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Regional Merry-Go-Round – While Key Issues Continue to Dog Lebanon’s Government in Formation, End to Syria’s Civil War in Sight

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The muddle called the Middle East gets murkier

It has long been said somewhat cynically that Lebanon’s raison d’etre is to serve as the proxy battlefield for everything in contention in the region and beyond. Certainly, contemporary events bear that out as PM Saad Hariri struggles to build consensus around a new government and ministerial statement while regional players continue to shuffle the policy cards to determine what’s next on their agendas.

Distinctions between the players’ existential concerns and their dominate current interests are muddled at best. The Assad regime draws closer to its immediate goal of restoring its punishing control over Syria; Iran seeks to strengthen its regional role despite rising domestic opposition; Turkey is…well Turkey; Russia and Israel look to their interests with fervor; and the Syrian refugees await their fate.

Here’s a quick summary of several current events that are adding to the continued uncertainty despite the latest battlefield outcomes in Syria, a small détente between Israel and Syrian government forces near its borders, Syrian refugees moving in larger numbers back home, and Hezbollah’s quest for meaning after Syria.

Lebanon-Syria relations, always contentious, seem to be the chicken bone in the throat of PR Hariri. Despite prodding from Speaker Nabih Berri, pro-Syrian members of Parliament, Gebran Bassil, the acting Foreign Minister and son-in-law of President Michel Aoun, and others, the PM is standing his ground that the ministerial statement, which outlines the new government’s priorities, will not address restarting formal relations with Syria. Can he hold out? There’s no immediate consensus as there are other MPs supporting the PM. Proponents of the move argue that the step is needed to facilitate the return of Syrian refugees, re-open border crossings to allow goods to transit to export markets to Lebanon’s neighbors, and potentially give Lebanon a piece of the Syrian reconstruction pie.

Syria meanwhile seems to be holding refugee repatriation hostage to resuming relations. Over the past two weeks, a number of statements have come from Syrian sources, as well as its friends in Lebanon, that formal relations are the key to accelerating recent repatriation actions. It is worth noting that despite allegations that the Assad regime has a list of a million or so unwanted returnees, it also craves to be recognized as a legitimate government that can manage the resettlement process.

The reality though may be much different, and Russia has already indicating that it will play a key role as well so that it can task the international community with the cost of reconstruction in exchange for pressuring Syria to work with Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey on refugee issues. So, as reported by Refugees Deeply, “Russia and Syria are seeking bilateral agreements to begin mass returns. This could be disastrous given that the Syrian government and its allies lack the capacity and perhaps the will to enable refugees to return safely and reintegrate into the country.”

The UNHCR is directly bound up in this quagmire as it serves as the mediating body for the international community on refugee affairs. It has outlined its criteria for conditions required to move ahead with large-scale voluntary repatriations in cooperation with the Syrian government. To date, however, the regime has imposed restrictions on UNHCR activities in Syria, which could leave returnees without adequate aid and exposed to more danger.

While some analysts believe that Russia and the US are winding down their roles in Syria, Israel is exerting greater efforts to ensure that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah do not become an even greater security threat. Israel is concerned with Iran’s role in the region, especially the increasing stocks of various grades and types of Iranian-supplied missiles in Lebanon and Syria; thus its insistence on Iran’s withdrawal from all of Syria. As Stratfor notes, “On the diplomatic front, Israel has focused its approach on the United States and Russia, striving to convince the two superpowers to heed its interests in Syria by containing and limiting Iran’s influence and presence in the country.”

What’s in the cards for Hezbollah’s hands in Syria and Lebanon is a subject of much speculation. Will it return to its traditional role as a political-military state within a state in Lebanon? Will it maintain a presence in Syria to enable Iran to continue to have a pressure point on Israel? Will it maintain an aggressive posture towards Israel so that Israel leans on Russia and the US to exercise what little leverage they have over the Iran-Hezbollah axis to keep tensions from boiling over?

If it remains in Syria, deployed in areas under its control, it is hard to imagine that, despite its alliance with Assad, the Syrian regime will allow it to exercise the same freedom it has in Lebanon. According to an article in Al-Monitor.com, “There is no withdrawal for now, only redeployments of troops in the various areas,” said one source. “If the situation stabilizes definitely, Hezbollah would pull out from certain regions, but there are areas it considers strategic that it will never leave.”

Nicholas Blanford, longtime journalist based in Beirut, describes the link between Hezbollah’s presence in Syria and Iran’s regional game plan. “Iran will play the long game in southwest Syria by relying either on Hezbollah or Iraqi militant groups. Tehran will also want to extend what Hezbollah has on its Lebanese frontier with Israel, to the Golan, and leverage southwest Syria in its confrontation with Israel in the long run. Iran is trying to shape its strategic interests in Syria as time passes by, to maintain its land bridge there against Israel.”

Ironically, Russia, which, it can be argued, saved the Assad regime, seems to risk a diminishing influence on Iran and Syria as it draws down its military role in the region. Having gained basing rights in Syria, the acknowledgement of all the local players that it is the top player in the region, and with its finger on any eventual peace and reconstruction effort, it is loath to act against Iran in Syria. As Blanford noted, “Israel and the US seem hopeful that Russia will serve as a block to Iranian ambitions in Syria, but this could be wishful thinking.”

So is the other great power, the US, still searching for a regional strategy? It appears that the Trump Administration has conceded that the war in Syria is now at a stage where the US should move on to focus on a formal end to the civil war and reconstruction. Jim Jeffrey, former US Ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), who served as the principal DAS for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, and deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, has been appointed as Representative for Syrian Engagement by Secretary Pompeo. His job is to run US negotiations with other regional players over Syria’s future.

He has extensive experience in the region that should serve him well. As Ambassador to Iraq, he opposed the US withdrawal from the country under the Obama Administration, arguing that without a tangible presence in country that Iran’s influence would prevail. So he has no illusions about Iran’s regional ambitions.

One of his first challenges is to ensure that the latest deal made by the Administration, to have others pay for Syria’s stabilization fund, is carried out effectively. In announcing the US cut of its commitment of $230 million in stabilization assistance, the State Department pointed out that the Gulf States and others have agreed to fund the program. Stabilization aid is intended to provide basic services that allow Syrian residents to return to their homes and some semblance of normal life after a devastating seven-year civil war.

Al-Monitor.com reported that the “US has elicited approximately $300 million in contributions and pledges from coalition partners to support critical stabilization and early recovery initiatives in areas liberated from [the Islamic State (IS)] in northeast Syria, including a generous contribution of $100 million by Saudi Arabia and $50 million pledged by the United Arab Emirates.” Other commitments have been made by Kuwait, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, the European Union, Australia. and Taiwan.

At the same time, a Reuters.com post noted that The US has also made it clear that “There will be no global reconstruction funding for Syria until a ‘credible and irreversible’ political process led by the United Nations is underway.” The State Department emphasized that “We will continue to provide life-saving, needs-based humanitarian assistance to vulnerable Syrians, support for the White Helmets and the UN’s International Impartial and Independent Mechanism to hold the [Syrian President Bashar] Assad regime accountable for serious crimes, as well as equipment and other measures to counter the effects of chemical weapons in northwest Syria.”

The spokesperson, Heather Nauert, explained that the decision “does not represent any lessening of US commitment to its strategic goals in Syria.” Which again raises the earlier question, does the US have a viable regional strategy that represents its long-term interests in the region?

 

 

D-PAD: A checklist for framing training content and delivering sustainable results

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The Arab uprisings are the clearest indicator to date of the region’s need for more and better jobs, better matches between what goes into education and comes out to the workforce, and restoring a sense of value to skilled and semi-skilled jobs critical to maintaining a well-functioning social and physical infrastructure.

While there is much emphasis on the integrating digital technology into training methodologies, a more effective approach focuses not only on the tools, but on the solutions. In the US alone, there are three million jobs waiting to be filled by people with the rights skills and the motivation to work and to work in new locations. Just as there must be an eco-system for entrepreneurship to thrive, a similar eco-system must be constructed for workers so that they add value to the process as products and services are brought to market.

So, not being fluent in I-PAD, I thought it might be useful to derive a framework, which I call D-PAD, to focus attention on the key content and context (environmental) issues in any skills-centric/jobs program. It is a checklist that will guide various stakeholders (potential employers, decision-makers, regulators, reformers, trainers, students, management, consumers, etc.) to smart decisions for defining content and context for recruiting and motivating the current and next generation of skilled workers.

First caveat: this thinking is not ground-breaking. I’m taking the charts, models, and paradigms of some top companies and translating them into something that hopefully is easy to digest without a consultant’s playbook. Second caveat: although this posting reflects the work of companies in Middle East and North Africa, the concern for more effective and durable training solutions is global and touches all levels and sectors of public policy and economic development.

 D-PAD is actually 5D-PAD.

In my experience, to begin the process of corralling market needs into a sustainable training regime, there are five steps:

  1. Define the goals as precisely as possible and include as many stakeholders as possible from the private and public sectors, and the institutions
  2. Discover the factors that promote and inhibit the goals (SWOT works) and discuss timeframes and constituencies that are relevant to the process
  3. Determine priorities, resources, and various cost-benefit parameters including gender, urban/rural, minorities, accessibility, and other relevant issues that influence decision choices; get sign-off from funders/regulators
  4. Design the learning objectives for both hard and soft skills and the work environment that is both the goal (where to work) and the process (how to work, ethics, career orientation, retention, performance, etc.)
  5. Develop the specific training materials, train the trainers, agree on the metrics, and move to the PAD

Of course these five action categories have multiple subsets and much fuller descriptions but that is for another article or two.

 The PAD – Acquiring skills for a lifetime

We now know that there are very few lifetime positions, although vocational self-employment still has great potential in that regard. Every job, from maintenance to programming, requires periodic if not continuous updating to be relevant to the marketplace. So the PAD has two functions: outline a learning/training regime that is both skills and career focused (hard and soft skills), and build in an emphasis on sustainability, that is, a flexible format that enables graduates to develop over time their own learning goals to have staying power in the economy.

  •  Preparation takes the results of the 5D process and defines what intellectual and physical capabilities the students and trainers need to make the program regime worth the effort. The most interesting challenge is working with prospective employers to define today’s job requirements without losing sight of how jobs in some sectors are evolving continually.
  •  Acquisition focuses on the learning/training materials and methodologies. Is there one-size that fits all? Considerations include quality of trainers, gender issues, embracing both soft and hard skills in a limited period of time, availability of mentoring/apprentice/OJT programs, counseling (why do so many want to own their own business; few succeed), and dozens of other concerns such as amount and accessibility of equipment, status/cultural factors, etc., etc. A critical key is developing cost effective solutions that are scalable and efficient, relying in large part on private-public sector partnerships; but it’s only one key.
  •  Demonstration deals with trainee and trainer performance. Societies in the Middle East and elsewhere still have a heavy cultural emphasis on avoiding shame so performance issues, in classes/labs, at the prospective employer, and elsewhere have to consider both the metrics and the process of achievement.

Okay, that’s the snapshot of D-PAD and a summary of what to consider in defining priorities and resource requirements to develop market-ready job seekers.

“Egypt: Challenges of Crafting Leadership in Foreign Affairs”

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The summer 2012 issue of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, includes an article, “Egypt in the World,” by former Egyptian Ambassador to the US, Nabil Fahmy. He is clearly in the secular/modernist/democratic stream of Egyptian political discourse, and provides helpful insights to those who want to understand the Arab world beneath the stereotypes. His main theme focuses on the centrality of Egypt’s foreign policy in the region and the world, which he defines in three concentric circles. His observations flow from the assumption that “Now, in a region transformed by popular upheaval, Egypt has a chance to pick up the mantle and renew her place as a political and ideological wellspring for the Arab and North African Middle East.”

Well, I hope that the government of Egypt isn’t waiting for an invitation from surrounding countries to lead from in front or from behind. This notion of Egypt as the regional leader “… stems not only from the country’s demographic weight, geopolitical location, and military capability, but also from its historic and contemporary role as the heart of cultural and intellectual innovation in the Arab world.” With all respect to my friend and former mentor, I find the notion of Egypt as the resurrected leader of the MENA region a bit of a stretch given the transitions still in store within Egypt as well as the significant political and economic challenges in the region that make any leadership role problematic. This is even more apparent as Fahmy indicates, “… any new government must learn from the lessons of the past.”

Learning from the past or overturning the past? This was obviously written before Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi made waves at the Tehran conference of the Non-Aligned Movement—the first global vehicle for Nasser’s claim to regional leadership, and Morsi’s visit to the opening of the UN General Assembly, where he spelled out Egypt’s new foreign policy perspectives in a long New York Times interview. It is hard to conceive of a country, which may slide to a “collective caliphate,” as an emerging regional power that promotes democratic values when its own legitimizing political process is being sorely tested.

By this I mean that while Salafists call for the new caliphate, one can argue that Egypt must guard against a kind of “collective caliphate” where political and religious/moral leadership is held by a few who claim to speak for the many. We have already seen the problematic and counterproductive impact of Iranian foreign policy for US interests. Can we expect the same from Egypt?

Some more wisdom from Ambassador Fahmy succinctly summarizes the challenges: “Egypt should provide the seeds of freedom by supporting openness, transparency, and the rule of law throughout the Middle East, but the demand for and pace of reform must come from within states, not across their borders.” “…If domestic reality does not match the principled stand of our international proclamations, our newfound legitimacy will be unsustainable and or claim of leadership will fall on deaf ears.”

While I admire Egypt for its past contributions, the reality is that the Arab street has moved towards conflation with its Islamic identity and crossing that line has changed the tone and focus of what leadership means to “the people.” So as Egypt emerges from its transitions and proffers “her natural role as a leader in the Middle East and Africa,” will anyone take up the offer?