Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, August 9, 2009

Original link with photos

Kathy Hamilton, a gregarious, 6-foot-tall, red-haired Texan, stands near the entrance to Osman’s textile shop atop Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, listening to the owner complain about the sudden disappearance of customers. The air-conditioned shop is filled with richly decorated bedspreads, suzani (traditional Turkish wall hangings) and Ottoman caftans in silk, cotton and velvet. Osman is sitting on the carpet-covered floor and spouting a steady stream of Turkish.

Hamilton listens, nods sympathetically and fingers a length of finely decorated antique textile in shades of gold that she guesses was once used as trim on a coat. In fluent Turkish, she reassures the shopkeeper, telling him that it looks as though the U.S. economy is picking up, which will improve things for Turkish merchants as well.

Meanwhile, John Atwell is poking around the shop. He checks out dozens of handmade caftans hanging on a metal bar at the back of the store as his wife, Cerian, changes the diaper on the couple’s 4-week-old baby, Geordan.

John and Cerian are Hamilton’s clients on this recent trip to the Grand Bazaar, a maze of alleys and winding streets crowded with more than 4,000 shops and food stands that is one of Istanbul’s most popular tourist destinations. Hamilton, a Texas transplant who lives in Istanbul, runs an occasional personal-shopping business for foreigners who want to visit the bazaar and buy traditional Turkish rugs, silver jewelry, ceramic ware and more, but are intimidated by the place’s intricate geography and swarming passageways.

“It’s too big for me,” Cerian Atwell says as the trip gets underway in mid-morning. Cerian works for a British company that imports Turkish garments to the United Kingdom, while John manages a Web site on expatriate life in Istanbul. In their two years in the city, the couple have peeked into the bazaar only once, and hated it. “I didn’t know where to go, and all the stores seemed to have the same stuff,” Cerian says, summarizing the feeling of utter helplessness that overwhelms most tourists when they take their first steps into the market.

Cerian is hoping that this trip with Hamilton will help her navigate the bazaar more easily in the future. Mostly hidden from view, the bazaar neighborhood stretches from Eminonu, the city’s commercial dock on the Golden Horn, and climbs up the northern side of the old town to Divan Yolu, the historic boulevard connecting the Blue Mosque to Istanbul University. At the very bottom is the Egyptian Bazaar, the colorful spice market with its Indian curry powders and its Turkish nuts. Just above that is a collection of warehouses and workshops known as hans. At the top of the hill is the Grand Bazaar, with its handicrafts and luxury jewelry.

Sultan Mehmed II built the Grand Bazaar after he conquered what was then Constantinople in 1453. It’s also known as the covered bazaar, and its alleys unroll under a labyrinth of porches decorated with ceramic tiles. The Grand Bazaar’s oldest core, however, displays elegant vaulted ceilings of exposed bricks.

Hamilton’s shopping trip begins at the Nuruosmaniye Camii gate, one of the Grand Bazaar’s less crowded entrances.

Before venturing in, she points to a long, two-story building on the right, home to several brass and copper warehouses where, she says, you can buy pieces at wholesale prices. This is precisely the secret to shopping here: knowing where, what and at what prices to buy.

“I first visited Turkey in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup,” Hamilton says as the group walks through the bazaar. In spite of the tanks in the streets, something about Turkey drew her back again and again. In 1988, at age 40, she relocated to Istanbul and married a Turkish carpet merchant in what she calls “a very productive midlife crisis.” By now, Hamilton has visited the bazaar more times than she can count and knows it like the back of her hand. “I kept wandering around, visiting shops, talking to different shopkeepers. I’m nosy; I approach people and ask what they’re up to,” she explains.

Hamilton shows the Atwells the shop of an artist who hand-paints golden motifs on dieffenbachia leaves imported from Florida. Another of her favorite merchants sells miniatures drawn on antique, progressively thinning paper. Down another alley, she takes the Atwells to a high-end thrift store packed with goods of every kind. John and Cerian are fascinated by some tiny brass scales once used by merchants to weigh coins to make sure that they were real. The Atwells recall that when Geordan was born, they received what they think is a gold coin from a colleague, in accordance with local traditions. Hamilton recommends a place where they can have the coin appraised.

The group also visits some of the more curious corners of the bazaar, such as the money market, a dark passage where illegal but tolerated currency trading takes place. Today, it looks sleepy, a sign that the Turkish lira is enjoying a stable day against foreign currencies. But Hamilton tells the Atwells that when the lira gets on a roller coaster, plenty of people come here to exchange it for dollars and euros.

“This place,” Hamilton says of the Grand Bazaar, “is almost like its own separate city. It has its own police department, post office, mosques.”

The final stop of the day is Osman’s store, which is on a rooftop and somewhat off the bazaar’s beaten path. Hamilton likes to take her clients there because of the quality of the merchandise — and because the air conditioning offers some respite from Istanbul’s summer heat. Some of the shopkeeper’s pieces are affordable, but many of his goods are ancient textiles and quite expensive.

Getting the price right can be particularly frustrating for foreigners, since Turkish merchants expect you to bargain. “There are never any prices in these stores, and I don’t know how much things are supposed to cost,” Cerian complains. Thankfully, Hamilton bargains on behalf of her clients. “As soon as merchants realize I speak Turkish, prices drop,” she promises.

The Atwells, though, are distracted by their baby and ultimately don’t take advantage of Hamilton’s bargaining abilities. Nancy Voye, on the other hand, makes full use of them. Only three days after the Atwells tour the Grand Bazaar, Voye, who’s from Greenwich, Conn., purchases handbags, pottery, jewelry and a carpet, spending close to $1,600. (Hamilton says that the most any client has ever spent in one go is $20,000.)

Voye recently retired from her job on Wall Street and is in Istanbul with her daughter Emily, freshly graduated from college. “Friends recommended Kathy to us,” she says. “As a tourist, I want to be able to see sights and not waste my whole time shopping. Her being able to navigate that immense place so easily made it all very efficient for us.”

Since she doesn’t generally take commissions from merchants, Hamilton is under no pressure to get her clients to spend money; she can easily accommodate both Voye’s buying spree and the Atwells’ window-shopping.

But even though she didn’t buy a thing, Cerian Atwell thinks her trip with Hamilton was a success. “I definitely feel more comfortable now,” she says. “I’d want to come back to the shops that Kathy pointed to . . . if I was ever able to find them again.”

A shopping trip to the Grand Bazaar with Kathy Hamilton costs $225 for groups of up to four, plus transportation and food. Contact Hamilton via her Web site: http://www.istanbulpersonalshopper.com.

A pipeline deal with Turkey was taken as a step toward EU energy security, but Russia looms large.

ISTANBUL — Turkey this week celebrated the signing of a major deal on the Nabucco pipeline project as a step toward European Union membership and becoming a Eurasian energy hub.

Nabucco is expected to pump 31 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe by 2014, bypassing Russia and thereby decreasing the dependence of the EU on Russian gas. Turkey is a Nabucco transit country, along with Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Austria.

Despite the agreement, Russia’s continued attempts to control the region’s energy resources, the lack of unified political action in the EU, and Turkey’s indecisiveness, threaten Nabucco, energy experts say.

Russia, which sits atop about 25 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves, dominates regional energy markets. To strengthen its near monopoly, Moscow buys almost all the gas produced by Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. As a result, countries including Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary have no choice but to import most of their gas from Russia.

Turkey depends on Russia for 65 percent of its domestic gas use and is also desperate to diversify its sources: “There are gas cuts every winter,” said Necdet Pamir, a former high-level official with Turkey’s state-owned oil company and a board member of the World Energy Council.

While Moscow blames the interruptions on Ukraine, “the result is that, for whatever reason, technical or geopolitical, every winter we suffer,” Pamir added.

Russia’s remarkable reach complicates diversification efforts via Nabucco. Azerbaijan — the only supplier committed to feed gas into the pipeline — recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Gazprom to export its gas to Russia for at least a year.

“But Azerbaijan cannot provide both Gazprom and Nabucco with natural gas. It’s either one of them,” said Vugar Baymarov, chairman of the Center for Economic and Social Development, an Azeri think tank.

The Azerbaijan-Russia MOU comes at a difficult time for Baku’s ties to Ankara: “Our recent move to normalize relations with Armenia has complicated Azerbaijani attitudes toward Turkey and thereby Nabucco,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament.

Since no other supplier has yet been signed up, the Nabucco pipeline faces a major supply hurdle.

Further, in phase two of the project Turkmenistan is scheduled to supply extra gas into Nabucco via a trans-Caspian pipeline. Considering that Turkmenistan’s economy is primarily dependent on Russia, it is unlikely that Ashgabat will sell its gas to any country but Russia, at least not without Moscow’s permission.

Meantime, the two remaining options — Iraq and Iran — are effectively off the table.

Northern Iraq is thought to have large gas reserves, but it will take years to develop them, and, said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Istanbul-based Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, “Political instability during the past decade made it impossible to estimate how much capacity there is and how it can be channeled to Nabucco.”

While it has the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas after Russia, Iran is, according to Stanislav Tkachenko of St. Petersburg State University, a “politically impossible alternative,” because it would require “radically improved relationship between Iran and the United States.”

<!–pagebreak–>

U.S. sanctions have crippled Iran’s energy sector and Washington continues to oppose any use of Iranian gas for Nabucco, as U.S. energy envoy Richard Morningstar reiterated Sunday.

Turkey says it will press ahead despite U.S. objections. “Turkey is an independent country and can buy its gas wherever it wants so long as conditions are right. If there is gas in Iraq, Turkey will buy it. The same with Iran,” said Kiniklioglu, the Turkish Foreign Affairs Committee spokesman, pointing to the fact that Turkey already imports Iranian gas for its domestic market.

But Turkey might not have to go behind the U.S.: “There are signals that the U.S. is changing its Iran policy toward a more accommodating approach,” said Tkachenko, noting President Barack Obama’s reaction to the aftermath of Iran’s contested elections.

In any case, Turkey’s own energy issues might complicate things further. While insisting that Ankara can maneuver independently of Moscow, Kiniklioglu admitted that Turkey has to “get along well with a country that provides you with over 60 percent of natural gas.”

Moscow is taking advantage of its position to offer Ankara alternatives to Nabucco. The two parties are discussing the construction of Blue Stream 2, an extension of the Blue Stream 1 pipeline that brings gas from Russia to Turkey. Talks are also underway for the South Stream pipeline, a direct competitor to Nabucco that would transport Russian gas via the Black Sea to Bulgaria, Austria and Italy. By joining South Stream, Turkey could become an energy hub without endangering relations with Russia.

The fact that a central dispute between Turkey and the EU over Nabucco was pushed aside with Monday’s agreement but not solved casts doubts on Turkey’s commitment to the implementation of the deal. Ankara has been asking to divert 15 percent of gas flowing through Nabucco toward its domestic grid, but the EU opposed the request.

Since Ankara’s number one priority is Turkey’s energy security and independence, it will probably try to use Nabucco as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia, and its relations with Gazprom as a lever in talks with the EU.

“Turkey will remain on the agenda with Nabucco, South Stream or some other projects,” Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yıldız told the press Tuesday. The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Ankara and Moscow will negotiate energy projects during the visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Turkey on Aug. 6.

According to Yurdakul Yigitguden, Turkey’s former undersecretary of energy, Russia shouldn’t be blamed for pursuing its own interests. “The problem is that there is a lack of leadership in support of gas companies. They can’t go at it alone,” Yigitguden added, calling for stronger political support for Nabucco across the EU and Turkey.

The agreement signed Monday might be a sign of political commitment towards Nabucco. At the same time, in the last several months the Nabucco Consortium began mentioning Russia as a potential supplier of gas for the pipeline, defying the sole reason for Nabucco’s existence.

Originally published in the Miami Herald’s blog dedicated to LGBT issues

Istanbul – Mirroring Turkey’s difficult yet unyielding progress towards equality for all its citizens, Istanbul’s sixth annual gay pride parade took place successfully Sunday after policemen in combat gear initially threatened to prevent the participants from marching down Istiklal Caddesi, the city’s central pedestrian street. After much quarreling and an hour’s delay, the marchers – numbering about 3000 – were finally allowed onto Istiklal. Colorful but definitely not as bold as fellow demonstrators in New York or San Francisco, they chanted political slogans and sang cheerful songs, while holding signs and the traditional rainbow flag. Tourists and curious spectators watched the parade making its way to Galatasaray Square. Heavy humidity leftover from the afternoon’s quick Mediterranean storm had everybody gasping for air, while the old-time tram that still whistles along Istiklal struggled to find a breach in the crowd.

Key to the resolution of the initial dispute with the police force was, perhaps, the intervention of two foreign g

uests attending the parade. The presence of Mechtild Rawert, Social Democrat (SPD) MP from Germany’s National Parliament, and Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk – the slain gay-rights leader from the ‘70s –and himself an internationally renowned gay rights activist, lent an international touch to the event and made sure that the police relented eventually.

Between Turkey’s bid to gain full European Union membership and its overall effort to present itself as the beacon of modernity in the greater Middle East, authorities here certainly did not want international headlines on the country’s controversial human rights record. “The fight for human rights in Turkey is a key issue towards EU membership. I have personally witnessed the progress achieved in the last few years, but there is more to be done,” said Rawert, the MP from Germany.

For Milk — who attended other events part of a weeklong series of panel discussions, award ceremonies, and film screenings culminating in Sunday’s parade — Turkey represents a great opportunity for the LGBT movement worldwide. “I think Turkey has a tremendous potential to act as a modern, civil and human rights bridge between west and east,” Mr. Milk said. “I came because I believe that success of the LGBT community here will resonate throughout the world,” he added.

While homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey — the country’s Ottoman rulers legalized it in 1858 — it remains a taboo in this conservative Muslim-majority society. Gay men and women who choose to come out of the closet risk being shunned by their families and friends, and fear discrimination. As a result, most Turkish homosexuals still choose not to disclose their true sexual preferences.

In 2005, a survey of the LGBT community in Istanbul conducted by LAMBDA – one of the two oldest gay rights organizations in Turkey — found that 83% of those interviewed preferred to hide their sexual orientation from all or some of their family members. 40% of interviewees also confessed to reluctantly forcing themselves into heterosexual relationships.

“There is discrimination everywhere, it’s hard to describe. It’s in the insults and the general unwelcoming atmosphere,” explained pride participant Zefer Çeler. A thirty-five years old professor of politics at Istanbul’s Yildiz University, Çeler has even seen friends lose their jobs due to their sexual preferences.

“When I walk down the street holding my girlfriend’s hand, or if I ever kiss her in public, people will always comment, sometime they can even try to hurt you,” said Burcu Ersoy, a twenty-nine years old activist who came from Ankara to attend the parade.

Turkey’s LGBT movement has achieved some success in the last couple of decades and they are now better able to organize. “I’d call the 1990s the decade of the movement’s foundation-building, when we created a platform for LGBT people to come together and discuss their experiences with one another,” explained Oner Ceylan. Ceylan, thirty-seven years old, is an interpreter by day and gay rights activist by night. The 2000s became, always according to him, “the years of visibility,” with gay rights organizations sprouting up in many Turkish cities and the community finally taking to the street with the g

ay pride parade, which began in 2004.

But there is little doubt that the movement is only at its inception. The LGBT community has achieved relatively little in terms of human and civil rights. There is no law on the books that protects homosexuals from discrimination in employment, education, housing, health care, public accommodations or credit. Turkey’s family law does not recognize same-sex marriages, civil unions or domestic partnership. The Turkish Council of State has ruled that homosexuals should not have custody of children. And the military bars LGBT people from serving in its ranks.

Members of the LGBT community here also continue to suffer from various forms of persecution. For example, when the country’s vague ‘public order, obscenity and morality’ laws are used by the police force to harass transsexuals on the streets. And hate crimes, particularly stabbings of gays are still not officially recognized by Turkey’s legal system as a form of especi

ally heinous crime. Rather, offenders often get reduced sentences for having harmed or killed a member of the LGBT community, with the courts open to accepting the defense’s claim of “provocation” under article 29 of the Turkish Criminal Code.

While coming out into the open was the key to Harvey Milk’s success — he relentlessly pushed all of California’s closeted gays to declare themselves to their relatives, friends and colleagues — his nephew Stuart thinks that this message might be premature here in Turkey, because of the particularly frightening consequences members of the LGBT community could face.

But there are other ideas that the Turkish gay movement can take from its American counterpart, for example active political engagement. “After the 1980 military coup, most progressive opposition groups in Turkey opted out of the system, giving up on elections and politics,” said Cihan Hüroglu, twenty-eight years old gay pride parade organizer. To this day, Hüroglu believes, the political left in Turkey does not encourage its youth to get involved. “The American tradition is different, more open to civil and political participation at the grassroots level,” Hüroglu continued, explaining that they invited Stuart Milk “to give us inspiration.”

The fact that three MPs from the National Parliament in Ankara attended a panel discussion held as a part of Gay Pride Week on Friday is testimony to the fact that Turkey’s LGBT movement is moving in the right direction. Two came from the left-leaning Kurdish-friendly Democratic Society Party (DTP) and one from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s main opposition party. However, nobody was there to represent the AKP (Justice and Development Party), the moderate Islamist ruling party.

]]> http://valentinapasquali.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/harvey-milk%e2%80%99s-nephew-stuart-helps-turkey%e2%80%99s-gays-break-through-the-barricades/feed/ 0 Valentina Pasquali June2809-IstanbulGayPrideParade1 June2809-IstanbulGayPrideParade4 June2809-IstanbulGayPrideParade3 June2809-IstanbulGayPrideParade2 http://valentinapasquali.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/mob-rule/ http://valentinapasquali.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/mob-rule/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:09:07 +0000 Valentina Pasquali http://valentinapasquali.wordpress.com/?p=500 ]]>

Originally published in Foreign Policy Magazine

NUNZIO MARI/AFP/Getty Images

Vincenzo Guida is the notorious crime boss of Naples, and in 2006, he and his Camorra clan were well on their way to infiltrating Milan, using a construction business as a front to launder more than $25 million of dirty money. By late fall, however, Italian authorities were on Guida’s trail, tapping the phones of his lawyer, Barbara Sabadini. That’s when Sabadini called Rep. Francesco De Luca, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s party, urging him to use his sway to help her criminal clients. De Luca seemed only too happy to oblige, alluding to a “friend,” a judge who was about to take over Guida’s trial. As Corriere della Sera reported last year, the Italian police were listening to all of this.

Investigators must have thought they hit the jackpot—that is, until they realized they were listening in on an elected representative’s conversation. At the time, Italy’s Boato Law conveniently required Parliament’s permission to intercept the phone calls of elected officials. So the wiretap was cut off. Before the police could get clearance to investigate, Parliament was dissolved and elections held. De Luca was reelected and only a few members of the Guida clan were arrested last year.

Stories like this are no exception in Italy. No doubt, the mafia has been powerful in Italy for a long time. But as a series of insightful books published there over the last year documents in vivid detail, Italy is now becoming a mafia-sponsored state. Its powerless judicial system, corrupt politics, and bloated but weak bureaucracy are enabling the mafia to take over the world’s sixth-largest economy—from construction to agriculture, waste management to manufacturing, small-time loan-sharking to high-end finance.

According to Confesercenti, the Italian association of small-business owners, the mafia’s activities account for nearly one tenth of Italy’s GDP. Corruption is finally starting to repel foreign direct investment, which in 2008 plunged more than three times as much in Italy as in the rest of the European Union. Indeed, in the World Bank’s 2008 “Doing Business” report, the efficiency of Italy’s justice system ranked 156 out of 181 countries—below Iraq and Pakistan, and just above Afghanistan.

This troubling picture is one that Italians don’t like to confront. But the recent publication of no fewer than six books—from insider accounts of mafia investigators to the sober investigations of intrepid journalists—has rejuvenated a decades-long national debate about the health and future of Italian democracy. At the heart of this debate, and running throughout these new books, are devastating questions: Is Italy becoming the failed state of Western Europe? Is the mafia running the show? And do Italians even care?

* * *

Roberto Scarpinato, a deputy district judge in Palermo’s anti-mafia division, and Saverio Lodato, a journalist, offer the most comprehensive account of the behind-the-scenes dealings between the mafia and politicians. Their Il Ritorno del Principe (The Prince’s Comeback) has the grand sweep appropriate to a social history of organized crime in Italy. The term “mafia”—likely from mafiusu, 19th-century Sicilian slang connoting swagger or a kind of fearless, bullying arrogance—has become a catchall term around the world. But the mafia actually comprises many organizations controlling separate territory, five of which are remarkably high profile: the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in and around Naples, the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Sacra Corona Unita in Apulia, and the Basilischi in Basilicata. And as Scarpinato and Lodato show, Italy’s mafia cartels are not simply violent, drug-dealing gangs; they are 21st-century corporations with an integrated system of governance, blurring the line between licit and illicit activities.

Scarpinato and Lodato argue that there are two faces to the mafia: the more visible military component—the low-ranking foot soldiers who rob, kill, and deal drugs—and the white-collar mafia, or “mafia bourgeoisie.” These professionals, entrepreneurs, and academics are not necessarily involved in criminal activity directly, but they are tied up in it nonetheless, and they manage the mafia’s relationships with Italy’s political class, which have recently grown much closer. Politicians let the mafia go about its business in exchange for votes and a cut of the illicit multimillion-dollar action. In turn, the mafia relieves the state of its duty to provide public goods. Take pizzo, the money for protection from rival clans and petty criminals that mafia bosses extract from business owners. The annual pizzo take is now estimated at nearly $19 billion.

Despite thousands of high-profile arrests and legislative attempts to conquer the mafia’s influence, Italy’s crackdowns raise their own suspicions. As Scarpinato and Lodato document, these intermittent efforts often coincide with attempts by the mafia’s armed wing to override its bourgeois counterpart. Any real progress is conveniently stopped just short of exposing the role of the white-collar mafia. It is unclear who really works for whom. And as the bond between politicians and the mafia deepens, Italy’s democratic state is hollowed out even more.

Indeed, many Italian politicians are not only themselves compromised, but as Bruno Tinti charges in Toghe Rotte (Broken Robes), they actively work to undermine the few parts of the Italian state that still have some integrity. Italian politicians chronically underfund the country’s traditionally independent judiciary and enact reams of legislation to debilitate it, like the Boato Law on wiretapping. Tinti, a former deputy district judge in Turin, writes, “If one examines the activity of the Parliament and the majority of the ministers of justice over the course of the last 20 years, one will discover something incredible: Not only has nothing been done to increase the efficiency of the justice system, but serious efforts have been devoted to further weaken it.”

Toghe Rotte offers a crash course on Italy’s dysfunctional justice system, and many of its stories and anecdotes should be filed under “funny if it weren’t true.” For example, there is the case of a 2002 law that Italy’s Parliament passed to try to neuter the judiciary. The measure dealt with prescrizione, or statutes of limitations. It shortened the so-called “period of prescription” for crimes—an allotment of time, now either five or 7½ years, in which Italy’s police and judges must discover the crime, investigate it, try it, and complete three layers of sentencing and appeals before a final verdict can be reached. If they fail to do all of this in time, the crime is expunged, regardless of its nature, and the accused is acquitted of all charges. What this means, according to Tinti, is that the penal procedures for 95 percent of all crimes committed in Italy expire before justice runs its course.

One man who is smiling because of all this is Prime Minister Berlusconi, who has been tried on 12 occasions for various alleged crimes, but has been acquitted eight times on grounds other than his proven innocence. The reason? In most cases, an expired statute of limitations, which Berlusconi’s government reduced even further in 2002 while some of his verdicts were pending. And if you were wondering how deep this scandal goes, according to Se Li Conosci Li Eviti (If You Know Them You’ll Avoid Them), written by Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio and published in 2008, 100 of Italy’s 945 currently serving parliamentarians have been indicted, tried, convicted, or are awaiting appeal for crimes that will likely disappear because of laws they wrote.

* * *

As Italy’s democracy grows more corrupt, the mafia fills the void, operating more freely and in more places than ever. Two recent books document the mafia’s expansion well beyond its traditional stronghold in southern Italy and toward a growing penetration of northern Italy, where its presence was once minimal.

Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah tells the southern half of the story, providing a gripping picture of the magnitude of the Camorra empire in Campania. Saviano, a journalist who grew up in the Naples projects, recounts how the Camorra’s activities now encompass every sector of the economy, even Italy’s trademark fashion industry.

One of the book’s stories is that of a tailor named Pasquale, whose factory on the outskirts of Naples is one of the Camorra’s many phantom operations—front businesses that the mafia has taken over using generous loans and extortion. The workers, like Pasquale, toil for punishing hours and little reward. Saviano writes that Pasquale was watching television one day in his tiny apartment, and he saw Angelina Jolie at the Academy Awards wearing a white satin suit—that he had made. The mafia knew exactly where the suit was headed, but no one told Pasquale. Such is life in what are essentially the mafia-run sweatshops of Western Europe.

Similar stories are now unfolding in northern Italy, too. This comes to life in Polo Nord (North Pole), written by two young Italian journalists, Fabio Abati and Igor Greganti. They began covering crime around Milan and noticed an increasing number of violent murders in what were once peaceful suburban communities. This discovery led the authors into the dark new world that the mafia runs in northern Italian cities such as Milan, Turin, and Verona, which are becoming hubs for the global drug trade.

Here, too, the mafia is taking over once legitimate businesses and twisting them to their illicit ends, corrupting everyone in the process. The authors tell one such story of a construction entrepreneur from Lake Garda named Giuseppe. He got wrapped up with the mafia when they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse to use his construction businesses to launder money and invest it in local nightclubs. Before long, Giuseppe was helping the clan run a prostitution ring, shuttling Eastern European girls and their wealthy clients between the clubs and hotels. “In Garda’s nightclubs I saw society turn into sewage,” Giuseppe told Abati and Greganti, “and tons of people swim in its crap.”

Despite mounting evidence of Italy’s growing mafia problems, public outcry has been limited, or at least ineffective. To be fair, some have worked courageously, often under threats of violence, to expose the mafia’s penetration of Italy and pressure the state to do more about it. Still, they’re a minority. Many Italians comfortably tolerate the mafia’s presence. Others, because of their deep distrust of the corrupt and feckless Italian state, even support some mafia-wrought changes to their communities—so much so that, at times, they resent the efforts of crusading public servants to crack down.

One Italian who tasted this resentment firsthand is Raffaele Cantone, a former judge in the anti-mafia division of the Naples courts, who recounts his ordeal in Solo per Giustizia (Only for Justice). When Cantone first moved to Giugliano, a city just north of Naples, he received a chilly welcome. In addition to cracking down on the Camorra clan, which was seamlessly woven into the fabric of everyday life in Naples, Cantone supported police efforts to do small things such as regulate traffic and fine drivers who displayed fake insurance tags. Tensions really peaked when the police decided to check public licenses and discovered that most businesses were, in fact, illegal. The police promptly shut them down, and the locals became enraged, blaming Cantone for disrupting the peace. “I kept wondering,” he writes, “if a similar reception would have been thinkable had a Camorra boss moved to Giugliano instead of me.”

These truth-telling books are receiving a warmer reaction in Italy than Cantone did in Giugliano, but that’s not saying much. Saviano’s Gomorrah rose to international acclaim. It was made into a movie in 2008 and won lavish praise, including the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. But soon thereafter the Camorra clan made death threats against Saviano. Polo Nord sparked real controversy by exposing the infiltration of northern Italy by southern criminal cartels. This is a development Italians don’t want to hear about.

Still, whatever debate is now stirring in Italy is mainly confined to a relatively small circle of intellectuals, activists, and avid readers. Italy’s democracy remains immobile when it comes to stemming the country’s corruption. These books have come nowhere close to rousing Italians to demand better governance and a rejection of illegality and organized crime. Instead, as the authors show, too many Italians have been settling for a mafia state for a long time now, and they appear content to continue doing so.

Washington D.C. – In an effort to identify the causes of, and possible solutions to the growing divide between public opinions in the United States and the Muslim world, Juan Cole discussed his most recent work, Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), at a book launch hosted by the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. Assessing the damage on Muslim perceptions of America inflicted by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq of 2003, Cole argued that a withdrawal, albeit slow, of U.S. troops will contribute significantly to improving relationships with the region at large.

A professor of history at the University of Michigan, fluent in several Middle Eastern languages, and a frequent commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, Cole tried to extricate the causes of the growing disenchantment with the United States among the Muslim public, despite the many alliances the U.S. entertains in the Middle East and across the Muslim world. Take Indonesia for example, suggested Cole. According to a series of polls conducted over time by the Pew Charitable Trust and Gallup, in 2000 75% of Indonesians held a positive view of the United States. This figure fell to 15% in 2004 and has now regained some ground hitting 37% in 2009, still only half of what it was nine years earlier.

Cole believes that, alongside the languishing stalemate in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the occupation of Iraq devised by the Bush Administration is heavily responsible for this dramatic change in attitudes. In Cole’s most conservative estimate, 300,000 Iraqis have been killed during the war, as a result of fighting and infrastructure failures caused by military operations. Not to count the orphans, the widows and the millions of displaced citizens the war left behind. Additionally, scandals like that of the prison at Abu Grahib became major issues for Muslims around the world. “In an effort to curb the insurgency using harsh questioning techniques and torture, the Bush Administration ended up creating huge new numbers of insurgents,” Cole said at the Middle East Institute.

According to Cole, the U.S. needs to accept blame for a sort of idleness, the lack of a prompt and effective response to the deterioration of the situation on the ground (Cole reported that Sweden, for example, without having anything to do with the invasion, has already accepted 40,000 Iraqi immigrants.) Cole holds the American corporate media partially responsible for the some of the disinformation that kept the American people from understanding more about the tragedy that was unfolding. “We are not well served by our corporate media. I don’t think the U.S. public was ever aware of what the Iraq war really was for the Iraqi people,” lamented Cole. TV networks in particular had a tendency to sanitize the war, showing images of the craters that would be left by the bombs, but not of the blood and the corpses and the spare limbs that dominated the scene immediately following the explosion. This imagery, instead, made it regularly on outlets such as Al Jazeera. Because of the sanitization of the more gruesome aspects of the war, Cole believes that the human costs of the U.S. military engagement in Iraq were never fully recognized at home.

As all of this is on the minds of the Iraqis, and of people across the Muslim world, U.S. military presence in Iraq has, according to Cole, become utterly unacceptable. Yet, while polls show a certain amount of support among Muslims for violent retaliation against the U.S. armed forces based in the Middle East, even those who feel more strongly about the issue do not express any desire to ever hit the United States homeland. Mostly what people want is withdrawal, which is good news according to Cole, especially since President Obama seems determined to go through with it. To be fair, Cole did not argue that all Americans must necessarily disappear from Iraq at once, something that those he nicknamed “withdrawal extremists” are calling for. Cole simply claimed that Muslims would welcome a steady and consistent reduction of armed forces deployed in Iraq.

While being extremely critical of the policies of the Bush Administration, Cole also recognized that the situation in Iraq has improved and that U.S. forces exercise today far more command and control then ever before. However, he insisted that the relative stabilization of the country should not be understood as vindicating the invasion. “It would be like saying that, when the black plague began subsiding in medieval Europe, the Norwegian rat had been vindicated,” Call remarked ironically.

Overall, Cole’s present assessment is that Iraq has been building some fundamental capabilities and that there is increasing promise that it might come back together and at least provide for its own security. “I’m somewhat optimistic that Iraq might get its act together and that a U.S. withdrawal could actually be possible without ensuing disaster,” Cole suggested. The one issue that remains unresolved and that could create hurdles in the years ahead is the Arab-Kurd relationship, which is again showing signs of distress. The new American Administration should also be aware that, even in the best-case scenario of a fully recovering Iraq that maintains a positive relationship with Washington, relations between Baghdad and Teheran will continue to be warmer than the U.S. would like. “I think the U.S. will have to suck it up, because the Bush Administration created an Iran that is more powerful in the Middle East than it used to be,” argued Cole. What the U.S. can and should do, according to the University of Michigan’s professor, is to ensure a more hands-on leadership than the previous administration was able to practice. “I hope President Obama and Vice-President Biden will take more active control of what happens including in trying to tackle the case of the Kurds,” explained Cole.

Asked only in the Q&A session his opinion on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Cole did not even try to hide the hopelessness he feels about the situation: “I’m very pessimistic about the conflict. I really don’t see an end to it,” he admitted. Describing the newly formed Israeli government as the “farthest right we have seen in history,” Cole predicted that it could be decades before a solution is reached. Cole foresees three possible scenarios. He finds it unlikely that an agreement will be found on a variation of the two-state solution. Also unlikely, but not as much as one might think, is the apocalyptic view that Israelis will proceed with the expulsion of the Palestinians from Palestine, which would trigger a conflict of enormous proportion throughout the region. Finally, and more likely, Cole believes that we are about to witness a long period of, what he described as “apartheid,” which could continue for two to three decades. This would not be a stable long term solution, and it would probably attract increasingly strict sanctions on Israel, maybe not from the U.S. but certainly from the Europeans. But, according to Cole, Israel is really not capable of surviving without trading with Europe and, at some point, the conflict would just end with a one-state solution, where Palestinians will be granted Israeli citizenship. Apparently, one-third of Palestinians already appear willing to accept it, showing that this third scenario might be the more likely, albeit in the very long run.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – In anticipation of the G20 meeting that will take place in London on April 2^nd and of the EU-US Summit that will be held in Prague on April 5^th, Alexander Vondra, the Czech Republic Deputy Prime Minister, visited Washington and outlined key items on the agenda of the Czechs, who currently hold the rotating presidency of the European Union. Emphasizing the fundamental role of the historic alliance between the United States and European countries, Vondra stressed the desire to strengthen cooperation, in particular in areas that the Czech Republic deems as priorities, namely security, climate change and energy, and the global economic crisis. These remarks were given just a day prior to the vote of no-confidence that caused the Czech government to fall on Wednesday. The country’s Prime Minister said he would resign. It is unclear how this unexpected development will affect the Czech agenda for the EU presidency.

“The November 4 elections provided space for the rejuvenation of EU-US relations,” said Vondra speaking at Johns Hopkins University. This opportunity to refresh bilateral relations should not be missed for any reason because, in the end, “the US and the EU are stronger together, especially in times of crisis,” Vondra said. The Czech Republic views the transatlantic relationship as a priority, he promised, reminding the audience that his country has been “one of the staunchest allies of the United States for the last twenty years.”

In the field of security, the EU-US alliance must be viewed as the relevant tool for addressing threats to international peace, primarily Afghanistan and Iran. “I have no illusion on Afghanistan, it is a very difficult challenge,” Vondra admitted. He explained that the EU is focused on approaching the issue with “dedication and realism” and with the goal of getting the Afghans ready to govern themselves. U.S. President Barack Obama took a first step by promising a ‘surge’ of troops to be deployed in Afghanistan and Vondra acknowledged that it is now the Europeans’ turn to act. It is thought that member countries will deploy more police force with the aim of training their Afghan counterpart, rather than increasing the number of soldiers on the ground. According to Vondra, Europeans are also determined to focus more on the development side of things, working to strengthen the military-civilian partnership initiated with the establishment of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Overall, he argued that it will be important to “try to agree on a comprehensive EU-US strategy for the next three-to-five years.” According to Vondra, this comprehensive strategy will need to include a regional component and to include Pakistan as a key part of the equation.

Iran is, in Vondra’s opinion, the other outstanding challenge the international community is currently facing. “Obama decided to engage Iran. It is a commendable effort and we hope it will bring change,” Vondra said. The fact remains, he continued, that Iran is developing nuclear and ballistic programs, and the whole of Europe could be within reach of its missiles. Hence, the EU and the US will need to coordinate and find common ways to change Iran’s more suspicious behaviors.

Energy security also became a particularly hot issue in Europe recently, when Russia cut gas supplies traveling via Ukraine, Vondra recalled. Certain countries, especially Slovakia and Bulgaria, were harshly hit. Others, shielded from more immediate consequences, continued to view the problem as an intellectually challenging geopolitical issue. For this reason, Vondra regretted that EU members failed to reach quickly a coordinated policy, while the dispute between Moscow and Kiev went on earlier this year. But things have changed and the 27 member countries have come closer together on the issue, establishing, for example, a 5 billion Euros fund for energy that was just appropriated. Programs that will receive funding are in the fields of energy efficiency, alternative energy and planning for improved EU-wide mechanisms to respond to energy crisis. The biggest challenges, according to Vondra, remain the diversification of suppliers and supply routes.

Alexander Vondra also stated that the Czech Republic’s Presidency of the EU values a proactive agenda on climate change, in preparation for the Copenhagen Summit that will be held at the end of the year. “It will be difficult to set ambitious goals in a time of crisis,” Vondra acknowledged, “but it is key that the US joins the EU on this issue,” he argued, lamenting that the openings coming from the new US administration have been significant and yet not sufficiently substantive.

Last, but certainly not least, Vondra tackled the economic crisis sweeping through Europe and the rest of the world. He insisted that “any kind of protectionism should be avoided.” Admittedly, the EU Council just survived a hard-fought battle to come to such agreement, even just internally. But finally, Vondra noted, it succeeded. “Now we should strive to impose the same principle globally, and particularly in the realm of EU-US relationships.” Responding to President Obama’s calls to the EU — Obama pressed member countries to approve additional fiscal stimulus measures — Vondra noted that the EU already spent 3% of its GDP, approximately 400 billion Euros, to help the recovery. “Additional stimuli are unlikely at this point,” he declared. The finance ministries of EU member countries, Vondra explained, are tied to stricter limits on spending than the U.S. Treasury. In particular, the EU Central Bank’s focus is on monetary stability and on avoiding inflation, while the U.S. Federal Reserve prioritizes growth. Furthermore, in Vondra’s opinion fiscal stimuli only work in conjunction with programs meant to unblock the credit markets. For those member countries that are plagued with bad assets, Vondra asserted that “a clean-up operation is the priority.” In this sense, he welcomed the announcement made the day before by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the proposed Public-Private Investment Program that should help free troubled banks of their most toxic assets. Vondra added that the international community will have to upgrade regulations, especially with regard to rating agencies and hedge funds.

In the Q&A session, Vondra quickly touched upon a few other contentious issues, but rather superficially. He confessed to being disappointed about the current lack of focus on human rights and democracy of the EU, while insisting that human rights in particular remain the basis of the EU policy on enlargement to the east, especially in the case of Belarus. Vondra also admitted to a certain “enlargement fatigue in Europe,” but said that EU officials are doing their best to keep the process moving, albeit far more slowly than it was five or six years ago. Asked about whether or not the EU had formulated a new policy on the practice of rendition – transferring foreign suspects to third countries with looser regulations on torture so that they can be interrogated or detained more easily – Vondra said that the EU is awaiting the comprehensive review being conducted by officials of the Obama Administration. “It is important to have this issue on the agenda, but discussions are only at the initial stage,” Vondra said.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – Almost eight years after aircrafts flown by terrorists hit the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., the U.S.-led ‘war on terror’ is far from won and Al-Qaeda, identified as the perpetrator of those and many other attacks on American military forces as well as civilians, has grown into the name-brand for an international franchise of increasingly decentralized terrorist groups.

Estimates on the overall cost of the so-called ‘war on terror’ vary widely and range from the $700 billion calculated by the Congressional Research Service to the about $4 trillion some private analysts claim have been spend. This money includes budget appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other military operations decided by the Bush Administration in response to 9/11. We are talking about a rather large sum, independent of the exact amount; which begs the uncomfortable question of how effectively this money has been used and with what results.

“Al-Qaeda probably is weaker than it was in 2001, because its leadership has been on the run and it has suffered losses of much of its cadre,” Paul Pillar says to Washington Prism in an e-mail interview. Pillar is a former CIA and National Intelligence officer and a visiting professor at Georgetown University where he teaches security studies.

American anti-terrorism operations have been focused on the military structure of Al-Qaeda, and on its leadership. The long list of targeted assassinations of the organization’s high-level officials, (for example Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s, Al-Qaeda’s number one in Iraq, in 2006), is a testimony to this strategy.

“The elimination of a number of senior Al-Qaeda militants has damaged the network,” argues Paul Wilkinson in a separate interview, “but the damage is likely to be repaired very rapidly.  There is no evidence that Al-Qaeda is short of new recruits or experienced operatives.” Wilkinson is a former professor of International Relations and former Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He’s one of Europe’s foremost experts on Al-Qaeda and terrorist networks.

The fact is that, however painful a setback the removal of senior operatives might be for Al-Qaeda, the organization has shown a strong track record in filling vacancies at mid-to-senior-levels. Moreover, Al-Qaeda has repeatedly shown itself able to reorganize after major blows.  “They suffered a major setback in Iraq but they have consolidated their position in Pakistan and are expanding their influence and pressure in Africa, including not only the Horn of Africa but also in West Africa,” claims Wilkinson.

As a result, it is hard to say what the overall balance of targeted assassinations might be. For example, what is the real effect of the operation carried out by the CIA that reportedly killed Abu Laith al-Libi, one of Al-Qaeda’s most senior officials, in a frontier province of Pakistan at the end of last year? “The loss of valuable experience probably is a net minus for the group, although as with any organization, the possibility of upward mobility and fresh blood can be an offsetting advantage,” Paul Pillar explains.

Moreover, while targeting Al-Qaeda’s central structure might hamper the activities of the ‘parent’ cell, it simultaneously propels the outgrowth of many smaller and far flung offspring. “We have noticed that, beginning with 9/11 and then continuing with the attacks in London, Madrid and Mumbai, we are experiencing more of the phenomenon that Mark Sageman called ‘the bunch of guys,’” argues Gary LaFree during a telephone interview. LaFree is the Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a center of excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland. The result of this American strategy intensely focused on “Al-Qaeda central” has been increased activity on the part of people that have very little or almost no contact between one another or with the Al-Qaeda’s leadership. “They are increasingly like a decentralized franchising operation,” says LaFree, “which is very much alive and well.”

This increasing decentralization is changing the definition of terrorism, and it creates problems for those experts and academics that try to categorize the activities of terrorist groups. “The definition of what Al-Qaeda really is and what can be counted as Al-Qaeda’s actions is especially problematic in Iraq. In this country the violence is so widespread that it is very difficult to separate out what might be just military actions, insurgencies, ordinary crime or terrorism,” LaFree explains. He outlines the challenges he faces in recording attacks in Iraq to his database of over 80,000 incidents of terrorism that have happened all over the world since 1970. While more traditionalist terrorist groups, such as the Irish IRA, would normally claim responsibility for their action (55% of LaFree’s 80,000 recorded attacks have a clear attribution,) Al-Qaeda rarely does the same. In Iraq, for example, after the U.S. invasion of 2003 terrorist cells claimed responsibility for only 9% of all episodes of violence. This significantly complicates the job of those who are tasked with assessing the fluctuating strength of Al-Qaeda and the developments in its internal power structure.

Overall, LaFree is convinced that the U.S. has been relatively successful in weakening the leadership of Al-Qaeda. “The part that we probably have been much less successful with is stopping the social movement that has grown around Al-Qaeda,” he argues. According to LaFree, removing the opponent’s leadership has always been a critical strategy of conventional war-fighting, but is not as true anymore. “Hitting the opponent’s leadership doesn’t have the same meaning when there is a fair amount of support and sympathy for the kind of ideas that are being propounded,” he says.

LaFree’s START Center, in partnership with worldpublicopinion.org, conducted several surveys of public opinion in the Middle East: “We have found a fair amount of support from the general population for either Al-Qaeda or ideas associated with it,” explains LaFree. Worldpublicopinion.org, managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, is a consortium of research centers studying the response of global public opinion to international developments. The results of the latest round of polling, released on February 24^th, show for example that large majorities throughout the Muslim world agree with Al-Qaeda’s goal of pushing U.S. military forces out of predominantly Muslim countries. This is true for 87 percent of Egyptians, 64 percent of Indonesians, and 60 percent of Pakistanis. The survey also indicates that Muslim public opinion overwhelmingly rejects the use of attacks on civilians as a tactic to pursue these goals. Nevertheless, this poll illustrates that some of Al-Qaeda’s claims resonate well beyond its military operatives and to ordinary people throughout the Muslim world. Substantial numbers, in some cases majorities, of those interviewed by START and worldpublicopinion.org even approve of attacks on American troops based in Muslim countries.

The lack of a more comprehensive approach on the part of the U.S., one that would address the social implications of Al-Qaeda rather than its military prowess alone, has resulted in a three-legged and inconclusive war, at least thus far. “The organization is not crippled.  Even less crippled is the wider radical Islamist movement, which extends well beyond Al-Qaeda,” argues Paul Pillar. And Wilkinson echoes him: “I suspect that the prediction of a fatal schism in the network is premature.”

Gary LaFree is wary of an exclusively military approach to fighting international terrorism. “Simply going after what the military calls ‘the bad guys,’ has little impact on people living in a remote part of Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan,” he warns. Instead, the U.S. should pay more attention to winning over people’s hearts and minds. “We have to remember that our opponents are providing social services, that they actually have a presence in the communities. If this battle is lost, then it is likely that the whole war will be lost too,” argues LaFree.

Of the specific policies undertaken by the Bush Administration, Paul Pillar appreciates the increased attention paid to security countermeasures on American territory as the most effective step taken in recent years. “What has not worked has been the outgoing administration’s tendency to lump all terrorism into a single category and to use a ‘either you’re for us or for the terrorist’ approach,” Pillar argues.

According to Pillar, the new Obama Administration should “quietly discard the harmful and misleading ‘war on terror’ terminology.” In his opinion, this rhetoric has played into the view put forward by extremists of a religious war in which the United States is waging war on Islam.  For Gary LaFree, the new U.S. Government must look for international partners. “The idea that one country can go at it alone without international cooperation is a dangerous one,” he says. LaFree concludes on a quasi-optimist note, by recalling the spontaneous outburst of global support for the U.S. that followed 9/11, and which has been squandered thereafter: “the world community as a whole is not happy with random violence and people being tortured and killed, no matter who is behind it.”

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

The results of two rounds of U.S.-led polling of public opinion in Iran, conducted in 2006 and 2008, portray a moderate Iranian people. The studies show Iranians as relatively pleased with their own system of government and electoral system, although critical of certain aspects of it. Iranians appear open to multilateralism and international organizations, even in the realm of human rights. While they are eager to push forward with the nuclear program, they don’t necessarily want to develop nuclear weapons. They long to be treated as an important regional actor but don’t wish for regional hegemony. They are suspicious of terrorist groups and even hold a generally positive view of the American people. In this overall temperate picture, deeply rooted animosity toward the U.S. Government remains as a fundamental component of the Iranian identity.

While Iran’s presidential elections approach, and as the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress discuss opportunities for an overture toward Teheran, Washington Prism’s Valentina Pasquali spoke to Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland, about his experience assessing the Iranian psyche. Mr. Kull is a political psychologist who studies world public opinion on international issues. He directed both the 2006 and the 2008 surveys in Iran.

Valentina Pasquali: What would you say was the most striking result of your two rounds of surveys in Iran?

Steven Kull: What comes through quite strongly is the extent to which Iranians are not in a revolutionary mindset. There is this image of Iranians being swept up by the kind of zeal one associates with the early days of the Bolsheviks, that they have an ideology that they are aiming to spread. I just don’t see any evidence of this, in the polling data and the focus groups. Iranians are supportive of an Islamic state, but they are also reaching out to the West in a variety of ways: they endorse democracy and human rights, and endorse changes for the role of women. They are evolving and trying to integrate these liberal ideas into their own system. But it is a struggle; they are not, by any means, ready to abandon their Islamic roots. They perceive the West, particularly the United States, as exerting a destabilizing effect on them and making it more difficult for them to find their way. In short, on the one hand, the number of people who truly identify with the revolutionary Islamic mindset is quite small. On the other, I should also underscore that the idea that Iranians, underneath it all, love America, love the West, and can’t wait for the current government to fall so that they can become a western-style democracy, is also a dream unsupported by reality.

VP: Where do Iranian people stand on the nuclear issue?

SK: Both in the polling and the focus groups we found widespread determination on the part of the Iranians to acquire a capacity to enrich uranium, combined with a strong sense of the constraints that should be put on developing a nuclear weapon. A fairly large majority perceives that developing a nuclear weapon would be contrary to the principles of Islam. The Iranian elite and religious leaders have put forward this view and it would be very difficult for them to change course. Maybe public opinion doesn’t determine their decisions, but there is something to be said about the normative environment the leadership has created, rooted in the idea that it would not be legitimate to acquire nuclear weapons. I think it would require a significant trigger for them to switch course, something would have to happen that dramatically increased the threat to Iran. It’s quite unlikely that they would just abruptly cross that line.

Now, it is also clear that the Iranians are aware of the fact that having a nuclear energy program serves more purposes than just nuclear energy. They want to be one step closer to having nuclear weapons capability. They perceive that this would give them a number of benefits: greater status and a deterrent effect on other parties. Moreover, there is a widespread perception that neighboring countries are not complying with the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iranians think that others are secretly developing nuclear weapons and that the NPT regime is fragile, and, as a result, they want to be well positioned should the NPT regime collapse.

VP: In the discussion of your work in Iran, you addressed the overstated perception Iranians have of American power in the world. Were you able to assess what this perception was born out of?

SK: The majority of Iranians we polled think the U.S. controls most of what happens in the world. In the focus groups we did, some of the views that were expressed were particularly potent, for example the idea that the U.S. controls Al-Qaeda. Why? I don’t have an easy answer to that. It is a belief that seems to have a quasi-religious connotation. When Iranians use the term ‘the Great Satan,’ they honestly describe how they perceive the U.S.; something like a cosmic principle, and not just an ordinary state that happens to be rather rich and well armed. Certainly the long history of the U.S. having a highly intrusive role in Iran matters. In general, I would say that there is a tendency in that part of the world toward conspiracy theory, a tendency to see complex organizing themes behind the surface of things. Even on the Al Jazeera website there is a section called conspiracy theory. With respect to Iranians in particular, there also is a history of discovering at a later time that America was behind something that they had not previously assumed. And so it has become a kind of default position to assume that America is behind something. Iranians’ perception of being under siege works as an important glue holding their society together. I think the best comparison to try understanding Iran is America shortly after 9/11. America was so cohesive, and there was very little criticism of the government. All the polls showed that the people’s attitude toward the government or everything American became much more positive. It’s not that people were lying, or making things up. But when people feel threatened, they tend to huddle closer together. Iran has that same quality, constantly feeling under siege.

VP: What do you think is the effect of international sanctions on the psyche of the Iranian people?

SK: It’s not something we polled on directly, but based on my experience, sanctions contribute to this generalized sense of being under pressure by the West. It also justifies the economic failures of the current government and it feeds into this idea that the U.S. is hostile to Islam itself and is out to undermine it.

VP: What was the people’s view of President Ahmadinejad, at least at the time of your most recent survey?

SK: About two-thirds of the people we interviewed at the beginning of 2008 expressed a favorable opinion. Because we heard so much about people coming to Iran and hearing negative views of the president we proofed further and divided people according to income and education. People with higher education or higher income were not as positive, they were more divided about Ahmadinejad. And those tend to probably be the people that Westerners encounter more often when they come to Tehran.

VP: How would you explain the animosity of the Iranian people toward the U.S. Government?

SK: I think it is important to recognize how deep the roots of this animosity are and how far back they go. For many people in Iran the experience of the Shah was a very negative one and the U.S. was always associated with it. I don’t think other Muslim countries have a history that could trigger that depth of animosity. However, it is also true that Iran has a stronger than average attraction to the west. It’s kind of a complex love/hate relation, which you can find broadly in the Muslim world but is more common in Iran. There is some magnetism, while, at the same time, animosity toward the U.S. plays a huge role in the structure of society. So much that it would be difficult to break away from it. Many politicians and leaders embrace this national narrative rooted in a negative relationship with the U.S. An effort to change this approach would rattle fundamental structures in Iran, and could be very destructive to the Iranian identity.

I do think that there is a genuine desire among most Iranians to improve relations; the question is whether or not this can be done in a way that does not make Iranians feel like they are just submitting. They have a strong sense of pride and any agreement would need not to be received as some kind of defeat, or capitulation. I think that the proposition that Tom Pickering, and others, have put forward as far as the nuclear weapons program, to multilateralize it or to create some kind of structure with intrusive inspections and a limit capacity to enrich uranium, would go over. We polled on it and the majority of Iranians said they would accept it. And it has been alluded to by a few Iranian leaders. To actually bring it about would probably require a more complex bargain touching on a wide array of components, as for example the removal of some or all of the economic sanctions. From the first to the second poll we conducted in Iran, we found an increase in the readiness to support steps that would improve relations with the U.S., such as growing diplomatic contacts and more people-to-people exchanges. Probably, some combination of removal of economic sanctions, limited enrichment capacity with highly intrusive inspections, and greater cultural contacts, could be a package that, from all the indications I have, would be feasible. Clearly, giving up the idea of regime change is a key part of this grand bargain. I don’t have poll data to show this but, from everything I see, the Iranian people as well as the Islamic regime find the rhetoric of regime change annoying and threatening. Iranians don’t react thinking that the U.S. is simply going after their government but not after them. Rather, they see this as part of the American attempt to undermine their way of life. And they identify with the regime. I think this is the most important thing that U.S. government leaders can understand better. When we threaten the Iranian government, the Iranian people feel threatened too.

VP: According to your study, Iranians view most terrorist organizations in a negative light. However, this doesn’t apply to Hezbollah and Hamas, outlining a difficult relationship with Israel. What is your understanding of the general perception of Israel among regular Iranian people?

SK: There is a very negative view. The polling numbers are extremely negative and there is definitely a lot of hostility. It’s also striking that, while Iranians reject attacks on civilians quite strongly, when asked about Palestinians attacking Israeli civilians they are more divided. I think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very engaging to Iranians, and other Muslims, because it is a very distinct and vivid narrative of Muslims being victimized, in their mind, by a Western based force that ultimately works on behalf of the United States. It’s not so much that they care about the Palestinians per se, but they identify with the Palestinians and the conflict strikes a very strong emotional chord.

But in all honesty, I don’t think you would find the desire to annihilate the state of Israel to be the majority opinion in Iran. My impression is that Iranians would probably be fine with the two-state solution, and that the Arab initiative that is in play right now would be attractive to them. I don’t see any real indication that Iranians are dead-set on some kind of maximal outcome where Israel is eliminated. They don’t perceive themselves as pursuing maximal outcomes at all. They perceive themselves as in a defensive mode.

VP: Do you have a sense of how consistent, or inconsistent, the mood of the Iranian public is? Your latest survey was conducted approximately 12 months ago; do you have reasons to believe that, were you to do another one now, the results would be fairly similar, or quite the contrary, completely different?

SK: All publics are pretty stable and so, as a general baseline, as a pollster you don’t expect big change. The most interesting question is what changes might be happening given the new U.S. Administration of President Barack Obama. To the extent that we have data from the Muslim world, but not Iran, I can tell you that people are hopeful, but on a wait-and-see mode. Iranians have an elaborate belief system that says it is impossible for the U.S. to change, that the U.S. is structurally the way it is, driven by lobbies, and particularly the Israeli lobby. There is this narrative that says that Obama couldn’t change these things even if he wanted to. But I still think that, underneath, there is hope nonetheless, and that, if the U.S. does offer an overture, it would be difficult for Iran not to respond in some way.

VP: While surveying people in Iran you were free to touch upon almost every topic, with the exception of the clergy and the role of the Supreme Leader. Do you have a sense of how much the lack of such discussion clouds the overall validity of the survey?

SK: To make things clear, it wasn’t the government that forbade us to ask these questions, they didn’t have any direct involvement; rather the local polling organization we selected did its own self-censorship. And I think that, if we had brought the issue of the role of the clergy up directly in the focus groups, people would have been uncomfortable. I certainly would like to understand this issue better. From what I read, I don’t see a lot of signs that people are burning to actually discuss it though. It’s not that they are fully content. In a sense, this is comparable to asking Americans about the Supreme Court. “Should we get rid of the Supreme Court?” Americans don’t really think about it. They generally like the Supreme Court, they have some respect for it, but it’s mostly just part of the furniture. In Iran, the clergy is not one of those things that people are accustomed to challenging, no more so than the Americans are accustomed to challenging the Constitution. It should be understood that the Council of Guardians can be criticized, for example, for excluding candidates from elections. People do it all the time in Parliament, and there are demonstrations against such decisions. Specific choices can be questioned. But whether the Council of Guardians ought to have any role at all, that’s probably a question beyond what Iranians are willing to discuss. This is, in a way, very similar to asking Americans whether the Supreme Court should have any role. Here, where we have a Constitution and a Supreme Court that interprets it. In Iran the idea that the clergy plays some role in the interpretation of Sharia law and the Koran is not seen as something to question. However people might have criticisms about specific decisions, like people here might have criticisms about specific Supreme Court decisions. To an extent that we have trouble understanding, Iranians don’t perceive Islam, and even the Islamic state they have, as intrinsically opposed to democracy. Again, we have constraints on democracy here as well, it’s not like the majority can make any decision it wants; it is limited by the Constitution and how the Supreme Court interprets it. Iranians would say that this is the same for them, although they would probably acknowledge that their system is more restrictive. But they don’t see it as intrinsically problematic. Words like democracy and human rights are popular words.

VP: What do you think a U.S. Government official should come away from these surveys with? What is most important to understand about the views of the Iranian people?

SK: The combination of openness to the West as well as the rootedness in the idea of an Islamic government. That democracy and an Islamic government are not contradictory. And that Iranians are not in a pre-revolutionary state, but even open to influences from the West. I think it’s very important to get rid of the notion that they are against us; they are simply struggling with the process of modernization, and that is a difficult process. They are people with very proud roots, they achieved very high level of culture, but in the current period they are not doing so well, which is humiliating to them. They are also not ready to abandon their roots. Even as they open up to Western influences. In the end, you have some rejectionists, as you might say, and you have those that are totally ready to go over to the Western model, but the big majority both wants to keep its root and be in a relationship with the West. The problem is that we are not good at talking to that group, we tend to threaten the former and seduce the latter, or treat them as some kind of ally, but we haven’t found a good voice for the middle masses. This approach is rooted in our fantasy that, underneath, everybody is like us and people really want what we have. I think we really must let go of this, while also understand more clearly that Iranians are not in a revolutionary mindset. A lot would follow from this, I think.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

On February 23rd, Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini publicly stated that his government is considering the possibility of inviting Iran to a Group of Eight’s (G8) ministerial conference scheduled for June in Trieste. The meeting, which falls under Italy’s G8 presidency, will focus on the stabilization of Afghanistan and Central Asia. Washington Prism talked with Maurizio Massari, head of the policy-planning unit at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about this Italian overture toward Iran.

Washington Prism: Italy’s invitation to Iran was driven by what considerations in particular? What does Italy believe can be achieved in the relations with Iran?

Maurizio Massari (MM): I wouldn’t call it so much an invitation, but rather a hypothesis for collaborative work. Our goal is the stabilization of Afghanistan and the region. We want to see whether Iran can, and is willing to, contribute to this goal. It has nothing to do with the nuclear issue, on which the standards put forward thus far still stand.

WP: Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has maintained a hard line on Iran up until now. How shall we understand this initiative of the Italian Foreign Ministry? Is this a signal that the Italian Government is ready to change approach?

MM: The hard line on the nuclear issue and international sanctions stands and it remains the approach of our government.

WP: Have there been consultations between the Italian Government and the U.S. Government, or those of the other members of the European Union, before the invitation to Trieste was officially extended to Iran?

MM: As far as Iran’s potential involvement in the stabilization process in Afghanistan and the region we are consulting with our American, European and Arab allies. It is not a unilateral initiative, rather we are trying to gather overall consensus on it.

WP: What is the Italian Government’s position as far as economic sanctions on Iran? What will Italy’s approach be over the course of the next few months?

MM: Italy will act in accordance to the decisions made between the EU and the U.S. If, within the framework of ‘bigger sticks, bigger carrots’, new sanctions will be imposed, we will also adopt them.

WP: Beyond Afghanistan, do you see other areas in which Italy thinks a positive dialogue and collaboration with Iran can be created?

MM: I think the Persian Gulf and Iraq, after U.S. troops withdraw, can become areas where we can test Iranian behavior and intentions.

Originally written and reported for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – A rapidly shrinking, aging and increasingly expensive American military, which is unequipped to carry out real-life combat missions, is the worrying scenario presented in “America’s Defense Meltdown,” a recently published book that contains the results of a survey of the U.S. armed forces conducted by thirteen Pentagon insiders. Winslow Wheeler, Thomas Christie and Pierre Sprey, three of the authors, discussed the decades-long, and continuing, deterioration of America’s defenses at a book launch organized in Washington D.C. by five not-for-profit organizations active in defense-related issues: The Fund for Constitutional Government, the Center for Defense Information (CDI), the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Institute for Policy Studies.

According to official data from the Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. military budget

America's Defense Meltdown

(in inflation-adjusted dollars) is higher today than it was during the wars in Korea and Vietnam and during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which was heavy on defense spending. Today, the U.S. military budget approximates that of the rest of the world, noted Winslow Wheeler, and it is about three times as large as those of China, Russia, Cuba, Iran and North Korea combined – America’s potential short and long-term enemies. However, in terms of the size of forces, numbers are down from the past, even considering Iraq and Afghanistan. This is true for Army divisions, Navy combatant ships, and Air Force tactical wings; despite steady growth, figures suggest, the defense budget is capable of buying only a decreasing number of weapons systems. As a result, the forces are aging. While in the 1980s the average age of an American fighter aircraft was around 10 years, today it is between 15 and 20 years, and growing.

Thomas Christie, who has five decades of experience in defense acquisition, weapon testing and program evaluation, and who retired as the Pentagon’s most senior career civilian official in 2005, depicted a fouled DoD planning and budget process based on a series of flawed assumptions. For example, one assumption has been that future budgets will grow at a faster rate than the past or that weapon system procurement costs will decrease in the future. These constant misinterpretations of budget cycles lead, according to Christie, to the approval of programs that are unattainable in reality, with subsequent delays and ballooning costs. As a result, for example, the Air Force ended up with a dwindling fighter force because it banked on a higher modernization line than what it could have reasonably expected. According to Christie the problem is not in the acquisition process per se, but rather in the way defense managers have been using it. “We have had enough acquisition reform; we need no more acquisition reform. We need to take this process we have and make it work better,” Christie argued.

There could also be historic and philosophical roots to the failures in the DoD acquisition process. According to Pierre M. Sprey, who worked at the Pentagon and is known to have been part of a group that procured some of the most successful weapons in DoD history, the U.S. Air Force in particular still relies on a strategy devised in the early 1900s by an Italian General, Giulio Douhet. The driving idea of Douhet’s military philosophy was that one can win wars without the use of land force just by heavily bombing the enemy’s territory, population and economy. “This is an appallingly stupid idea,” said Sprey. He argued that this conceptualization of war has led the U.S. to develop the wrong military mission – with the attendant dominance of strategic bombing — and, subsequently, the wrong force, comprising ineffective and expensive bombers. In order to improve the state of things, the defense apparatus should review the last seventy years of military history, Sprey recommended, and should distill what really works in combat. DoD managers would discover that, through the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and the war in Kosovo, what always worked best was a numerous, light and flexible force capable of providing efficient close air support to beleaguered ground troops. Such a force, Sprey argued, would be large, effective and much more affordable than the current shrinking pool of bomber aircrafts.

Not only was their analysis unforgiving but Wheeler, Christie and Sprey’ forecast for the future of the U.S. military was one might say, discouraging. Sprey admitted to be “extremely pessimistic,” while arguing that it is still important to speak out and try to create public outrage over the missed opportunities that the U.S. will incur if the Pentagon keeps going down the current path. “I’m very pessimistic about making the changes needed happen,” Thomas Christie echoed him, “for how concerning it is to see that we have lost most of the capabilities we had even only 20 years ago.” Winslow Wheeler even went so far as to express his disappointment over the early decisions of the Obama Administration as far as DoD appointments. “Obama has promised change, but so far we are getting none of that. They have brought in people from the past and, as a result, we are headed down the wrong path,” Wheeler said. Particular criticism came in for the selection of the newly confirmed Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, who served as the Under Secretary of Defense/Comptroller in the Clinton Administration, and who was responsible, according to Wheeler, Christie and Sprey, of making the acquisition process even less transparent than it already had been. “I doubt anything can happen until the whole ethos of our military changes,” Thomas Christie concluded emphatically.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism