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Friday, May 9, 2008
3:25:53 PM EDT
Feeling Quiet
America’s Dilemma in Iraq
The Bush administration wanted a secular democratic Iraq, where the rule of law reigns supreme, with a market-driven economy closely linked to US corporations and investors, flowing with abundant crude oil, supportive of US policies, welcoming to permanent American military bases, a strong ally in “War on Terror,” and friendly to Israel. They dreamed of Iraq as a beacon of democracy for the Arab world to emulate.
Five years later, the opposite was achieved. A theocratic dictatorship allied to Iran complete with an Islamist constitution tinged with a wilayat al-faqih (rulership of the senior-most Shiite cleric) odor replaced the Arab world’s most secular regime. From the Abu Ghraib Prison, the image of American decency and fair play was shattered. From the devastated Anbar, Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul, Najaf, Ramadi, Samarra, Tikrit, and Tal-Afar, with thousands upon thousands of innocent children, women, and men killed and maimed, in addition to the more than four million displaced Iraqis, Arab and Muslim enmity to American policies, sadly, has deepened to a frightening level.
In the process more than 4,000 American soldiers were killed, 30,000 injured, US$500 billion spent, possibly three times as much in terms of economic cost. These figures turned out to be considerably higher than the prewar forecasts. Less than six months before the war, the White House’s budget director put the monetary cost at US$50-$60 billion. In early January 2003, a few weeks before the invasion, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the number at under $50 billion. "How much of that would be the US’s burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question," Rumsfeld said. Not only were the financial forecasts wildly off, the US Central Command’s war plan postulated in August 2002 that the United States would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq by December 2006, a far cry from the 141,000 US military personnel on the ground in Iraq at the end of December 2006. In Iraq, “America is living a nightmare with no end in sight” warned the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, retired general Ricardo Sanchez in October 2007.
Why was the Iraq project undertaken? The simple answer is that the benefits from the project were perceived to outweigh its cost. Groups with different agendas pushed for the removal of Saddam’s regime and the occupation of Iraq in the name of serving the best interest of the United States, but in reality each serving its own parochial interest. All these parties contributed to administering a sugarcoated bitter pill to the American people.
Leading the charge were the oil men who wanted to control Iraq’s 113 billion barrels in proven reserves and later go after Iran’s 90 billion barrels; the chiefs of the military-industrial complex who were tantalized by new opportunities to sell expensive arms systems and gain huge contracts to reconstruct war-ravaged infrastructure; Israel’s lobbyists who sought to demolish Iraq’s fighting capabilities and later those of Iran and Syria; the Christian evangelicals who fantasize over speeding up the return of Christ; the neo-con ideologues who found in the War on Terror a replacement for the Cold War; and Tehran’s cunning Iraqi moles who were bent on luring the US not only to hand them the keys to Baghdad but also hand Tehran control of the predominantly Shi’ite southern Iraq.
Notable among those Iraqis was Ahmad Chalabi. Befriending many of the men in the highest offices of the Bush administration, Chalabi provided what later proved to be false information regarding Iraq’s WMDs. In the Spring of 2004, rumors circulated in Washington that Chalabi had been duping the Americans all along while spying for Iran. With the approval and funding from Washington, Chalabi had maintained an office in Iran.
Abdulaziz Al-Hakeem is the head of the Badr Brigade, a militia financed, trained, and equipped by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which fought on the side of Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). He and his older brother, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir, fled to Iran in 1980. As Baghdad fell in April 2003, Abdulaziz was appointed to the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Hakeem was assassinated in Najaf in August 2003. Iran declared three days of official mourning following his assassination.
The senior leaders of the Islamic Daawa Party are closely linked to Tehran as well. Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, spent twenty years in exile in Iran. He became Iraq’s transitional prime minister in April 2005. Nouri Al-Maliki succeeded Al-Jaafari in April 2006 as Iraq’s first full-term prime minister. Al-Maliki, a hard-line activist, spent two decades in exile in Iran and Syria.
Five years after the occupation, Washington finds itself in an untenable position. Staying means facing four fronts: a nationalist war of liberation, a Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian war, a Shi’ite-Shi’ite turf war, and a war against Al-Qaeda. The cost of staying is high, especially when it is to protect anti-American ayatollahs and Iraqi politicians linked to Tehran. However, as the cost of the war mounts, the United States will sooner or later withdraw. When this happens, Iraq will be left as a broken country, plagued by civil war—a haven for gangsters and terrorists. The United States will leave behind a Middle East rife with Shi’ite-Sunni conflicts, spilling rivers of blood, breeding battalions of hardened terrorists, until Iraq’s Sunnis and the Sunni majorities in the neighboring countries manage to either halt the march of Shi’ism or accept Iran’s hegemony.
The paradox between the fantasy and the reality is astounding.
How did such a situation develop? Why did the actual cost of the occupation turn out to be so drastically greater than planned?
The explanation is that Iraqis in their millions did not turn out to welcome America’s soldiers with roses, as Washington’s Iraqi “friends” had promised. In naming Iran as a member of the “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, a few weeks before the invasion President Bush made US plans towards Iran clear, regime change. Rather than wait for America’s onslaught on Iran, America became bogged down in Iraq.
The lack of knowledge by the Bush administration’s war managers about Arab history, Islam, Sunnism, Shi’ism, Arab social and cultural subtleties and the makeup and dynamics of Iraq, or other Arab religio-ethnic structures. Many of the administration’s “experts” had never visited Iraq or any Arab country before the occupation, let alone studied Arabic, or read the Quran, or deliberated its message from an Arab or Muslim perspective. Most of these “experts” do not speak Arabic. They had little or no contact with Arabs, Arabic food, Arabic music, or the Arab way of life, save for a life-long indoctrination from anti-Arab and anti-Islam rhetoric in Hollywood movies or hostile and prejudiced Madison Avenue prototypes of Arabs and Muslims as dirty, nasty, violent, and nefarious beings.
This ignorance was also behind the wishful thinking, or the mistaken belief that the Arab masses everywhere would want to copy the Iraqi nirvana. These experts failed to foresee that the masses would regard the American occupation as an anti-Islam colonial adventure. These “experts” could have never imagined that the Quran may be transformed into a weapon against occupation.
An additional factor is the arrogance of power, the feeling of self-righteousness stemming from the belief that superior force can suppress resistance, and that the Arab people understand only the language of force. The natural outcome of such a mindset is escalating violence, especially when martyrdom-seeking jihadists are at the receiving end.
Former president George Bush (Sr.) and Brent Scowcroft wrote on why the first Bush administration decided against occupying Iraq in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome.”
In March 1991, when he was defense secretary, Dick Cheney toed his superiors’ line. He said on ABC-TV, in answer to a question as to why US forces did not go to Baghdad to remove Saddam Hussein from power: “I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shi’ite government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular, along the lines of the Baath party? Would it be fundamentalist Islamic. I do not think the United States wants to have US military forces accept casualties and accept responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. It makes no sense at all.”
To pretend that the failures are only tactical in an otherwise sound strategy is to put on a brave face with a brazen political spin. To blame the failures on Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian divisions or on the meddling of neighbors is to run away from responsibility. Was it not the American occupation that released these demons in the first place? History will remember Iraq as Mr. Bush’s gift to Iran, a strategic blunder of gigantic proportions. The followers of Shi’ism will be forever grateful. Arab Sunnis will never forget or forgive.
As for those former officials of the Bush administration who were relentless in their eagerness for the war and who later found it convenient to blame the failures on the Bush administration’s mismanagement, such finger pointing is morally deficient. Two leading neo-cons, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, attacked the Bush team in Vanity Fair Magazine (November 3, 2006). Both had been senior defense department officials and members of a Pentagon advisory board. Both had argued vociferously for war in Iraq. Richard Perle declared that had he known how it would turn out, he would have been against it. “I think now I probably would have said, ‘No, let’s consider other strategies.’” Kenneth Adelman said, “They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era . . . Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.” Donald Rumsfeld “fooled me,” Adelman added.
In a speech in October 2007 the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, retired general Ricardo Sanchez labeled US political leaders as “incompetent” and “corrupted” and declared that they would have faced courts martial for dereliction of duty had they been in the military.
Written by eeh100
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Thursday, March 6, 2008
12:51:25 PM EST
Feeling Hopeful
A Turkish Martin Luther?!
The BBC reported on February 26, 2008 that Turkey's Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University's School of Theology to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet. An adviser to the project says some of the sayings can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society (BBC, February 26, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7264903.stm).
Turkey, yet again takes the lead in trying to usher the Muslim world into the modern age. However, the challenge ahead is formidable. Accusations of heresy and apostasy will be flying around by Islamist extremists and their political benefactors, especially from the Arab world. The following explains the nature of the controversy and the reasons for my cautious and guarded optimism.
Elevating the Prophet’s way of life (Sunna) to a source of law equal to the Quran
Following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, the caliphs were faced with different conditions in the conquered lands of Roman Syria, Iraq, and Egypt and of Persia from what Quranic law has prescribed for the desert Arabians. Of the 6,236 Quranic verses, less than 10% deal with legislative matters, primarily marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The rest deal with theological matters.
By the end of the ninth century the Ulama (religious scholars) succeeded in enshrining the Sunna Traditions of the Prophet, His sayings (Hadith) and actions (Sira) as a source of law equal to God’s word in the infallible Quran; notwithstanding, that the Quran never made the Sunna a source of law and despite God’s attestation that the Quran contains every thing mankind needs to know. The basis for elevating the Sunna was the belief that it was a manifestation of God’s will, a guide on matters on which the Quran was silent.
Incorporating the attributed sayings and actions of the Prophet into the Islamic Sharia made the Prophet more than the deliverer of God’s message. He became the exemplar for the Muslim to emulate faithfully. In so doing the coverage of Quranic law was expanded; thrusting the Ulama into the tiniest details of Muslims’ daily lives. For example, Ahmad Bin Hanbal (d. 855), founder of theorthodox Hanbalite School of jurisprudence, “is alleged never to have eaten watermelon because he was not in possession of any Prophetic precedent on the subject” (Coulson, A History of Islamic Law, 1999, 71).
Hundreds of thousands of often contradictory and blatantly partisan traditions in favor or against every imaginable thing affecting the individual, the family, the tribe, the city, the mosque, religious rituals, personal conduct, personal hygiene, business affairs, etc., were put to the mouth of the Prophet by thousands of sometimes dubious transmitters. Each transmitter claimed that he had been told by x, that y had told him, that z had told him, that f had told him, etc., claiming the Prophet had said this or done that.
We are told that leading scholars diligently verified the authenticity of every word of every attribution and the integrity of every attributer into every chain of attributions. Eventually, a few thousand traditions were accepted as authentic, with six collections elevated to canonical rank by Sunni Muslims.
The most revered and authoritative collection is that of Muhammad Bin Ismail Al-Bukhari (d. 870). Al-Bukhari selected out of 600,000 traditions he collected from 1,000 sheikhs in the course of 16 years of travel and labor in Persia, Iraq, Syria, Hijaz and Egypt 7,400 traditions (Hitti, History of the Arabs, 1970, 39). His book, titled Sahih Al-Bukhari (Sahih means correct or sound), is classified according to some 100 subject matters. Al-Bukhari’s collection is considered by most Sunni scholars second only to the Quran in authenticity. A close second in importance is the collection of Muslim Bin Al-Hajjaj (d. 875) of Naysabur, Iran with 7,600 traditions. The other four collections are those of Ibn Maja (d. 886); with 4,300 traditions, Abi Dawood (d. 888); with 5,300 traditions, Al-Tirmithi (d. 892); with 4,000 traditions, and Al-Nasai (d. 915); with 5,800 traditions. Repetitiveness exists in the collections individually and among each other.
The challenge
Notwithstanding the reported integrity of the collectors and the care that they must have taken to ensure the credibility of the thousands of attributers and the authenticity of the hundreds of thousands of Prophetic traditions that grew over more than 200 years, it remains impossible to know with absolute certainty whether every word and comma in every attribution by every memorizer was perfectly authentic and reliable and in the true chronological order in which the Prophet had announced and acted. What is known, however, is that during the first two-and-a-half centuries following the death of the Prophet, the generations of Hadith attributers and collectors were witnesses to momentous doctrinal, legal, and political conflicts. Aside from the great Arab conquests, which established one of the world’s largest empires in a relatively short time, major intra-Muslim conflicts erupted during that era. There were four civil wars, seven state capital cities, and numerous violent political and religious rebellions. These events spilled rivers of blood and divided the nascent Islamic nation into many factions and sects. Under such circumstances, it is fair to say that some attributers, not to mention the collectors, had financial, political, career and other personal interest in the outcome, or they might have simply forgotten what was said or heard.
The first Muslim civil war was from 656 to 661 between Ali (the fourth Caliph) and Muawiyah (the fifth Caliph and founder of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus). The second civil war (680-692) was during the reigns of Muawiyha’s four successors against another claimant of the Caliphate, Abdullah Bin Al-Zubair, who in 683 was recognized as a rival Caliph to the Umayyads in parts of Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, until he was killed at Mecca in 692. The third civil war culminated in 750 with the destruction of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus and the advent of the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad. The fourth civil war (811-813) was between Al-Amin and Al-Mamoun, the two sons of the famed Caliph, Haroun Al-Rashid (786-809). Eventually, the former was killed and Al-Mamoun reigned from 813 to 833. Additionally, there was the cataclysmic event in 680 that eventually shook the foundations of Islam and caused a permanent split between Shiites and Sunnis to this very day: namely, the rebellion and the resulting killing of Imam Hussain Bin Ali at Karbala, Iraq.
The first capital of the Muslim State was Medina, the Prophet’s adopted city, in which He took refuge to escape the persecution of the Meccans in 622. Medina remained the capital during the rule of the first three Caliphs (632-656). In 656, Ali, the fourth Caliph, made Kufa, Iraq his base. Muawiyah (the fifth Caliph) made Damascus his capital in 661. Damascus remained the capital of the Umayyad dynasty’s fourteen Caliphs until the Abbasids destroyed the Umayyads Caliphate in 750. The Abbasids moved the capital to Iraq, transitionally to Al-Hashimiyyah before Baghdad was built, starting in 762. In 836, the eighth Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mu’tasim (833-842), moved the capital to Samarra (a short distance north of Baghdad on the Tigris River). The sixteenth Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mu’tadid (892-902), moved the seat of government back to Baghdad in 892. Meanwhile, Cordova became in 756 the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate in Spain, rivaling and eventually outlasting the Abbasids in Baghdad.
To uncover the truthfulness of hundreds of thousands of Prophetic sayings and actions, which supposedly had occurred ten generations earlier, must have been a daunting task. The monumental size, the old age, and the great significance of the issues involved raise questions regarding the genuineness of some of the Traditions.
To put this challenge into perspective, the assertion that Al-Bukhari (810-870) examined 600,000 traditions means that, even if he had spent forty years of his sixty-year life exclusively on the one and only task of compiling the Sahih, working 14-hour a day without taking a vacation, a sick day, or working on anything else; be it to earn a living or compose other books, he would have had to investigate an average of more than forty traditions every single day, or one tradition every 20 minutes. But, Al-Bukhari wrote 21 books in addition to the Sahih. If we take Professor Hitti’s statement that Al-Bukhari spent 16 years of travel and labor in order to produce his Sahih, then he would have had to investigate the provenance of an average of 103 traditions every single day; or, a tradition every 8 minutes. In addition to confirming the exact text of every Hadith, Al-Bukhari had to ensure the personal integrity of the thousands of attributers over ten generations who reported the Prophet’s sayings and actions. Even if the number of the Traditions involved were half as many; or one tenth, the likelihood that every Tradition in Sahih Al-Bukhari is perfectly authentic requires a great act of faith to accept. Was Al-Bukhari aided by assistants? The answer is unlikely. The nature of the task was such that Al-Bukhari alone could have judged the integrity of the attributer(s).
The volume of traditions attributed to some memorizers is bewildering. “Abu-Huraira, a companion of the Prophet . . . and a most zealous propagator of His words and deeds, reputedly transmitted some 5,374 Hadiths . . . Aisha transmitted 2,210 traditions, Anas Bin Malik; 2,286, and Abdullah, the son the second Caliph, Omar Bin Al-Khattab; 1,630” (Ibid., 394). Other transmitters with large volumes of attributed traditions include: Ibn Abbas; with 1,710, Jabir Bin Abdullah; 1,540, Abu Saiid Al-Khudari; 1170, Ibn Masud; 748, the second Caliph Omar; 537, and the fourth Caliph Ali; 536 (Azami, Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature, 1977, 26-27). Some of these figures are in dispute. Less than fifty years earlier, one scholar, Ghundar Bin Jaafar (d. 808) “alleged to have said that Bin Abbas did not hear more than nine traditions from the Prophet, while Yahya Bin Saiid Al-Qattan (d. 813) believed this figure to be ten” (Juynboll, 1983. Muslim tradition. Studies in chronology, provenance and authorship of early Hadith, 1983, 29). Al-Ghazali “maintained that Ibn Abbas heard no more than four traditions from Muhammad” (ibid.). Whether these disputations are true or false, whether the Prophet’s teenager wife Aisha, who when the Prophet died was 18 years of age, possibly 15 years, could have remembered accurately all 2,200 traditions is impossible to tell.
Additionally, the six canonical collectors lived under Abbasid rule during the turbulent decades of the 800s. The Abbasid Hadith transmitters, upon whom the six collectors relied, were in turn reliant on transmitters who had lived for almost one hundred years under the rule the Abbasids’ great nemesis, the Umayyads (661-750). Abbasid politics and fervent hatred of the Umayyads could have played a role in choosing or ignoring attributers, as well as altering certain attributions considered pro-Umayyad.
To add to the controversy, Shi’a Muslims disregard the Sunni Hadith collections. They have their own. Shi’a collections differ from the Sunni collections in that they emphasize the Prophet’s naming of Ali as his first successor, a claim disputed by the Sunnis. Also, while the Sunnis record the sayings and actions of the Prophet, the Twelver Shiites, the great majority of the Shiites today, record the sayings and actions of not only the Prophet but also those of the twelve Imams. Additionally, for a tradition to be credible it must be transmitted through one of the Imams. Shi’a Muslims denounce the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr (632-634), Omar (634-644), and Uthman (644-656) as usurpers of the caliphate from Ali (656-661). Shiites do not consider Abu Bakr, Omar, or Uthman, along with the Prophet’s companions who supported these Caliphs, as reliable transmitters of traditions. Sunnis, on the other hand, revere the first three Caliphs and their supporters, as well as Ali.
The Indian Islamic thinker Muhammad Ashraf observed that it is curious that no caliph or companion found the need to collect and write down the Hadith traditions for more than two centuries after the death of the Prophet (Guillaume, Islam, 1990, 165). Ignaz Goldziher concludes “it is not surprising that, among the hotly debated controversial issues of Islam, whether political or doctrinal, there is none in which the champions of the various views are unable to cite a number of traditions, all equipped with imposing Isnads” [supporting references] (Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 1890, Vol. II., 44). John Burton observes: “The ascription of mutually irreconcilable sayings to several contemporaries of the Prophet, or of wholly incompatible declarations to one and the same contemporary, together strain the belief of the modern reader in the authenticity of the reports as a whole” (Burton, An introduction to the Hadith, 1994, xi). Leaders of Turkey’s Hadith project say successive generations have embellished the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad (BBC, February 26, 2008).
The prospects for success
Is Turkey’s undertaking likely to succeed? Among moderate Muslims, the answer is in the affirmative. However, among the orthodox, especially among the Arab orthodox, the answer is negative. Arabs feel that they are the guardians of an Arabic religion. The Quran describes the Arab peoples as the “best people evolved to mankind” (3:110). The Prophet, His companions, the Quran, and the Sanctuaries in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem are all Arabic.
In the early 1920s, while the Turks acted as if the long decline and the destruction of their empire in the aftermath of the First World War could be blamed on a rigid Islam in a world of secular European modernity, the Arabs acted as if Islam would be their path back to greatness. While Kemal Ataturk was energetically secularizing the Turkish state, Egyptians responded by establishing in 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Wahhabism succeeded in ruling Saudi Arabia. Since that time, political frustrations at home and from abroad, particularly Israel’s occupation and humiliation plus U.S. support of Israel and Arab tyrants have had the effect of drawing the Arab masses closer to Islam, turning many among the moderates into orthodoxy.
Arab rulers, too, would undermine Turkey’s attempt at revising the Hadith or allowing reason into religious dogma. In Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism legitimizes the Al-Saud rule. In other Arab monarchies and republics, Islam prolongs the hold of Arab kings and presidents on power. Reforming Islam, the rulers fear, would lead to representative governance and accountability. Keeping the masses intoxicated with age-old religious dogma, on the other hand, means obedience to non-representative despots. In 4:59, the Quran orders: “Obey God and obey God’s messenger and obey those of authority among you.” The Prophet has also reportedly said: “Hear and obey the emir, even if your back is whipped and your property is taken; hear and obey.” Pandering Ulama to Arab kings and presidents preach that obedience to Muslim rulers is a form of piety. Belief in predestination helps the Ulama's indoctrination along. It makes tyrannical rulers seem as if they were ordained by God’s will. Armed with Prophetic attributions against innovation, the Ulama condemn any attempt that might compromise the reign of their benefactors as sinful heretical innovation. The Prophet reportedly said: “Beware of innovation, for every innovation is heresy, and every heresy leads to hell.”
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
4:14:14 AM EST
Feeling Quiet
From Dust to Dust; or, Greening the Saudi Desert
Over the millennia, arid conditions prevented the development of settled agricultural communities of any size in the Arabian Desert. Since the early 1980s, however, Saudi Arabia spent enormous amounts of money and exhausted massive volumes of water from mainly nonrenewable aquifers ostensibly on achieving food self-sufficiency. On January 8, 2008, the Saudi government abandoned its food independence strategy and decided instead to import the country’s entire wheat needs by 2016. This article examines the events that led to the old and the new strategies and the lessons that may be drawn from a politically determined economic and ecological policy with negative tendencies of a poorly informed elite enjoying rentier economic circumstances.
A roller coaster performance
Farming is alien to the desert habitat and the culture of its peoples. Scant rainfall of 70-100 mm per annum constrained Saudi food production and population growth. Until recent decades, little or no groundwater was extracted because pumping technology was not available.
Having almost no expertise in settled farming, Saudi investors were induced by huge government subsidies to import the technology and the farm workers. Wheat growing was emphasized. Between 1980 and 1992, wheat production grew by 29 folds; from 142,000 tons to 4.1 million tons; making the Saudi desert the world’s sixth-largest wheat exporting country. Such quantity was greater than the self-sufficiency requirement of a country of 17 millions in population; or, its storage capacity of 2.38 million tons.
To achieve this big growth, the wheat-producing areas were increased by 857,000 hectares; or by 14 folds, from 67,000 hectares in 1980 to 924,000 hectares in 1992.
Starting in 1993, however, under pressures from low oil prices since the second half of the 1980s, from heavy spending on defense and security, from the cost of the Iran/Iraq War (1980-1988), from the cost of the 1991 Gulf War, and from the cost of maintaining the expensive lifestyle of some 4,000 immediate members of the Al-Saud ruling family the government had to scale down its wheat-growing subsidy program. On defense and security between 1981-1993, Saudi Arabia spent a total of US$225 billions out of US$420 billions in total oil revenues. On the 1991 Gulf war, it spent US$80 billions, and on the Iran/Iraq War, it spent US$25.7 billions. The ruling family is estimated to have cost US$4 billions per annum during the 1980. All this spending happened while Saudi budget deficits were at their height, adding up to US$130 billion between 1984 and 1992.
By the end of 1996, 76% of the new wheat growing surface added between 1980 and 1992 were abandoned, 650,000 hectares out of the 857,000 hectares. Wheat production dropped during the same period by 70%, from 4.1 million tons to 1.2 million tons. By 2005, however, wheat production increased to 2.65 million tons. On January 8, 2008, Reuters and other news agencies reported that starting this year purchases of wheat from local farmers would be reduced by 12.5%, with the aim of relying entirely on imports by 2016.
This dramatic rise and the equally dramatic fall of Saudi Arabia’s cereal production, reflect haphazard planning. The experience proved merely that throwing money to import the expertise and the machinery to extract mammoth volumes of water could make even a desert bloom, until either the money or the water runs out. No accounting, however, has ever detailed the full cost of this adventure in terms of money or water.
The financial cost
For the sixteen years between 1984 and 2000, it may be estimated that the assessable cost of Saudi agricultural development may be put at about US$85 billions, representing 18% of the country’s US$485 billions in revenues from oil exports during the period. This huge investment produced wheat at an average cost of more than US$500 per ton. During the same period, the international market price for wheat averaged about US$120 per ton. When the waste resulting from abandoning the newly reclaimed and irrigated lands plus four un-quantified government subsidies are added the cost might more than double. The first un-quantified subsidy is government’s price support to electricity and fuel, from which the farmers benefited. The second is the value of the concessionary borrowing terms on a total of US$9 billions granted to 394,000 loans by Saudi Agricultural Bank by 2000. The third is the value of 1.67 million hectares of government land given away between 1980 and 1992 under the 1968 Regulation for Fallow Land distribution, and which was used in farming. The fourth is the cost of the bureaucracy that the Saudi government had to employ in order to administer the new agricultural schemes.
The water cost
If money has become of late of no concern in Saudi Arabia, water ought to have been. In the searing desert sun, the water needed to irrigate a hectare of land is twice to three times the volume needed to grow the same produce under temperate conditions. Between 1980 and 1999, a gargantuan volume of water—300 billion cubic meters (m3), the equivalent to six years flow of the Nile River into Egypt—was used in Saudi Arabia’s agricultural adventure. Two-thirds of the water thus used is regarded as nonrenewable, according to estimates by the Ministry of Agriculture and Water (MAW). At this rate, it does not take a genius to predict that regardless of how vast Saudi nonrenewable water reserves might have been they will sooner or later be depleted if the extraction does not stop.
That the 1993 scaling down in subsidies was designed to conserve water cannot be supported by the facts. Despite the dramatic drop in cereal production, agricultural water use remained strong. Between 1994 and 2005, while the overall irrigated surface declined by 31%, from 1.596 million hectares to 1.107 million hectares water used in irrigation was reduced by 13% only, from 20 billion m3 to 17 billion m3. Furthermore, between 1990 and 1994, average agricultural water use was 12,225 m3 per hectare. Over the next five years, agricultural water use increased to an average of 15,230 m3 per hectare. In 2005, the average climbed to 15,760 m3 per hectare.
The rather marginal decline in agricultural water use between 1994 and 2005 and the persistent rise in the per hectare use of water was due to the fact that most of the water saved from growing less cereals was used to increase the growing of produce that requires greater volumes of water to grow than cereals; such as, animals, animal products, fruits, and alfalfa. Generally, one thousand tons of water (1,000 m3) is needed to produce a ton of wheat and 16,000 m3 of water is needed to produce a ton of red meat. Alfalfa requires six times as much water to grow as wheat. 5,000 tons of water is needed to produce a ton of chicken.
Saudi exports of virtual water
Saudi Arabia not only increased the production of high water using foodstuffs for domestic consumption, but it also has been exporting to neighboring city-states animals, animal products, vegetables, animal and vegetable fats and oils, beverages, and other high water using agro-commodities, though the export of alfalfa was stopped in 2000.
Foodstuffs are an encapsulation of water. Food is virtual water. Saudi food exports are synonymous with shipping away the country’s finite water resources. For the five years between 1997 and 2001, the volume of Saudi water used to produce the exported foodstuffs averaged 2.5 billion m3 annually. For the five years between 2002 and 2006, the value of Saudi foodstuff exports doubled in comparison with the value of foodstuffs exports during the previous five years. If the composition of the exported produce did not change, it would be safe to estimate that Saudi water exports in the form of foodstuffs between 2002 and 2006 averaged 5 billion m3 per annum.
To put 5 billion m3 of water in perspective, Saudi Arabia, which ranked third in the world in the use of household water (286 liters per day), needed 2.2 billion m3 for drinking and household purposes in 2006.
Generally, the volume of drinking and household water a country needs represents a fraction of its agricultural water needs. Of Saudi Arabia’s 19.8 billion m3 of water used in 2006, householders used 2.2 billion m3 (11%), agriculture used 17 billion m3 (86%), and industry used 0.6 billion m3 (3%). Such ratios are more or less typical.
That during the ten-year period between 1997 and 2006, an arid Saudi Arabia exported around 37.5 billion m3 of its finite water endowment, most of which was nonrenewable, is breathtaking. That the export of virtual water continues today unabated is incredible.
A guesstimate of water availability
Estimates of the day when Saudi nonrenewable aquifers would become depleted vary. One estimate using the M. king Hubbert technique might possibly be a helpful guide.
Hubbert’s theory, developed in 1956 for the oil industry, observed that in any large region, unrestrained extraction of a finite resource rises along a bell-shaped curve that peaks when about half the resource is gone. Hubbert found that a growth curve of the utilization of other finite natural resources should rise in a manner similar to those of the fossil fuels.
Water extraction from Saudi Arabia’s finite nonrenewable reserves has been unrestrained since the start of the country’s foray into agricultural production in the early 1980s. The volume of water extraction from nonrenewable aquifers reached a peak of slightly more than 14 billion m3 in 1993 and 1994. In 1995, the extraction volume dropped to 12.5 billion m3 and in 1996, it dropped further to 12 billion m3. In 2006, the extraction was estimated to be some 11.3 billion m3.
Using Hubbert’s theory, the period starting 1993/1994 might signify the midpoint in the volume of Saudi nonrenewable water reserves. Since 1980 was the year when water extraction from nonrenewable sources started in earnest, it might be considered as the starting date of the aquifers’ expected useful life. Prior to 1980, nonrenewable water extraction was insignificant.
According to Saudi Ministry of Agriculture and Water, the aggregate water extracted from the nonrenewable aquifers between 1980 and 1994 was 140 billion m3. Hubbert’s theory suggests that the volume of Saudi nonrenewable water before the heavy extraction had started was likely to be around 280 billion m3 and that the remaining volume of water around 1994 was 140 billion m3. On this basis, such a volume would last for 10 years, if the average extraction would be 14 billion m3 per annum. If, on the other hand, the average extraction would be 10 billion m3 per annum, then the volume would last 14 years.
Already, there is evidence of water quality degradation along with dwindling volumes of previously abundant aquifers. Natural springs which discharge many aquifers have dried up in most parts of the Western, Central, and Eastern regions along with seawater intrusion in areas of the East Coast. Also, due to poor quality sanitary and drainage systems, and the unmonitored use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides the water quality in most aquifers has become brackish.
The Saudi government’s embarrassing abandonment of a strategy propagated for thirty years as its pride achievement could be an indication of serious trouble with the country’s nonrenewable groundwater sources. Such an announcement could not have been possible unless the condition of the nonrenewable aquifers has reached perilous levels in terms of quality and quantity. The Saudi action lends credibility to Hubbert’s guesstimate that the day of reckoning is near.
The impossibility of Saudi self-sufficiency in foodstuffs
Saudi food independence is impossible to sustain. Saudi renewable water resources are insufficient and the country’s population growth is among the highest in the world. Between 1975 and 2004, the Saudi population grew by an average annual rate of 4.1%; compared with Arab countries, 2.6%; developing countries, 1.9%; OECD countries, 0.8%.
The Saudi population is forecast to increase from its size in 2006 of 24 millions to reach 40 millions in 2025. Given such a high rate of growth and, regardless of how large Saudi water reserves might be, Saudi food independence is impossible to sustain in the long run. It is only a matter of time before irrigation exhausts the recoverable contents of the aquifers.
An individual needs about 1,000 cubic meters of water each year to raise the food requirement of that individual. The composition of diet determines the volume of water embedded in food. The more meat, especially red meat, a diet contains, the more water embedded in food is consumed.
Saudi Arabia’s 24-million population in 2006 would need an estimated 24 billion m3 of water for self-sufficiency in foodstuffs. Despite using mammoth volumes of water over the past three decades and spending huge amounts of money, Saudi full self-sufficiency in foodstuffs remains as elusive as ever. In 2006, Saudi agriculture used 17 Billion m3 of water from all sources, leaving a gap of 7 billion m3; or 30%, to be imported. Between 2002 and 2006, Saudi foodstuffs imports added up to US$35 billions; an average of US$7 billions for each of the five years involved. During the previous five years (1997-2001) Saudi food imports added up to US$24 billions; an annual average of almost US$5 billions. As Saudi Arabia’s population grows, the water sufficiency ratio will correspondingly decline and food imports will increase.
As the Saudi population reaches 40 millions around 2025, Saudi water consumption embedded in foodstuffs would reach 40 billion m3. Even if, and this is a very big if, the volume of irrigation water remains unchanged from the 17 billion m3 in 2006, the proportion of food produced domestically to total Saudi food requirements would be 43%. Under the more likely scenario, however, as Saudi nonrenewable aquifers get depletedand Saudi agriculture becomes reliant on renewable water sources only, the ratio of Saudi food self-sufficiency in 2025 would be 12.5%, given MAW’s estimate of the country’s renewable water sources of about 5 billion m3 per annum.
Possible reasons for greening the desert
Why did Saudi Arabia pursue expensive agricultural development in the desert despite persistent and large budget deficits during the early 1980s and 1990s? Was it to achieve food independence, settlement of the Bedouins, or enrich the ruling elite? The answer is probably a combination of all these factors, but with a special emphasis on the enrichment of the ruling elites.
Food independence
Desert agriculture is not an intuitive choice for an economist. However, food independence in Saudi Arabia has a nationalistic appeal. It conveys a message of control over the country’s own political and economic destiny.
The misguided belief that home production was a means of securing the Saudi economy was successfully constructed by those making Saudi rural policy and water policy. Propagated in the national discourse as a well-planned strategy to insulate the country from the risk of a possible wheat boycott by oil-consuming, food-producing countries, desert irrigation was turned into a sacrosanct belief. The strategy might have been prompted by threats in the US media to withhold food supplies as leverage against unacceptable oil export and pricing policies, following the 1973 oil boycott and quadrupling of oil prices.
While independence in foodstuffs is a politically attractive slogan, it is a flawed policy. Wheat—indeed all foodstuffs—is not critical for national security. The inability to import, for example, desalination equipment, spare parts, and engineers by a country like Saudi Arabia would have much greater damaging repercussions than wheat and meat boycott.
Desalinated water has become the lifeblood of Saudi communities. Most of the drinking and household water supplied to the country’s ten largest cities is desalinated. In 2006, Saudi Arabia supplied from giant desalination plants on its East and the West coasts 1.1 billion m3 of drinking and household water out of total drinking and household water requirement in 2006 of 2.2 billion m3.
The problem with Saudi water availability is not household water. It is irrigation water. Abandoning wheat growing is too little and too late. The campaign to reduce household water use, while important, is minor. Saving 30% of household water, as the campaign boasts, or 0.7 billion m3, is only 4% of irrigation water. To be serious about protecting the country's nonrenewable water endowment the growing of most produce should stop.
Settlement of the Bedouins
Ostensibly, in an effort to settle the Bedouins, the Saudi government promulgated in 1968 the Regulation for Fallow Land Distribution. Between 1968 and 1980 the distribution under the new law was 7% of the size of the land distributed during the following twelve years (1980-1992), the years during which the agricultural boom reached its peak. If the purpose of the Regulation was to settle the Bedouins, the size of the distributed land between 1968 and 1980 should have been much greater. Such history suggests that the 1968 Act was implemented more in the interest of agricultural production than the settlement of the Bedouins.
Enriching the ruling elites
The Saudi ruling elite is composed of four groups. These groups support the thousands in the ruling family in return for privileges and benefits. The four groups are: the Wahhabi religious establishment, the Bedouin tribal leadership, the major merchant families, and the military class. The first group lends the regime religious legitimacy; preaching on every turn: “Obey God and obey the apostle and obey those of authority among you” (the Quran, 4:59), along with attributed prophetic sayings like: “Hear and obey the emir, even if your back is whipped and your property is taken; hear and obey.” The second and third groups control the rank and file members of the business and tribal communities. Such a structure is particularly important in a country with no civil society organizations, labor unions, political parties, student and women associations, social clubs and the like. The military class defends the regime against local dissent.
It is thought that Saudi desert agriculture was a scheme to enrich these groups, their families and clients. Such is evident from three observations:
The first observation is the large scale of the wheat project. Between 1985 and 1993, Saudi wheat production grew well beyond domestic needsand the country’s storage capacity. By 1992, Saudi Arabia became the world’s sixth largest exporter of wheat. Had the objective been meeting local demand, the quantities would have been considerably smaller.
Secondly, the early participants in desert agriculture were investors, not farmers. They were absentee owners with little or no experience in farming. They had to be financially sound, with substantial landholdings. The promise of high financial returns from government subsidies to wheat growing enticed some of the country’s richest business families, mainly from the Riyadh and the Qassim Regions to underwrite the risk of the new adventure. They imported the resources from around the world; not only the engineers, the mechanics, and the farm managers but even the unskilled laborers, along with the pumps, tractors, harvesters, seeds, chemicals, and fertilizers to construct and maintain the hundreds of those once famous giant 1000-foot-arm pivot irrigation systems, seen from the air on approaching Riyadh or the towns of the Qassim Region.
Thirdly, the agricultural adventure did not start soon after the 1973 jump in oil prices. It was a decade until the program started in earnest.
While food independence and settlement of the Bedouins might have played a role in Saudi government’s drive toward food self-sufficiency, the early business investors became engaged in the adventure purely to enrich themselves.
In his "Cadillac Desert" Marc Reisner wrote: “Water flows uphill towards money.”
How was the decision to support desert agriculture made?
Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, is non-representative and non-participatory in its governance. Foreign suppliers (in this case, of agribusiness) closely associate themselves with the powerful elites. Schemes such as food self-sufficiency in the desert, which are unsound both economically and environmentally, are attractively packaged with nationalistic slogans. In the absence of political parties, a free press, environmental groups, or any other concerned groups, such as egalitarian nongovernmental organizations, it is impossible to introduce a balancing economic or environmental perspective into water policy. Consequently, there has been no effective dissent against desert agriculture and its seriously negative economic and environmental policies. On the contrary, the Saudi government, its propagandists, and apologists in the East and the West acted as if they were in a competition, praising this folly as a judicious strategy that achieved amazing results.
The oil economy and the nature of the Saudi political system provided the decision-making context. The narrowness of the Saudi decision-makers’ coalition enabled the unsustainable water policies of the 1980s and 1990s. The Saudi experience is an extreme case of a politically determined ecological policy with the negative tendencies of a poorly informed elite enjoying rentier economic circumstances.
The policy goal of irrigating even a portion of Saudi Arabia’s foodstuffs requirements was economically and environmentally damaging to the Saudi economy. Food self-sufficiency is a very dangerous dream for countries like Saudi Arabia to pursue. That billions of cubic meters of water from mainly nonrenewable aquifers have been and continue to be “exported” as virtual water is particularly irresponsible.
The recent Saudi desert irrigation projects were an aberration in the history of desert agriculture. Although politically challenging, creating the most favorable conditions for efficient allocation of water resources requires that projects be selected purely on a rate of return on investment basis in economies operating without government subsidies. Had such a criterion been applied to assessing the economic feasibility of irrigation projects in Saudi Arabia, the approach of the government would have been rejected in favor of higher return projects. The rejection would have saved nonrenewable water reserves. The end of inefficient farming is not negative for Saudi Arabia.
A final thought
As the fable of Saudi desert agriculture reaches its end, a footnote in the country’s history will remain. Alongside the tale of the Saudi ruling group that has accumulated enormous riches and engaged in some of the most profligate indulgences, there is the story of the one generation that squandered tens of billions of dollars on the fruitless quest to make the desert bloom and, in so doing, wasted the nation’s finite water inheritance without regard to their grandchildren.
Written by eeh100
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Thursday, January 3, 2008
5:47:33 PM EST
Feeling Anxious
A verdict on the “surge”
Three developments in Iraq since the middle of 2007 are noteworthy.
The first is the success of the U.S. in arming and funding Arab Sunnis in the Anbar Province and Baghdad to stop shooting at U.S. soldiers and to fight Al-Qaeda. Named Awakening forces, these have grown to more than 70,000 men. “Awakening” men patrol local areas. They get paid about $10 a day each by the U.S. Many were formerly a part of the Sunni insurgency against the occupiers and Iraqi government security forces as well as against the Shi'a militias of AbdulAziz Al-Hakeem (Badr brigade) and of Muqtada Al-Sadr (Mahdi army).
The second development has been the cease-fire on August 29, 2007 that Muqtada Al-Sadr ordered the Mahdi army militia to observe for six months, renewed on February 23, 2008 for six additional months.
Concurrent with these developments was the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report of November 2007, which stated with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not restarted it. This NIE conclusion reversed the findings of a similar NIE report in 2005.
How is one to read these developments on the short-term and the long-term?
On the short-term, Washington is happy; the number of U.S. casualties dropped significantly to hastily declare success. Tehran is happy; the threat of a U.S. war against it has receded. Iraq’s Arab Sunnis are optimistic; they think that in return for “Awakening,” Washington would force the Baghdad Shi'a dominated government to amend the “federalism” provisions in Iraq’s constitution and, among others, reverse Paul Bremmer’s de-baathification program, which together with dissolving Iraq’s army have turned Sunnis' lives upside down and cost hundreds of thousands their livelihood and lives.
The Al-Maliki government, however, is uneasy; the U.S./Sunni accommodation means U.S. pressure to give the Sunnis concessions. Iraq’s defense minister stated on December 22, 2007: “Iraq will not allow US-backed neighborhood patrols to become a ‘third force’ alongside police and the army.” Violent clashes between government security forces and Awakening units in certain areas have already been reported.
If the Iraqi government acquiesces to Sunni demands, Shi'a/ Sunni reconciliation would follow. If it rejects them, the sectarian violence would return.
As for the long-term maintenance of the current lull in American casualties, the prospect is uncertain; a function of how Tehran would react to Washington's actions in the region.
Ultimately, Tehran and Washington are locked in a conflict over who would control GCC oil. Washington, being 10,000 kilometers away, has traditionally relied on military bases for decades to support helpless Arab tribal emirs, kings, sheikhs, and sultans. Iran is next door. The Bush administration’s destruction of Tehran's great enemies to the east; the Wahhabi Talibans in Afghanistan, and to the west; Saddam’s regime in Iraq, turned Iran into the region’s major power. Iran has a solid infrastructure of support in Southern Iraq. Most of Iraq’s 15-million Shiite population live there. Shiism’s holiest shrines are there. The prominent families of Najaf and Karbala trace their roots to long lines of marriages with the leading clerics families of Iran. Ayatollahs have cross-country followings. From Najaf and Karbala, Iranian clerics often led the world of Shiism.
Furthermore, Tehran’s men control Iraq. Strengthening Tehran’s grip on Baghdad are the personal rivalries that exist among Iraq’s Shiite leaders, particularly the Sistani/Hakeem camp (supporters of the Maliki cabinet today) and the Sadr organization. In their turf wars, these men are compelled to seek assistance from Tehran. Iran is their natural habitat. Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani is obeyed by millions in Iraq and Iran. Born and raised in Iran, he does not accept Iraqi citizenship. Through his disciples, he has been heavily involved in the American designs on Iraq. While consolidating Shi’a control Al-Sistani, and Tehran as well, have a good reason to support the presence of the occupation troops. Abdulaziz Al-Hakeem is the head of SCIRI and the Badr Brigade. Badr is a militia of thousands; created and sustained by Iran. Al-Hakeem spent most of his adult life in Iran. He is the leader of the largest Parliamentary bloc. When his olderbrother was assassinated in August 2003, Tehran declared three days of mourning. Al-Sistani and Al-Hakeem may be described as Tehran’s instruments to institute clerics’ control over Iraq. Muqtada Al-Sadr may be described as Tehran’s instrument to harass U.S. forces. His father and uncle were Grand Ayatollahs. His uncle founded in 1958 the Islamic Daawa Party (IDP). IDP received big support from Tehran. Its leaders, Al-Jaafari and Al-Maliki, became Iraq’s transitional prime minister and full-term prime minister, respectively. Both men lived in exile for years in Iran.
It is inconceivable that these leaders would turn to Iraq’s Sunni neighbors for support. Divide and rule is a powerful weapon in the hand of Iran’s ayatollahs to keep Iraq’s Shi’a politicians virtual surrogates and Tehran their ultimate arbiter. That Iran made representatives of Al-Sadr and Al-Hakeem/Iraqi government end the recent fighting in Basra (The Nation, March 31, 2008) is a case in point. It follows that it is in Tehran’s ayatollahs’ power today to decide when to direct their Iraqi surrogates to fight the Americans. The presence of American troops in Iraq is a pressure tool in the hand of Tehran's ayatollahs against Washington. Iran’s Defense Minister declared in August 2004 that these “forces would turn into a hostage” in any military confrontation with Washington.
In Arab countries, the Shiites look to Iran for deliverance from Sunni subjugation. To Sunnis, the Shiites are heretics. Shi'a areas in Saudi Arabia are the poorest despite containing the entire oil wealth of that country. In Bahrain, the Sunni minority mistreats the 60% Shi'a majority. In Kuwait, the Shiites are second-class citizens. In Lebanon, the Shiites are underprivileged. In Yemen, the Zaydis, a Shi'a sect, accuse the Sunni government of genocide. In Syria, until seizing power in 1970, the Alawite minority, a Shi'a sect, lived in abject poverty. In Iraq, until 2003, the Shi'a majority was deprived. Egyptian President Mubarak declared recently that, Shiites in Arab states were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. The notion that Iran might encourage the GCC Shiites to demand their human rights sends shivers in GCC circles and beyond
It may be observed that in return for cooling the Bush administration's threats to attack Iran over the nuclear issue, Tehran helped reduce American casualties. The recent lull, however, is at best capricious and temporary.
Regardless of whether the U.S. increases the level of its military presence in Iraq or withdraws altogether; whether the Democrats or the Republicans control the White House and/or Capitol Hill, and regardless of whether Iraq emerges from its current chaos as a single entity, a federal republic, or broken-up into three states the occupation has set in motion events that make it difficult to predict how lifting the lid on Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic tensions could lead to anything but to Iranian domination over southern Iraq, to Shi’a emboldenment everywhere, and to endless long-Term Shi’a/Sunni conflicts spilling rivers of blood and breeding hoards of Jihadists until the Sunni leaders in the region would either accept Iran’s hegemony or succeed in stopping the march of Shiism.
In his report to the Congress on April 8, 2008 General David Petraeus described the situation in Iraq as “fragile and reversible.” Washington could, of course, destroy Iran’s infrastructure militarily. But, that would not solve much in the long-term.
Written by eeh100
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Friday, December 14, 2007
3:42:52 PM EST
Feeling Worried
Credit 101 to bankers
The sub-prime mortgage debacle in the U.S. inspired this posting.
In December 1863, Hugh McCulloch, then Comptroller of the Currency of the United States and later Secretary of the Treasury, addressed a letter to all national banks. Here are some of the paragraphs.
“Let no loans be made that are not secured beyond a reasonable contingency. Do nothing to foster and encourage speculation. Give facilities only to legitimate and prudent transactions. Never renew a note or bill merely because you may not know where to place the money with equal advantage if the paper is paid.
“Distribute your loans rather than concentrate them in a few hands. Large loans to a single individual or firm, although sometimes proper and necessary, are generally injudicious, and frequently unsafe. Large borrowers are apt to control the bank; and when this is the relation between a bank and its customers, it is not difficult to decide which in the end will suffer.
“If you doubt the propriety of discounting an offering, give the bank the benefit of the doubt and decline it; never make a discount if you doubt the propriety of doing so. If you have reasons to distrust the integrity of a customer, close his account. Never deal with a rascal under the impression that you can prevent him from cheating you. The risk in such cases is greater than the profit.
“Pay your officers such salaries as will enable them to live comfortably and respectably without stealing; and require of them their entire services. If an officer lives beyond his income, dismiss him; even if his excess of expenditures can be explained consistently with his integrity, still dismiss him. Extravagance, if not a crime, very naturally leads to crime. A man cannot be a safe officer of a bank who spends more than he earns.
“The capital of a bank should be reality, not a fiction; and it should be owned by those who have money to lend, and not by borrowers.
“Pursue a straightforward, upright, legitimate banking business. ‘Splendid financing’ is not legitimate banking, and ‘splendid financiers’ in banking are generally either humbugs or rascals.”
The sub-prime mortgage fiasco in the United States should serve as a reminder, yet again, that gamblers must not be allowed to manage society’s saving. Central banks need to institute qualifying psychological testing to bar bank leaders with gambling propensity from wheeling and dealing in customers’ deposits and shareholders equity.
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Monday, October 29, 2007
11:24:17 AM EDT
Feeling Hopeful
Democratizing Islamic Law making
The Sunni Ulama have for more than a thousand years preached that the Islamic Sharia is the unchangeable law of God sent to the Desert Arabians through the Prophet Muhammad as the perfect way of life for mankind; as suitable to today’s living as it was in the seventh century. The Sunni Ulama preach that with four Sharia sources and four schools of jurisprudence, or rites, (see below) traditional dogma, and all doctrinal and juridical requirements are forever provided for. Consequently, the Sunni Ulama succeeded in keeping the door shut on forming a new religious opinion or further interpreting the Quran and the Sunna Traditions [the reported sayings (Hadith) and actions (Sira) of the Prophet)]. For the Muslim rulers, this story has perpetuated their absolute authority over their subjects. Upon the Ulama class, the story has conferred lucrative careers and privilege.
This article contends that Sharia dictums are changeable. Because the great majority, 85%, among the estimated 1.25 billion Muslims in the world today are Sunnis, the article focuses on Sunni law making. The article starts by describing the Sunni Sharia construct. Then, it outlines a democratic process for Sharia law making.
The Sunni Sharia construct
To Sunnis, the Islamic Sharia has four sources from which and through which all likely religious development may be derived. The first source is divinely inspired: "God’s word" in the Holy Quran. The other three sources were made by the Sunni Ulama and their political ruler/benefactors during the two and a half centuries following the death of the Prophet in 632 A.D. The most significant development has been the success of the Ulama, notably Al-Shafei (d.820), in enshrining the attributed Prophetic Sunna Traditions as a source of law equal to "God’s word" in the infallible Quran, although the Quran has not made the Sunna a source of Islamic law and despite “God’s attestation” in the Quran that the Quran contains every thing mankind needs to ever know (in 6:38: “Nothing have we omitted from the Book,” and in 16:89: “We have sent down to thee the Book explaining all things”). By the ninth century, hundreds of thousands of Traditions circulated around the Muslim world, a big proportion of which was spurious. To separate the true from the false, Sunni scholars judged that a few thousand Traditions were genuine. The work of six specialists was especially notable that their compilations became recognized by later Sunni Muslims as authoritative. These unique Sunna books bear the names of their authors: Al-Bukhari (d. 870), Muslim (d. 875), Ibn Majah (d. 886), Abu Dawood (d. 888), Al-Tirmithi (d. 892), and Al-Nasai (d. 915).
The other two man-made Sunni sources were Analogical Deduction and Consensus of the Ulama. Through the Consensus of the Ulama important decisions and Fatwas (religious opinions or rulings) were reached; such as, elevating the six unique Sunna Tradition books to canonical status (to Shii Muslims, Analogical Deduction and Consensus of the Ulama are of no use; replaced by the personal philosophical reasoning (Aql) of the senior Shii Ulama).
Sunni Muslims may follow any one of four rites: the relatively liberal Hanafi rite, named after Abu Hanifa (d. 767); followed in West and Central Asia and in the Indian subcontinent, the Maliki rite, named after Malik (d. 795); followed in North and West Africa, the Shafei rite, named after Al-Shafei (d. 820); followed in East Africa, South Arabia, and the Malay Archipelago; and the extremist Hanbali rite, named after Ibn Hanbal (d. 855); followed by the tiny Wahhabi minority (2% of world Sunnis) of Saudi Arabia and the Talibans of Afghanistan. Each of these Sunni rites encapsulates for its adherents all they need to know about the Islamic way of life.
Democratizing the process of Sharia law making
An indication from the Prophet on the role of the Islamic community in law making could reflect Islam’s attitude towards evolving the Islamic Sharia with the changing times. The Prophet reportedly said: “My community reaches no agreement that is an error” [attributed by the Hadith compilations of Ibn Maja, Abu Dawood, and Al-Tirmithi.
This prophecy was the foundation upon which the Consensus of the Ulama became one of the four sources of Sunni Law.
Why has Consensus of the Sunni Ulama, not the consensus of the Sunni community, become a source of Sunni law? The answer may be found in the success that the Ulama achieved in positioning themselves in the Propheticsaying as the representatives of the Sunni community.
Such success is not surprising. Before the advent of electricity, computers, telecommunications, and modern polling techniques, gauging the opinion of the Muslim community in its far-flung lands was a practical impossibility. So, a caucus of religious experts was needed. The Ulama were the obvious choice. Their specialist knowledge qualified them for the task.
In the modern age, however, electricity, computers, telecommunications, and modern polling techniques have made referendums on specific issues simple just as they made the election of community representatives easy. Modern technology has rendered the consensus of a narrow and un-elected caucus like that of the Ulama obsolete. In its place, the consensus of a regularly and periodically elected body, to be called, for example, Religious Parliament, would be more consistent with the word and spirit of the Prophetic Tradition. It may be said
that modern technology has enabled the prophecy: “My community reaches
no agreement that is an error” to become a reality. In the Prophetic Tradition, the word “community” raises three questions:
The first relates to what constitutes the “community.” Is it the body of world’s Muslims? Or, is it the Muslims of each country separately? The answer is that since the Muslim peoples today are divided into many countries around the world with dozens of different languages and ethnicities, then the word “community” signifies the Muslims of each country separately.
The second question is concerned with who among the Muslims is eligible to vote in the referendums or run for office in the elections for the Religious Parliament. The answer is that every Muslim is eligible; the Ulama as well as the lay people. The Prophet was reported as saying: “All faithful are as equal as the teeth of a comb in the sight of God.” In 49.13, God says: “The most honored of you in the sight of God is the most pious.”
The third question relates to the degree of the required consensus. Does consensus mean the agreement of every member of the “community”? Or, is it the agreement of the majority of the people in the “community”? In answer, since a unanimous consensus of all the people is a practical impossibility, consensus must mean the agreement of the majority in a referendum, or in the Religious Parliament. Indeed, the Prophetic statement did not specify unanimous agreement. Moreover, the existence of four different Sunni rites may be regarded as a pragmatic response to the impossibility of achieving full agreement.
Replacing the consensus of a non-elected caucus like the Sunni Ulama by the consensus of the majority of the elected representatives of the Sunni community would solve the weaknesses inherent in selecting caucus members; like, who appoints members of the caucus and who among the Ulama may qualify for membership? Allowing the Muslim community to elect its representatives removes the political influences that typically dominate the nominations of caucus members.
It may be concluded that the Prophetic Hadith signifies that: 1) The truth lies in whatever the majority among the members of the Religious Parliament agrees upon. 2) Sunni Laws may be changed by the consensus of the majority members on the Religious Parliament.
The Religious Parliament would deal with a wide range of issues; spiritual, theological, and ritual, in addition to matters of historical significance such as the historicity of the Quran and the Sunna. The Religious Parliament would have no legislative powers. That would be the prerogative of the legislator, the national assembly. When the Religious Parliament issues a Fatwa of a legal nature, it would be referred by the government to the legislative national assembly, which might or might not enact it into law.
A Religious Parliament may represent the Sunnis of one Muslim country, or a number of Muslim countries, or all Muslim countries. Likewise, the Sunni immigrants to non-Muslim countries may have their own Religious Parliament(s), individually or collectively. There might even develop a single Religious Parliament for Sunnis worldwide.
Each Religious Parliament would address the issues it considers important to its particular local conditions. The Religious Parliaments would replace the government appointed Fatwa Councils, which exist in Muslim countries today. No one outside the Religious Parliament would be authorized to render a religious opinion.
If Sharia Law is to evolve with the changing times, a new rite needs to evolve; namely, Parliamentrite.
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Monday, October 1, 2007
7:53:49 AM EDT
Feeling Anxious
Is Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani a spiritual guide or a political leader?
Washington’s occupation of Iraq in April 2003 handed control of governmental power in Baghdad to the country’s 60% Shii majority. At the top of the new power pyramid sits Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. His personal philosophy will dictate whether Iraq becomes a theocratic dictatorship or a secular democracy. Is the Ayatollah of the Quietist School (separates religion from politics), or is he of the Khomeini activist Wilayat Al-Faqih School (combines religion with politics)? This question has attracted a good deal of attention in recent years. The answer could reveal the colors of Iraq’s post-occupation governance and the consequences it might have on the Middle East and beyond.
This article explores the basis of the Ayatollah’s immense spiritual hold over the millions of his followers in Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere. It also recalls political decisions made by the Ayatollah since 2003 that help shed light on his preferences.
The source of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani’s immense spiritual power
Most Shiis in Iraq and millions in other countries obey the 75-year-old Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah blindly. To appreciate the tremendous influence that the Ayatollah wields over his followers certain aspects of the Shii Creed need to be explained.
Shii Muslims believe in the authority of the Prophet Muhammad and the Imams. To most Shiis today, there are twelve Imams. They all are descendants of Ali Bin Abi Talib, cousin of the Prophet, son-in-law who married the Prophet’s daughter Fatima, the father of the Prophet’s two grandchildren with Fatima (Hasan and Hussein), and the fourth Caliph. The twelfth Imam, Muhammad Al-Muntazar (the awaited one), is believed to have disappeared as a child around 874 A.D. and that he is hidden in a state of occultation, until his return to the earth someday to restore justice and bring prosperity. The majority of Shiis today are believers in this story; thus, their name, Twelvers.
Twelver Shiis believe that as long as the twelfth Imam is hidden the Shii Ulama (religious scholars or clerics) act as his representatives, or deputies. In this capacity they uncover for the masses what the Hidden Imam would have ruled on all matters. To perform their duties, the Shii Ulama interpret the Quran and the Shii version of the Hadith (sayings and acts of the Prophetas well as those of the Imams) according to their personal reasoning, though in the name of the infallible Hidden Imam. As such, the Shii Ulama have been perceived by the Shii masses as infallible lawgivers: Exemplars to emulate. And, since the Hidden Imam is thought to be among the body of the Shiis incognito, there is always the possibility that one of the Ulama might be the Hidden Imam. Such belief adds a unique aura of respectability and reverence around the Shii Ulama. This aura is further enhanced by the stories that have existed in popular culture of the Hidden Imam manifesting himself to prominent clerics.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani is the leader among the four Grand Ayatollahs who belong today to the most excellent Shii center for scholarly learning, the age-old Najaf Hawza, established in 1056 in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq. He acceded to the leadership in 1992 following his teacher and mentor, Iranian born, the highly revered Grand Ayatollah Abu Gharib Al-Qassim Al-Khoei (1970-1992).
Politically, until 1979, the senior Shii clerics refrained from claiming the political authority and temporal rule implicit in their vice-regency of the Hidden Imam. Grand Ayatollah Khomeini changed that legacy in Iran in 1979. He asserted that, as representative of the Hidden Imam the senior-most Shii cleric possesses the right to the same authority and functions that the Hidden Imam has; including, authority over the political sphere. This power became known as Wilayat Al-Faqih, or the rulership of the Faqih. Faqih means specialist in religious jurisprudence. Wilayat Al-Faqih yields absolute theocratic dictatorship. It grants the Faqih supreme powers over an elected parliament, the judiciary, and the executive branch of the government.
Is Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani politically quietist? Or, is he politically active? The answer might be gleaned through the Ayatollah’s actions since 2003.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani’s influence over Iraq's political affairs
In dealing with the U.S., Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani prevailed whenever his judgment clashed with Washington’s politics. Here are a few instances:
When the Ayatollah issued in June 2003 a religious ruling requiring the framers of Iraq’s constitution to be elected, not appointed by U.S. officials and the Iraqi Governing Council, he prevailed. When he stated in November 2003 that elections would be the correct way to select a transitional government, not regional caucuses as Washington had envisioned and demanded UN involvement to oversee the election, the U.S. yielded. When the Ayatollah called for a transitional assembly to ratify an Interim Constitution, he won.
At the signing ceremony for the Interim Constitution by the Iraqi Governing Council on March 5, 2004, five members loyal to the Ayatollah refused to show up in protest against certain variations in the document from what they had supposedly agreed upon a few days earlier. The ceremony, planned to have been carried live on news networks, complete with a children’s choir and a six-piece formally attired orchestra was canceled more than an hour after it was supposed to have started, embarrassing Washington.
In November 2004, when calls to postpone the January 30, 2005 election were voiced because of the deteriorating security situation, the Ayatollah insisted that the election must be held on time. It was held on time.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani was instrumental in reaching a ceasefire agreement in June 2004 to stop the fighting in the holy city of Najaf between Muqtada Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia and U.S. forces. He also brought the second round of fighting between those two sides in August 2004 to an end.
The Ayatollah’s followers entered the January 30, 2005 election under a unified list of candidates, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). The list became known as the Al-Sistani List. The UIA won 140 seats out of the 275-seat assembly. In the December 15, 2005 election for the full-term four-year parliament, the UIA won 128 seats.
Under the Ayatollah’s guidance, the Draft Permanent Constitution, approved in the December 15, 2005 referendum, specified in Article 2 (a) that: “No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.” Who defines the undisputed rules of Islam? It would be the parliamentary majority, which the Ayatollah controls.
In March 2006, the Ayatollah “persuaded” Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, the transitional prime minister, to step aside in order to break the political deadlock to form Iraq’s first full-term cabinet, paving the wayfor Nouri Al-Maliki to become prime minister instead. Before taking office, prime minister-designate Al-Maliki won the Ayatollah’s endorsement to work on disbanding the country’s militias.
The U.S. Secretary of State together with the British Foreign Secretary were both full of praise during their joint visit to Iraq on April 2, 2006 for the Gran |
