Dr. Clovis Maksoud and the Arab World

By: Dr. Clovis Maksoud

May 16, 2007

الدكتور كلوفيس مقصود ربما من القلائل الذين خرجوا من الوطن العربي وظلوا يحملون الهوية العربية اسماً ومضموناً ، كيف لا وقد شغل منصب سفير الجامعة عربية ، وكرس جهوده لرفع راية الفكر العربي ، ليس هذا وحسب بل يتحدث عن الإسلام بلباقة تليق بمثله ، ويضع للإسلام إطاره العربي حين الحديث عنه ، وليس هذا غريباً على من عرف هويته واستطاع أن يخرجها من قوقعة الفكر المتحيز ، إلى الفكر المنفتح ، ليتقبل الآخر وفق مفهوم وفي إطار جامعة الدم العربي الذي يرسخ فينا مفهوم الولاء لأمة عريقة كان فيها المسلم والمسيحي على نفس الدرجة من الوعي لقضاياهم القومية ، من هنا أرى أنه يحمل بفكره هوية قل أن يحملها أناس كثر ادعوا أنهم على قدر هذه المسؤولية الفكرية القومية التي جعلت الإنسان وقيمه الإنسانية أساساً لحوار اختزل الفرقة وقدم لنا الوحدة .. لذا أجد أن رسالته جديرة بأن يحملها العرب وأن يعيها اللبنانيون على وجه الخصوص وهم يمرون في مرحلة حرجة لا ندري إلى أين ستؤدي بهم. أدعكم مع رجل صدق وعده يوم بعثت له بأسئلة كثيرة قاصداً استكشاف فكره وتقديمه للناس ، وها هو يرسل لي هذا الحوار الذي أجري معه من خلال صحيفة Daily Star اللبنانية.

محرر "قضايا عربية"
صلاح المومني

'Every genuine Arab feels that anybody who distorts the image of Islam is distorting his identity'
Ex-arab league envoy clovis maksoud offers his take on Lebanon's problems - and the region's
By Hanan Nasser
Daily Star staff
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Interview

BEIRUT: Clovis Maksoud, former Arab League ambassador to the United States, has advised Lebanon's politicians not to turn the international tribunal into a partisan issue and said Syria must help "expedite, not delay" an investigation into former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Star, Maksoud also urged the Arab League to immediately ask the UN secretary general to leave the so-called "Quartet" of Mideast peace mediators in order preserve his role as the "custodian of UN resolutions."

He also argued that both regional power Iran and global power the United States are witnessing internal changes that would have an impact on the political crisis in Lebanon.

Maksoud was the ambassador and the permanent observer of the Arab League at the United Nations and its chief representative in the United States, from 1979 until 1990. A lawyer and a journalist, Maksoud, 79, also served as Arab League ambassador to India and Southeast Asia 1961- 1966. He was senior editor of the daily Al-Ahram in Cairo from 1967 until 1971. He writes a weekly column in Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper.

Before answering questions on the Hariri tribunal and the presidential elections, Maksoud said that Lebanon first and foremost is witnessing a serious crisis of identity which he described as unacceptable.

"We should not have a crisis of identity. We Are part of the Arab national patrimony. We are part of the Arab national identity. We can have a hyphenated identity: Lebanese-Arab, Syrian-Arab, Egyptian-Arab etc. It doesn't mean that we dilute our context. We reinforce it. Lebanon reinforces the Arab identity, Arab identity reinforces our Lebanese identity," he said. "Our legal identity is Lebanese, our legitimate aspirational identity is Arab renaissance."

"Arabism is not even ethnic or religious," Maksoud added. "It is an identity that has culture, language, and the spiritual cycle. And the Arab, [even] if he is Christian, feels the dimension that he is Muslim because Islam was his first Arab revolution in history."

He cited the late Columbia University professor Edward Said's many battles to defend "and explain the enlightening part of Islam."

"Because every genuine Arab everywhere feels that anybody who distorts the image of Islam is distorting his identity," Maksoud said "So it is transcendent. That is why we should get away from both obscurantisms: the Islamic and the Muslim into a convergence in service of human development, in service of human freedom and in the service of complimentarily of our Arab region."

On the tribunal, Maksoud underlined the need for the ruling party in Lebanon to differentiate between the international court as a legal mechanism and as a pre-judgment.

At the same time, he said, Syria's government, which was responsible for security in Lebanon at the time of Hariri's killing, must be ready to be answerable to the investigation.

Last week, Syrian President Bashar Assad said Damascus would not cooperate with the tribunal if it took actions that undermined Syrian sovereignty.

Commenting on the speech, Maksoud said: "He can say whatever he wants [but] I think it was the wrong emphasis. Syria was responsible at the time of the assassination, with the Lebanese, for the security issues. It doesn't mean it is indictable."

"Being responsible for issues of security in Lebanon necessitates that it provide what ever information, cooperates with the investigation that takes place," he added.

"What I'm trying to say [is that] Lebanon needs to have excellent relations with Syria, but Syria must understand that when the assassination took place, Lebanon was a crust of the security, by long-time invitation. So it was responsible ... It doesn't mean that they were responsible for the killing, it means that they are responsible to be accountable and answerable to the questions and help expedite the investigation, not delay it," he said.

"Is that an infringement of their sovereignty? No, because they were here ... It's accountability [for] its role during its presence in Lebanon."

Maksoud said that by emphasizing sovereignty, Assad indicated that he was seeking "no intrusion."

The former diplomat argued that for a variety of reasons, sovereignty is no longer "absolute," saying that a new legal reality has emerged, in which the world community has gone "beyond sovereignty into legitimate intervention but not illegal interference."

Addressing the ruling party in Lebanon, Maksoud said that while its members and supporters are right to call for the tribunal, it must "not appear as if the court is the judgment."

"The court is the introduction through a process which leads to a conclusion," he explained. "So don't make the court a partisan thing. This is my advice to both the ruling party and the opposition."

As for the opposition, Maksoud said that having reservations and recommendations about the structure of the tribunal was legitimate and a "sign of cooperation."

"But to say, 'I will not articulate them to so and so before I go into the government' is disingenuous - with due sympathy that I have personally, but that is disingenuous."

Moving to the presidency, Maksoud said any presidential candidate must be either one of two things: an inspirational leader who can mobilize and restore the role of Lebanon as an oasis of renaissance "or someone who is a combination of [former President] Elias Sarkis and [former President] Charles Helou. A bureaucrat or a technocrat, who is honest and has integrity and a Charles Helou who knows how to read and write."

As for the first option, Maksoud said he must have a "Lebanese presence, an Arab presence and [be able to] negotiate from a position of equality."

An inspirational president, according to Maksoud's vision, would be someone who "can guide the governments. Not to govern the governments but to guide them."

Asked if any of the current aspirants to the presidency embodies the ideal qualities, Maksoud could not be convinced to give a name.

"I don't know," he said. "There might be. The second combination is available, some senior judge ..."

He was very clear, though, that at this stage having a military man as a president is not something that the Lebanese look favorably upon.

"I think, for example, a commander like General Michel Suleiman has proven to have a level of integrity. But I think at this juncture, a military figure, however democratic he might be, has a sharpness of decision which is not necessarily nuanced," he said.

"So, with the experience with having had Emile Lahoud for nine years, I think people would rather have a civilian," he said. "It doesn't mean that a military man is disqualified."

Although Lebanon is entrapped in its own political impasse, which is affected by an increasingly volatile region, Maksoud still believes the country can extract itself from the "danger zone" provided it adjusts to changes taking place within the administrations in both the United States and Iran.

"At this juncture Lebanon is caught in a situation which is beginning to mirror the US-Iranian - I wouldn't say conflict but tensions - to the extent that this tension is diffusible the internal situation in Lebanon is amenable to rational resolutions," he said.

Maksoud explained that the US failures in Iraq, in the aftermath of the 2003 "illegitimate invasion," ushered in a Democratic majority on Capitol Hill that "created balance" in the American system. He described it as the beginning of a "positive corrective" in US policy.

"In Iraq there was an illegitimate invasion without a post-conflict concept, which disabled the United States, [prevented it from] managing the complexity," he said, "and it is on the threshold, if it continues its occupation, of managing chaos.

"And that is why the American electorate, [opted] for a Democratic majority, not a big one, but enough to create a balance which deters the Bush administration from having a freeway," Maksoud added.

Through the power of subpoena, Maksoud said, the Democrats have guaranteed that the administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere will no longer go unquestioned.

"This does not undermine the executive power but it deters its continuum and it subjects them to scrutiny and accountability," he said.

"In that respect this is a beginning of a positive corrective in American policy. Not yet matured, but at least it indicates a level of fermentation within the American policy-making process, particularly concerning the area to which Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt etc., belong," he added.

Similarly, Iran is undergoing a level of "fermentation" albeit "less resolute and less audible," characterized by the existence of conservative and liberal voices within the establishment seeking to counter the hard-line policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"There are certain conservatives like [former President Ali Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani who want to restrain Ahmadinejad ... without confronting him. There are liberal trends within the regime, not outside, not the opposition, like the supporters of Khatami at one time inside the Parliament, he said.

"So there is fermentation. And there is no longer a monolithic executive power in the United Sates and no longer a monolithic power in Iran."

As such, Maksoud explained, Lebanon is presented with an opportunity to "begin to adjust to the outcome of these fermentations."

Asked whether Lebanon would seize the moment, Maksoud said: "On the surface it doesn't look like it, but I think that that is because of the sectarian structure in general where every sect wants to appear as if it is afraid of the other sect."

"And fear makes the leaders of the sects control and prevents the search for an outcome of this fermentation that is taking place," he said. So sectarianism, he added, "freezes intellectual mobility in the system."

"Many people think that the polarity that exists now between the March 14 Forces and the March 8 camp is either a fixed reality or irreconcilable, and so there is a level of pessimism in the future of Lebanon," Maksoud explained.

"But this is not true. It is apparently true, but because the regional power [Iran] as well as the United States are having fermentation and correction, a new reality might emerge and a new attitude might emerge. This will undoubtedly impact Lebanon."

In order to counter the effects of the sectarian system, Maksoud called for the inclusion of civil society in Lebanon's decision-making process.

"What the Lebanese need at the moment is a catalyst movement," he said. "This catalyst movement needs to be reflected institutionally."

He regretted the absence of civil society in the national dialogue, describing it as having alienated much of the public.

"The sectarian system, which manifested itself in the so-called dialogue that has been commended by some [like] the speaker of the House, Mr. [Nabih] Berri, [meant] there was no representation ... of civil society, professions, cultural [groups], the syndicates etc. There is no involvement. So the people in a way do not have any say in Lebanese self-determination."

He called for sectarian leaders to allow a certain level of input rather than an exclusive role of civil society at this stage.

"So the important thing is to inject civil society more directly and dynamically into the dialogue among the sectarian leaders but more importantly into the decision-making process," Maksoud said. "What you have is civil society, in all its branches, is opinion-making not decision-making. And decision-making is not opinion-making. So what you have to do is bridge the gap."

The difference between representatives of sects or "decision-makers" and civil society "opinion-makers" is that the latter have no sects, he said.

"They don't write, or think, or act as a Maronite or a Shiite or a Sunni; they act as persons, as citizens of Lebanon. Not as citizens who have no relations to the state except through the sect. The Lebanese citizen has no relation to the state except though the sect. He has no rights except though the sect.

"Therefore, bridging the opinion-maker with the decision-maker, at this juncture, is an absolute requirement in order to extract ourselves from the suffocating atmosphere in which we are living."

In a recent article in An-Nahar, titled "The Martyrdom of the Two Ziads," Maksoud, while mourning their death, saw in it a "paradox" that brought back what he called "the absentee wisdom."

He was referring to the murder late last month of Ziad Ghandour, 12, and Ziad Qabalan, 26. The two youths were kidnapped and their bodies were found four days later.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt, in a statement broadcast live by television stations, called for maximum restraint, stressing that only state authorities should handle the issue.

"Lebanon has not come out of the danger zone," Maksoud said. "But I think that we don't have to remain in the danger zone. It is more than a silver lining. There is a very fine line. It is risky, but it is there.

"So when I talked about the two Ziads and the role that Walid Jumblatt [played] in a 'restraining reaction,' he restrained the weapon of muscles and revenge, and introduced the possible corrective and transcendence. And I think that is important.

"But what I asked in the article was, 'did the two Ziads have to die in order to bring back the absentee wisdom?' It's a paradox. This incident portended what might become a pattern and it was arrested. The trend to escalate was arrested. And hopefully it becomes the new pattern," he said.

Careful not to appear too optimistic, Maksoud said: "I won't relax yet, but I would promote diligence ... in making sure that this positive development becomes a pattern of political behavior," he said.

Moving to the Arab-Israeli peace process, Maksoud launched an urgent appeal for the Arab League to demand that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon immediately leave the Quartet, which imposed an economic siege on the elected government formed by Hamas after the January 2006 elections.
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