EFTA00701858

From: Office of Terje Rod-Larsen 
Subject: FW: July 15 update 
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:20:13 +0000 
15 July, 2012 
Article 1
The Sunday Telegraph 
Why I defected from Bashar al-Assad's regime, by 
former diplomat Nawaf Fares 
Ruth Sherlock 
Article 2. 
NOW Lebanon 
Scared by the tribunal, who me? 
Michael Young 
Article 3. 
Russia in Global Affairs 
Echo of an Impending War 
Sergey Karaganov 
Article 4. 
The Wall Street Journal 
Radical Islamists Wage Muslim Civil War in Africa 
Melik Kaylan 
Article 5. 
The New Republic 
The Weimar Union 
Walter Laqueur 
Article 6. 
NYT 
Why Our Elites Stink 
David Brooks 
The Sunday Telegraph 
Why I defected from Bashar al-Assad's 
mgine,_h_y former 
Nawaf
Sherlock 
EFTA00701858

14 Jul 2012 - Beirut -- Nawaf Fares, a former regime hardliner and 
security chief who was Syria's ambassador to Iraq, spoke out in an 
exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph yesterday - his first since 
announcing his dramatic decision to quit last week. As the first senior 
diplomat to abandon the government, it is thought his departure may pave 
the way for others to follow, leaving President Assad's regime even more 
exposed. 
Yesterday, in a wide-ranging interview conducted by telephone from Qatar, 
where he has now sought refuge, Mr Fares made a series of devastating 
claims against the Assad regime, which he said was determined to be 
"victorious" whatever the cost. 
* Jihadi units that Mr Fares himself had helped Damascus send to fight US 
troops in neighbouring Iraq were involved in the string of deadly suicide 
bomb attacks in Syria 
* The attacks were carried on the direct orders of the Assad regime, in the 
hope that it could blame them on the rebel movement 
* President Assad, who had a "violent streak" inherited from his father, was 
now living "in a world of his own" 
Mr Fares spoke out as the violence in Syria continued unabated, with at 
least 28 people killed across the country yesterday. The town of Khirbet 
Ghazaleh in southern Syria was attacked by hundreds of troops backed by 
tanks and helicopter gunships, according to the London-based Syrian 
Observatory for Human Rights. 
Meanwhile, United Nations observers visited the village of Treimsa, in 
central Hama province, in which up to 200 people are feared to have died 
on Thursday. 
It was precisely such atrocities as these that forced Mr Fares to gradually 
question his own allegiance to the regime, ending 35 years of loyal service 
in which he worked as a policeman, regional governor and political 
security chief, becoming entrusted with some of its most sensitive tasks. 
"At the beginning of the revolution, the state tried to convince people that 
reforms would be enacted very soon," he said. "We lived on that hope for a 
while. We gave them the benefit of the doubt, but after many months it 
became clear to me that the promises of reform were lies. That was when I 
made my decision. I was seeing the massacres perpetrated — no man would 
EFTA00701859

be able to live with himself, seeing what I saw and knowing what I know, 
to stay in the position." 
Mr Fares's most damaging allegation is that the Syrian government itself 
has a hand in the nationwide wave of suicide bombings on government 
buildings, which have killed hundreds of people and maimed thousands 
more. By way of example, he cited the twin blasts outside a military 
intelligence building in the al-Qazzaz suburb of Damascus in May, which 
killed 55 people and injured another 370. 
"I know for certain that not a single serving intelligence official was 
harmed during that explosion, as the whole office had been evacuated 15 
minutes beforehand," he said. "All the victims were passers by instead. All 
these major explosions have been have been perpetrated by al-Qaeda 
through cooperation with the security forces." 
Such allegations have been aired in general terms by the Syrian opposition 
before, and Mr Fares would not be drawn on what exact proof he had. He 
is, however, better placed than many to make such claims. One of the 
reasons for his rise in President Assad's regime was that he is a senior 
member of the Oqaydat tribe, a highly powerful clan whose population 
straddles the Syrian-Iraq border. Following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 
2003, their territory became part of the conduit used by Syria to smuggle 
jihadi volunteers into Iraq, with Mr Fares playing an important role. 
"After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the regime in Syria began to feel 
danger, and began planning to disrupt the US forces inside Iraq, so it 
formed an alliance with al-Qaeda," he said. "All Arabs and other foreigners 
were encouraged to go to Iraq via Syria, and their movements were 
facilitated by the Syrian government. As a governor at the time, I was 
given verbal commandments that any civil servant that wanted to go would 
have his trip facilitated, and that his absence would not be noted. I believe 
the Syrian regime has blood on its hands, it should bare responsibility for 
many of the deaths in Iraq." 
He himself, he added, knew personally of several Syrian government 
"liaison officers" who still dealt with al-Qaeda. "Al-Qaeda would not carry 
out activities without knowledge of the regime," he said. "The Syrian 
government would like to use al-Qaeda as a bargaining chip with the West 
— to say: 'it is either them or us'." 
EFTA00701860

Mr Fares, who has six grown-up children, said he made his decision to quit 
five months ago, after a particularly bloody Friday, which has become the 
regular day for opposition protests. "The number of killings was unusually 
high that day, especially in my area, and that was the final straw - there was 
no hope any more," he said. 
Mindful that such a display of disloyalty could lead to reprisals against his 
family, he slowly began getting his relatives out of the country. He himself 
was then smuggled out of Baghdad last week by the Syrian opposition. He 
declines to give details of the operation, but says he made a point of 
continuing his normal duties up to the last minute so as not to alert the 
authorities, who he suspected would have been monitoring his phone calls 
as a diplomat anyway. 
Since his defection, he regretted, many cousins within his extended family 
had been questioned by Syrian intelligence, with some forced into hiding. 
However, any doubts he had harboured prior to jumping ship had gone 
after a final visit he made a month ago to his home city of Deir al-Zour, 
near the Iraqi-Syrian border. 
"There was tremendous destruction there and thousands of people had been 
killed, many of them from my tribe," he said. "Life in the city was almost 
non-existent. What I saw there broke my heart, it was tragic and 
unbelievable, and if people there have not joined the uprising already, they 
will now. The majority of the tribe, I think, are already on the side of 
revolution." 
Indeed, the last time he had spoken to President Assad, in a face-to-face 
meeting six months ago, the Syrian leader had asked him to use his 
influence in Deir al-Zour, promising him promotion if he did. 
"He was saying that we should insist that this is a conspiracy from the West 
aimed at Syria," Mr Fares said. "I spoke with the local sheikhs and leaders, 
but the people's response was that you cannot trust Assad. 
"I think he does believe it is a conspiracy against him, but he is now living 
in a world of his own." 
However, on the question of whether Mr Assad was directing the violence 
personally, Mr Fares was equivocal. On the one hand, he claimed the 
Syrian leader was being "led" by powerful members within his own family, 
and also his Russian backers. On the other, he pointed out that President 
Assad's late father, Hafez, had been equally ruthless during his rule, which 
EFTA00701861

included the massacre of more than 10,000 people during a Muslim 
Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. 
"Bashar doesn't strike you as being extremely intelligent, he seems to be 
someone who is led rather than who leads. But nobody has the ability to 
carry out these decisions except him, and he definitely has the genes of his 
father, who was a criminal by all accounts. This is what he grew up with, 
this is the hallmark of the family." 
Like President Assad, Mr Fares now faces an uncertain future. To the 
regime, which formally sacked him from his job last week, he is now a 
traitor and a marked man. To the opposition, meanwhile, he is a boost to 
morale but not necessarily someone who can be entirely trusted. 
In his message announcing his defection last week, he urged other 
diplomats to follow in his wake. Yet his own familiarity with the workings 
of Syria's police state means he knows that they will most likely keep their 
plans to themselves. "These things are extremely sensitive so I don't know 
of others planning to defect. Sometimes you are frightened someone will 
hear if you think it yourself." 
NOW Lebanon 
Scared by the tribunal, who me? 
Michael Young 
July 13, 2012 -- Remember when the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was the 
nuclear bomb in Lebanese pants? Hezbollah members would be accused, 
civil war would ensue, and Sunnis and Shia would fight, in the memorable 
words of Bashar al-Assad, from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea. 
Now the tribunal provokes hardly a yawn, as lawyers pursue the laborious 
legal process in their Dutch bubble. This week, the Lebanese state paid its 
contribution to the institution, without fanfare and without tension between 
Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Hezbollah. 
Is anyone asking the obvious question: Why does Hezbollah seem so 
sanguine about the tribunal? Could it be that the party now believes the 
legal outcome will be less devastating than initially feared? 
EFTA00701862

Until this point, the prosecutor, Norman Farrell, has not issued an amended 
indictment, one that implicates more Hezbollah figures. Last March the 
pretrial judge, Daniel Fransen, rejected the prosecution's request to amend 
the indictment prepared by Farrell's predecessor, Daniel Bellemare, by 
adding to it the crime of "criminal association" under Lebanese law. The 
term had to be clarified first by the appeals chamber, Fransen argued. This 
requirement will have only added more time to the process. 
Hezbollah is perfectly aware that the Bellemare indictment suffers from a 
fundamental flaw: It offers no motive for the assassination of Rafik Hariri. 
We have four individuals, not one of whom will stand in the dock, who are 
accused of a crime the rationale of which has not been elucidated—at least 
not in the publicly released indictment. 
Worse, the timeframe once the trial begins hardly suggests an early 
endgame. According to sources at the tribunal, we may not have a trial 
until next year. One individual intimately familiar with court procedures of 
this kind expects the trial to take three to four years, the appeals stage to 
take an additional two years, and he points out that if the defendants ever 
surface, the trial will have to be restarted from scratch. If that assessment is 
correct, we should expect some kind of verdict by 2017 at the earliest, 12 
years after Hariri's killing. 
I wouldn't worry if I were Hezbollah, would you? 
The party is protected to an extent by another factor. Most Lebanese 
believe, probably rightly, that if Hezbollah participated in Hariri's murder, 
then it did so in close collaboration with the Assad regime—indeed very 
probably at the instigation of the Syrian leadership. Within the coming 
years, there is a good chance that Bashar al-Assad will fall, and with him 
the edifice of repression and intimidation so instrumental in targeting 
Lebanon's late prime minister. 
What an irony. Some believe the Syrians sought to place the Hariri 
assassination entirely at Hezbollah's doorstep by eliminating key 
individuals who might have provided a link in the conspiracy between the 
party and Damascus. But if Assad is ousted and the Hezbollah suspects are 
never caught—or if they are somehow declared innocent by the tribunal—
then the last laugh would be the party's. 
As a weapon against impunity, the Special Tribunal has been an abysmal 
EFTA00701863

failure. The notion that political assassinations will not occur in the future 
for fear that the international community might set up new tribunals as it 
did for Lebanon is laughable. If anything, the myriad shortcomings of the 
investigation and the delays in going to trial will work against a repeat of 
the Lebanon experience. 
After all, a more consensual and, arguably, effective body, the International 
Criminal Court, has not managed to dissuade mass murderers. Though the 
ICC has accused prominent leaders of terrible crimes, notably indicting 
Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, this did not prevent fellow 
dictators, such as Bashar al-Assad, Moammar Qaddafi or Ali Abdullah 
Saleh from massacring their populations. 
At this stage, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is useful mainly as a 
political weapon inside Lebanon. That is why the March 14 coalition 
continues to swear by it, and perhaps why Walid Jumblatt, who denounced 
the tribunal as "politicized" in the days when he was cozying up to the 
Syrian regime, recently praised the American senator, John McCain, for 
having been steadfast in defending the institution. As leverage against 
Hezbollah, the tribunal still serves a purpose, but no one should expect 
results soon. 
However, you have to wonder whether March 14, beyond political 
expediency, is still convinced that the investigation and Special Tribunal 
were successful experiments. The members of that loose fraternity should 
feel hoodwinked by the United Nations. Outrage is in order, even though 
the parties in the opposition will never express it, given their political stake 
in upholding the tribunal's credibility. 
And if political calculation is behind their silence, that only gives us 
another reason to regret what the United Nations has spawned. Here the 
international body set up a judicial body to stay above politics and dispense 
justice. Now its purpose, at least in Lebanon, is to serve as a political tool, 
while justice is kept waiting, indefinitely. 
Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon. 
Ankle 3. 
Russia in Global Affairs 
EFTA00701864

Echo of an Imp_n ing War 
Bergey Karaganov 
Resume The macro changes in the world economy and politics, 
developments in the Greater Middle East, and actions (or inaction) by old 
great powers make further plunging of the region into conflicts almost 
inevitable. The macro changes in the world economy and politics, 
developments in the Greater Middle East, and actions (or inaction) by old 
great powers make further plunging of the region into conflicts almost 
inevitable. I am a bit surprised that the press keeps ignoring the growing 
probability of a big war, or a series of wars, in the Middle East. Observers 
and analysts, following in the footsteps of the Western mass media from 
which they primarily get their information, discuss one crisis after another, 
without trying to blend them into one picture. Many factors from macro 
geopolitics and macro geo-economics indicate an impending war. These 
include, above all, an unprecedented rapid redistribution of power in favor 
of new leaders, especially Asian ones. 
New Leaders 
The last two decades have also seen a dual energy revolution — major 
changes in the balance of power and wealth in the energy sector, which 
have exacerbated the general tendency still further. In the 1990s, when the 
West was celebrating its victory in the Cold War, it failed to notice that 
control over an overwhelming part of the world's energy resources moved 
from its multinational corporations to extracting countries and their 
companies. Later, in the 2000s, the growth of newly industrialized 
countries sent energy prices soaring — and the world GDP poured into 
extracting countries, including Russia. By the second half of the 2000s, 
OPEC countries alone had begun to earn about one trillion dollars a year, 
several times more than a decade before. 
Now we are witnessing a growing degradation of institutions of 
supranational political and economic governance: the UN, the IMF and 
others have become increasingly feeble. The G8 has turned into a parody 
of a world government, and the G20 is obviously following suit. 
Organizations like BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are in 
no hurry to compensate for their weakness. 
EFTA00701865

International relations are being renationalized. Sovereign states are now 
coming to the fore, rather than supranational governance bodies, 
multinationals or non-governmental organizations, as was predicted earlier. 
Yet their capabilities have been impaired by the economic and 
informational globalization, and they cannot fill the governability vacuum. 
Something very strange is happening, namely re-ideologization of world 
politics. The West, temporarily losing the competition with new leaders, 
has not only stepped up efforts to proselytize democracy but has also 
begun to back them with arms. The re-ideologization is proceeding along 
religious dividing lines as well, especially between the Muslim world and 
other cultures and civilizations. This situation is seriously aggravated by 
ideological confusion. The old powers and their intellectuals are unable, or 
unwilling, to explain what is going on, while the new ones are not yet 
ready to do it, or unable to, either. Discussions about the state of the world 
economy and politics contain unusually large amounts of high-sounding 
pretentious nonsense, understatements, or outright lies. 
Add to this the systemic crisis that has predictably hit the EU, the sharp fall 
in the United States' prestige after its two military-political defeats, and the 
weaknesses of its economic model (still the strongest, though), which were 
graphically revealed by the world crisis — and the picture becomes almost 
unequivocal. 
A New Conflict Is Inevitable 
There are all prerequisites, even more than required, for predicting the 
possibility of a new world war. And it would be most certainly unleashed 
but for the mysterious horror inspired by the existing giant nuclear arsenals 
of Russia and the United States and smaller, yet still terrifying, arsenals of 
other countries. But if a new world war is almost ruled out, the probability 
of a major war or a series of wars in the Greater Middle East, on a vast 
territory from the Indo-Pakistani border to the Maghreb, is visibly growing. 
Now it is beginning to seem inevitable due to the aforementioned and other 
macro prerequisites. But even regional prerequisites alone are more than 
enough. Pakistan, which is losing competition with India, is already 
seriously concerned that another provocation (like the attack at a Mumbai 
hotel) would force New Delhi to respond. In what ways, other than nuclear 
weapons, Islamabad would be able to prevent its military defeat is 
unclear. Nuclear-hungry Iran, which has become much stronger due to 
EFTA00701866

the Shiitization and weakening of its former rival Iraq, is scaring its 
traditional rivals in the Sunni kingdoms of the Gulf. Israel, despite its 
strong nuclear potential and armed forces, is almost in panic, only fueled 
further by the "Arab Spring" and a series of falls of troublesome yet 
relatively stable regimes, with which it could have come to agreement. 
These regimes are being replaced, one after another, by less stable 
governments that are more vulnerable to public opinion and, therefore, to 
anti-Israeli sentiment. 
So far, Israel has refrained from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, realizing 
that it would not benefit much from such an attack but that the probability 
of it causing turmoil in the region would increase dramatically. Iran has 
great possibilities to destabilize the already unstable region still further. 
Another factor holding back Israel from attacking Iran is Washington 
which, having lost two wars, does not want to be involved in one more war 
on the eve of presidential elections. Theoretically, an Israeli attack could be 
prevented if Tehran agreed to stop at the nuclear threshold. However, the 
outside world shortsightedly has offered Iran no guarantees except 
sanctions. The ruling elite in Iran is torn by growing differences, and it 
seems that part of it is provoking an attack in order to consolidate the 
country against an outside threat. But there is a limit even for the 
moderate and cautious part of Israelis. When they come to believe that the 
region is plunging into the abyss of war and destabilization, an attack 
against the enemy, even if only for its temporary weakening, will seem to 
be the best way out of the worsening situation. 
The Vulnerability of the Middle East 
Meanwhile, fundamentalist Sunni kingdoms of the Gulf, which have 
sucked up billions of petrodollars over the last decade, have predictably 
begun to try to convert their financial power into political influence. They 
have launched an offensive against secular and/or Shia states in the Middle 
East. Their main target is Iran, which is growing stronger despite sanctions, 
and which can become even stronger in case of its nuclearization. These 
secular states are highly vulnerable because of inequality in their societies, 
half-starved masses, and total corruption. It was not the glorified social 
networks, which Arabs almost did not have, but Qatari and Saudi money 
and Qatar's Al Jazeera that were behind the "Arab Spring" riots. 
EFTA00701867

It is quite obvious that the uprising in Syria largely rests on Sunni 
petrodollars and a desire to undermine the secular al-Assad regime, which 
gravitates towards Shiites and which is an ally of Iran, although there are 
also many internal reasons for the discontent in Syria. An important part 
of this landscape is Afghanistan. The yet another war lost by external 
forces in this country may make it an even more dangerous exporter of 
instability if Afghan tribes and clans are not played off against each other, 
so that they busy themselves and not project their problems outward. For 
the time being, I do not see a willingness to do that. NATO members, who 
keep talking about a democratic and stable Afghanistan, are trying to flee 
for their lives from the country. China is overcautious and is mostly 
worried that Americans may leave the military infrastructure in the country. 
Iran will do anything to weaken the West. Russia might be the leader of a 
new policy towards Afghanistan. But will it want and be able to become 
one? And here we come to one more factor that is increasing the 
probability of a big war or a series of conflicts in the Greater Middle East —
this is the role of the West. I am far from seeing its hand behind the "Arab 
revolutions," especially as this hand is nowhere to be seen either in Egypt 
or Tunisia. Their results are simply monopolized by Western politicians, 
who are thus trying to compensate for their geopolitical weakening. 
But sometimes the West does play a negative role. The systemic crisis 
which it is entering forces it to look for distracting tactical maneuvers 
abroad. European political and intellectual elites, which are losing the 
current round of international competition, have begun to defend 
democracy promotion even more vehemently, even if it works against their 
medium-term interests. Russian readers of this article may still remember 
the "More socialism!" slogan in Gorbachev's times. But democracy is not 
dying. On the contrary, it is on the rise. Information transparency has given 
nations and people unprecedented and ever-increasing freedom. It's just 
that the growth of democracy no longer coincides, as was expected, with 
the strengthening of positions of the cradle of modern democracy — Europe 
and the United States. Liberal elites are naturally outraged by massive 
human rights violations in Arab countries and Iran. But then follow less 
justifiable motives. The war in Libya, for all the indignation over the 
Gaddafi regime's outrages, was a classical "small victorious war," at least 
for Paris and London at the time. However, the stake on it did not work. 
EFTA00701868

The "victory" over Gaddafi, which the West was very proud of, was 
immediately washed away by the waves of the economic crisis. Now it 
prefers not to recall the country which is going to pieces in the throes of a 
smoldering civil war and which has become a source of instability in the 
region. 
The pressure on al-Assad, in addition to ideological and humanitarian 
sentiments and considerations, conceals the same, absolutely obvious 
desire for a "small victorious war." And even more — a desire to weaken 
Syria, which is an ally of Iran. In the past decades, the West tried, even 
though inconsistently, to be a stabilizing force in the region. Now it does 
not want, and is unable, to play this role. Many countries, subconsciously 
and contrary to their declared policies, are trying to justify their inability to 
cope with the crisis by external factors. 
Such sentiments can also be found among Russian elites that are not ready 
for a long-overdue volte-face. To prevent this change, they are trying to 
find non-existent external threats — or not to counter their emergence from 
the South, especially as it has no capabilities to do that. 
Russia is warned that it may lose its positions in the Middle East. 
Simultaneously, it is repeatedly told that future developments in Syria 
depend only on it, and it is urged to interfere. I am not going to give 
unsolicited advice as to whether or not al-Assad and his government should 
be saved, if he and his regime fail to cope with the uprising. 
The South on Fire 
I want to say another thing: due to the objective situation and external 
factors, the region has crossed the line of profound destabilization. It is all 
burning or smoldering: India and Pakistan, Afghanistan, nuclearizing Iran, 
Iraq writhing in convulsions, Syria, Lebanon, Israel encircled by enemies, 
degrading Egypt and Tunisia, and Libya falling to pieces. This is why it 
would be immoral and stupid for Russia to follow outside advice and get 
involved in the developments in the region, no matter on which side — al-
Assad, Iran or the West, or start playing Afghan games again. And it would 
also be stupid to listen to others. 
However, geography will not allow Russia to move far away from the 
region. We and our closest neighbors are vulnerable ourselves. So in the 
decades to come we will have to maneuver, limit possible damage, deter 
EFTA00701869

potential aggressors with the threat of force, and sometimes actively defend 
ourselves. 
And the last thing. The economic strategy of the country, its corporations 
and people will have to be built on the basis of the new reality — the 
probability of decades of wars and conflicts in the vast region south of the 
Russian border. This reality will not only affect oil prices or pipeline 
prospects, but also the global economic environment, changing the 
structure of world demand for many goods and services. The easiest things 
to predict are the shrinking of real estate markets in the region, a multi-
million redistribution of tourism flows, and a dramatic increase of 
migration, religious and terrorist pressure from the South. 
One thing is clear: a profound destabilization of the Greater Middle East 
will require structural changes not only in politics but also in the economic 
behavior. 
Sergei Karaganov is Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign 
and Defense Policy and Dean of the School of World Economics and World 
Politics at the National Research University—Higher School of Economics. 
Article 4. 
The Wall Street Journal 
Radical Islamists Wage Muslim Civil War in 
Africa 
Melik Kaylan
July 13, 2012 -- The recent spate of attacks on Muslim historic and 
religious sites in the ancient city of Timbuktu calls to mind the Taliban's 
destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan over a decade ago. The 
Taliban, of course, were obliterating the icons of a rival religion, as they 
EFTA00701870

saw it. The Salafist militias that have lately overrun Timbuktu and Mali are 
obliterating a rival tradition within their own faith. 
Their actions more closely resemble intra-Islamic frictions at the end of the 
Yugoslav conflict in the mid-1990s that were largely overlooked by the 
news media. In exchange for rebuilding their war-damaged religious sites, 
Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims first had to acquiesce to the destruction of 
headstones in their ancestral cemeteries and old decorative motifs on 
mosque walls. This was required by their benefactors, the Mideast-based 
Muslim fundamentalist sources of international funds. 
Such incidents have now become a global phenomenon. In effect, primitive 
iconoclastic strains of tribal Islam have burst out of their historical 
isolation on the margins of civilization and coalesced globally to attack the 
more cosmopolitan, syncretistic and culturally advanced centers of their 
faith. 
To Western minds, Mali denotes the most marginal of places in the African 
desert. But it is home to African Islam. The city of Timbuktu, located on a 
timeless crossroads of trade, developed as a marketplace of ideas for 
centuries, open to learning from afar and reverential to saintly scholars 
who came on pilgrimage and stayed. Their manuscripts are housed in 
Timbuktu's ancient celebrated desert libraries. Their mosques and shrines 
are what the al Qaeda-related militia Ansar al Dine are busy trying to 
destroy. 
Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo had prospered under the Ottoman 
dispensation of tolerance among faiths, trade with the West, and aesthetic 
heterogeneity. Their ancestors' tombstones often featured pictorial bas-
reliefs and carved turbans in shapes that denoted professional ranks. Their 
communities also built shrines to their saints. 
None of this was acceptable to Wahbist puritanism—a form of 
fundamentalist Islam which originated in Saudi Arabia—or al Qaeda and 
allied zealots of revolutionary, internationalist Islam. In recent decades 
they have assailed the localized variegations of Islam everywhere. 
This is the new power topography of the Muslim geosphere. Oil money has 
funded extremist madrassas, or religious schools, to propagate a stripped-
down, one-size-fits all ideology precisely suited for pollination across 
impoverished regions such as Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Pakistani-
Afghan border and the like. With money and threats, this international 
EFTA00701871

extremist franchise has targeted peaceful Muslim lands where the faith had 
blended with local customs or become more cosmopolitan through contact 
with other cultures. Places, in other words, where Islam had lost its 
aggression and exclusivity. 
Today, radicalized imams from the outside infiltrate such places and rebuke 
the natives for their superstitions and weakness, their relaxed and 
idolatrous ways. Few can resist the irruption of money and guns 
legitimized by a virulent Quranic rhetoric, however pious they may be. 
Some of the oldest communities in Islam, loosely categorized as Sufi for 
their mystical bent and ecstatic rituals often involving dance and music, 
have come under attack. In Pakistan, last year 41 Sufis were killed at a 
festival in Punjab province. Nothing provokes Salafists more than a 
festival. In postrevolution Libya and Egypt, Sufi mosques, cemeteries and 
schools have been assaulted. 
According to the Islamists, the Sufis, along with other Muslim sects such 
as the Ismailis and the Ahmadis—not to mention artists, women without 
veils and the like—have allowed impure outside influences to alloy their 
faith. They have lost their Islamic authenticity. 
In the radical worldview, violence furnishes the litmus test: All authentic 
Muslims are jihadists, or holy warriors. The addition of anti-imperialism to 
the religious ideological mix happened under the Afghan resistance to the 
Russian occupation. Anti-imperialism has become so central to radical 
Islam's message and appeal that these days any fellow Muslim daring to 
demur gets branded a foreign agent. 
Yet the real imperialists, the outsiders bent on conquest and control, are the 
radicals themselves. What Timbuktu and other ancient Muslim locales and 
cultures face is precisely an alien colonial and imperial force—a species of 
Islam that evolved organically in only one region of the world and now 
seeks to impose its dominion universally. 
That is why national identities and indigenous cultural traditions pose such 
a threat to international jihad. Local Islam has a living memory tied to 
geography and ritual, to historical moments when culture was enriched 
through songs or buildings or to even paintings that commemorate a 
particular phase. 
Jihadists have no memory except for the Quranic era. They have no 
intervening identity or nostalgia. What we take for granted, the era of 
EFTA00701872

Mozart or Shakespeare or Big Band music, photographs of our 
grandparents beside a 1950s automobile—such things don't exist for 
iihadists and represent dangerous, idolatrous deviancy. So too with Muslim 
societies with history and traditions of their own. 
There is a countering strategy, if only we in the West would take up the 
cause. We have abetted the liberation of political life, freedom of religion 
and freeing of markets where we can in the Middle East. We have 
neglected culture. 
It's time for the other shoe to drop. We must encourage Muslim countries—
with funds and ideas for museums, mass media, education and 
entertainment—to celebrate their national cultures at their historical peaks. 
If we help them inculcate their citizens with a pride in their specific 
regional identity, this pride will act as a shield if the jihadists come to erase 
it all. 
Mr. Kaylan, a writer based in New York, writes frequently about culture in 
the Journal. 
The New Republic 
The Weimar Union 
Walter Laqueur 
August 2, 2012 -- THE PUBLIC DISCUSSION of Europe's economic 
crisis has carried a curious air of repression: When commentators have 
worried about worst-case scenarios --the scenarios that harken back to the 
dark moments in the Continent's history --they have generally been 
dismissed as alarmist. 
But there are good reasons to treat these dire warnings with the gravest 
seriousness --to place them within the realm of plausibility. One of these 
reasons can be found within the file cabinets of the U.S. government. In 
2004, the U.S. National Intelligence Council, the government's premier 
EFTA00701873

agency for strategic intelligence analysis, published a report arguing that 
the European Union might not survive to see the year 2020. The report 
worried about restrictive labor laws and aging populations, not debt and the 
unraveling of the currency union. (The report also saw the main danger as 
Germany's economic weakness, which makes for curious reading eight 
years later.) Still, it is bracing to consider that the U.S. government has 
worried about the worst-case scenario with the same intensity as the so-
called alarmists. 
With Europe in such a precarious condition, it should be clear that the 
current economic and political arrangements can't last much longer. That 
reality ought to focus our attention on the question of what arrangements 
will take their place. We would do well to recognize that Europe has a 
range of possible futures in store, some much more disastrous than others. 
WILL THE EUROPEAN UNION unravel? One reason to think it won't is 
that dissolving the currency union would impose great expense on all 
involved. According to the Swiss bank UBS, the immediate cost of leaving 
the euro zone would be in the vicinity of $14,000 per person for weak 
countries. Whatever new currency is introduced would be precipitously 
devalued. 
But such exorbitant cost is increasingly an insufficient deterrent. EU 
countries are fully aware of Argentina's experience with default in 2001. 
The economic and social consequences were extremely painful --high 
unemployment, capital flight, the impoverishment of the middle class. But 
the country's newly devalued currency soon spurred a recovery. European 
leaders may decide to exit the monetary union on the basis of similar 
calculations: that the introduction of a new currency would inflict a period 
of hardship on their countries for two or three years, after which they 
would again become competitive on international markets. 
Moreover, the economic costs of exiting the European Union are running 
up against other political imperatives. The economic contagion has 
metastasized to a point where the only remaining solutions involve the 
sacrifice of significant national sovereignty. It's now taken for granted 
among many European policymakers that countries will soon have to 
surrender control over their budgets (and, thus, domestic policy more 
generally) to a central European government. 
EFTA00701874

They are much too sanguine, however, in assuming that the European 
public would ever agree to such a move. Postwar Europe has often been 
referred to as post-nationalist, but that designation is only partly correct. 
The carnage of the twentieth century imparted lessons that mostly had to 
do with the horrors of military conflict. (It's indeed inconceivable that war 
would now break out between two European countries, except perhaps in 
the Balkans.) But the loyalty of Europeans still resides foremost with the 
countries of their birth. The idea of the nation-state is deeply rooted 
throughout the Continent; the concept of a United States of Europe is 
authentic only to the least-rooted of elites. 
For many Europeans, then, the introduction of the euro --and the 
relinquishing of existing currencies --was never thought of as a hopeful 
measure of economic and political progress, but rather as a rude affront to 
national pride. So if Brussels demands that national capitals relinquish 
significant power, national publics can be counted on to agitate for an exit 
from the currency zone. We shouldn't be surprised when national 
politicians feel obliged to comply. There may be a "European core" that 
decides to stay with the euro currency, but it's possible that the majority 
would choose to exit. 
IN THOSE COUNTRIES that did exit, domestic politics would quickly 
focus on finding an adequate replacement for Europe's monetary union. 
But the search for a new economic order would soon engage more 
fundamental political questions. 
National politicians would be quick to label the failure of the common 
currency as a failure of the belief in unfettered markets (and they would not 
be entirely wrong). And as a consequence, they would also work to shore 
up the reputation of state institutions, insisting they play a larger role in the 
political imagination --as a dignified guarantor of the common good, but 
also as a steadfast protector from outside threats. 
Some European politicians, drawing on the populist appeal of nostalgia, 
are likely to extol the Continent's former political divisions. Certainly, the 
patchwork of homelands that was nineteenth-century Europe offers ample 
opportunity to indulge in fantasy. (The sentimental artwork, especially 
painting from that period, provides plenty of fodder.) So we can expect 
populists across Europe to denigrate the cosmopolitan ethic of the 
EFTA00701875

European Union and romanticize instead the local face-to-face interactions 
of a bygone era. 
Politicians will also use such nostalgia to insulate themselves from the 
economic hardship that arrives as a consequence of exiting the euro zone. 
They will praise the days before the globalized economy, when it may not 
have been as easy to acquire great wealth, but at least life was simpler, 
more familiar, and not as hectic. 
But some inventive demagogues may combine their appeals to nostalgia 
with calls for radicalism. Indeed, one underappreciated tragedy is that 
Europe's political future will depend greatly on the political will of those 
most traumatized by the current crisis: Europe's youth. The political and 
social implications of Europe's mass youth unemployment have not earned 
nearly the attention they deserve. 
Traditionally, youth has been a factor of hope in politics. As the 
philosopher Martin Buber put it in 1918, "Youth is the eternal chance 
mankind possesses." Older generations generally focus on the difficulties, 
dangers, and risks of political change. But young people have always had 
the passion, idealism, and enthusiasm to struggle for political progress. It is 
no coincidence that, when the French Revolution broke out, the most fiery 
of revolutionaries, Saint-Just, was just 22. Georges-Jaques Danton, 
meanwhile, was nearly 30 --and therefore considered an old man. 
However, the second part of Buber's statement about youth is usually 
forgotten: "What a pity that this chance is usually wasted." If youth is the 
season of hope, it is also the age of credulity and fanaticism; the radicalism 
on behalf of which youth has served as a vanguard has not always been so 
admirable. 
Consider Italy's fascist movement. Benito Mussolini was not yet 40 at the 
time of his march on Rome, and those surrounding him were even younger 
--Achille Starace, the future secretary of the party, was 33; Dino Grandi, 
the future minister of justice, was 27. Galeazzo Ciano, the future foreign 
minister, claimed to have participated at the age of 19. (The anthem of the 
fascists was "Giovinezza primavera di bellezza": "Youth, Spring of 
Beauty.") 
The same was true with the Nazi movement. In 1933, Adolf Hitler was in 
his forties, but his closest followers were all very young: Joseph Goebbels 
was 36; Heinrich Himmler, head of the terror machine, was 33; his deputy, 
EFTA00701876

Reinhard Heydrich, 29; and Adolf Eichmann, the engineer of the 
Holocaust, a mere 27. And there is no doubting that Germany's massive 
youth unemployment problem in the early '30s --a total of seven million 
Germans were out of work in 1932 --contributed to their collective rise. 
Communist parties throughout Europe similarly exploited youth 
unemployment. In early Soviet days, they sang: "We are the young guard 
of workers and peasants." The leading figures in the Russian Revolution 
(with the exception of Vladimir Lenin) were all in their thirties or younger. 
So far, the political radicalization of youth in Europe has been sporadic. 
But this is unlikely to remain the case. Youth unemployment in much of 
Europe is running at astronomical levels, reaching 50 percent in Spain and 
Greece. The official figures do not even convey the full picture, as many 
young people have been forced into part-time or unskilled work, or have 
given up looking for a job entirely. And already, in the past year, there have 
been riots in London and mass action by the indignados in Spain. 
Will protest make a turn to the left or the right? The most widely noted 
manifestation so far has been the phenomenal success in Germany --and a 
few other countries such as Sweden --of a new political party named the 
Pirates. But that party has eschewed commenting on broad societal issues 
like the EU crisis, instead focusing on copyright and intellectual property. 
(At least two leading German Pirates were revealed to have had past 
affiliations with extreme right-wing groups.) 
But a latent potential for extremism is very much present in Europe. And 
given the stubbornness of the youth unemployment crisis, it's very likely 
that this potential will be absorbed (and exploited) by new groups and 
leaders preaching an illiberal political gospel. Parliamentary democracy, 
they will say, does not work anymore; the system should be replaced by 
something new. These movements, whatever form they take, will be 
unpleasant. 
EVENTUALLY, THESE currents of nostalgia and radicalism may push 
European leaders to look beyond the monetary union and to undo the other 
institutions comprising the European Union: the single market, the 
European Court of Justice, the coordination of economic and foreign 
policy. When those functions are unraveled, the European Union would, in 
essence, cease to be. 
EFTA00701877