Melancholia ad Aegyptum
A Weekly Political News Magazine
If Trump Wants to Get Out of Syria, He Should Do a Deal With Russia
Turkey’s Bid for Religious Leadership
Issue 1731 - January 18/01/2019
What Comes Next in Syria
Void Left by US Will Attract Forces of Instability and Lead to More Conflict www.majalla.com
Editorial Nostalgia is a powerful feeling that everyone goes through most of their lives. One can have nostalgia for a number of things, a childhood in which everything seemed to be easier and you did not have any of the daunting responsibilities of adulthood, a time period in which everyone seemed to be happier, warmer and more polite or a media era that you perceive as a gold standard for all music films or TV shows. This issue of Majalla explores how people and society can perceive and view episodes of the past, and how this perception can makes them shape their futures. Hanin Ghaddar warns us about a full withdrawal of US troops in Syria and reminds us of the past example of when Obama pulled troops out of Iraq too soon and that left a void that was filled with ISIS. A similar episode might happen in Syria if the US decides to quickly withdraw; moreover Iran and Russia might find themselves with a golden opportunity to get involved in Syria. Russia has always had an old ambition of tipping the balance of power in the Middle East to its favor and can accomplish just that with no Americans around. Iran can reinforce its proxies in Syria and the wider region, much to the dismay of US allies such as Israel who feels that its old alliance with the Americans is getting weaker. Israel has started striking Iranian bases in Syria, fearing a future attack from the Islamic Republic. While Pompeo argues that the US will use diplomacy to deter Iran, the author states that such tactics have not worked in the past and that Iran knows that more ground gained means more power. Now it’s up to the US not repeat the mistakes of the past lest the region will become a more unstable place. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon talks of her experiences in Raqqa, Syria last year and how the low key American presence in Syria has helped deter ISIS, Russia, Turkey and Iran. She argues that the US government seemed to learn from past mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq and has now opted for a more hands off interventionist approach, by which it provides protection and aid for its allies while allowing the state’s internal forces to handle their affairs. This approach has helped Raqqa from ISIS militants and more importantly has given the residents a more promising future that did not exist in pre-civil war Syria and certainly did not exist during ISIS rule. The author notes how many entrepreneurs are getting involved in the rebuild and many of which include women, for example one woman had a successful pajama manufacturing business while another was running a booming hair salon in Raqqa. Many women of the older generations were proud as they note that they did not have such opportunities. While Syrian citizens now seek to put the ISIS era behind them, they still have a long way to go for a rebuild, as such the author warns that although this new American foreign intervention is working, only time will tell is it is effective in protecting Syrians and their futures. Ganol Tol explores Erdogan and his AKP party’s soft power foreign policy, which involves the use of exporting an Islamist ideology, one that has Turkish nationalist elements. To do this the government took full control of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a institution initially created in 1924 to promote secularized Islamic teaching. Now under the full control of the AKP, the government has used the Diyanet to spread pro-Turkish Islamist teaching, funding mega mosque projects around the world and restoring Ottoman monuments around the world. Erdogan and the AKP have often used nostalgia for the Ottoman past to spread this ideology, which can be successful considering it was the last example of a functional and stable Islamic empire, so it appeal to those inside and outside Turkey. Turkey has found success with Somalia and other Muslim African states, but has not had the same success in the Middle East since many of the states remember and recognize Turkey’s imperial past within such an ideology. European states are also worried of Turkey’s efforts since Diyanet funded mosques often prevent Turkish migrants from integrating into society. Margaret MacMillan reflects on the upcoming centennial of the Versailles Treaty, and how its failures ultimately led to the breakout of the Second World War. The author argues that the democratic states that came out as victorious did not form an effective alliance that could stop the rise of authoritarian leaders who broke newly established international rules that states were now supposed to follow. Moreover, the US choice of isolation and the allied mistake of not being more involved in Germany and trying to appease its extreme desires were catastrophic decisions. These hard lessons are what led to more US involvement in world affairs after World War II and an allied invasion of Germany during that world. Now it seems that the US and its democratic allies are ignoring the past as the former is seeking to be more isolationist and both are leaving authoritarian leaders, such as Putin, do as they please without any consequences. Amal Shahada writes on the late French-Israeli singer Maya Casabianca, who died recently on New Year’s Eve 2018. Despite the fact that she was a prominent singer in the 1960s and 1970s who sang in Damascus, Beirut, the former USSR and South Africa, few media outlets reported her death. Other than her music career, Maya was famous for her love affair with Syrian musician Farid Al Atrash, although both loved each other they had to end their relationship after the controversy that surrounded her in the Arab world, after she revealed her Jewish identity in a concert in the USSR. Despite that, Maya could never get over her past with Al Atrash and did not marry any man who should interest in her, it is said that she remained loyal to Al Atrash even after his death and until the day of her death. Iason Athanasiadis explores Alexandria, Egypt’s multicultural past when it was home to many Greek and Levantine expats, as well as native Christians and Jews. The author takes us on a trip to many of the old bars, clubs and hotspots that were a haven for the cities Greeks and Levantines and talks with the few remaining Greeks in the city.
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A Weekly Political News Magazine
Issue 1731 - January 18/01/2019
32 24 Turkey’s Bid for Religious Leadership
14 What Syria Stands to Lose
42 Melancholia ad Aegyptum
3228 Warnings From Versailles
If Trump Wants to Get Out of Syria, 20 He Should Do a Deal With Russia
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Maya Casabianca: From Regional and Global Fame to a Modest Ending 3
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34 Strengthen Your Mood with Weight Training
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Dead and dying kangaroos , goats and sheep stuck in drying mud in the drainage canal of lake Cawndilla , one of the 4 main lakes of the Menindee Lakes on January 10,2019. This drone shot was accompanied a report on the effects of extreme heat and continuing drought on wildlife, following on from the horrific mass fish kill on the Darling Rive. (Getty)
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U.S President Donald Trump presents fast food to be served to the Clemson Tigers football team to celebrate their Championship at the White House on January 2019 ,14 in Washington, DC.(Getty) 7
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Houthis fire at UN monitor Patrick Cammaert's convoy in Yemen's Hodeidah The head of a U.N. mission tasked with overseeing a peace deal in Yemen’s Hodeidah port city is safe after an armoured car in his convoy was hit by a bullet, the United Nations said on Thursday. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Cammaert and his team were leaving a meeting with representatives of the government of Yemen when the incident occurred. A Yemeni source in the Saudi-led coalition told Reuters the convoy was visiting an area under its control when Houthi fighters opened fire. Earlier, the Houthi militia prevented retired Cammaert, head of the Joint Coordination Committee to monitor the implementation of the Stockholm Agreement, from leaving his residence to meet representatives of the Yemeni government, Al Arabiya reported.
Blast claimed by ISIS kills U.S. troops in Syria A bomb attack claimed by ISIS killed two U.S.
troops and two civilians working for the U.S. military in northern Syria on Wednesday, weeks after President Donald Trump said the group had been defeated there and that he would pull out all American forces. The attack in Manbij appeared to be the deadliest on U.S. forces in Syria since they deployed on the ground there in 2015. The town is controlled by a militia allied to U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said 19 people had been killed in all, including four Americans.
Trump threatens Turkey with economic devastation if it attacks Syrian Kurd Militia Trump threatened Turkey with economic devastation if it attacks a U.S.-allied Kurdish militia in Syria, weakening the Turkish lira and prompting sharp criticism from Ankara on Monday. He said on Sunday the US was starting the military pullout
from Syria that he announced in December but that it would continue to hit ISIS fighters there. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that Ankara would set up a "security zone" in northern Syria suggested by the US President. Syria's Kurds on Wednesday rejected a US proposal for a "security zone" under Turkish control along the Syrian side of the two countries' border.
May suffers heaviest parliamentary defeat of a British PM in the democratic era Theresa May has sustained the heaviest parliamentary defeat of any British prime minister in the democratic era after MPs rejected her Brexit deal by a resounding majority of 230. Both Labour and the Scottish National party withdrew amendments to the government’s motion at the last minute, to allow MPs a clean vote on the deal. Just one amendment, tabled by the Brexiter John Baron and proposing a unilateral exit mechanism for the Irish backstop, was voted on and soundly defeated, by 600 votes to 24. Theresa May’s government survived a vote of no confidence the next day where 325 MPs voted for her. They have now entered a cross-party discussions in an effort to resolve the withdrawal deal impasse in Parliament..
At least 14 killed after explosions and gunfire at hotel in Nairobi, Kenya The attack on the dusitD2 hotel began shortly after 3 p.m. on Tuesday with an explosion in the parking lot and then a suicide bomb blast in the foyer, killing at least 14 people. Kenyan security forces have “eliminated” the militants who stormed the hotel
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police. They came on the first day of a three-day general strike called by unions amid an intensifying economic crisis. There were clashes in the capital, Harare, and in Bulawayo, a city in the south, as police attempted to disperse groups of youths who had lit fires in streets, erected barricades and, in some cases, looted shops. compound in the attack claimed by Somali Islamist group al Shabaab, President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Wednesday. More than 700 civilians had been safely evacuated from the dusitD2 complex, he added, after an attack that echoed a 2013 assault on a Nairobi shopping centre that killed 67 people. He did not specify how many assailants took part in the terrifying -20hour siege. CCTV footage showed at least four.
been applied “arbitrarily” in the case of Robert Lloyd Schellenberg when it was upped from a -15year prison sentence on appeal. Relations between the two countries – which only months before had been in pursuit of a large free trade agreement – turned icy in early December when Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, a senior Huawei executive and Chinese citizen, for extradition to the US.
Zimbabwe police fire live rounds during general strike protests Police in Zimbabwe fired live ammunition and teargas during running battles with groups of young people trying to enforce a nationwide shutdown to protest against the rising cost of living. The clashes were the worst outbreak of disorder in the southern African country since the aftermath of elections last year, when six civilians were shot dead by
China expresses 'strong dissatisfaction' with Trudeau as countries spar China has expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with Justin Trudeau after he criticised the death sentence passed on a Canadian man convicted of drug trafficking, as the two countries continued to spar over detained citizens. The Canadian prime minister should “respect the rule of law, respect China’s judicial sovereignty, correct mistakes and stop making irresponsible remarks”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday. A day earlier, Trudeau said that the death sentence had
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Brazil's Bolsonaro signs decree loosening gun ownership rules Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has signed a decree making it easier for citizens to keep a firearm at home in a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates and a record 63,880 intentional violent deaths a year. The move was criticised by public security experts and lauded by his supporters. At a ceremony in Brasília, Bolsonaro said the decree had been drafted “so that good citizens can at this first moment have peace inside their homes.” More measures could follow, he said. The new decree makes it easier for Brazilians to keep weapons at home, waiving the requirement for an interview with a federal police officer to demonstrate the need for a firearm at home. It also increases gun licences’ validity from five years to 10.
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What Comes Next in Syria Void Left by US Will Attract Forces of Instability and Lead to More Conflict by Hanin Ghaddar
real and serious.
Nearly eight years into Syria's civil war, President Trump’s announcement that he would withdraw U.S. troops from the region had many worried about repercussions, and pushed some to rethink their strategies and short-term plans. Although US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had rushed to the region to try to assure leaders and people that this is just tactical withdrawal and will not influence US Foreign Policy against Iran’s regional threats, the concerns are still
It seems the decision to withdraw is beyond the withdrawal of around 2000 soldiers from Syria. The reaction to this decision within the US was loud enough to be heard and feared in the region. The withdrawal, which the military said began with equipment removal last Friday, is only the latest instance of a broader American disengagement from the Middle and certainly not sudden or unexpected. The signs of the US disinterest in being involved the
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Iran has deepened its ties with militias in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, undercutting their governments. The American withdrawal from Syria could set off an accelerated effort by Iran to fill the void. Iran will feel free to move its militias and weapons – and money – from Iraq to Syria and vise versa as it pleases. Russia doesn’t seem serious or interested in containing Iran, especially in that part of Syria, as it does not overlap with Putin’s Syria interests. As the United States pulls out, regional powers will be left to their own devices and other foreign states will move in to fill the gap. In Syria, two main states – Russia and Iran - have been waiting for such excellent opportunity. Iran has deepened its ties with militias in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, undercutting their governments. The American withdrawal from Syria could set off an accelerated effort by Iran to fill the void. As for Russia, an American absence mean more power to Putin – not only in Syria, but in the region, fulfilling his mission to “the” broker of the Middle East, thereby being in charge of all diplomatic action and coordination, a role that the US had also enjoyed for a long while.
Armed men in uniform identified by Syrian Democratic forces as US special operations forces ride in the back of a pickup truck in the village of Fatisah in the northern Syrian province of Raqa on May 2016 ,25. (Getty)
This process is not unprecedented. When President Obama decided to withdraw American troops from Iraq, the jihadists were back within a few years and region’s turmoil is not news. stronger, rebranded as ISIS, and prompting a new American military operation. This scenario might A VOID THAT WILL BE FILLED repeat itself in Syria, and we can see an escalated reMost US forces are concentrated in the northeast of emergence of Islamist military groups, such as ISIS Syria, where the last strongholds of ISIS are located, and Al Qaeda. but soldiers also maintain a base near southern Syria in an area known as al-Tanf, on the Iraqi border. The On the other hand, Israel feels it can no longer rely base is seen as key to monitoring and thwarting Iranian on the U.S. in its efforts to counter Iran’s regional efforts to move personnel and weapons overland into ambitions. Without either the U.S. - or Russia for that Syria. It is still unclear whether the US will pull its matter - stepping in to constrain Iran, Israel will keep troops from the Tanf base, but if that took place, striking targets in Syria, thus increasing the chances
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of a large-scale conflict. As Pompeo was delivering his speech in Cairo, Israel was striking Damascus and its southern countryside with what appeared to be the most extensive wave of airstrikes by Israel against Iranian-linked targets in Syria since September. We might be seeing more of these Israeli strikes in Syria. Iran has not responded to most of them, but sometimes, they did respond, in the incident of May 2018, which had almost started a regional war between Iran and Israel. That kind of void that the US will leave will attract forces of instability and lead to more conflict.
IT’S A MATTER OF LEVERAGE The American physical and military presence in the Middle East does not always mean a willingness to start wars and be involved in ongoing conflicts. However, it is about leverage. Many regimes in the region would think twice if they hear a strong and consistent rhetoric from the US, and the influence the US has in the region is usually based on this consistency and the strong rhetoric. Drawing lines in the sand had been an effective strategy to push regimes to make compromises and thwarted deadly conflicts. For example, Libyan dictator Col. Muammar elQaddafi’s had given up his country’s nuclear program under American pressure. With less American appetite to solve the region’s problems or be involved in its conflicts, autocrats and dictators like Qaddafi and Assad will feel free to kill more of their people and fight all democratic initiatives at home.
Last week, Pompeo vowed that Washington and its allies would work diplomatically to expel all Iranian troops from Syria. America “will use diplomacy and work with our partners to expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria and bolster efforts “to bring peace and stability to the long-suffering Syrian people,” he said during his speech in Egypt.
Diplomacy has barely worked with regimes like the one in Tehran. In fact, this regime use diplomatic efforts to buy time and use it to exert more control via military means.
The problem with this statement is two-fold. First, diplomacy has barely worked with regimes like the one in Tehran. In fact, this regime use diplomatic efforts to buy time and use it to exert more control via military means. We have seen this happening in Syria over the past eight years, where all diplomatic and political solution failed. Meanwhile, Iran did not waste time on these as it used military force to win the ground. Iran understands that whoever owns the ground owns the power. And when the US decides to leave the ground, Iran can only move in.
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A member of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by US special forces, looks out from a building at the frontline in Raqa on October 2017 ,16 in ISIS’s former stronghold. (Getty)
Second, Iran has moved beyond the military presence in Syria. By entrenching its roots within communities and building a Syrian proxy presence, Iran has now a very deep presence that is very hard to counter. The US is not only leaving Syria. American appetite to be involved in the region as a whole is shrinking. However, this is not the end of American Middle East Foreign Policy. The United States is still present via a number of military bases across the region, and had been sending military and financial aid to many of the region’s governments and security institutions. These bases and aid packages can be used as leverage to maintain the pressure against Iran.
The American physical and military presence in the Middle East does not always mean a willingness to start wars and be involved in ongoing conflicts.
seeking uninterrupted and uncompromised power. But sanctions are also not enough to counter Iran and its proxies. Punishing the bad elements requires an attempt to reward the good ones, thereby creating a viable alternative to Iran in the region; one that is not sectarian in nature, but caters for all those willing to The regime in Tehran should not feel reassured. As step away from Iran. It is probably time to reconsider sanctions are enforcing economic obstacles on Iran these tools. and its regional proxies, Iran needs to stay worried about other means as well. Political solutions and Hanin Ghaddar is the inaugural Friedmann Visiting diplomatic means are not tools that work with a regime Fellow at The Washington Institute.
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What Syria Stands to Lose A View From Raqqa, Where Normal Was Hard-Won By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon In April 2018, I drove into Raqqa, Syria, for the first time since reporting eight months earlier on the fight that liberated the city from ISIS. By April, Raqqa resonated not with mortar rounds but with drilling and the rattle of
generators as the city’s residents unearthed the remains of their homes from the rubble that had engulfed them. A town once inhabited by ghosts now slowly shook itself back to life, through sheer force of will and intestinal fortitude. As I drove into the city, I found one sight particularly
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A modest investment of U.S. tax dollars has allowed a fragile stability to hold in a place that once served as the capital of extremism. Young people who have not given up on their city or their society are leading this revival. And young women are at its center. From my five visits to northeast Syria since August of 2017, I have concluded that U.S. policy in northeast Syria is working. A modest investment of U.S. tax dollars has allowed a fragile stability to hold in a place that once served as the capital of extremism. ISIS has remained under pressure, schools are open, and shopkeepers are bringing the city center back to life. The United States has helped defeat ISIS and prevent its resurgence, and it has done so not solely through direct U.S.military engagement but by assisting a partner force—one whose cemeteries are filled with the white marble tombs of young people who gave their lives battling ISIS. The wreckage of Syria’s war is visible the moment you enter the city of Raqqa—and so is the hum of a new normalcy, buzzing with shops, restaurants, and now traffic. That normalcy is perhaps the city’s most remarkable sight. Its loss terrifies a populace that built it on the back of the fight against ISIS. And it hangs in the balance as facts on the ground in Washington shape facts on the ground in Syria.
WOMEN AT THE CENTER
Syrians walk along a destroyed street in Raqa, the former de facto capital of ISIS, on February 2018 ,18. (Getty)
befuddling. There on a street full of crushed buildings was a black, proudly hanging sign, behind which a young man sat in front of dozens of glass bottles: a perfume shop, the only storefront open on its street. Who, in all the world, would open a perfume shop in a city that had just emerged from under the black curtain of war and ISIS rule? A place that needed construction companies and grocery shops and pharmacies, to be sure—but perfume? Some months later, the young perfume entrepreneur would tell me his story of destruction and revival. It was one I had heard over multiple visits, from dozens of Raqqa citizens resuscitating their city: a tailor who now owns a pajama shop, a teacher rebuilding her school, and a hairdresser who now owns her own salon in the city center. Raqqa is stepping forward, its citizens told me, coming back to life slowly, in spite of great fragility and enormous obstacles.
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Raqqa’s rebuilding is underfunded, incomplete, and imperfect. But the progress is real, and it is not simply the business of men. Women are out, about, and taking part in leading their city. Hawla is one such woman. I first met her in April, when my colleague and I stepped into her pajama shop, and I saw her again each time I returned. Hawla said that ISIS fighters used to come to her door asking her to make their clothes, which she refused to do because she didn’t support them or their ideology. “I told them I was sick.” She kept her daughters indoors, especially after one was nearly detained by ISIS for being out on the street wearing a pajama set with a smiley face on it. In Hawla’s shop last August I met two university students, both young women, who praised the Americans and said they hoped they would stay. The U.S. presence, the students told me, provided the invisible force field that
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kept ISIS down and the Russians, Iranians, and Turks at bay. With only a few thousand troops on the ground in northeast Syria, the United States is nearly invisible locally, but it has produced real results. Its presence has provided the stability required for effective local forces—the kind that previous U.S. administrations struggled to coax into being in places like Iraq and Afghanistan—to do the work no U.S. ground force can do. These local forces are tasked with holding the teetering peace in place so that mothers like Hawla can rebuild their society and fight extremism. Hawla had left Raqqa for a nearby town already freed from ISIS in 2017. Early last year, she returned. Business has been slow, but her father has encouraged her not to give up. What is moving much faster than her business, she says, is the pace of change in her city. “There is more of a chance for work; the city is getting better, more rubble is getting removed, there are more jobs. And women are everywhere,” Hawla told me. In fact, I had spotted two women working in the Raqqa security forces as we entered the city by way of one of its many checkpoints. Fatima, a hairdresser I met in April, is a female entrepreneur whose business is booming. At that time she worked at one of the few hair salons open in the city. She had styled women’s hair throughout ISIS’s rule in Raqqa. Some ISIS wives—including, she says, an American woman who used to show her photos of the United States, the “land of the Kafir,” on her phone—were regulars at her salon. Fatima told me she stopped worrying about the Hisbah, or religious police, detaining her once she started doing their female officers’ hair along with the wives’. “They would take me in the afternoon and I would be out by the evening,” she said of her brief detentions, noting that they would let her out in time to do the hair of ISIS wives the next day. Fatima wanted two things, she told me in April. One was security and an end to the war. The other was to have the most famous hair salon in Raqqa. When I saw her again four months later, the salon where she worked was
Young people who have not given up on their city or their society are leading this revival. And young women are at its center.
hopping, full of women getting their hair done and makeup perfected. We went to the storefront across the street to talk, only to be regularly interrupted by employees with questions or customers consulting about needs for their upcoming weddings. By December, she was too busy to pin down for a ten-minute interview: she had saved her money and opened her own salon, just as she had hoped, and her only focus was on growing her business. Last summer I attended the opening of the Raqqa Women’s Council, an organization that supports local women’s economic and civil society activities. I went in expecting a dog-and-pony show created by and for foreigners. Instead I spotted no Americans, only Syrians (including one young woman wearing the then-infamous Zara coat saying “I really don’t care do U?”). In December I shared a quiet coffee with two women from the council. Both came from Raqqa and neither had ever worked outside the home before. “Who watches your children?” I asked, as an energetic toddler bounced around one of the women’s knees. The
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A Syrian boy sits next to fire as he sells fruits in Raqa, the former de facto capital of ISIS, on February 2018 ,18. (Getty)
woman, who did not want her name to be published, said she had just finished a ten-day training from the council preparing her to manage her finances and seek her own livelihood. “My mother-in-law,” the woman said. “She told me, ‘Go, I will watch the kids.’ She said, ‘We never had these kinds of chances in our generation.’”
A U.S. POLICY SUCCESS Americans have largely missed the many advances— tentative as they are—in northeast Syrian towns from Manbij to Tabqa to Raqqa and Kobani and Qamishli. Domestic affairs seem to have left little share of mind or attention for anything beyond U.S. borders. But there are other occluding factors. The battle to free the region from ISIS was bloody; Turkey has made clear its continuing discomfort with the Syrian Kurdish fighters who led the battle in Kobani and beyond; and Iraq and Afghanistan taught the United States to stay out of wars in the Middle
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East. Today so many Americans have learned the lesson of U.S. ineffectiveness in the region so well that they fail to register a story of a policy gone largely right across two administrations. This omission is an avoidable shame. And it threatens with extinction a conditional stability that often feels like science fiction when you see it on the ground, so different is it from what we have come to expect from the post11/9interventions. Thanks to the courage and effectiveness of Syrian citizens and local forces, together with the Oz-like presence of the United States, things are actually on the right path—not a perfect one, but one on stable ground. And the United States has pulled this off with a barely visible footprint. I have never glimpsed the Americans out and about except on the road in their pickup trucks and at a kabob shop in Manbji—just the low profile that U.S.policy makers have always said they wanted. Last month, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to invade northeastern Syria, I happened to be on a military base belonging to the U.S.-
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backed Syrian Democratic Forces. That night I met the commander, Mazloum Kobani, whose Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, have been backed by the United States since their 2014 battle in Kobani against ISIS. A Christmas tree twinkled behind him as Mazloum told me how gravely Erdogan’s words had struck him. “This will affect the fight against ISIS,” Mazloum told me. He would have to pull his forces back from the ISIS fight to protect Syria’s border. He spoke of those deployed to fight ISIS in Hajin, in the east. If soldiers’ families in the northeast were to be threatened by a Turkish offensive, Mazloum noted, “they will have to pull back from the fight in Hajin, and the situation will get very complicated.” Moreover, he told me, “If the Turks attack, the Iranians will get the benefit. They want to come to this area. Right now we are stopping them from entering, but if we are occupied with the Turks, the Iranians will make the most of the chance.” On the other hand, Mazloum told me, “If there are no attacks from outside, no hands from outside, we will improve what we are building here. We can build on the situation. People are returning to normal life.”
THE NEW NORMAL I finally met that perfume shopkeeper in December. Mohamed is 20 years old, and he has had his store for four years. “During ISIS we couldn’t continue our studies, so I wanted to have a shop,” he told me. “I opened this.” In the final months of the fight for Raqqa in 2017, he fled west, to the nearby city of Tabqa. He returned to Raqqa nearly as soon as ISIS left and spent a month rebuilding his shop. Today his perfume business supports his parents and his siblings. “When I reopened the shop, I posted on Facebook, and people came,” Mohamed said. “At first when we opened we had 20 or 30 customers a day. Now we have 50 or 60.” He didn’t want me to take a picture of his shop. No need to be too visible in a city where ISIS sleeper cells might be
“There is more of a chance for work; the city is getting better, more rubble is getting removed, there are more jobs. And women are everywhere.” Hawla
around the corner: better to blend in. Everyone knows the moment is precarious. You can feel it moving around the city: everything is okay until it isn’t. The day after my visit to the perfume shop, a military commander delayed her meeting with me because ISIS had placed an IED beneath a fellow soldier’s car. No one died, but the attempt was a reminder of the pressure on local forces to keep ISIS at bay. “We just hope we have stability like we did before the war,” Mohamed told me. On the street outside, traffic was double or triple what it had been eight months before. “The situation is improving.” As for the question that had stayed with me since April— why sell perfume in a city struggling to revive after a war?—seated in front of glass bottles filled with fragrances in hues of beige and amber, Mohamed looked at me with an expression that betrayed how inane he thought the
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A picture taken on October 2017 ,21 shows a general view of heavily damaged buildings in Raqa, after a Kurdish-led force expelled ISIS from the northern Syrian city. (Getty)
question. “After all,” he said, “everyone needs to smell good.”
A PRECARIOUS FUTURE In April, a school teacher named Shamsa urged me to tell the world in general, and the Americans in particular, that it and they needed to stay in Raqqa, and not to give up on helping to bring a basic level of services back to her city. Her students had seen beheadings and hangings under ISIS, and they needed to empty their minds of such horrors. Fifteen hundred kids came to her school each day, exploding with joy and energy as they shouted their ABCs. At first parents had worried their kids wouldn’t be safe from ISIS back in school, but all the kids wanted was to be there. Schools like this one will be Syria’s enduring defense
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against extremism and the region’s best insurance for a future that looks different from the past. But Shamsa’s school did not have enough windows. Or doors. The little ones lucky enough to have coats and ski hats wore them in the classroom to stay warm. I saw one beaming little boy, maybe seven or eight years old, in the school’s hallway wearing only a white T-shirt to protect him against the winter cold. I felt so very inadequate to his grit. So was the world. Electricity and water are in short supply in Raqqa. Salaries don’t go far enough to cover generators. Teachers struggle to make ends meet. But the city continues to shake off its ISIS years and keep extremism at bay. The region is standing itself up and writing its next chapter, backed by very limited U.S. investment and the lightest of U.S. troop presences. That is an actually effective policy. Very big questions about the future loom.
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If Trump Wants to Get Out of Syria, He Should Do a Deal With Russia Making the Best of a Bad Idea 20
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In the wake of the U.S. withdrawal, Iran will seek to take over as much Syrian territory as possible and then use it to control the Syrian-Iraqi border region and transport weapons and fighters between Baghdad and Damascus. THE RISKS OF RETREAT The withdrawal of U.S. forces from eastern Syria has the potential to create a security vacuum in which ISIS could regenerate, especially if fighting flares up again. The United States will be abandoning its best local partner in the campaign against ISIS: the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which U.S. commanders expected would stabilize eastern Syria after ISIS’ defeat. Iran will likely take the opportunity to shore up its supply lines across the Levant and reinforce the missile stockpiles it is building in western Syria. By walking away from a region that makes up nearly one-third of the country, including some of its most important electricity-producing resources and its most significant water, oil, and wheat reserves, the United States will be giving up its biggest piece of leverage in any negotiation over the final disposition of the country.
A convoy of US forces armoured vehicles drives near the village of Yalanli, on the western outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Manbij, on March ,5 2017. (Getty)
by Ilan Goldenberg, Nicholas A. Heras
Even if Trump changes his mind, or slows down the withdrawal, the damage to the U.S. position in Syria will have been done. The various regional actors, including the United States’ closest Arab partners, are already behaving as though the Americans have left. Given this reality, the only remaining question is how to best protect U.S. interests.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from Syria is a mistake. But if he insists on going ahead with it, the best option for the United States is to do what it can to ensure that Moscow—not Ankara or Tehran—ultimately replaces it and negotiates a political settlement that prevents a new conflict in eastern Syria. The two of us have long argued for greater U.S. engagement in Syria, so we find this approach unpleasant. But given Trump’s decision, it is the best way to avert further conflict, prevent ISIS from reemerging, and limit Iran’s influence in eastern Syria.
U.S. policymakers should focus on ensuring a peaceful transition in eastern Syria. If the withdrawal leads to renewed conflict between Turkey and the SDF’s Kurdish members in the northeast, or between the SDF’s Sunni Arab components and the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the southeast, the results would be devastating. ISIS’ remaining soldiers in the Middle Euphrates River Valley in southeast Syria and in the neighboring areas of western Iraq would thrive. The conflict would cause further misery for civilians and push even more people into Jordan, Iraq, Turkey,
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and government-controlled Syria. The best of the United States’ meager options is to encourage a political deal between Assad, the SDF, Iran, Russia, and Turkey. But U.S. policymakers should be realistic about the limits of their influence once the drawdown is in full swing. Because Turkey is a member of NATO, it might seem the best partner to maintain stability in northern and eastern Syria, but that is an unrealistic prospect. Despite President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s promise to Trump that he will fight ISIS, any effort by Turkey to retake parts of eastern Syria will be wholly motivated by its desire to limit Kurdish influence and will likely result in an ugly renewed conflict. What’s more, ISIS’ remaining forces are based primarily in the Middle Euphrates River Valley and western Iraq, far from the Turkish border. The Turks have neither the will nor the capacity to fight that far south. Iran offers an even worse option as a partner. Its position in western Syria has given the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah the ability to threaten Tel Aviv with missile strikes. Israel has responded with air strikes targeting Iranian facilities in Syria. In the wake of the U.S. withdrawal, Iran will seek to take over as much Syrian territory as possible and then use it to control the Syrian-Iraqi border region and transport weapons and fighters between Baghdad and Damascus. That will allow it to project power more effectively in the Levant. Iran will be particularly interested in seizing control of the al-Tanf region, which lies on the SyrianJordanian border, along the best road from Baghdad to Damascus, where U.S. forces have been deployed for the past few years. As Iran expands its influence in the aftermath of a U.S. withdrawal, it will likely ratchet up tensions with
The Kurdish components of the SDF are already negotiating with the Assad government and will likely be more willing to return under its umbrella than to fight Turkish-backed forces.
Israel. So far, neither side has escalated beyond titfor-tat strikes, but an accident or miscalculation could spark a larger conflict. The risk will increase if Israel sees Iran as the big winner of the United States’ retreat and seeks to compensate by escalating its air campaign and covert efforts against Iranian proxies and military infrastructure in Syria.
MAKING THE BEST OF IT Turkey and Iran cannot and will not hold together a political settlement in eastern Syria. That leaves Russia as the best of a bad series of options. Russia does not want to see a new conflict that gives ISIS an opportunity to recover and delays international aid for Syrian reconstruction. It also wants to avoid a major war between Israel and Iran, which would undermine its efforts to consolidate its victory in Syria. Israel, Jordan, and the Gulf states are all relying on Russia to provide some measure of stability. Moscow does not want to throw away that status. Russia, Turkey, Assad, and the SDF will need to come to some kind of agreement in northern and eastern Syria. The Kurdish components of the SDF are already negotiating with the Assad government and will likely
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A Turkish-backed Syrian fighter looks on as he trains in a camp in the Aleppo countryside, northern Syria, on December 2018 ,16. (Getty)
if Trump is intent on leaving, the best his advisers can do is to limit the damage by using the meager tools at their disposal to encourage Russia to keep ISIS down and contain Iran. position in Syria. The United States should leave the withdrawal from the Middle Euphrates River Valley and al-Tanf—the most important part of eastern Syria to Iran—until last. It should press Russia to commit to keeping Hezbollah fighters away from Jordan’s border and encourage the Israelis and Jordanians to echo this point with the Russians. Jordan should be particularly receptive, as al-Tanf is so close to Jordan’s vulnerable eastern border.
be more willing to return under its umbrella than to fight Turkish-backed forces. Turkey will worry that any deal would create a new safe haven for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in eastern Syria. Russia is best positioned to prevent this, as the Turks put little trust in Assad. The United States should also use its relationship with Turkey to urge restraint. In the Middle Euphrates River Valley, where Russia has deployed special forces and private military contractors, Russian and U.S. forces maintain a direct communications channel to prevent military accidents from escalating. The two countries should use this channel to coordinate the peaceful handover of territory. As part of this effort, the United States should share information with Russia on the remaining ISIS-held territory in this region and ask Moscow to prioritize retaking that territory and preventing ISIS’ reemergence. The United States will be giving up much of the leverage it might use to contain Iranian influence if it withdraws, but there are still things it can do. U.S. diplomats should support Israel’s efforts to counter Iran through limited strikes in Syria. That should motivate Russia to find a solution acceptable to Israel, in order to avoid a major new conflagration, which could undermine Russia’s
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By announcing a precipitous U.S. withdrawal and then sending confusing and contradictory signals, which suggest the president and his national security adviser are not on the same page, Trump has significantly reduced the United States’ leverage, so the approach we recommend will have a limited impact at best. Russia does not have the same motivation or ability to fight ISIS as the United States does. Turkey’s desire to eliminate the Kurdish stronghold on its border may be so strong, and Russia may so lack commitment to the SDF, that Moscow will simply cut a deal with Ankara, allowing Turkey to conquer large areas of northern and eastern Syria. Russia does not want to own all of Syria and has only limited leverage over Iran, which has deployed thousands of Hezbollah fighters to Syria from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Pakistan and is actively building local Syrian security forces that are loyal to Assad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran will inevitably seize territory as the United States withdraws, and the Russians may not be able or willing to stop it. The bottom line is that the U.S. withdrawal from Syria is a bad idea. Keeping a small U.S.presence to hold eastern Syria has protected U.S. interests—ensuring the defeat of ISIS and limiting Iran’s influence in Syria—at a reasonable cost. But if Trump is intent on leaving, the best his advisers can do is to limit the damage by using the meager tools at their disposal to encourage Russia to keep ISIS down and contain Iran. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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Turkey’s Bid for Religious Leadership How the AKP Uses Islamic Soft Power By Gonul Tol Under the leadership of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) has Islamist roots, religion has become a critical instrument of Turkish foreign policy. In countries from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey is building mosques, financing religious education, restoring Ottoman heritage—and advertising its unique brand of Islamic leadership along the way. Fusing Sunni Islam with Turkish nationalism, the state institutions and civil society organizations behind the country’s religious
outreach promote Turkish language and culture alongside religious curricula, and they erect the Turkish flag at the sites of new projects. In the minds of those executing the policy, Turkey, as heir to the Ottoman Empire, is Islam’s last fortress and the natural leader of a revival of Muslim civilization. But the nationalist tinge in Turkey’s religious diplomacy could stand in the way of its success. It already irks European countries, which see Turkey’s actions as polarizing and detrimental to the integration of Turkish immigrants, and Middle Eastern states, which view Turkey through an imperial lens. The AKP has taken
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In countries from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey is building mosques, financing religious education, restoring Ottoman heritage—and advertising its unique brand of Islamic leadership along the way and cultural center in Maryland that bills itself as the largest Islamic campus in the Western Hemisphere. In September, he opened one of Europe’s largest mosques in the German city of Cologne, which is home to a large Turkish community. He has plans to construct mosques in Cuba, Romania, and Venezuela. The Turkish state backs these projects through the Diyanet Foundation, which functions under the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). The Diyanet was established in 1924 to promote a secularized version of Islam as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated and the modern Turkish state was born. Within Turkey, in addition to constructing and maintaining mosques, the Diyanet hires imams, offers religious education to the public, interprets Islamic norms, and writes sermons that are read each week in the country’s mosques. Until the 1980s, the Diyanet did not play a prominent role outside Turkey’s borders. Following the 1980 military coup and the resulting diaspora, both Islamist and leftist organizations began to gain influence among Turkish immigrant communities in western Europe. The military government, needing a way to compete with its respective messages, expanded the Diyanet’s operations to Europe. There, it used the organization to promote a secularized version of Islam to Turkish immigrants in order to prevent their radicalization.
President of Religious Affairs of Turkey Ali Erbas conducts Friday sermon (Khutbah) during Friday Prayer at The Diyanet Center of America in Maryland, United States on January ,12 2018. (Getty)
Turkey’s religious outreach to unprecedented levels, but in this international context, suspicion of its intentions could well limit its prospects for success.
MOSQUE DIPLOMACY One of the most visible means through which Turkey has broadcast its religious credentials has been by constructing mega mosques around the world. In 2015, Erdogan inaugurated one in Tirana, the capital of Albania. In the spring of 2016, he attended the opening ceremony of Diyanet Center of America, a mosque
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The AKP has both expanded the Diyanet’s international mission and made it more distinctively an instrument of the party’s political and ideological agenda. Starting in 2010, what was once a semiautonomous institution has come firmly under the government’s control. That year, the ruling party appointed a new chairman to the Diyanet who was more devoted to fulfilling the AKP’s demands than his predecessor. Legislative reforms significantly expanded the mission of the organization and strengthened its bureaucratic and administrative capacity— including its involvement in foreign policy. The Diyanet Foundation now operates all over the world, from Latin America to Europe, Africa, and Asia, offering religious services to Muslim communities: organizing trips to the haj, educating preachers, publishing books, and translating the Koran into local languages. It also provides scholarships for students from Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia, and Latin America to study religion in Turkey.
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Nor is the Diyanet Foundation the only such instrument of Turkish religious soft power. The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, another state institution, has also significantly expanded its international presence under the AKP. It has been responsible for restoring Ottoman heritage sites worldwide, including dozens of monuments in the Balkans; the historic mausoleum of Gul Baba, a famous Ottoman warrior and poet, in Hungary; a bazaar in the Iraqi town of Kirkuk; and a consulate building in Ethiopia. Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with an Islamic bent have further promoted Turkish influence in parts of the Middle East and Africa that once belonged to the Ottoman Empire. These groups offer aid, including medical supplies and food, and they assist in developing infrastructure such as wells, orphanages, and schools. Since it came to power 16 years ago, the AKP has relaxed bureaucratic limitations on these NGOs, allowing them to receive more donations and expand their work abroad. Many senior AKP officials have close ties to humanitarian organizations. Leaders of the NGOs, for their part, consider themselves important actors in Turkish foreign policy. They frequently invoke Turkey’s responsibility to the former Ottoman lands and its role as a leader of Islamic civilization. Nowhere has Turkey’s religious diplomacy been more effective than in Somalia. At the height of a devastating famine in August 2011 that the Western media largely ignored, Erdogan led a delegation of senior cabinet ministers, NGO leaders, businesspeople, journalists, and celebrities to visit a camp full of starving children in Mogadishu. The trip took place during the holy month of Ramadan, and Erdogan’s message was clear: Turkey would not abandon its Muslim brothers and sisters. Since then, Turkey has spent more than 1$ billion on aid to Somalia. A Turkish company runs the Mogadishu airport, and Turkish Airlines is the only international carrier that flies there. The Diyanet Foundation and other Islamic NGOs run religious schools. There is a hospital in Somalia named after Erdogan. Turkey’s aid agency is responsible for garbage collection. Somalis trust Turkish Muslim organizations more than they do Western ones. Perhaps as an outgrowth of this trust, trade between the two countries has expanded rapidly, and Turkey has established its largest overseas army base in Somalia.
European countries have grown uneasy about Turkey’s religious outreach activities as Erdogan expands his influence among the Turkish diaspora across Europe
Turkish-style religious education is popular in other parts of Africa, such as Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria. Islamic organizations, including the Hudayi Foundation and Suleymancilar, run religious schools called Imam Hatip schools, which combine Islamic and scientific teachings. Erdogan is one of many prominent graduates of these schools. They have grown in popularity since the 11/9 attacks because many Muslim countries have come to see Turkish Islam as an alternative to more radical currents. Authorities from Afghanistan, Chad, Niger, Pakistan, and Somalia have all expressed interest in adopting the TurkishIslamic model of education offered by Imam Hatips for this reason. Turkey also brings students from other countries to receive religious education at international Imam Hatip schools in the cities of Istanbul, Kayseri, and Konya. More than 1,000 students from 76 countries studied at these schools between 2014 and 2015. A state-affiliated education association called the Maarif Foundation has also played an active role in promoting Turkishstyle religious education abroad—offering scholarships, building schools and dormitories, and training teachers. Owing to historical animosities, Middle Eastern states have been less receptive to Turkey’s religious outreach activities than
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A Nigerien woman receives aid from ‹Turkiye Diyanet Foundation›, a government-led charity organization from Turkey, within the distributions of sacrificial animal›s meat packages to needy people during a humanitarian aid organization within Eid al-Adha in Niamey, Niger on September 2017 ,3. (Getty)
Many Arab countries that were once ruled by the Ottoman Empire still see Turkey as an imperial power, making them less receptive to Turkey’s religious outreach activities which Turkey relies on heavily to accomplish its goals—is now considered a failure by many Muslims and labeled a terrorist organization in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey’s intensifying nationalist rhetoric and frequent references to the Ottoman past rattle regimes such as Egypt and the UAE that see an imperial agenda behind Turkey’s religious diplomacy. European countries have also grown uneasy about Turkey’s religious outreach activities. Through the Diyanet, President Erdogan has been able to expand his influence among the Turkish diaspora across Europe. The Diyanet pays the salaries of imams who are sent from Turkey, and it tightly controls the messages they deliver. The weekly Friday sermons are the same as the ones delivered in Turkey, issued from the Diyanet’s headquarters in Ankara. This has been deeply unsettling to European officials, who argue that Turkey’s interference in the religious lives of immigrants is preventing successful integration. African ones. Many Arab countries that were once ruled by the Ottoman Empire still see Turkey as an imperial power. Many Turks, for their part, view Arab countries as traitors for allying with the British against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Since the rise of the Islamist-rooted AKP in 2002, that enmity has started to slowly give way to cultural rapprochement. To enhance its soft power in the Middle East, the AKP has primarily relied on its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which does not have a chapter in Turkey but is closely aligned ideologically with the AKP. Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of the AKP’s predecessor party and in many ways its intellectual father, had strong relationships with Muslim Brotherhood leaders throughout the region. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, religious NGOs affiliated with the AKP continued to build on those ties, hosting international conferences and forums on the future of the Muslim world in Istanbul and making the city into an important center for the Brotherhood. Qatari-backed Al Jazeera, the largest news network in the Middle East, has also helped advance Turkey’s image as a model Muslim country. In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, however, the Middle East has become perhaps the region most deeply skeptical of Turkish leadership. Turkey’s damaging engagement in Syria and its authoritarian turn under Erdogan have shattered its image in neighboring countries. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood—
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EXPORTING TURKISH NATIONALISM Globally speaking, Turkey’s religious outreach has yielded mixed results. In war-torn Somalia, both the political elite and the local population have appreciated Turkey’s efforts, which have built trust and prepared the way for future cooperation between the two countries. In the Balkans, invoking Ottoman heritage and casting Turkey as the protector of Muslims has predictably played well with Muslim communities and less well with non-Muslim ones. Turkey has found few takers in the Turkic republics of Central Asia, which are mostly secular. Its overtures in the Middle East and Europe have been met with increasing skepticism. The nationalist and far-right parties making gains across Europe are hostile to Turkey’s religious outreach. In the Middle East, the blend of Islam and Turkish nationalism will continue to evoke unpleasant memories of the Ottoman Empire. So long as it is ruled by a party with Islamist roots, Turkey will continue to conduct a foreign policy to which religion is integral. But as nationalisms gain ground globally Turkey’s particular brand of religious outreach could become harder to sell. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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Warnings From Versailles The Lessons of 1919, a Hundred Years On by Margaret MacMillan We often recall World War I and the two decades that followed as a grim chapter of history, the prelude to an even costlier and more destructive war from 1939 to 1945. We remember terrible
losses—the nine million or more dead in battle, the civilians who died of preventable disease or starvation, the ghastly influenza epidemic that, in the dying days of the war and the shaky first moments of peace, may have carried off as many as 50 million around the world. We think
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With populist dictators and aggressive powers once again on the rise, 1919 and its aftermath point to the dangers of ignoring or underestimating these threats before it is too late Safe for Democracy. Wilson’s League of Nations was meant to create an international community of democratic nations. By providing collective security for one another, they would not only end aggression but build a fairer and more prosperous world. These ideas drew support around the globe—from Europe, where Wilson was greeted as a savior, to the West’s colonies, and even in struggling nations such as China. But the world was to discover that making peace endure was a matter not just of hopes and ideas but of will, determination, and persistence. Leaders need to negotiate as well as to inspire; to be capable of seeing past short-term political gains; and to balance the interests of their nations against those of the international community. For want of such leadership, among other things, the promise of 1918 soon turned into the disillusionment, division, and aggression of the 1930s. Treaty of Versailles is negotiated by delegates in May 1919. (Getty)
of a Europe that once led the world in wealth, innovation, and political power, only to emerge from the war diminished, its Russian and AustroHungarian empires in tatters, Bolshevism and ethnic nationalism threatening more upheaval and misery. Yet when the Allies gathered at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles 100 years ago, from January to June 1919, the time was also one of hope. The Allied leaders promised their own peoples a better world in recompense for all they had suffered, and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson made of those promises a crusade for humankind: a War to End All Wars, a World
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This outcome was not foreordained at Versailles. Although some of the decisions made upon ending the war in 1919 certainly fueled populist demagoguery and inspired dreams of revenge, the calamity of World War II owed as much to the failure of the democracies’ leaders in the interwar decades to deal with rule-breaking dictators such as Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese militarists. A century later, similar forces— ethnic nationalism, eroding international norms and cooperation, and vindictive chauvinism— and authoritarian leaders willing to use them are again appearing. The past is an imperfect teacher, its messages often obscure or ambiguous, but it offers both guidance and warning.
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THE PRICE OF PEACE “Making peace is harder than waging war,” French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceaureflected in 1919 as the victorious powers drew up peace terms, finalized the shape of the new League of Nations, and tried to rebuild Europe and the global order. For Clemenceau and his colleagues, among them Wilson and David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, the prospect was particularly daunting. Unlike in 1815, when negotiators met in Vienna to wind up the Napoleonic Wars, in 1919 Europe was not tired of war and revolution. Nor had aggressor nations been utterly defeated and occupied, as they would be in 1945. Rather, leaders in 1919 confronted a world in turmoil. Fighting continued throughout much of eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had apparently set off a series of unstoppable revolutionary waves that threatened to overwhelm even the victors’ societies. The war had damaged or destroyed old political and social structures, particularly in Central Europe, leaving formerly stable and prosperous peoples adrift, desperate for someone or something to restore their status and a form of order. Ethnic nationalists seized the opportunity to build new countries, but these states were often hostile to one another and oppressive to their own minorities. Inevitably, too, old and new rivalries came to the surface as leaders in
A century after the Allies gathered in Versailles, similar forces—ethnic nationalism, eroding international norms and cooperation, and vindictive chauvinism—and authoritarian leaders willing to use them are again appearing
Paris maneuvered to promote the interests of their nations. Wilson and company also had to deal with a phenomenon that their forerunners at the Congressof Vienna had never had to consider: public opinion. The publics in Allied countries took an intense interest in what was happening in Paris, but what they wanted was contradictory: a better world of the Wilsonian vision, on the one hand, and retribution on the other. Many Europeans felt that someone must be made to pay for the war. In France and Belgium, which Germany had invaded on the flimsiest of pretexts, the countryside lay in ruins, with towns, mines, railways, and factories destroyed. Across the border, Germany was unscathed, because little of the war had been fought there. The British had lent vast sums to their allies (their Russian debts were beyond hope of recovery), had borrowed heavily from the Americans, and wanted recompense. John Maynard Keynes, not yet the worldrenowned economist he was to become, suggested that the Americans write off the money
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Allied delegates leaving the Trianon Palace during the Versailles peace talks on 7 May 1919. (Getty)
Toward the end of the war, the German High Command under Generals Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg had effectively established a military dictatorship that kept all news from the front under wraps. The civilian government in Berlin knew as little as the public about the string of defeats the country’s military suffered in the late spring and summer of 1918. When the High Command suddenly demanded that the government immediately sue for an armistice, the announcement came like a thunderbolt. The German chancellor appealed to Wilson in a series of open letters, and the U.S. president, somewhat to the annoyance of the European Allies, took on the role of arbiter between the warring sides. In doing so, Wilson made two mistakes. First, he negotiated with Germany’s civilian government rather than the High Command, allowing the generals to avoid responsibility for the war and its outcome. As time went by, the High Command and its rightwing supporters put out the false story that Germany had never lost on the battlefield: the German military could have fought on, perhaps even to victory, if the cowardly civilians had not let it down. Out of this grew the poisonous myth that Germany had been stabbed in the back the British owed them so as to reduce the need by an assortment of traitors, including liberals, to extract reparations from the defeated and then socialists, and Jews. concentrate on getting Europe’s economy going Second, Wilson’s public statements that he would again. The Americans, Wilson included, rejected not support punitive indemnities or a peace of the proposal with self-righteous horror. And vengeance reinforced German hopes that the so the Allied statesmen drew up a reparations United States would ensure that Germany was bill that they knew was more than the defeated treated lightly. The U.S. president’s support for could ever pay. Austria and Hungary were the revolution that overthrew Germany’s old impoverished remnants of a once vast Habsburg monarchy and paved the way for the parliamentary empire, Bulgaria was broke, and the Ottoman democracy of the Weimar Republic compounded Empire was on the verge of disintegrating. this misplaced optimism. Weimar, its supporters That left only Germany capable of meeting the argued, represented a new and better Germany reparations bill. that should not pay for the sins of the old. The French and other Allies, however, were less A RUDE AWAKENING concerned with Germany’s domestic politics than with its ability to resume fighting. The The circumstances of Germany’s defeat had armistice signed in the famous railway carriage left its citizens in no mood to pay. That feeling at Compiègne on November 1918 ,11, reads would grow stronger over the decade to follow. like a surrender, not a cessation of hostilities. And its outcome contains a warning for our era: Germanywould have to evacuate all occupied the feelings and expectations of both the winners territory and hand over its heavy armaments, as and the losers, however unrealistic, matter and well as the entirety of its navy. require careful management. Even so, the extent of the military defeat was not
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immediately clear to the German public. Troops returning from the front marched into Berlin in December 1918, and the new socialist chancellor hailed them with the words “No enemy has overcome you.” Apart from those living in the Rhineland on the western edge of the country, Germans did not experience firsthand the shame of military occupation. As a result, many Germans, living in what Max Weber called the dreamland of the winter of 19–1918, expected the Allies’ peace terms to be mild—milder, certainly, than those Germany had imposed on revolutionary Russia with the Treaty of BrestLitovsk in March 1918. The country might even expand if Austria, newly formed out of the German-speaking territories of the vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire, decided to join its fate to Germany’s. The actual Treaty of Versailles, published in the spring of 1919, came as a shock.Public opinion from right to left was dismayed to learn that Germany would have to disarm, lose territory, and pay reparations for war damage. Resentment focused in particular on Article 231 of the treaty, in which Germany accepted responsibility for starting the war and which a young American lawyer, John Foster Dulles, had written to provide a legal basis for claiming reparations. Germans loathed the “war guilt” clause, as it came to be known, and there was little will to pay reparations. Weimar Germany—much like Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union—nursed a powerful and lasting sense of national humiliation. For
A hundred years on, 1919 and the years that followed still stand as a somber warning to democratic powers of the consequences of abdicating global responsibilities
many years, the German Foreign Office and its right-wing supporters did their best to further undermine the legitimacy of the Treaty of Versailles. With the help of selectively released documents, they argued that Germany and its allies were innocent of starting the war. Instead, Europe had somehow stumbled into disaster, so that either everyone or no one was responsible. The Allies could have done more to challenge German views about the origins of the war and the unfairness of the treaty. Instead, at least in the case of the English-speaking peoples, they eventually came rather to agree with the German narrative, and this fed into the appeasement policies of the 1930s. Peace would take a very different form in 1945. With memories of the previous two decades fresh in their minds, the Allies forced the Axis powers into unconditional surrender. Germany and Japan were to be utterly defeated and occupied. Selected leaders would be tried for war crimes and their societies reshaped into liberal democracies. Invasive and coercive though it was, the post–World War II peace generated far less resentment about unfair treatment than did the arrangements that ended World War I.
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Supporting troops of the 1st Australian Division walking on a duckboard track near Hooge, in the Ypres Sector on 5 October 1917. (Getty)
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES The terms of Versailles were not the only obstacle to a lasting resolution of European conflicts in 1919. London and Washington also undermined the chances for peace by quickly turning their backs on Germany and the rest of the continent. Although it was never as isolationist as some have claimed, the United States turned inward soon after the Paris Peace Conference. Congress rejected the Treaty of Versailles and, by extension, the League of Nations. It also failed to ratify the guarantee given to France that the United Kingdomand the United States would come to its defense if Germany attacked. Americans became all the more insular as the calamitous Great Depression hit and their attention focused on their domestic troubles. The United States’ withdrawal encouraged the British—already distracted by troubles brewing in the empire—to renege on their commitment to the guarantee. France, left to itself, attempted to form the new and quarreling states in Central Europe into an anti-German alliance, but its attempts turned out to be as ill-fated as the Maginot Line in the west. One wonders how
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history might have unfolded if London and Washington, instead of turning away, had built a transatlantic alliance with a strong security commitment to France and pushed back against Adolf Hitler’s first aggressive moves while there was still time to stop him. Again, the post1945- world was different from the one that emerged in 1919. The United States, now the world’s leading power, joined the United Nations and the economic institutions set up at Bretton Woods. It also committed itself to the security and reconstruction of western Europe and Japan. Congress approved these initiatives in part because President Franklin Delano Rooseveltmade building the postwar order a bipartisan enterprise—unlike Wilson, who doomed the League of Nations by alienating the Republicans. Wilson’s failure had encouraged the isolationist strain in U.S.foreign policy; Roosevelt, followed by Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, countered and contained that impulse. The specter of communism also did its part by alarming even the isolationists. The establishment of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe, and Soviet rhetoric about the coming struggle against capitalism, persuaded many Americans that they faced a pressing danger that required continued engagement with allies in Europe and Asia. Today’s world is not wholly comparable to the worlds that emerged from the rubble of the two world wars. Yet as the United States once again turns inward and tends only to its immediate interests, it risks ignoring or underestimating the rise of populist dictators and aggressive powers until the hour is dangerously late. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has already violated international rules and norms, most notably in Crimea, and others—such as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or Chinese President Xi Jinping—seem willing to do the same. And as Washington and other democratic powers abdicate their responsibility for the world, smaller powers may abandon their hopes for a peaceful international order and instead submit to the bullies in their neighborhoods. A hundred years on, 1919 and the years that followed still stand as a somber warning. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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FEW COSTS AND PLENTY OF BENEFITS
Pumping iron might inflate not only your muscles, but also your mood, says a study in published in the June issue of JAMA Psychiatry.
The idea that resistance training can help with depression is especially good news because exercise in general has advantages when compared with medication and psychotherapy — today’s first-line treatments for depression. You can exercise for free or with only a small initial investment in some simple equipment. Exercise is also free of side effects, and it’s readily accessible if you do it at home.
The study’s authors came to this conclusion after examining the results of 33 randomized clinical trials involving more than 1,800 people. They found that people with mild to moderate depression who performed resistance training two or more days a week saw “significant” reductions in their symptoms, compared with people who did not. The findings also suggested that resistance exercises may be even more beneficial for those with more severe depressive symptoms. In addition, study authors also found that people got a mood boost from resistance training, regardless of their health status, how often they performed resistance training, and whether or not they actually got stronger as a result of their workouts. The findings seem to support the idea that resistance training — which the study authors defined as exercises designed to increase muscle mass, strength, endurance, and power — can be used to help improve mood, when performed either alone or in combination with other strategies. “If women find that resistance training appeals to them, there is some pretty strong evidence coming from a meta-analysis of almost three dozen randomized trials showing that this is something that can benefit their mood,” says Dr. Olivia Okereke, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Plus, a potential mood boost isn’t the only benefit: exercise of any type can also reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, which, as the study’s authors point out, is the leading cause of death in people suffering from major depressive disorder. “There is a wealth of data showing that regular physical activity can lower the risk for heart disease and diabetes, and is related to better overall health and cognitive aging over time,” says Dr. Okereke. Resistance training, in particular, can also help preserve muscle and bone mass, which begins to dwindle in middle age. “I would put these findings in a larger context of exercise and mood,” Dr. Okereke adds “There have been a number of observational studies, including the Nurses’ Health Study, that show a favorable association between physical activity and lower depression risk.” This includes aerobic exercise and moderate or brisk walking. So, resistance training isn’t the only option when it comes to exercising to combat depression. “Frequent exercise of any type appears helpful for mood,” she says.
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HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? So how much exercise do you need to do to boost your mood? Study authors struggled with this question, because exercise frequency varied among the studies they looked at. They did note, however, that the most common study design among those they examined called for resistance training at least three days a week, so that may be a good benchmark to shoot for, says Dr. Okereke. That amount of exercise has also been shown to bring physical benefits. It’s important to note that this analysis did have some limitations, among them that the authors didn’t know details about medication use, including antidepressants, by the individuals in the 33 studies. They also didn’t have an idea of how sedentary the participants were when they weren’t exercising, says Dr. Okereke. If people were sitting around all day when they weren’t exercising, that might have dampened mood improvements.
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Study authors found that people with mild to moderate depression who performed resistance training two or more days a week saw “significant” reductions in their symptoms “It’s hard to understand the extent to which sedentary behavior may reduce the level of benefit someone might get from resistance exercise,” she says. Even so, the evidence is still strong that exercise — including strength training as well as the often-cited cardio activity — is good for your mental health as well as your body.
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Maya Casabianca: From Regional and Global Fame to a Modest Ending Tel Aviv: Amal Shahada Maya Casabianca, the famous Moroccan-Jewish singer, passed away on December 31 of last year, 44 years on from the death of the love of her life and mentor Farid Al Atrash who passed away on December 1974 ,26, in Beirut. Casabianca was born in Morocco in 1940 and was given the name Margot Elmakayis Azran, she then moved with her family to Israel in 1948. She moved again in the late 1950s to France, where she rose to fame as she became a renowned singer gaining fame in France, Lebanon, Russia and South Africa. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was one of the most successful and popular singers in the world. She was also famous for being one of Fareed Al Atrash’s lovers, and she would not have been upset if that ended up becoming her legacy for she loved Al Atrash and could not love another man after him. After living the extravagant celebrity life in Beirut with Al Atrash, she would settle in a small modest house in Haifa, Israel, where she remained away from all the glitz and glamor. As such, she left this world in a similar manner, celebrating New Year’s Eve with a small number of close friends and loved ones in her modest house. Casabianca was buried in the Tabor Village situated near Mount Tabor, where her only daughter resides. Many artists and singers have not paid tribute to Casabianca and her voice. Not only has her funeral been ignored, but many an artist never even heard of her. Moreover, few news outlets in Israel and around the world reported the singer’s passing, despite the fact that she was known as one of the best singers of her generation. On the day of her passing, her daughter
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wrote: “Today the French-Israeli singer Maya Casabianca passed away, today her life journey came to an end, today her singing voice fell to silence, today her heart stopped beating, today she rose to the heavens while being placed underground, for she now joins with the people of Merom. I am sure that my mother will carry on living, and will keep singing the song of life”. At the age of eight, she moved to Israel with her aunt, while the rest of her family stayed in Morocco. By age 14, she, along with the rest of her family, migrated to Paris, France where she started her musical career. While the exterior of her house in El Naby Street in Haifa can be described as modest the inside of it is anything but. The walls in her house are decorated with photos of her with Farid Al Atrash, her concerts, Al Atrash singing and performing and photos of Lebanese celebrities and politicians.
MAYA AND THE FAMOUS MUSICIAN FARID AL ATRASH When I asked Maya about the Al Atrash’s song “Ya Gamil,
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Casabianca was born in Morocco in 1940 and was given the name Margot Elmakayis Azran, she then moved with her family to Israel in 1948. Ya Gamil, Ya Gamil”, she started to wholeheartedly sing and told me: “Farid Al Atrash wrote this song for me, yes Farid himself!” She then said, “When I was eleven, I was one of his millions of fans; I used to listen to his records while singing and dancing to the songs. My favorite songs of his were “Weyak”, “Benady Alek” and “Ya Zahra Fe Khayaly» as well as others.” Her father used to organize concerts, as such when she was fifteen her father let her sing in one of the concerts he was organizing. At that concert, the president of Phillips Records, Jack Billet, heard her and offered her a recording contract. Her father instantly agreed and she was signed by the record
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label and was given the name, “Maya Casablanca” because it was thought that such a name would garner mass appeal. On October 1960, the president of Phillips organized a Paris concert for Maya in which he invited many artists, singers, actors, art connoisseurs and upper-crust members of society, the attendance of the concert was said to be in the thousands. Casabianca added that she was blown away the number of famous individuals she saw in the audience who came to her first concert, she was especially surprised due to the fact that many of these upper crust individuals came to see a singer who had a modest and in many ways a poor upbringing. Tunisian-German film director Max Berger was in the audience, and at the time he was directing a film starring Farid Al Atrash, as such he brought the musician along with him to the concert. Maya was absolutely flabbergasted when she found out that her idol was going to see her debut, for that reason she made sure that she sang the best she could as to not disappoint her hero. She wanted Farid to be astounded by this young girl who had seemed to come out of nowhere. Luckily she was able to do just that, as not only was Farid impressed, but so were the other celebrities and various VIPs. After the concert, Berger introduced Maya to Farid and he told her: “I wish you the best of luck in this path you decided to take, this path of artistry.” Maya would later say that: “I can’t say it was love at first sight, but my heart intensely
started beating when I saw in front of me the handsome star of the East, whose songs I listened to religiously for hours during my childhood and who I always dreamed of meeting. The man of my dreams was wishing me good luck and at that moment I told myself: “My God, this is too much to take in, the musician who introduced me to the world of music and artistry, was now one of my fans.” Maya would go on to say: “The end of this concert marked a new chapter in my life, as my dressing room was filled with many bouquets from fans, one of which had a card that said: “From your fan, Farid”.
THE RAHBANI BROTHERS, SABAH AND DAMASCUS CASINOS Despite the fact that Maya tasted fame and her songs were appearing across radio stations in France, the Soviet Union, Syria and Lebanon, the thing she treasured most from her short-lived fame was her relationship with Farid Al Atrash. When she was a schoolgirl listening and dancing to his songs, she never imagined that she would someday be sipping wine with the singer, nor would he be passionately kissing her hand. She would write the details of their relationship in her autobiography: “He and I”, which was published in 2001.
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Maya Casabianca
The introduction to this autobiography was as follows: “This is a story about a young girl who was a passionate singer, became famous and spent time with famous and important individuals during the late 60s and early 70s. She also enamored many men with her beauty as many wanted nothing more than to be there by her side, but she could not settle for anyone but the person who has forever stolen her heart, the famous and influential musician Farid Al Atrash�. In the book she spoke of their affair, and aspects of their relationship that were until then, private. On the question of why she never married the man she states in her book that she indeed wanted to marry him and proposed the idea to Farid many times, but he stayed adamant on staying a bachelor. She also insisted that nothing was missing in her life except for a stable marriage with a warm and loving husband. She also wrote about her love for Beirut and its people who showed her love and translated her French songs and sang them, they would even name their newly born girls after her. Maya recorded 320 songs, most of which were composed by Farid Al Atrash, but she has only expressed love for 30 of them saying that they are her best songs. Casabianca had many fans all over the Arab world, especially in Syria and Lebanon. Moreover, many Arab leaders would attend her concerts often sitting in the front row. It should be noted that she achieved this fame while most of her Arab
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Many artists and singers have not paid tribute to Casabianca and her voice, not only has her funeral been ignored, but many an artist never even heard of her. fans thought she was a French Christian woman. She would hold concerts in the biggest hotels in Lebanon and in major casinos across Beirut and Damascus. Fayrouz and her husband, Joseph Shaheen, and the Rahbani Brothers attended one of her concerts in the Morocco Casino in El Hamra Street in Beirut; all these famous people cheered her on and encouraged her to continue her career. Maya also met with Sabah at that concert and both women hit it off instantly. As a matter of fact, both singers once performed together on stage, much to the delight of every audience member. Farid Al Atrash was present at the concert, knowing that she sang beautifully and passionately in French. After the concert, tens of fans went up the stage and hugged her; suddenly a strongly built man pushed away the crazed fans and told her to quickly go to a car waiting for
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her outside. After most of the fans went away he explained that he was under orders from Farid Al Atrash to bring her to him.
HATIKVAH ANTHEM Up until this moment in Maya’s life, most of her Arab audience did not know of her Jewish identity. It was during a concert held in the Soviet Union that she decided to make the big reveal. This concert was one of the biggest of its kind and had USSR leader Brezhnev as one of its spectators. To reveal her identity she decided to sing the Israeli national anthem Hatikvah, which was written by the Jewish Eastern European poet Naftali Herz Imber and literally means “The Hope”. This moment marked another new chapter in her life as word of mouth among Arabs spread on the fact that Maya was not a French Christian, but rather a Jew who migrated from Israel to France. Shortly after the concert, Syrian intelligence started pursuing her but thanks to help from her friends she was able to travel safely from Syria to Lebanon and from
Thanks to help from her friends she was able travel safely from Syria to Lebanon and from there they transferred her to Israel via Cyprus.
there they transferred her to Israel via Cyprus. The aftermath of the Hatikvah concert did not bother Maya as she wished to live the rest of her life and die in Israel. What Maya was afraid of was that she would lose her fame and fans. Her fears came true as she would spend the rest of her career singing in small concerts for small audiences mostly made of Arab Jews coming from Egypt, Libya and Morocco as well as other nations. She had a relationship with Bieber Dawlo, the head of Monte Carlo broadcasting and her agent and together they had one daughter who would be her only child. She never married her agent and lived far from her daughter since she did not want to leave her house in Haifa, which she spent 10 years of childhood. She remained in her Haifa residence until her death and her friends tell us that she spent the rest of her life talking about her love for Farid Al Atrash. Their relationship had to end due to her infamy after the “Hatikvah concert”. The last time she met Farid was during the 1960s before she left Beirut for good, on the morning of their last day together she wrote: “Farid was holding my coat, his hands were shaking but he tried to hide it from me, my hands were also shaking so he reached out to hold them. At that moment I burst out crying, but he dried my tears and said: “This is not the end, but rather the beginning.” He also said: “If I could, I would be by your side forever.” After her relationship with Al Atrash, Maya refused to marry any man who would propose to her. She would also wait for and watch all of Farid’s films on the Arabic TV stations and would bitterly cry whenever he appeared on screen.
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She would also come to miss all the Lebanese stars she met over the years, such as Sabah, Wadih El Safi, Elias El Rahbani and Simon Al Asmar. She also missed Lebanese audiences, who would loudly cheer for her whenever she sang Ave Maria. She sometimes fantasized about going back to Lebanon where she hoped she would be warmly welcomed back by fans. As a matter of fact, sometimes she would think to herself: “Laila Morad was also a Jew, it’s not my fault I was born Jewish.” She had one daughter with her fiancé and agent who she lived with for five years, despite saying that she could not marry anyone after Farid. However, she never came to marry her fiancé saying: “I tried moving on and lived with my fiancé, but after five years the relationship couldn’t work and I left him”. Her life ended like a romantic tragedy, as she died exactly 44 years and 4 days after Farid Al Atrash’s death. Her autobiography ended on with a passage describing the void in her life left by Farid Al Atrash: After Farid’s death my life was filled with nothing but
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Maya recorded 320 songs, most of which were composed by Farid Al Atrash, but she has only expressed love for 30 of them saying that they are her best songs. sadness, am I not destined for a new chapter in my life? A voice inside me keeps telling me to move on and live my life. I will not surrender to despair and dark thoughts, which took over the lives of many artists and musicians before me. I was raised from a young age to have strength and have faith, for my father told me that our lives are a gift from God that can and will be taken away at any moment, so we have to cherish this gift and keep on living. As for my love for Farid, our love is one that transcends life. God has blessed me with many more years of life after him, but when my time comes we will be reunited in the world beyond this one, but for now, he still has to wait.
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Melancholia ad Aegyptum A City That Yearns For Its Aristocratic Past
by Iason Athanasiadis It is an early spring morning in Alexandria's waterfront Ramla Square and a distinguished-looking man—neither local nor fully foreign in his appearance—sits at one of the tables of Délices, a fabled patisserie facing the historic Cecil Hotel that was a hangout for Alexandria's beau-monde in the city's cosmopolitan years. The man orders in native, Egyptian-accented Arabic, glances at the newspaper's front page, then pulls out a cell phone and exchanges a few sentences in Greek with an unseen interlocutor. The incident would have been entirely unremarkable in the decades when multicultural Alexandria pulsed to a melting-pot beat largely shaped by its Greek community. But the foreign
residents departed in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Crisis and nationalizations ordered by socialist Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The most recent turmoil—started in 2011 and still ongoing—stripped the city's public spaces of their remaining foreign element: tourists. Now, spotting a foreigner, much more a Greek, elicits the kind of thrill more often associated with encountering a pride of lions while on safari.
A WRITER IN EXILE The mystery man turns out to be George Kypraios, a novelist and former resident of a city that no longer exists. Alexandria's urban structures are mostly still standing, but its boulevards,
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belle époque buildings, churches and synagogues have long been closed. Alexandria: End of an Era (2010) is Kypraios's Greeklanguage paean to the city he grew up in which now exists only in the memories of those who whiled away their childhood in its streets when it was still an extraordinary ethnic mélange. His book, like the equally fascinating Voices From Cosmopolitan Alexandria (2012), is an effort to commit fleeting memories of the city to paper. Ιn the 1990s, Kypraios would split his time equally between Alexandria, Athens, and his wife's native France. But the post-revolutionary turbulence only compounded the city's demographic and social decline. According to municipal figures, 27,000 new buildings went up in just the past three years, the
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majority illegal brick high-rises often erected in the spaces formerly occupied by historic apartment blocks and villas. Old, unprofitable buildings were gutted at night by men employed by underground construction mafias, even though some were on protected monument lists. Harassed by aggressive neighbors and disturbed by the disconcerting pace of change, Kypraios now spends barely two months a year in Alexandria. When he does visit, he seldom leaves his high-ceilinged belleépoque apartment off the once-chic Rue Fouad and limits his excursions to coffee at the Délices and dinner at the lesserknown of the city's two Greek clubs: not the expensive restaurant commanding a stunning view of the curving bay favored by the city's Egyptian neo-elites and tourists, but the gloomy hall
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in the Greek Quadrangle area whose jealously-guarded door is opened only for members of Alexandria's dwindling Greek community. Inside, mezze and bottles of whisky decorate every table and regulars nod at each other, or—as befits an ossified minority where decades-long vendettas fester in a cabin-fever environment—studiously ignore the other's presence.
LAST ENCLAVES, LINGERING VILLAS Clubs such as the Greek and the Sporting are some of the last enclaves of the Levantine society that once dominated the city's public life. Today they are inhabited by septuagenarian remnants of that time, reminiscing over how things once were, while watching playing grandchildren and attendant daughters. When they get up to leave, their frail forms are swallowed by the city's swirling traffic and the towering high-rises that multiply with each passing year. Their cars drive past the occasional Rococo villa sheltering in the shadow of the apartment blocks. With the land those buildings occupy worth its weight in gold, they are unlikely to witness much more of the twenty-first century. Earlier this month, the Villa Aghion—a 1920s modernist gem built by Auguste Perret, an architect with UNESCO World Heritage Site awards to his name—was removed from the list of historical buildings and demolished. "Fewer and fewer of the villas remain," said an old member of the Greek community who remained in Alexandria after the majority of his relatives left. "Even if one's own villa is not wrecked, just being overshadowed by high buildings strips away any kind of privacy or pleasure in continuing to live in it." In the narrow streets of bustling Attarine, once known as the Foreigners' District, Italians would rub shoulders with Greeks, Jews, Armenians and Tsarist exiles. Today, the neighborhood is famous for its antique shops selling off mementoes of the past. Sometimes, that same past carefully displayed on shop fronts or piled up in dark interiors spills over into the present, such as in the lanes rendered impassable by piles of old wooden doors, carved windows, mashrabiya lattices and balcony railings, all looted from Alexandria's collapsing apartments.
SHIRAX AND THE SPITFIRE BAR I am searching for the small, aluminum cigarette boxes etched with exotic scenes of waifish Oriental women surrounding the Sphinx from 1940s Egypt and stamped with the names of long-defunct Greek tobacco manufacturers. At an antique shop named Shiraz, the attendant calls the owner to inform him he has customers. A middle-aged man resembling a plumper version of the Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy walks through the door of his shop and benignly sizes me up from behind round spectacles.
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An overview of Mohammed Ali Square in Alexandria, Egypt. (Getty)
Joseph Sednaoui is descended from a renowned Syrian family that emigrated to Alexandria in the late nineteenth century. He stayed behind when most of the minorities and shuwwam (Levantine Arab immigrants to Alexandria) left because "I had my routines, my friends and my hangouts to which I still go. What reason is there to leave?" One of Sednaoui's favorite watering holes is the historic Spitfire Bar. An Alexandrian institution tucked away on the ground floor of a building fronting onto a small square, the small bar's rooms are illuminated by red fluorescent lights, festooned in English and Scottish flags and filled with the sounds of 1980s pop and
disco. It was opened by a Greek in 1883 and is still a center for the city's intellectuals and dropouts. Rumors that the bar is about to become another one of modernizing Alexandria's casualties are only half true: Ali, the owner, is looking to sell, but his asking price of 2.5 million Egyptian pounds (approximately 360,000 US dollars) renders the prospect of a purchase optimistic at best. That's just as well, because the kind of Egyptian who frequents the Spitfire—a place that veritably exudes alcohol fumes— is a breed at risk of extinction. While less daring intellectuals squeeze into the Cafe De La Paix alongside cohorts of hairgelled/ headscarved couples, the Spitfire's tables are frequented by longhaired, bespectacled artists leading European foreign-language teachers and employees of the city's cultural centers through the waters of an unfamiliar culture.
MANSHEYA AND A FLAT FROZEN IN TIME A few minutes' walk from the Spitfire through crowded streetmarkets brings me to Mansheya, once Alexandria's most exclusive central square, and still surrounded by the imposing buildings once inhabited by powerful Western consulates, the first Bourse in the Middle East, and several high-powered businesses such as the Magasins Hannaux department store. Tonight, like most nights, the area is flooded by a tidal wave of humanity sweeping across its mud-spattered memory of a park, pausing to examine the clothes on sale from street vendors, and sidestepping glue-sniffing kids sunk in torpid reveries. Yesteryear's socially stratified crowds divided themselves into Europeans-by-birth, Europeans-by-protection (the shuwwam
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community who often purchased the privileges afforded by a European passport), and the indigenous Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities as they marched up and down that same square in a bourgeois spectacle. Past stalled traffic and street hawkers competing with each other, a jump into the entrails of a once-magnificent commercial complex offers a glimpse into the past. Shops, cafes and a babel of commotion burst from its peeling, scarred galleries and arcades. A staircase winds up to a high-ceilinged apartment currently under renovation. These were the offices of Behna Films, once the Arab world's largest movie production company and distributor. Gudran, the youth collective currently renovating the apartment, point out that Egypt was the location of only the second-ever film screening in history, during a visit by the Lumière Brothers, whose proto-
cameras needed strong light sources in order to register moving images. The impossibly high-ceilinged apartment with its intact library and period cinema cameras resembled a time capsule when it was first reopened. Now it's being revitalized to act as a cultural center and workshop for filmmakers, photographers and researchers in visual art. Once completed, Behna Film's archive of scripts, old camera reels and equipment will remain
Past stalled traffic and street hawkers competing with each other, a jump into the entrails of a oncemagnificent commercial complex offers a glimpse into the past. 46
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An aerial view of buildings and a harbor in Alexandria, Egypt in 1948. (Getty)
as polished memories of a glorious past. At a time when local construction companies such as Stanly Group are demolishing waystations in Alexandria's visual history such as Egypt's first modern cinema, the Rialto, and replacing them with malls and luxury hotels, Gudran are saving one of the forgotten shards of the city's past while demonstrating another way of repurposing Alexandria's empty old buildings.
CITY OF MEMORIES Back at the Délices Café, Kypraios is describing what it was like to grow up in a city that once personified Gilded Age frivolity. The son of a Greek Leftist, he didn't participate in the giddy social scene. His father schemed with Greek novelist and leftist Stratis Tsirkas and others over how to resist the English presence in Egypt, led a sailors' revolt for greater workers' rights during the Second World War, and went into self-imposed exile first to Moscow and then Tashkent, where he died unmemorialized behind the Iron Curtain in the 1960s. Kypraios was left with memories and an unbreakable bond to Alexandria. Today, he appears to inhabit a city of memories frozen sometime in the mid1950-s. When referring to the club where Tsirkas and his father would meet, and which became the title of the first book in Tsirkas' acclaimed Drifting Cities trilogy—still considered a more realistic rendering of wartime Alexandria than Lawrence Durrell's colonial-accented Alexandria Quartet—he casually
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In the narrow streets of bustling Attarine, once known as the Foreigners' District, Italians would rub shoulders with Greeks, Jews, Armenians and Tsarist exiles. waves a hand down the street as if the leftist comrades were just about to break from a secret meeting for coffee. And when he refers to the street on which his apartment is on, it is by its old Greek name, even though that name was replaced by an Egyptian one over half a century ago. Perhaps in a twenty-first century Alexandria gripped by rapid change, inhabiting melancholy shadows is preferable to encountering reality. "Alexandria was always my Ithaca," said Kypraios, alluding to Cavafy's most famous poem. "I wrote [my book] because speech is lost but writing remains.” *Iason Athanasiadis is a writer, photographer and documentary film producer based between Istanbul and Tripoli, Libya. He studied Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford University, and Persian and Contemporary Iranian Studies at Tehran's School of International Studies.