Sunday, December 09, 2007

Tom Friedman Discovers...the Middle East

Discovery One:-

...all of these countries are deeply internally divided, some with active civil wars — Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan — and some with latent ones. These divisions date from when these states were shaped by colonial pens, with boundaries that rarely reflected either shared ethnicity or a shared desire to live together. For decades, they were held together by colonial powers, the cold war, oil wealth or iron-fisted military dictators and monarchs.

But lately the lids have started to loosen, and in those places with real Parliaments — like the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iraq and Kuwait — they tend to expose the depth of lingering divisions rather than express, or forge, a new consensus. These are divisions about basics, like the line between religion and state, the rights of women and minorities, and the role of citizens.


Discovery Two:-

Each of the Arab countries and Israel has “its own Gaza,” said Mamoun Fandy, director of Middle East programs at London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies. “That is, an antipeace, fundamentalist, xenophobic faction, which wants to hold back any reconciliation. ... Until each country confronts its own Gaza, it will have problems.”

...“All these countries are like unfinished novellas,” said Stephen P. Cohen, author of the upcoming “Beyond America’s Grasp,” a history of the modern Middle East.


Source.

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