A Meeting with the President of the United States

The White House, Oval Office, December 2007

On Tuesday, December 4, 2007, my colleagues former deputy and political prisoner Mamoun al-Homsi, and Kurdish activist Djengizkhan Hasso of the Executive Council of the National Assembly of Kurdistan, and I met with President Bush at the Oval Office. The hour-long meeting was attended by National Security Advisor Steven Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, National Security Advisor to the Vice President John Hannah, and a number of White House and NSC officials. Continue reading “A Meeting with the President of the United States” →

Endgame Looming!

The last few days seems to have witnessed an expected resuscitation of the international campaign to isolate the Syrian regime. The move comes in the heels of the report issued by Terje Rod Larsen with regard to UN Resolution 1559, and is not really unexpected. For as most observers realize by now, a lull in pressures against the Syrian regime does not mean a reversal of policy on part of the international actors involved. Frankly, the anti-regime policies seem to be set in stone now, for the regime is defunct and the fact of it has become all too visible. Continue reading →

Dissent and Reform in the Arab World

An American Enterprise Institute event

Rather than impose democracy on the Arab world, the United States seeks to support the building blocks for political and economic reform that already exist throughout the region. But as the first installment in AEI’s Dissent and Reform in the Arab World conference series has shown, the brave and bright reformers at the heart of democratic change have little political space with which to work and grow. Continue reading “Dissent and Reform in the Arab World” →

Full Frontal!

The comments on my previous post might be few, but they do, nonetheless, encapsulate the main sentiment that were expressed to me in dozens of emails and phone calls: the Syrian people will simply not endorse a front formed by Khaddam and Bayanouni, as the twain come with too much Ancien Régime baggage on their backs.

Unfortunately though, in the realm of politics issues are not that simple. This is especially true in a country ruled by a corrupt dictatorial regime that plays a smart yet deadly game of communal politics, following the old rule of divide and conquer, and where the rate of illiteracy runs higher than 40% for men and 70% for women and where more than 40% of the people live under the line of poverty. Continue reading “Full Frontal!” →