’ll be breaking our fasts to this year, as there will also be 35 drama shows on the menu. Some of said dramas have only just started filming, while others are ready for TV. First, I will talk about the delayed works, which include about five

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series. Among these series is the “Hot Line” (Khat Sakhen). This show was meant to be shown in Ramadan 2018 but was delayed as its creators failed to market it. One of the main characters in the series is played by Syrian actress Sulaf Fawakherji, who returned to the acting scene after an eight year of absence since her last show, “Cleopatra” in 2010. Hussien Fahmi, Nidal Shafei and Salah Abdullah will also play main characters in the show.

Behind the scenes, Fawziah Hussein wrote the show, while Husni Saleh served as its director. The series focuses on the character, Alia, who is a doctor dedicated to helping patients who have attempted suicide.

The second series that was supposed to air in 2018 but was postponed to 2019 is titled, “The Secret” (Al-Sir). The show stars

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Wafaa Amer, Hussein Fahmi, Reem al-Baroudi and Nidal Shafi'i.

The series is one of the longer ones as it constitutes 60 episodes; the show also contains some social commentary focusing on human relations among people in Egyptian society. The series is written by Hossam Mustafa and directed by Mohammed Hamdi.

The third postponed series is titled “Al-Daher,” which stars Mohammed Fouad, who makes his return to the drama scene after his brief absence. Its screening was postponed due to a series of problems and creative differences between its creators, especially from the author, Tamer Abdel Moneim. But Fouad has recently announced that these differences have been resolved, and that the show is expected to be screened this year. It focuses

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on an officer who lives in the Daher area and provides aid for all the people living there. The series is directed by Yasser Zayed.

Actress/singer, Rubi, finished filming “This Is What Happened” (Aho Da Elli Sar) last year. The show was expected to be broadcast in 2018, but was postponed without giving prior notice.

Its author is Abdulrahim Kama, while Hatem Ali was its director.

The show’s actors include Mohammed Farraj, Ahmed Daoud, Sawsan Badr and Arwa Jawde. Its events take place between 1918 and 2018 and talks about women’s suffering in general, with a particular focus on the Sa’idi (Upper Egyptian) women’s struggles. The show also features the different ideas, customs, traditions and other social issues that concern women.

As for the series, "Baraka," by Amr Saad, it stopped filming before the beginning of last Ramadan due to poor production conditions.

Nevertheless, it was recently reported that its filming is expected to be completed within the coming months in preparation for this Ramadan. It tells the story of Baraka, a man from Upper Egypt, al-Sa’id, who immigrates in Cairo with his mother and starts working and saving money. However, he soon falls into a number of dilemmas because of a number of people in power. It is directed by Mahmoud Karim and written by Mohammed alShawaf. Kamal Abu Raya and Hala Sedki also play starring roles.

Among the dramas that are currently being filmed for this year is “Valentino” which stars veteran actor Adel Emam who has been appearing in shows for the past 7 Ramadan seasons. The show is directed and produced by Ramy Emam and written by Ayman Bahgat Qamar. There will naturally be a lot of comedic situations in the show, as Adel Emam will be playing the main character, thus making it more of a dramedy than a pure drama.

Mervat Amin will also participate in this year’s Ramadan season as she is set to appear in “Qayed Aely” which is written by Mohammed Rajaa and Michel Nabil. The series is directed by Tamer Hamza and will include almost 25 stars, including Ezzat El Alaili, Salah Abdallah, Poussi, Mohamed Reyad, Simone as

After achieving success in 2018’s “Ayoub” series, Mustafa Shaaban will be sure to re-captivate his audience and fans as he will star in the series titled “Beit Radi.”

well as a large group of young artists. The show focuses on a prominent businesswoman, who faces many difficult situations and stress because of her family. Many of the show’s plotlines will focus on familial conflicts.

Many of this Ramadan’s shows center on “Sa’idi” themes. For instance, superstar Ahmed El Sakka will once again play a Sa’idi character in the series titled, “Wild al-Ghaba”, written by Ayman Salama. The work sheds light on one of the social issues within Upper Egyptian society. It is directed by Mohammad Sami, and also stars Safaa El Toukhy, Mai Omar and Kamal Abu Raya.

Maged El Masry will also appear in "Bahr", in which he will play the titular role of a Sa’idi man named Bahr. The -60episodes series is written by Ahmed Abalfattah and directed by Ahmed Saleh.

After a two year absence, Mohammed Adel Emam will appear in “Hogan”, a series written by Mohamed Salah el-Azab and directed by Sherine Adel. The story focuses on a young man obsessed with the famous wrestler, Hulk Hogan, and is thus nicknamed “Hogan” by his friends. Karim Mahmoud Abdel Aziz will also be playing a main character in the series.

Yasser Galal will play a protagonist for the third year in a row as he is set to appear in “Lams Aktaf”. The series is written by Hani Serhan and directed by Hussein al-Minawi and will include other star actors such as Karam Jaber and Amina Khalil.

After achieving success in 2018’s “Ayoub” series, Mustafa Shaaban will be sure to re-captivate his audience and fans as he will star in the series titled “Beit Radi.” In the show he will play the role of a business man working in the Egyptian market.

Mohammed Sayed Bashir is the writer of the series while Ahmed Saleh is its director. Shooting hasn’t been started yet as the rest of the staff has yet to be selected.

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Artist Hamada Hilal is also expected to return this year to the Egyptian drama scene and play a role in a series by Mahmoud Abu Zeid. The is the third time that Hilal and Abu Zeid will be working together, and Mohammed Bakir will be the show’s director. The show’s title has not been chosen yet.

The young Syrian actor Bassil Khayyat is set to appear in another Egyptian show this Ramadan as he did the previous year. He recently signed on to a series which he has not given any details about. The actor was highly praised last year for his performance in "Journey" (Al-Rihla).

Nelly Karim will also play a role in an untitled series written by Amr El Daly and Ahmed Wael and directed by Ahmed Medh.

The rest of the staff is currently being selected, and Karim stressed that the show will be teeming with funny scenes and exciting plotlines.

Ghada Adel also returns this year to play a role in an untitled Egyptian drama after being absent for a while. Her last role was in the “Devil’s Angels” (Malaekat Iblis), which was written by Amin Radi and directed by Ahmed Khaled Moussa. Other actors set to appear in the show include Eman El-Asy and Salwa Khattab.

The series is set in populated working class neighborhood.

Mai Ezzidine, another actress who has been absent recently, will also appear in a Ramadan drama as she is preparing for a series titled “Princess Bisa” (El Princisa Bisa). It is written by Mostafa Amr and Farouq Hahem and directed by Akram Farid, and the rest of the staff is currently being selected.

Despite last Ramadan’s absence, actress Dina Samir Ghanem will be starring in a musical-comedy series written by Ayman Wattar and directed by Khaled El-Halfawy. The work is based on three stories under one title, which hasn’t been finalized yet by its makers. Mohammed Salaam, Mohammad Tharwat, Shaima Saif

Comedy isn’t the only thing we’ll be breaking our fasts to this year, as their will also be 35 drama shows on the menu. Some of said dramas have only just started filming, while others are ready for TV. will serve as Ghanem’s co-stars.

Donia’s sister, Amy, will be playing a leading role in another series. The details of the work are currently being finalized.

For the second year in a row, actress Dina El Sherbiny will be playing a leading role in a drama as she exclusively signed with the MBC Network this year. The currently untitled series is being directed by Kamla Abu Zekri and written by Mariam Naoum.

Many actors and actresses will have the chance to prove their full potential this year as they will be playing protagonists for the first time in their “Ramadan careers”.

Yasmine Sabri, for example, signed a contract to play the starring role in the drama series “My Story” (Hikayati). Production is set to go underway as she recently met with author Mohammed Abdel Moati and director Ahmed Samir Farag.

If drama doesn’t quite get your taste buds excited, then have no fear as there is no shortage of comedies this year. For the third year in a row, Akram Hosni will be playing a role in a Ramadan series, as he will appear in “What’s His Name” (Ismu Eh) which is written by Ayman Wattar and directed by Khaled El-Halfawy.

Comedian Ali Rabie has decided to star in a series entitled “Idea worth a Million Pounds,” (Fikra B Million Genaih) as he will be joined by Sahar El Sayegh and Karim Afifi. It is written by Ibrahim Mohsen and directed by Wael Ihsan.

Hesham Maged and Chico will star in a comedy series titled “The Game” (El Loaba) which is written by Mohammed Salah Khattab and Ahmed Saad.

Comedian Bayoumi Fouad will continue his work in comedy as he will appear in a show titled “Precious Step” (Khotwa Aziza).

The series is directed by Adel Adib and written by Shadi Abu Shadi.

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Can You Really Have a Work-life Balance?

De-busting the Myths of Popular Lifestyle Advice 54

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Life is chaotic but if you can find out what is or isn’t working right now, perhaps it’s only this particular point that you need to focus on? and what is the impact of this advice? Often I encounter people, clients (or at times even myself) trying too hard to compartmentalise their lives into career, leisure, down-time , relationships, family and so on.. They then continue to focus on one aspect of their life rather than the other which in turn is unrealistic and unsustainable as everything which happens in our lives and career etc is intertwined and impacted by the other. By trying to follow fixed rules, and sometimes unrealistic expectations, many people not only encounter stress but also set themselves up for failure as they try to live up to what’s considered the ‘right way to live’.

However, in today’s busy (if not chaotic) world how feasible is it to really split your life up? Is it feasible? Or is it even necessary? And if it is, how can you start to really create a sustainable holistic work life dynamic which really works for you?

Myth 1: Your life is needs to be equally balanced Every part of your life is undeniably intertwined and will both influence and impact.

For some people, splitting up the different areas of their lives helps them to efficiently focus and to stay on track. Whilst for others, this can cause even more anxiety as the thought of adding one more lifestyle task to the ‘to do list’ triggers alarm bells and unrealistic expectations.

Smiling businesswoman in meeting. (Getty)

By Samantha Morris More often than not, self help books, lifestyle advice and guru tips often point towards the importance, if not necessity, of informing us exactly what we need to do in order to live a successful confident, happy and balanced life . Yet whilst I highly respect self help books and advice, the question has to be asked; is it possible that you could end up drowning in a sea of counterproductive and unrealistic lifestyle expectations.

One popular example of lifestyle advice is that we should aim to have an equal work life balance. So what does this mean

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It’s important to assess or reassess, to understand and to acknowledge what your priorities are in the day and to then work with and around these priorities.

Myth 2: Work Hard Play Hard Have you ever heard the saying ‘Work hard play hard?’ If so, then it’s time to ask does this work for you? Does your work really dictate how much personal time you afford yourself? Do you treat yourself only when you’ve put in a good day’s work or accomplished something? If so, consider how productive this is for you? Does work dictate your sense of value? and is this

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effective for you?

However, If you find yourself trying to grip every spare moment and you find your life is unbalanced no matter how hard you try, then consider how you can incorporate a little bit of pleasure whilst you’re working and vice versa. First of all, why not start to reframe the phrase ‘Work hard play hard’ to ‘Work when you play, and play when you work’?

Yes I know a lot of people might be screaming at me now in disbelief, but hear me out. Not everyone’s needs are the same.

For example, if you can’t get away from work to experience some down-time, or you can’t leave your family to go to work, why not try stretching or meditating where you are for 10-5 minutes? If you are working, why not have a nourishing drink and play some calming music in the background. Or if you’re at home perhaps wrap up warm, light a candle and play a nondistracting but calm film in the background? The same can be done if you have children. Why not set up their own work/ desk play area near to you with their own activities so that you’re both experiencing quality time together, whilst you can (hopefully) work. Or if you’re with your partner why not try working together?

Myth 3: Rebalancing your life takes time, effort and money Rebalancing your life does not need to take huge amounts of time, effort or money. Why not start making smaller changes which compliment your current routine? For example ask yourself: What one thing a day can you do to help you to feel a little bit more balanced? Are there any free activities or quality ways to unwind which do not cost anything? Also remember, if rebalancing takes huge amounts of time and effort to get used to then perhaps it is not realistic and sustainable? Consider ways in which you can start to work and enjoy down time in simple, accessible, realistic and creative ways which will compliment your current schedule.

Myth 4: You need the perfect lifestyle in order to be happy

It’s important to assess or reassess, to understand and to acknowledge what your priorities are in the day and to then work with and around these priorities.

Myth 5: There is only one way to balance your life

Remember that no one has a perfect balanced lifestyle. If you strive for perfection then you’ll find you’ve been taken hostage and you’ll never be happy. Simply ask yourself what needs to change in order to feel that you are accomplishing ‘good enough!’ and in return how will this help you to feel happier, more content and productive? If ‘good enough’ doesn’t make you happy then ask yourself what you are striving for? Is it realistic and attainable and will it realistically make you happy?

There are multiple ways to balance your life and priorities.

Therefore, it’s really important to create the choices which are right for you. Lifestyle advice speaks to many people and so the

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Smiling young woman with headphones drinking coffee and using digital tablet on bed. (Getty)

your energy levels, your mood, efficiency, performance etc. However, your sleep patterns or quality of sleep may be impacted and determined by many personal situations- work or family stress, mental health, your nutrition, anxiety/ stress, diary management etc. It may be a mix of these things or perhaps one particular reason.

Remember, by focusing on one or two important aspects of your day, you split larger goals up into smaller steps, which in turn can lead to more effective sustainable results.

If the root cause is deeper such as anxiety or stress, then it’s time to really value yourself enough to explore with a friend, therapist or coach, what triggers this, why it’s happening and how you can effectively heal or manage it in the short and long term so that it doesn’t impact your work and life.

Also remember to be creative and to have fun! You’re creating a consistent effective and sustainable lifestyle which is tailored to your needs.

advice given may or may not work for everyone.

Therefore, it’s important to be creative and to take the advice, which might be right for you, and to leave the rest behind.

Myth 6: Everything in your life needs to be reorganized Not every part of your life needs to be so neatly split and balanced. Ask yourself what in particular is or is not working at the moment? Life is chaotic but if you can find out what is or isn’t working right now, perhaps it’s only this particular point that you need to focus on?

For instance, your sleep patterns determine

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