Avuncular American

Waltz With Bashir: Ari Folman on Israel, Lebanon, and Sabra-Shatila

For two whole days the sound of gunfire could be heard from the camps but it was only on the third day, when panic-stricken women swarmed the Israeli troops outside the camps, that the picture became clear: the Christian forces [had] massacred all refugee camp occupants. Men, women, the elderly and children were all killed with horrific cruelty. To this day the exact number of victims is unknown but they are estimated at 3000.

News of the massacre shocked the entire world and a spontaneous protest of hundreds of thousands Israelis forced the Israeli government to create an official inquiry committee to investigate the liability of Israeli political and military authorities. Defense Minister Arik [Ariel] Sharon was found guilty for not having done enough to stop the horror once he became aware of the massacre. He was dismissed and prohibited from serving as Defense Minister for another term. This did not stop him from [becoming] Prime Minister of Israel twenty years later.

Ari Folman, www.WaltzWithBashir.com (image source)

Will Waltz With Bashir, Israeli director Ari Folman’s animated memoir of his coming to grips with suppressed memories of his role in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, become a subversive new model for war films?  Soldiers – prevented from blogging or YouTube-ing their unit’s adventures, which may later be classed as war crimes – surreptitiously drawing haunting images in the fashion of Folman and his “Gang?”

What will Waltz do for the languishing international effort to bring the massacre’s perpetrators and enablers to justice?  Last year the 25th anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre came and went, with even less attention paid than in 2002, when – twenty years after the massacre of Palestinian innocents – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was badgered by Belgium’s Universal Jurisdiction law for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  But the case foundered.  The website of the International Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra & Shatila appears to be frozen in 2003.  Memory loss on a global scale for a September 11-sized massacre.

My questions parallel those of Ari Folman, who is shown in his current bearded forty-something state of confusion, asking friends to recall the events of 1982 so he can reconstruct his own faulty memory.  The flashback technique, like his choice of hallucinatory animation to recount his and his comrades’ stories, is more effective than any attempt at live action or documentary would have been.  For animation aficionados, check out his excellent website for production details.  For Middle East watchers, his site offers a creditable summary of the 1982 invasion and the context of the massacre.

If I say that the “Bashir” of the title is Bashir Gemayel, the assassinated Phalangist president-elect of Lebanon, I am not giving anything away.  Posters of Gemayel’s handsome head adorn the bullet-riddled facades of Folman’s Beirut, and Folman’s website notes that Ariel Sharon

developed a fantastical and ultra-imaginative plan: to occupy Lebanon as far as Beirut and to appoint his Christian ally, Bashir Gemayel, President of Lebanon. Sharon and senior military leaders were actually the only ones who knew about the plan. While the Israeli government approved a 40 km range operation only, the IDF thrust full speed ahead all the way to Beirut.

Within one week the IDF inundated Lebanon and reached the outskirts of Beirut. However, just then, before entering the city, questions were raised: What business does the army have being in a foreign capital, so far from home? Why are Israeli soldiers being killed on a daily basis when their actions have no real link to the protection of Israel’s northern border? Suddenly, the correlation to the Vietnamese war was inevitable.

Folman spares the audience much of this historical context, which is fine, because the film works best as a fog-of-war picture of young, confused Israeli draftees shooting at everything in sight – including the howling dogs who might give away their nighttime infiltration from “love boats” off Lebanon’s coast.  An impressive soundtrack of raucous 80s hits strikes the right wartime notes.  All for the phenomenal budget of... $2 million.  There's no indication of when it will be released in the English speaking world, but it has been a hit at festivals and with critics.

It has taken Ari Folman a quarter century to give us this unforgettable picture of a pointless war, where Israel’s invasion was indeed mired down by a Vietnam-type occupation and years of terrorist reprisals.  But like other war crimes perpetrated against nameless Arabs - in wars at least as "fantastical and ultra imaginative" as Sharon's - don't count on Victors’ Justice to deal with impunity (we saw Waltz With Bashir in France, just as indicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic was being flown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague).

At least Folman’s film shows that memory can be revived.

Chaotic Cairo: Egypt Loses Its Image-Maker, Youssef Chahine

(Image source: Tadrart.com)

The newspapers of the world are full of Youssef Chahine obituaries and testimonials (Ali Dilem's drawing in Algeria's Liberte is very touching), so I won't add to the confusion... or should I say "Fawda" (Chaos), the title of Chahine's last film.  I have seen a couple of his films, though I cannot count myself a fan.  Chahine's films tend to be unsubtle, a bit obvious, and not even the best that Egyptian cinema can offer - I much preferred Marwan Hamed's 2007 The Yacoubian Building, for its grasp of contemporary Egyptian society.

But Youssef Chahine is/was for much of the world Mr. Egyptian Cinema.  And his Egypt - secular, outward-looking, cosmopolitan, multicultural - is under threat.  The "Chaos" of his last film (I do want to see it, if only for that reason) reflects the transition from the usual chaotic, shambolic, overcrowded country at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Africa - but one legendary for its friendly, tolerant people, who have a special word for "contentment" - to a more deadly chaos born of religious intolerance and rule by a stultifying, corrupt government that hasn't changed in decades.

Thanks to an old friend who was my boss at the American Consulate in Alexandria (Chahine's home town, of which he was so proud he made several films in its honor) in the early eighties, I read a recent report in Bloomberg by Daniel Williams on Muslim-Christian strife, which conjured up worrying parallels with Lebanon.

Increasing violence between Egypt's Muslims and Coptic Christians is raising alarms that the sectarian hostility besetting Lebanon and Iraq may take root in the Middle East's most populous country.  Egypt's reputation for a live-and-let-live ethos is under assault following recent murders of Copts in Cairo, street fighting in cities including Alexandria and a pitched battle between Muslims and Coptic monks at an ancient desert monastery.  "The divisions are deepening,'' Hala Mustafa, editor of the political journal Democracy Review, said in a telephone interview.  "There's a growing Islamization of Egypt, and the Copts respond by turning inward in a defensive stance.  ''Muslims and Copts -- who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 78 million citizens and are the country's most-populous minority -- increasingly identify themselves primarily by religion," Mustafa said.

Youssef Chahine, in his own preachy way, dedicated many of his films to fighting this kind of intolerance.  Son of a Christian Lebanese father and a Greek mother, he incarnated Alexandria's melting pot of Mediterranean peoples.

So if there is mourning over Youssef Chahine, it is in part over the kind of Egypt he represented, where Cairo was the Hollywood of the Middle East, and secular Arab nationalism - though its founder Gamal Adbel Nasser could sometimes be a thorn in the side of the West - is a matter of wistful nostalgia, compared to the contemporary dangers of obscurantism.  Chahine's cinema, with touches of Bollywood, was closer to the Italian realism of the fifties and sixties, when the raw images of Italy's postwar urban reconstruction provided the backdrop for social-themed melodrama.  Chahine's oeuvre (click the link to LeMonde's selection of film clips) covered contemporary themes, Arab history, and cinema itself.  He matters, for all those reasons, and Egyptian and Arab film makers have big shoes to fill.

Obama Overseas: One Man Public Diplomacy Triumph

What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Frank Rich, New York Times, Sunday July 27, 2008

(Image: BarackObama.com)

As usual, Frank Rich says in 43 words what others devote entire books trying to convey: the power of images.  Yes, the “Barack Obama Trip to the Middle East and Europe” was a campaign event, and yes, as such the US Embassy in Berlin prevented its diplomats from attending (see Foreign Service blogger LifeAfterJerusalem’s thoughtful explanation of the Hatch Act and its limitations for political activity by career government employees).

But if the embassy had “covered” the event, like it might for any gathering of 200,000 American flag-waving Germans, it might have caught a sense of the international importance of Barack Obama and his quest for the US presidency.  As Frank Rich points out, we haven’t seen this in a very long time.

On the night of September 11, 2001, after a long day “role playing” at an embassy emergency action security scenario – cut short by news of the real life emergency happening in the US – I was at home staying in touch with a large embassy nearby (Washington was shut down).  My phone rang, and it was the duty communications officer telling me of a gathering outside the embassy’s gate.  At first, in the heightened security posture and the tension of the day’s events, it appeared that it was a demonstration.  But no, it was simply a spontaneous flow of local citizens, placing flowers, candles, handwritten messages of condolence and solidarity with the United States in the hour of its tragedy.

You know the rest of the story.  The days, weeks, and months following September 11 saw a continuous flow of the same sentiment, at a personal and a governmental level, from Iceland to Iran.  The world was with us.  Afghanistan, the Taliban, al Qaeda – all the early American actions were supported in word and deed.  Then “you’re with us or you’re against us” and Iraq happened.  The magic was gone, and we are where we are.

Now there is another moment, and whatever Senator Barack Obama said in his speech in Berlin, or the content of his meetings with leaders from Afghanistan’s Karzai to Great Britain’s Brown, matters less than the popular public reaction to the person and the idea of Barack Obama.  Whether you are a Republican McCainiac or Democratic Hillraiser, I challenge you to deny the power that an Obama presidency could bring to America’s engagement with the world.

Public Diplomacy is more than Presidential (candidate) speeches abroad, and deeds must accompany the fine words.  But I have no doubt that an Obama Administration, following an act as unilaterally unpopular as the Bush White House, would begin with a massive reservoir of international good will.  Something that a McWhat’s His Name (sorry, but most people abroad cannot even identify by name the Republican candidate) Administration would struggle to earn, identified as Senator McCain is with the ignominious incumbent.

And while a President McCain might give a morale boost to the over-70 crowd who want to maintain their relevance, there is no question that a President Barack Hussein Obama has already sparked the hopes of millions of young minority political wannabees, from Harlem to Hamburg.  With a head start like this, the "combat-booted" (in Matt Armstrong's words) State Department’s public diplomacy establishment (enthralled by the "war metaphor" according to Pat Kushlis) had better prepare itself for a major overhaul to deal with the flowering of the kind of human-to-human cultural exchange that can build on the Obama Good Will "Bridge" Effect.

Cultural Diplomacy’s Finest Hour

Practicing Public Diplomacy:  A Cold War Odyssey
Yale Richmond, Berghahn Books, 2008, $29.95, hardback, 175 pages.

Yale Richmond’s latest book, Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey - part of the ongoing “Diplomats and Diplomacy” series jointly published by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired - is a lively and important study in memoir form.

Richmond skillfully provides both the background and “flash forward” context to his career in Eastern Europe during the decades following World War II.  There he took part in early cultural exchange efforts with the Soviet bloc, which he updates throughout his lifelong study of the region.

Readers will see parallels with today’s transformational diplomacy in Richmond’s years as a civilian “Resident Officer” in American-occupied Germany, from which he segued into the Foreign Service.  As ROs, precursors to today’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams, he and his military colleagues administered, with imagination and initiative, the post-Nazi “Reorientation Program.”  Richmond recalls asking himself, “How would Germans react to me as a Jew?”  His answer shows the strength of character and magnanimity toward his “hosts” that he displayed throughout his seven years in Germany.

The heart of this memoir is the time Richmond spends in Warsaw, Vienna and Moscow as a cultural and press officer.  (His “out-of-area” assignment in Laos provides a rare look at Indochina between the French and American wars there.) Warsaw, the “best post of my career,” gives Richmond free rein to build cultural programs, including the first Polish-U.S. Fulbright academic exchanges — precedent-setting given Cold War tensions.

The author generously credits his success there to a colleague’s counsel: “If you can show officials that you really like Poland, you can do almost everything you want here.”  And so he did for the next three years.

Serving diplomats might envy Richmond’s freedom of action during the heyday of showcasing American culture, before security and media placement priorities trumped libraries, and “strategic communication” and “information operations” came to vie with civilian public diplomacy. Entry-level officers, in particular, should see his story as confirmation of the importance of the “basics”: learning languages (in his case, at least four), and developing regional and functional expertise.  And for PD officers, the book will affirm their profession’s key role in opening Iron Curtain countries to Western influence, a vital step on the way to winning the Cold War.

The chapter “Shafted by Shakespeare” should be excerpted for AFSA’s dissent collection.*  Richmond’s finest hour, as a professional defending longterm American interests, was his run-in with Nixon political appointee Frank Shakespeare.  The new head of the U.S. Information Agency visited Moscow in 1969, bent on regime change. After years of carefully implementing the bilateral cultural agreement, Richmond was floored when Shakespeare blurted out, to American staff in a (presumably) bugged room, that USIA’s mission was to overthrow the Soviet government.

Richmond’s response took some boldness: “Mr. Shakespeare, that has never been the policy of the State Department ... our aim is to live with these people in peace.”  Though Shakespeare subsequently blocked Richmond’s promotion, the McCarthy era was over.  The Nixon administration’s embrace of detente vindicated Richmond, and he became a respected Washington expert in the burgeoning exchange program with the Soviet Union.

After leaving the Foreign Service, Richmond’s skills continued to be in demand in the waning years of the Soviet Union.  Richmond contributed to the Helsinki process and later joined the National Endowment for Democracy.

I entered the Foreign Service as Yale Richmond was retiring, but while reading Practicing Public Diplomacy I felt I’d gotten to know him.  His straightforward writing makes his humanity, humility and sense of humor almost tangible.  If I ever write a memoir, I would like it to be as instructive and enjoyable as Yale Richmond’s.

*This was first published in the July-August issue of the Foreign Service Journal, the monthly magazine of the American Foreign Service Association.

BRAC à la française: CINC Sarkozy and His Army

(Photo Source: AP)

The politics of national defense

BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure, a bureacratic DoD term that doesn't translate well into elegant French) is nevertheless what is on the President Nicolas Sarkozy's mind these days when he considers France's defense options.  BRAC - that lengthy process that the US last went through in 2005-2006, involving multiple clearances through military, Congressional, and state and local filters before any base is closed - is basically what Sarkozy and his government are proposing, though they are holding off until the end of July (maybe they are hoping that as much of France goes on vacation, no one will notice).  Update: today's "Telegramme de Brest" says that the announcement will be made by Prime Minister Francois Fillon on 24 July).

Though much of the plan had already been leaked, last week's Bastille Day pageant was allowed to take place before official pronouncements of painful cuts.  The outlines are clear, however: close bases, disband units, and make France's Army (the Navy is also due for hits, though of a lesser order, while the Air Force is to be trimmed by almost 25%) better fit for deployment abroad, whether alone, or as part of UN, EU, or NATO operations.  Sarkozy, as President of the European Union Council for the rest of 2008, also has in mind making forces available for a new "European Pillar of NATO."

As in an American BRAC process, much of this doesn't go down well with those most concerned: the military hierarchy, and the local hosts who depend on a unit's presence in their jurisdiction for economic stimulus, a kind of reverse NIMBY: "cuts are fine, as long as they're not in my constituency."  Given the military's traditional presence on France's littoral or along its eastern and northern borders, these "legacy" bases are often in economically deprived areas, making the hits even harder to absorb.  But they probably make sense from a standpoint of rationalization (much was made of the move of the 13th "Dragon" Paratroop Regiment [RDP, a reconnaissance unit] from its longtime home in the Moselle valley along the border with Germany, to southwest France where several of its sister special forces units are stationed.  Local officials only see the zero-sum aspect of losing, in the case of the RDP, half of its population.  In an excellent July 23 article, Catherine Magueur in Le Telegramme shows that party politics - shocking! - plays a large part in gerrymandering the new military map of France.  Too bad for bases and communities represented by the opposition...

Civilian control of the military

All this was hovering in the background (the excellent "JDD," le Journal de Dimanche on 13 July had a special two page pre-Bastille Day spread on Sarkozy and a discontented military) on 14 July, when France's military showed its finest marching style down the Champs Elysées.  Luckily for Sarkozy, the French military has matured from the days when, a half century ago in Algeria, its frustrated generals staged a "putsch" that helped fell the 4th Republic.  In 2008, there is grumbling in the ranks, where some feel that Sarkozy "humiliated" the honor of professional soldiers when he spoke of "amateurs" after a live-fire accident during a public event in Carcassonne - resulting in the resignation of the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Cuche.  Other officers anonymously joined a collective called "Surcouf" to sign a broadside against the "White Paper" that in the US context would have been the equivalent of the initial BRAC recommendations.  But don't expect any "putsch."

In the end, all the military wants is a little respect (one senior officer admitted that "the army is une grande sentimentale").  Many realize that "modernization" is overdue, and lament having to spend scarce resources on excess manpower when what they really need is spare parts.  Sarkozy's task (one of the many he has set himself in his "hyperpresidency") is to convince the French Army and its constituency that his reforms are in a context of recognition of the Army's worth.  One issue to monitor closely: as Sarkozy develops his "European Pillar of NATO" proposals and tries to leverage American acceptance of EU defense prerogatives in exchange for French reintegration into NATO's military command, check the French military reaction.  Away from the EU/NATO negotiations, will Sarkozy be seen as strengthening the French pillar, or undermining its foundations?  And what of the multiplicity of commitments?  Former defense minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, in the JDD, questioned how France could maintain 18 current overseas deployments, and entertain expanded commitments under an activist Sarkozy, all while reducing its military establishment.

As with all things Sarkozy, it's best to wait until the fireworks are long over, the dust settles, and then look at his military modernization campaign with a little bit of "recul."  In the meantime, wish the French Army a quiet summer holiday, and a bit of distance from its hyperactive Commander-in-Chief.

American Diplomats in Tehran: Don’t Do Anything Stupid

(Photo source: National Security Archive, Iran Documentation Project)

Stupid, like Jimmy Carter’s offer of refuge to a dying Shah in 1979, after the US Embassy in Tehran had already been taken over briefly in February by Iranian militants who knew little and cared less about diplomatic conventions and immunities – a prelude to the infamous hostage drama that began in November of that year.  Stupid, like if the Bush Administration allowed the current covert war in Iran to become overt, with pictures of smoking American guns to wave in front of the American Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy.  Stupid, like leaving your diplomats exposed should Israel decide to pull off a daring air raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, like it did against Saddam Hussein’s reactor in 1981.

Diplomats – especially those representing countries that are, what shall I say, activist (?) like the United States – are always exposed when their country does something against the country that they are ostensibly supposed to conduct relations with.  In the best of times, American diplomats are the face of the US Government in ___ (fill in blank country).  When times are tense, those same diplomats can become the most convenient American target available.  When you have a few people hanging out on a limb in a country like Iran in 1979, it’s not the time to poke the hosts in the eye.  Which is what Jimmy Carter (bless his heart, I truly like him as an elder statesman) did when he opened the door to the Shah.

I remember keeping ears attuned to the news out of Washington, during the years when I exposed my family to life in the Arab world.  Don’t get me wrong: we enjoyed our years in North Africa and the Middle East, and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.  But there were times when the administration’s (of either party) attitude toward, say, establishing the American Embassy in Jerusalem vice Tel Aviv could get the “street” riled.  Nice to have a little advance warning, if only to batten down the hatches.

So in the twilight months of the George W. Bush era, it appears that the Administration is giving serious thought to establishing a diplomatic presence in Tehran.  For practical purposes, like treating Iranian visa applications.  Okay, I’m all for it.  Gives us a chance to show the good citizens of Tehran that Americans do not all sprout Great Satan horns, and allows Americans to see life in Iran for themselves.

One proviso, though: keep VP Cheney away from the “ATTACK” button, and make it clear to Israel that they are not to send their bombers east.  Or has that already been done?  Prudent planning would call for that, but since when has the Bush regime shown any prudent forethought?  My advice to the American Foreign Service Officers who might get sent to Tehran: stay tuned to the news and have your “bug out bag” ready (my name for a little pre packed and pre-positioned kit with essentials should shouting people start coming over the wall of the Interests Section).  And watch “Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper,” the fact-based 1981 TV movie about how a few American diplomats and dependents escaped the hostage drama by averting the takeover and finding refuge with their Canadian counterparts.

Remember: when the US Government does something stupid, it’s handy to have friends locally.

Wild Blood - Sanguepazzo: Familiar Fascists

Marco Tullio Giordana, director of what we saw in France as "Une Histoire Italienne," can do no wrong.  Maybe I'm too easy to please, but I found his six and a half hour (it was shown on European TV as a mini-series) La Meglio Gioventu (The Best of Youth, 2003) addictive.  Now that he has so accurately portrayed Italian youth in the Sixties and beyond, he has trained his eye for period detail on the 30s and 40s, the heyday and then precipitous fall of Mussolini's Fascist state.

The settings are properly sumptuous when depicting the film world of Cinecitta, and appropriately squalid when showing the depths of fascist depravity as their world collapses during the Allied liberation of Italy.  Casting Monica Bellucci as Luisa Ferida and Luca Zingaretti as Osvaldo Valenti is inspired - I have no idea whether they resemble the real actors murdered (executed?) in the confused bloodletting at war's end, but Bellucci is credible as a no-nonsense actress, and Zingaretti looks like current Italian prime minister Berlusconi, who looks like il Duce Mussolini...

Director Giordana plays with such historical flashbacks both on screen and off.  In a two page interview in France's Liberation when "Sanguepazzo" was released, he draws parallels between the fascism of Italy's inter war period and the "fascism" of Berlusconi's "control of the Italian imagination" through his omnipresence in both politics and the TV industry, much of which he owns.  Giordana spends much time disparaging Italian TV (if our two weeks there recently can serve as corroboration, we would agree: almost no documentaries, almost exclusively 50s style variety shows with a maximum of buxom dancing girls).  Awful as it is, Giordano asserts that most Italians spend hours glued to it every evening.  Bread and circuses... it all started in Rome.

I guess "Wild Blood" will not be for everyone.  Jay Weissberg, writing in Variety after Wild Blood was screened at Cannes, says that "Giordana's surprisingly wet treatment adds nothing incisive or complex to the debates" about the behavior of Italian partisans during the war, or the current rise of the far right in Italian politics.  Too bad that Weissberg's is one of the few mainstream reviews in English currently available, so we'll have to await release in the English speaking world to get divergent opinions.

In the meantime, Wild Blood offers, in my opinion, a credible, nuanced, and dramatic picture of an era that is not all that far away.  Giordana knows his fellow citizens' foibles, and his depiction of Italians is probably timeless, though set in the 1940s.  And fascism, while it may no longer wear black or brown shirts, is still with us.  Here the fascists are not all monolithic monsters, and those who collaborate with them sometimes do so for less than ideological motivations.  Anyway, go see it, if for no other reason than to see Monica la Bellissima.

(Photo credit: Ocean Films, distributor in France)

Belgium's Lost Year: Politics Cancels Governance

(Image source: Brussels Export)

This has happened more than once in the past 12 months: Belgium decides to have an existential crisis when we happen to be away.  But existential political crises are the norm in a country where there are seven parliaments, three languages, and borders that include a wonderful geopolitical construct sometimes called the donut.*

The current kerfuffle is, again, essentially over the future outlines of the "linguistic frontier," both on maps and in how decentralization is pushed to its limits, before the "country" is no more than a shell for the all important regions and communities (Dutch speaking Flemish in Flanders, French speaking Walloons in the south, Germanophones along the eastern border, and a mix of all of the above, plus lots of internationals, in Brussels).  Things came to a head on July 15, the deadline for an "institutional reform" (Belgian for separatism) package.  See Le Soir cartoonist and author of "Dessine-moi la Belgique" Pierre Kroll for his take on the impact of the deadline on the daily life of Belgians.

The recent proffered resignation of Prime Minister Yves Leterme is simply the latest manifestation of the seemingly limitless capacity of Belgian politicians to conduct themselves as if the only thing elected officials should do is play politics.  Things like economic impact, national image, care for the national brand - those are for sissies.  Brinkmanship is the name of the game, and Leterme's resignation (as of this writing, not yet accepted by the head of state, King Albert II) is almost a footnote.  He's still in place, running a caretaker ("affaires courantes") government, and the name most talked about as a replacement in a future (coalition, as always) government is... Yves Leterme ("Leterme II").

Economic, business, and labor leaders throw up their hands in frustration: "A wasted year," sighed Vincent Reuter, head of the Wallonia employers association.  Essentially, the country has had a full year of holdover caretaker governments or short-lived successors since elections in summer 2007.  Months ago Belgian economists hazarded guesses on the cost of the crisis, which has only been compounded since.  The reaction of the politicians?  Hold the economy hostage to the outcome of a redistricting proposal dear to the hearts of Flemish politicians, and anathema to the French speakers.

The redistricting of the Brussels Hal Vilvoorde (BHV) constituency is a vital issue, even though trying to explain it to anyone living outside of Belgium results in understandable yawns.  Vital only because it risks splitting Dutch speakers and Francophones in the only area - the capital and its hinterland - where they live in close proximity.  Francophones (and many interested observers) fear that such a split would only be a precursor to further Flemish moves to bring an end to Belgium as a country.

Rather than splitting BHV, some thoughtful citizens are circulating a petition to unite Brussels and its hinterland, known by its historic name of Brabant (which exists, of course, in Flemish and Walloon versions).   They point out that the greater Brussels represents 2 million people, 1/3 of Belgium's GDP, and "more NGOs, lobbyists, embassies and consulates than Washington DC."  The Greens - probably the only Belgian political grouping that truly coordinates between its French and Dutch speaking sections - had earlier tabled proposals along the same lines, noting the natural synergies that regionalization would bring to the capital area, in terms of transportation and economic development, not to mention the main beneficial side effect of restoring some sense of shared destiny.

But there are other centrifugal forces at play, and not just on the Flemish side.  There has always been a fringe "rattachist" element wanting to find refuge with France, but of late at least one serious politician has come out with a "Belgique française" scenario in case the Flemish carry matters to their logical, separatist, conclusion.  Last month there was brief attention in the international press to the idea of a "Brussels Corridor," floated every few decades when Bruxellois get antsy about being cut off from their French speaking cousins down the road in Waterloo.

*So what about the donut?  It's actually worse than that.  According to Wikipedia (be sure to look at the map):

Baarle-Hertog is noted for its complicated borders with Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands. In total it consists of 24 separate pieces of land. Apart from the main piece (called Zondereigen) located north of the Belgian town of Merksplas, there are twenty Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are also seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves. Six of them are located in the largest one and a seventh in the second-largest one. An eighth Dutch exclave lies in Zondereigen.

The border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. There was a time when according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border it meant that the clients simply had to change their tables to the Belgian side.

Let's hope that this doesn't become the template for Belgian cartographers.

The Sea in Between: Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Project

A Project Dear To The President’s Heart

On Monday’s July 14 Bastille Day in Paris, spectators will be treated to another grand military parade, one of the few such martial national day displays remaining in the democratic West.  The audience will include the leaders of the European Union member states as well as those from the (mostly Arab, but including Israel and Turkey) countries bordering the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean.  They will be gathered in the French capital for one of the most important events in the early days of the French EU Presidency, the launch of the “Union Pour la Mediterranée (UPM)” or the Union for the Mediterranean.

In Arabic, the Mediterranean Sea is poetically called Al-Bahr Al-Abyad Al-Muttawasit, "the middle white sea.”  President Nicolas Sarkozy was a schoolboy when Algeria (where his father had served in the Foreign Legion) became independent, though he may have had occasion to hear the geopolitical adage taught to generations of French schoolchildren: “The Mediterranean separates France, like the Seine separates Paris.”  Algeria was an integral part of France, and then suddenly, it wasn’t.  A million European settlers left independent Algeria, and in the intervening 46 years, millions of Algerians have settled in France.  The Med is definitely a middle passage between North and South.

With his present and former family connections in Ottoman-era Greece (mother's family), Corsica (first wife) Spain (wife No. 2, Cecilia), and Italy (current wife Carla), it is perhaps not surprising that the Mediterranean has had a special place in Sarkozy’s heart, even before his election to the Elysée Palace in spring 2007.  And this has all the hallmarks of a personal project: in June 2007, Quai d’Orsay diplomats responded with quizzical looks when asked about the new president’s Mediterranean ambitions.  Even now, on the eve of the summit, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs website gives much more space to the EU-Mediterranean Dialogue (an ongoing program) than to the Presidential UPM, which still has much to be defined (not the least of which, where will it be headquartered: Tunis on the southern shore, or Barcelona on the Spanish coast?).

Emotion-Laden North-South Relationships

The love/hate relationship between France and its former “colony” (the word was never used by the French, but the Algerians still pride themselves, sometimes even define themselves, by being at the forefront of the anti-colonialist drive from the Fifties through the Seventies) has in some ways been the bellwether of the Sarkozy Mediterranean proposal.  France and its policies are always treated with circumspection in Algeria, and few domestic points are gained in Algeria by seeming to kowtow to the former masters. (Though Algeria's ace political cartoonist Dilem has it right when he shows what Algeria's unemployed "hittistes" want out of the UPM: calm Mediterranean seas for their rafts, or preferably, French visas; emigration is still a big drain/safety valve).  At one point, it seemed that Algeria would scupper the whole deal.

In the end, Algerian President Bouteflika’s foot dragging on the Mediterranean project was overcome by careful French diplomacy, though not in the case of the one remaining holdout, Colonel (do we still call him that?) Kadhafi of Libya.  Despite blandishments (nuclear project, arms deals, wife No. 2 Cecilia as emissary-of-charm, week-long state visit to Paris last year), Kadhafi has condemned the Sarkozy Med Union.  Anyway, his life long ambition has been to unify (often literally, through mergers and sometimes with weapons) the Arab and African worlds that are Libya’s home turf.

Sarkozy’s ambitions for a French-led Mediterranean project were severely modified by Germany, which succeeded in EU-izing (opening up to non-Med EU countries what had previously been seen as a Mediterranean riparian state grouping) Sarkozy’s vision.  As former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine said today on France-Inter radio, the test of the new Med Union will be whether it can create a co-secretariat to build on the high-level co-presidential (France and Egypt) kickoff summit, and not just become a subcommittee of the EU.  Egypt, with its concentric Arab, African, and Middle East (especially longstanding relations with Israel) circles, and its experienced diplomatic corps, is an inspired choice to help France get the new grouping off the ground.

Another “Machin” or An Essential Tool?

Vedrine, along with a number of right and left of center European and southern Mediterranean luminaries, signed an “open letter” to the leaders gathering in Paris this weekend, published in Thursday’s Le Monde.  Though the letter enthuses about the Med Union’s potential for peacemaking (all eyes will be on the body language between Israeli and Syrian leaders this weekend), Vedrine on the radio spoke to the more nuts-and-bolts projects for the Union.  One not so trivial matter: North-South cooperation on cleaning up what is essentially massive a salty lake, one that gets dumped on, literally, with every effluent man and industry can produce.  If nothing else, Union for the Mediterranean success in this one crisis area could make the nascent organization worth all the hoopla.  As one commentator put it, success in "small" practical matters counts, and cited the EU's beginnings as a post-WW II coal and steel cartel combining the victors and the vanquished.

In his definitive work on the fall of France in 1940 “To Lose a Battle,” British historian (of France and Algeria) Alistair Horne starts off with a vivid portrait of another Bastille Day parade, that of the victorious French Army in July 1919, the first such parade after the end of the carnage of World War One the previous November.  At the time, the consensus was that the French Army was the biggest and best in the world.  True, but we know what the inter war period did to its relative standing against the Wehrmacht.  There was no follow up to the big show.

For the EU and Mediterranean leaders lined up on the Champs Elysées for Monday’s parade, what comes after will be the true test of the fine new Union For The Mediterranean to be unveiled this coming weekend.  Those 40 plus leaders, if not backed up by painstaking staff work, may be present at the creation of another “machin” (probably best translated as “thingy” - Charles De Gaulle’s ironic description of the UN and like multilateral organizations, which have to struggle to avoid being labeled talking shops).

Haraka mush Baraka: The Dangers of Perpetual Movement

Machin vs. functional coalition: does Sarkozy himself have the wherewithal and patience to stick with his bright shiny idea in the long term?  Wherewithal: yes (once the Quai d’Orsay is convinced that this is a going concern, it will apply itself to making it work).  Patience: this is Sarko’s Achilles heel.  The man, once described by an observant Brit as a kind of Tigger, bounces around from idea to proposal to next inspiration, whether domestic or international.  Bitter Lemons also has misgivings about his "frenetic" pace, and has devoted several articles to the Mediterranean Union plan from Arab, Israeli, and Turkish viewpoints.

The Mediterranean is timeless, but action is urgent; Sarkozy is a man in a hurry, but he’ll need to down shift and focus in this forum which will juxtapose cultures with different notions of time.  After all, his Maghrebi counterparts know the meaning behind a traditional expression, "Haraka mush Baraka."  Movement - for movement's sake - does not equate with benediction.

Mountaintop Trenches: The Dolomites and Europe’s Future

You have to do a bit of climbing to get to these trenches.  They happen to be Italian trenches in the photo on the left, but on the other side of the Piave Valley there are similar Austrian ditches, scraped out of the rock and peat on the hillsides of these Dolomite peaks.  This is the setting of Hemingway's  "A Farewell to Arms."

Take your worst mental image of trench warfare – with its mud, cold, vermin, and high explosives – and then transpose it to the top of a 6,000 foot mountain during several winters.  That’s the World War I recollection of people in this Italo-Germanic corner of the Alps.  Check out the official site of what has to be one of the most spectacular open-air museums dedicated to the First World War, that of Lagazuoi and the 5 Torri.

Our hiking group - formed ad-hoc by Charlie Tessari (photo below right, looking at the formerly Austrian-held positions), wintertime ski instructor, spring and summer hill walking guide, and author of a book with some of the most beautiful photos of this region - is mostly Italian, and of all ages.  We and a family of Slovaks form the Anglophone contingent, and we get abridged versions of Charlie's explanations of the flora, fauna, and geology of this unique mountain region.  The Slovaks know of the Piave Valley; their grandfathers fought here when Slovakia was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  They grew up hearing songs of the Piave, and of their grandfathers' long-defunct multinational country.

Nowadays they can drive a few hundred kilometers across Austria and visit the battlefields as tourists.  Slovakia, which has gone through several national mutations in the 90 years since the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburgs waved goodbye to the world scene, is now a part of NATO, of the European Union, and will soon spend Euros just like their former Italian enemies.

Paul Hoffman, former New York Times correspondent and author of “The Sunny Side of the Alps” (a gift from an old friend who knew exactly what we’d appreciate on this trip), writes about this former Austrian region from personal experience.  He married a local girl from the Sud Tyrol (the Italian Alto Adige) in the inter war years, and witnessed first hand the excesses of Fascist nationalism, where the Germanic names on gravestones were Italianized – even the dead weren’t allowed to keep their identity.

World War II and the fall of Fascism led to a mellowing of the nationalism up here, and now signs are bilingual, and there’s a relaxed approach to language.  This year, the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War is being marked along the old mountain battlefields by a series of concerts, multinational hikes and climbs, and various other events.  Europe might be confused over which direction it should take after recent reverses, but there is one avenue that is no longer an option: war.  Make tourism, not artillery duels.  That booming across the valleys these days is summertime thunder, not high explosive.

There's probably no better place in Europe than the peacefully spectacular Dolomites to contemplate the ultimate stupidity of war.