2007: Enjoy It While It Lasts

This past year was a good one in the Middle East at least in one sense: there was no new regional war. At the beginning of the year, you'll remeber I started this blog with no small amount of apprehension. Would there be another war between Israel and its enemies in Lebanon or Syria? Would America and Iran come to blows over Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support of insurgents in Iraq? Would the sectraian killing between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq spread to other countries in the region, such as Lebanon?

The fact that these dire scenarios didn't play out is probably due to to the fact that a fragile kind of stability returned to Iraq, thanks either to the surge in American soldiers, or the new American strategy of protecting Iraqi civilians, or simply because sectarian militias finished round one of the Iraqi civil war by clearing out Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods. Either way, the chaos in Iraq was like jet fuel for the region's many simmering conflicts. With that heat down a few degrees, not much else has exploded.

But it's far too soon to celebrate. It's not just that the American surge in Iraq is due to end my mid-2008, there were also a few ominous signs this year that the status quo of regional semi-peace is unsustainable.

Kurdistan, the one relatively peaceful part of Iraq, suddenly looks a whole lot less stable since Turkey began staging operations against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq this month. By continuing a military strategy that has failed for the 30 years against the PKK (a group of radical Turkish Kurds who have bases inside Turkey and northern Iraq) Turkey is on its way to getting sucked into the Iraq quagmire. An alternative would be for Turkey to open peace negotiations with the PKK. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. Both Turkey and the US designate the PKK as a terrorist group.

Hamas' takeover off Gaza in June was scary on several levels, in part because of the ease with which they defeated the American-trained and funded Fatah security forces. Hamas are clearly a bunch of guys that need to be reckoned with, but the US and Israel aren't. America didn't invite Hamas to the peace conference in Annapolis, and Israel just ignored a Hamas cease-fire offer. A peace process that doesn't include enemies is a road map to nowhere.

Think Hamas is bad? Try talking to the guys in Fatah al Islam, and other Al Qaeda inspired groups that are gaining ground by leeching off the war in Iraqi, the Arab-Israeli wars, and just about every other unresolved conflict in the Middle East. They don't just want to fight Israel, they want to fight everyone who's not a Muslim. Fatah al Islam staged that uprising in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon this summer, and these well-armed, Iraq-trained jihadis held out for months against the Lebanese army. Almost 60 years, since the creation of Israel and the creation of the Palestinian refugee population, these camps have become hothouses for radical groups that make Hamas look like the Boy Scouts.

So I wish I could have some more faith that 2008 would be more like 2007, but I'm afraid its going to be more of the same. Instead of using the goodwill created by the surge in Iraq to help heal old wounds in the region, we are letting them fester. I don't know what's going to break out in 2008, but I doubt it will be peace.

What do you think is going to happen in 2008?

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut