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Waleed Hazbun's Letter from Doha

Letter from Doha

Last weekend I found myself on a Qatar Airways flight crossing the Saudi desert not far, according to the real time map displayed in front of me, from the Iraqi border. I was flying to Doha on an invitation from the World Economic Forum (the people who created the Davos summit, the Sundance of the global capitalism/Economist reading jet set) to attend something called the Arab World Competitiveness Roundtable.

Between moments of dread and a deep sense of being an odd-person out, I found myself comforted—if that’s the word—by flashbacks to scenes from the movie Syriana.

I often felt like the naïve, Swiss-based American energy analyst who finds himself calling his wife to tell her about the ultra-luxury hotel and who later senses he might have a front row seat watching major geopolitical shifts driven by the possibilities created by Gulf oil wealth. My hotel was not Dubai’s seven star (!) sail-shaped Burj al Arab, but the ziggurat-like Doha Sheraton.

The conference took place at the next hotel along the coast, the Four Seasons. The chain is owned by the Saudi-Lebanese Prince Al Walid and they tend to outdo themselves with gold plated...no, solid gold opulence. Think Rococo and use your imagination.

After being given my name tag (aka security badge) I was faced with the daunting challenge of entering the opening reception of hobnobbing CEOs and government ministers being maybe the only one who did not know a single person present. I was one of the few, actually the only plain academic there. The two other professors are the sort involved with private sector financed-WEF studies. I, on the other hand, happened to have once written a paper on tourism for an Arab League meeting that is easy to find via Google. I’m proud of the paper and I often meet people who have read it, but I suppose getting an invitation to be on a tourism panel here was the real payoff for drafting an unpublished essay.

Back to the daunting challenge of the reception. Wandering around, I wondered how I might find myself not just standing alone like it was some high school dance. I was lucky enough to notice a younger participant nearly doing the same, but not looking anxious like me. He turned out to be a publisher of The Middle East news monthly, with whom I talked for the 30 minutes or so before we were ushered into the dining tent.

A few minutes later I noticed the name badge of an official for the World Tourism Organization who was the only other non-tourism minister on the panel with me. After introductions we sat at an empty table. Moments later a women came up to my dinner partner informing him that he (and “his guest”) were requested to join the CEO of Qatar Airways who was at the head table and is also the head of the national tourism authority. I had read about him since he was on the tourism panel as well as being a host for the dinner and the whole event.

After the flashing of the local media photographers subsided, it turned out that our only other dinner guest was Lord David Owen (you might recall him from the Dayton Accords, or if old enough, a thing called the Cold War when he was once the British Foreign Secretary). He was in Doha to appear on a panel with a Saudi and two Iranian officials discussing the role of Iran in the Gulf. The topic of Iran dominated the dinner conversation. Lord Owen gave us a preview of the remarks he would offer the next day during what was billed as a debate to be telecast on Al Jazeera. A self-described Cold Warrior in a previous era, Owen’s big theme was the need for accommodation with Iran. He suggested the West drop sanctions and open a dialogue. Coming just days after the end of Iran’s holding of the British Marines, this seemed an approach that only a former politician could advocate. Owen noted he supported the Iraq war, and if it was successful we would not be discussing the need to contain expanding Iranian power, but with the failure of the war (which he blames on the utter incompetence of Bush and Blair) we need to deal with the mess.

This view struck me as a basic realist approach, that regional and global powers needed to adjust to the distribution of power in the Gulf, allow Iran its due but then establish a balance of power that contains Iranian expansion. In short, a new bi-polar order is needed to stabilize the new Middle East Cold War.

Al-Baker, the Qatar Airways CEO, also suggested the need for accommodation, noting that as the director of an airline he does business with Iranians (he, as well as the state of Qatar, also does business with the Israelis who have an economic affairs office in Doha which tells you something about the role they seek to play in regional geopolitics).

The next morning, at breakfast, I discovered on the cover of the business pages the following:
“Call for boosting ties among gas giants”, The Peninsula (Doha, Qatar), April 10, 2007

(Caption: Akbar Al Baker, CEO Qatar Airways, Lord David Owen, Former Foreign Secretary of UK, Geoffery Lipman, World Tourism Organisation, Waleed Hazbun, American University of Beirut at World Economic Forum during a reception at the Four Seasons Hotel yesterday.)

Throughout the conference, which really focused on economic and business issues, the theme of Gulf-Iranian ties emerged as a major topic of discussion and concern. These conversations always seemed to take place in the idiom of accommodation within a range of strategic postures.

At one end were the Saudis who made the integration of Iran into the Gulf contingent on Iran meeting IAEA demands first. Other Khaleejis (people from the Gulf) emphasized the existing business and social ties that exist across the Gulf. The Qatari Foreign Minister specifically noted they would not support a US attack on Iran (the US has a large base in the country). The Iranians themselves, including a security adviser (with turban in photo) and Mohammed Larijani, a physicist and the brother of Iran’s top nuclear affairs negotiator, spoke of peaceful cooperation within the context of a region in which Iran is a major player.

The strategic studies official passed out a “Ten Point Plan for Changing the Environment of the Persian Gulf to an Environment of Cooperation, Security and Development.” On the face of it, it’s the ideal sort of cooperative security community all parties should be seeking. The Iranians would not stop with their language of “our brothers on the other side of the Persian Gulf…” Taking a page, it almost seemed, from Shimon Peres, one Iranian responded to an Emirati who noted the Iranian occupation of some small Islands in the Gulf claimed by the UAE by pleading that small territorial issues should not prevent brotherly relations. Emiratis, he said, should invest in those islands so that soon they will own them! Then we can discuss territorial issues. Together with this brother-speak the Iranians were firm to repeat they will not negotiate about their rights to nuclear energy, calling efforts to prevent it neo-imperialism (or something like that).

My tourism panel took place right before the Iran panel and it was cut short as the debate had to begin on time, while our panel was delayed due to the previous session going over. Two themes were striking. One of the concerns was about job creation, which all noted is needed, and the other was that tourism is a growth sector in the region that could help provide jobs. But some pointed out (not, however, the ministers) that a visitor to Doha might meet a lot of nice South Asians and never get to know a local Arab.

A related question was that of regionalism. Some asked why the Gulf states did not hire staff from other Arab states, especially when there is so much talk of inter-Arab tourism as a growing trend. I will leave my thoughts on this topic to my academic papers.

Here is the photo from that session, moderated by a presenter from the Saudi-owned Al Arabiyah satellite television channel:
“Mideast states told to tap tourism market,” Gulf Times, April 11, 2007

(Caption: Al-Baker speaks as Garranah, Lipman, Hazbun and Cyba Audi-Daya look on during the session yesterday.)

In the end there was no dramatic conclusion or climax. I kept hearing the same Syriana theme song again and again in my head. We will have to wait for the plot to play itself out, for which Beirut is a front row seat for the action on the ground. There was something missing, however, from the discussions... it was the same something that made the film (Syriana) move forward. There were really no Americans at the conference. At dinner the first night after Lord Owen presented his ideas, I asked the group if a new regional Gulf order was possible considering the American position in the Gulf and its regime change posture towards Iran. As one of the few Americans and a scholar of US policy I found myself asking the same question in other contexts during the conference. It seems that any Arab Gulf willingness to accommodate Iran is contingent on (or made possible by) the American security umbrella in the Gulf, while Iran, on the other hand, seeks the withdrawal of all foreign forces from the region and wants to project its influence into spaces filled currently by the US. As an American official once stated, “We are not going halfsies with the Iranians.”

writing from Beirut...

-Waleed Hazbun

(thanks to michelle for editing this post)

letter from Waleed Hazbun

Waleed Hazbun's most recent Letter from Beirut, with some interesting thoughts on public space in the downtown area. I've added a few photos I took on this walk.

March 25, 2007
Beirut, Lebanon

The Virgin Megastore in downtown Beirut is housed in a beautiful white trapezoid shaped building that has the art deco feel of a small bank or theater building from the 1930s. Upon exiting the building, you find yourself looking out over a large open space, filled with parking lots. In the middle is the Martyr's Statue, where in the wake of the Hariri assassination young Lebanese from various political affiliations camped out until Syria was pressured to end its military presence.

Today the square is empty and undeveloped, waiting for the winner of a design competition to reimagine, once again, this space that was once the heart of pre-1970s Beirut. This emptiness is a product of the years of civil war when the area was a no-man's land between East and West Beirut, (but its not as if this was the only territorial divide.).

(photo: the Martyrs statue)

Past the Martyr's Statute is a large white tent housing the tomb of Hariri at the foot of a imposing mosque which the big man himself helped build. On this bright Saturday morning a few large buses were parked next door to pick up a crowd of Lebanese, who like ourselves that day, came to pay our respects.

(photo: Hariri incorporated into an image of the Martyr's statue in a poster in the tent housing his grave site.)

My first thought was, Is this going to be a tourist draw? Not yet.The thought was provoked by my need to figure out what I am going to say during a presentation on "the impact of regional geopolitics on Lebanon's tourism economy" that I agreed to give at a UN sponsored conference on Rebuilding Lebanon. Maybe, some day, a stop at Hariri's memorial will be followed by a shopping spree at the Virgin Megastore and a beer at a local bar but the time has yet to come.

Until last summer Beirut's tourism economy, which relied on traffic and capital investment from the Arab gulf and the Lebanese diaspora, had been growing fast. It failed to pause in the wake of 9/11 and wasn't deterred by the 2005 assassination of Hariri. It now seems oddly both directionless but also driven by inertia, or a typical Lebanese faith in the future. Under Hariri's direction, this area of ruined buildings, rubble, and squatters was cleared to make way for the reconstruction of a new "Paris of the Middle East." This space includes shiny skyscraper hotels and super luxury apartments towering over the waterfront with million dollar sea views. Cranes still crowd the sky where new buildings, hotels, offices, and shopping malls continue to be built. Interspersed between the buildings, both new and old, are open pits from archaeological excavations. Looking down one can see the uncovered ruins and layers of the city's history.

One of the most (seemingly) conspicuous ruins downtown, however, is also one of the tallest around. It is the old Holiday Inn hotel built late in the high modernist era as a long, thin rectilinear white washed tower.

(photo: Holiday Inn)

Its façade is ripped and crumbling from sniper bullet holes and damage from mortars. While the sight of it might seem incongruous, I assume most Beirutis don't notice it anymore, like old cracks in the sidewalk.

(photo: detail of Holiday Inn, when you click to see the larger version, notice that each black spot on the building is a bullet hole -- and  this is just part of the hotel.)

I think it should be left as a ruin, maybe with a visitor center lookout and tourism information  booth.

The part of downtown on the other side of the Virgin Megastore from Hariri's grave is an older section of smartly rebuilt blocks of stone buildings housing sleek new offices for banks, cafes, restaurants and high-end shops. The stonework is really magnificent. This section is located next to the edge of the protest camp set up by Hezbollah and other opposition forces. While there is still security near the camp and government buildings, the tensions and edginess of the previous months seems to have dissipated as the rancor of political accusations and failed talks became an everyday occurrence. Little progress has been made on political negotiations (about a cabinet, the international tribunal about the assassination etc..), but at least both sides seem to have kept their differences from becoming manifest in street fights.

On this bright sunny Saturday, a handful of well dressed Beirutis were walking the streets maybe going to one of the old churches in the area. Not many window shoppers were amongst us. Many of the stores, banks and airline offices were staffed, but few people were engaged in commercial activity. We did see small groups of tourists that day, mostly European 20 and 30 somethings who have graduated from the backpack but knew that the city, even now, makes a fascinating tourist destination.

With these numbers it was peacefully quiet with plenty of empty tables at what might have been some the most upscale cafes and bars in the city looking out at the clock tower at the center of Beirut's Place d'Etoile. Michelle noticed that there really wasn't any physical impediment to coming down here. We walked from our flat, but parking and taxis could also be found. While the scene might pick up in the evening, it seemed that the scene has been killed off. My guess is that while people could come down here, it just isn't the place to see and be seen at the moment (as it had been).

I wonder if in a sense the whole downtown has been too politicized, it has become a public space of protest (both as a space of demonstrations as well as an object of critique over the way it was rebuilt and by whom at whose expense etc..) and some are a bit uneasy with the fact that others are using it to protest as well, contesting it's "public-ness." Lebanon is sort of a nation without a center, rather than figuring out a way to make that work, conflicts are often driven by contests over the content of the center. The pro-govt forces feel they are the center and is needed to consolidate Lebanese sovereignty, while the opposition claims that the govt must first be inclusive of all voices. To this the March 14 govt agrees to be inclusive but is unwilling to give the opposition veto powers which they assume it will use to block the tribunal, viewed by March 14 forces as the only tool they have left to fight for sovereignty with the help of the international community.

After passing the massive poster of the recently assassinated Pierre Gemyael coating the (rightwing) Phalange party headquarters, we walked into the Gemayze neighborhood, a sort of Brooklyn or Portland Pearl district where old homes and shops are being remodeled into quaint bars, cafes and bistros. The style, service, and quality is far above the more routine and tattered hangout we have in Hamra.

(photo: graffiti in Gemayze...sorry, no photos of the stylish cafes)

I, however, prefer my own neighborhood where, as AUB Prof Samir Khalaf was explaining in a documentary I just watched, has developed as a mixed, cosmopolitan area since it was an empty space at the edge of the sea that attracted students, artists, intellectuals, and political activists who sought to define their lives in new, different ways outside of the sectarian categories. As one guy says in the film, "In Hamra if I was asked what religion/sect I was I would say I didn't know as no one had informed me of it." As it turns out we are living in a flat across the street from where Khalaf and my parents lived in the 1950s.

-Waleed.

Waleed's AUB profile (with photo)

Dalia Khamissy

I am starting off what I hope will be an occasional series of contributions by guest photographers and writers. Today I've put up a Guest Album of photographs by Dalia Khamissy. I have put up 6 photos from her documentation of the Shiite commemoration of Ashoura in Nabatiyeh, Lebanon in January 2007.

Some of you may know of Dalia from several of her photos that we published in Middle East Report. She is a Lebanese photographer who works on social documentary projects around the Middle East. She is especially interested in the situation of refugees and social and human rights issues. Her work includes photographing Iraq while on a humanitarian mission, documenting the life of refugees stuck on the border of Jordan and Iraq in 2004 and being photo editor at AP in Beirut up through this past summer's war. She recently left AP in order to concentrate on her photography projects.

I chose to show you some of her work on Ashoura because she reveals something that doesn't usually come through in most representations of how it is commemorated, which is the larger community context around the rituals. She didn't focus exclusively on the most dramatic and well-known moments such as men drawing blood from a cut on the top of the head. In addition she shows people listening to a cleric tell the story of Imam Hussein, bystanders watching the procession with mixed emotions, and the musicians. Even in her photos of the bloody moments, such as of the boy trying to hold back his tears, she includes background details. The boy is placed in the context of the hall where young men mill around inside, as if backstage in a theater production. The photo of the boys watching the cleric tell the Hussein story on TV, with one of them bringing the others juice, also has a quality of peering behind-the-scenes, which gives us insight into the significance and depth of the other events of the day.   

I'm sure Dalia would appreciate your comments, as I would. Please visit her photo album, the link is on the right sidebar.