Security And Migrations in the Mediterranean: Playing With Fire (NATO Science Series: Science & Technology Policy) (Nato Science Series: Science & Technology Policy)

SECURITY AND MIGRATIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

NATO Science Series A series presenting the results of scientific meetings supported under the NATO Science Programme. The series is published by IOS Press and Springer Science and Business Media in conjunction with the NATO Public Diplomacy Division. Sub-Series I. II. III. IV. V.

Life and Behavioural Sciences Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry Computer and Systems Sciences Earth and Environmental Sciences Science and Technology Policy

IOS Press Springer Science and Business Media IOS Press Springer Science and Business Media IOS Press

The NATO Science Series continues the series of books published formerly as the NATO ASI Series. The NATO Science Programme offers support for collaboration in civil science between scientists of countries of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. The types of scientific meeting generally supported are “Advanced Study Institutes” and “Advanced Research Workshops”, although other types of meeting are supported from time to time. The NATO Science Series collects together the results of these meetings. The meetings are co-organized by scientists from NATO countries and scientists from NATO’s Partner countries – countries of the CIS and Central and Eastern Europe. Advanced Study Institutes are high-level tutorial courses offering in-depth study of latest advances in a field. Advanced Research Workshops are expert meetings aimed at critical assessment of a field, and identification of directions for future action. As a consequence of the restructuring of the NATO Science Programme in 1999, the NATO Science Series has been re-organized and there are currently five sub-series as noted above. Please consult the following web sites for information on previous volumes published in the series, as well as details of earlier sub-series: http://www.nato.int/science http://www.springeronline.nl http://www.iospress.nl http://www.wtv-books.de/nato_pco.htm

Series V. Science and Technology Policy – Vol. 50

ISSN: 1387-6708

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean Playing with Fire

Edited by

Mendo Castro Henriques Head of Department at the National Defence Institute, MoD, Lisbon, Portugal

and

Mohamed Khachani Professor at Law Faculty of Université Mohammed V, Rabat, Morocco

Amsterdam • Berlin • Oxford • Tokyo • Washington, DC Published in cooperation with NATO Public Diplomacy Division

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean: A Prospective Vision Lisbon, Portugal 4–6 March 2005

© 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission from the publisher. ISBN 1-58603-618-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2006925643 Publisher IOS Press Nieuwe Hemweg 6B 1013 BG Amsterdam Netherlands fax: +31 20 687 0019 e-mail: [email protected] Distributor in the UK and Ireland Gazelle Books Services Ltd. White Cross Mills Hightown Lancaster LA1 4XS United Kingdom fax: +44 1524 63232 e-mail: [email protected]

Distributor in the USA and Canada IOS Press, Inc. 4502 Rachael Manor Drive Fairfax, VA 22032 USA fax: +1 703 323 3668 e-mail: [email protected]

LEGAL NOTICE The publisher is not responsible for the use which might be made of the following information. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

v

Preface This book results from the work of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop which took place in Lisbon, in 4–6 March 2005, and the edited volume now published in 2006 would not have been possible without the generous support of NATO. We would therefore like to express our personal thanks, as well as those of the Instituto da Defesa Nacional (IDN), of Portugal, for this support. In the course of the discussions after each presentation and joint meetings, it became clear that it would be impossible to achieve complete consensus on all issues, including definitional, or on recommendations. Nevertheless, a number of major themes emerged that enjoyed a good degree of support among the participants. The post-Cold War period made a new concept of security imperative: it encompasses environmental, social, economical, political and military issues. Migration as a civilizational phenomenon, albeit transitional, goes across this entire spectrum, particularly in a varied historical milieu as the Euro Mediterranean region is. In turn, reforms and changes need to be carried out by South Mediterranean states and societies, in order to eliminate some of the obstacles to modernization, creating conditions for economic development at home with the help of North Mediterranean countries. Another package of reforms in European countries should empower migrants to adopt a more active citizenship and become more integrated in the societies where they choose to live. For Mohamed Khachani, a demystification of the question of migratory risk is in order to foster an improved dialogue between south Europe countries and North Africa countries. Sending countries are affected by political crises, socio-economic instability, and illegal migration from North Africa; receiving countries practice discrimination in labour market and social space. Mendo Henriques argued that a multilevel approach to security is imperative in the Euro-Mediterranean region, on account of the presence of distinct regional and national interests. Stereotypes should be discarded and modernization should be promoted by sharing a doctrine of natural right enshrined both in modern secular and religious allegiances. To Francis Ghilès, as economical growth in North Africa has been insufficient to stop migration, Europe is having problems to integrate young immigrants and postponing political and economical treaties with Southern Mediterranean. There should be a technical support to needing countries, and Mahgreb Banks should risk investments and should support young entrepreneurs. Georgia Papagianni provides an overview of the historical development and the institutional framework of the migration agenda within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. She provides a critical appraisal of recent policy developments within the stricto sensu Euro-Mediterranean Partnership framework and at a more general EU level. Fatih Tayfur calls attention to how current strategic and political events in Afghanistan and Iraq may affect the Mediterranean migratory flows. A new dialogue strategy is needed to implement proposals of Turkish foreign policy. Abdel Moughit Tredano envisions migrations as a geopolitical question. It should encourage a mutual cultural enrichment and it should not block the development of

vi

receiving countries. Security needs better controls achieved through a multiplication of agreements between the EU and sending countries. Jean Claude Monod defines secularization as a generic separation between state and religion, but according to variable formulae. The USA prefers the civil religion model, France the laicité model. Muslim migrants are able to dialogue and integrate in both kinds of models. Alami Houria argues that integration must be approached as a two-level process. As South Mediterranean individuals are supposed to become integrated in European societies, South Mediterranean countries should also be co-opted by the Western processes of modernity and secularization. For Inacio Steinhardt, in spite of growing divisions in Israel, the socialist impulse of the Founding Fathers of the country morphed into the solidarity impulse in present Israeli civil society. To Sidney Shipton Islam phobia and anti-Semitism have the same source; to counteract them, much can be achieved through interfaith dialogue. In spite of strong identity and differentiation, persons of different heritage, faith and religion, may work together and originate beneficial effects, as practiced by the Three Faiths Forum. According to Jean Yves Camus, political pressures of far-right parties, in the post 9/11 context, challenge the immigration policies of Western Europe countries; up to a point, they became part of the mainstream parties’ agenda. As countries call for tougher immigration policies, they base them upon a biased understanding of the relationship between immigration from Southern Mediterranean countries, Islam and Islamic radicalism. Lorenza Sebesta argues that, most of all, Security Studies need non-deductive paradigms of analysis. State security is one thing; migrants’ security is another. In between stands the necessity to build a new concept of European identity which must be not be biased by organicism neither laicism. To Jude Wanniski, as the US stands at the top of the pyramid of world powers, because of its undisputed technological, economical and military power, it misuses its hegemony since 1991; a Cold War attitude is maintained instead of a new management of multilateral global institutions. According to William S. Lind, in the 21st century, there is an increasing variety of actors engaged in conflict – tribes, regions, religions, sectarians, and enterprises. As war is no more an exclusive of interstate conflict, the state must distance itself from sources of disorder as a precondition to collective security. Ely Karmon argues that Radical Islamic Movements like Hezbollah consider a liberated fundamentalist territory as their legitimate basis to attack Israel, the only Jewish state amidst a sea of Islamic countries. For Paula Pereira, the Barcelona Process is not the only model for the Mediterranean dialogue. Economical and cultural disparities between North and South and demographic pressure should propel more innovative policies. To Massimo de Leonardis, the dialogue between North and South Mediterranean countries and NATO improved after the traumatic changes of September 11. Misunderstandings were somehow subdued as North and South united against common terrorist threats. Mónica Silva and Maria do Rosário Vaz enhance how Portugal, unhindered by recent colonial issues in the Euro Mediterranean and profiting from a strategic position, has strengthened his role of partner in the region, particularly in the Maghreb, in areas such as tourism and energy.

vii

We would, finally, like to express our gratitude to providers, presenters, moderators and participants in the Workshop for their insights and contributions. We would single out Lieutenant-General Garcia Leandro, Director of IDN, Portugal, until September 2004 and Professor Marques de Almeida, currently Director of IDN, both gave full support for this initiative. Manuel Pechirra, Chairman of the LusoArabian Institute for Cooperation, Portugal, was a key player of this Workshop. Professors Antonio Marquina, Helder Santos Costa and Major-General Mohamed Kadry Said who, for various reasons, could not send their papers, made most valuable presentations. We are particularly grateful to the moderators, who did a wonderful job: José Lamego, Professor and Parliament Member, Portugal; Ramtane Lamamra Ambassador of Algeria in Portugal; Lahzar Bououny, Ambassador of the Tunisian Republic in Portugal; Ângelo Correia, Portugal; General Garcia Leandro, Portugal; and Ambassador Manuel Amante, Cape Vert. To all other participants in the Workshop, listed in Annex II, we express our thanks. We are particularly indebted to António Paradelo, Antonio Baranita, Paula Pereira, Vanda Santos and Delgado da Rocha as well as other IDN staff who made all the arrangements to enable the smooth functioning of the Workshop. Antonio Baranita further worked in the preparation of this book with IDN trainees Filipe Romão, Olinda Costa, Elias Bene, Marta Boavida, André Chagas, Amália Martins and Licínia Simão. Without his and their professionalism, this book would not be possible. Last but not least, we express a word of regret for the loss of Jude Wanniski (1936–2005), the celebrated author of The Way the World Works, who so much enjoyed coming to Portugal and spread his good news that the democratic global electorate should have the last word in international relations. Mendo Castro Henriques Mohamed Khachani

viii

About the Authors Houria Alami is Professor at the Faculté de Droit, Université Hassan II, Casablanca. Law Degree from Université de Paris I, 1973. MA in Political Science from Université Paris I, 1975. MA in International Law from Université Paris I, 1976. MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Université Paris I, 1978. PhD in Political Science from Université Paris I, 1983. Lecturer on the Master’s Degree Course in International Studies, U.F.R. International Law/International Relations – Geopolitics of the Arab World. Lecturer on the Master’s Degree Course in Law and Migration, U.F.R. Law and Migration – Management of Migratory Flows in Euro-Mediterranean Relations. Member of the AMERM (Association Marocaine d’études et de recherches sur les migrations)’s board of trustees. Member of the scientific committee of UNESCO’s “Migration and Law” subject area. Jean-Yves Camus is a Political Scientist at the Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Action sur le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme (CERA), Paris. MA in Contemporary History from the EHESS and in Political Science from Université Paris I. Degree from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. Regular contributor to the online newspapers Proche-Orient. Info and Actualité Juive. Francis Ghilès is a member of the WorldMed Institute and works as a consultant, specialising in political, economic, financial and energy analysis of North Africa and the Western Mediterranean region. B.A. in Politics from the University of Grenoble and M.A. in Politics from the University of Keele. Journalist and Political Scientist, Contributor to Le Monde, El Pais, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Libération, France Info, the BBC, CNN, ITV and Euromoney. Lecturer at Columbia University, Princeton University, Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, University of Tel Aviv. Works with various organizations: the Council of Foreign Relations, the Pentagon, the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Royal College of Defence Studies, Ministère de la Défense in Paris, CERI, Madrid. Co-founder of ‘The annual Mediterranean Gas Conference’ and member of the Comité Scientifique, WorldMed Institute. Mendo Castro Henriques is Director of the Research Department at the National Defence Institute, MoD, Lisbon. PhD in Political Philosophy from Universidade Católica Portuguesa. MA in Portuguese Philosophy from Universidade de Lisboa. Political Philosophy Professor at UCP and guest lecturer at other Portuguese Universities. Lecturer in several Portuguese and International Academic Institutions. Project Evaluator, European Commission, Brussels. Director of GEPOLIS (Gabinete de Estudos ÉticoPolítico-Religiosos) of UCP from 1995 to 2005. Contributor to the Portuguese media and editor-in-chief of book collections on Military History, Human Sciences and Philosophy. Ely Karmon is a professor at Haifa University, Israel. B.A. in French Culture and English from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Licence in International Relations from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. Licence in Bantu languages – Ecole de Langues

ix

Orientales in Paris. M.A. and PhD in Political Science from Haifa University. His PhD thesis deals with “Coalitions of Terrorist Organizations: 1968–1990”. Advisor to the Anti-Semitism Monitoring Forum of the Israeli Government Secretariat. He lectures at the Dept. of Political Science at Haifa University on the subjects of International Terrorism and European Extremist Parties and Organizations. Mohamed Khachani, Professor at the Law Faculty of Université Mohammed V, Rabat. PhD in Economics from Université des Sciences Sociales, Lyon II. MA from Université des Sciences Sociales, Grenoble. BA in economical sciences from the Law Faculty of Université Mohammed V, Rabat. Member of the Unité de Formation et de Recherche “Stratégies économiques et partenariat euro-méditerranéen”; member of the Ecole Doctorale de Marketing. President of the Association Marocaine d’Etudes et de Recherches sur Les Migrations. Member of the Morocco-Spanish Inter-University Joint Committee. Massimo de Leonardis, Director of the Department of Political Science, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. PhD in International Relations, Political Science and Philosophy degree from Università Cattolica. Professor of History of International Relations and Institutions at Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore. Secretary of the Scientific Council and the Steering Committee of the Centro di Ricerche sul Sistema Sud e il Mediterraneo Allargato (C.Ri.S.S.M.A.). Author of books and articles centred on NATO, Italy, and Europe. William S. Lind holds the post of Director of the Centre for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, Washington DC. Graduated from Dartmouth College in 1969. MA in History from Princeton University in 1971. Worked as a legislative aide for armed services for Senator Robert Taft Jr., of Ohio from 1973 to 1976. Held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 to 1986. Joined the Free Congress Foundation in 1987. He has written extensively for the media, including the Washington Post, the New York Times and Harper’s, and professional military journals, including the Marine Corps Gazette, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings and Military Review. Jean-Claude Monod, a PhD researcher in philosophy at CNRS. Member of the mission to study nationality and immigration legislation, 1997, France. Adviser to the mission of commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948–1998. Professor at École Normale Supérieure. Currently researching the impact of new migrations on the models of secularisation in the European Union and the USA. Georgia Papagianni, currently works at the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. BA in Legal Studies from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. MA from the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium. PhD in European Migration Law and Policy from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Trainee at the European Commission and a Researcher at the Institute for Legal Studies of the University of Liège, Belgium. Since January 2002, she has been employed by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Justice, Home Affairs and Schengen). Greek delegate and chairperson (during the Greek Presidency – January to June 2003) of the “Migration-Admission” and “Migration-Expulsion” council Working Groups. Greek rapporteur for migration policy for the XXI F.I.D.E. Congress 2004. Author of several articles on Justice and Home Affairs.

x

Paula Pereira, Advisor at the Instituto da Defesa Nacional, (IDN) Lisbon. Degree in International Relations from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Paris. MSc in Military Strategy and Politics of Defence from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Paris. Researcher at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Lisbon, 1997–2001. IDN National Defence Course, 2001. Consultant to the Portuguese Parliament’s Legislative Committee for Defence 2001–2002. Researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security, Lisbon. Lorenza Sebesta, is a Professor at the University of Bologna, Buenos Aires Campus, Argentina. Graduate in History of International Relations from the University of Florence, 1982. Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies (DEA) from Sciences Po., Paris, 1984. PhD from the University of Florence, 1988. Taught the Europe and the Superpowers course at the Florentine branch of the American Syracuse University; taught at the Political Science University (Bologna), at the University of Bologna, Forlì Campus, at the Science Po., and ran several Masters courses. Supervised a project for a textbook on peace and war in the Mediterranean – Towards a security community in the Mediterranean (www.puntoeuropa.it/peaceandwar), 2003–2004. Joined Bologna University, Buenos Aires Campus, to set up Punto Europa – a research and information centre on questions related to the EU and its relationships with Latin America (Puente@Europa). Associate Researcher at the Space Policy Institute, George Washington University. Sidney Shipton, is an executive of NGOs since the 1970s. BA in Law from London University: MBA from the Middlesex Business School at Middlesex University. Fellow of the Institute of Management and of the Royal Society of Arts. Involved in voluntary and charitable organizations, both national and international, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Council of Christians and Jews, Middlesex University’s Alumni Association, and the Network. Vice Chair of his local UNA for many years. Honorary Executive Director of Business against Drugs. Chair of the Governors of a State-Aided Primary School in North London until the beginning of the 1990s. Executive member of Scopus Educational Trust. Founder of TAALI. Regular delegate and participant in National and International conferences. Member of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), the Medico-Legal Society, the Law Society, the British Academy of Forensic Sciences, and MENSA. Lecturer and speaker, book reviewer and editor of several publications and journals. Mónica Silva, currently works at the European Commission, Brussels. BA in International Relations, specializing in Culture and Politics, from Universidade do Minho, Braga, 1996. Master of Arts in European Political and Administrative Studies, College of Europe, Bruges, 1996–1997. Researcher and assistant on project at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies, Lisbon, 1997–1999. Head technical specialist for the Directorate-General for European Community Affairs, engaged in the EU Portuguese Presidency, 1999–2000. Head of mission of the Instituto Marquês de Valle Flôr in East Timor, 2001. Researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security, Lisbon. Inacio Steinhardt, is a Journalist and Writer in Jerusalem. Chairman of the AAPI – Israeli-Portuguese Friendship League. Born in Portugal and living in Israel, he is an expert on Judaism and Crypto-Judaism (Marranos) in Portugal and Hebrew Genealogy.

xi

Fatih Tayfur is Assistant Professor at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. BSc from Middle East Technical University, 1986. MSc from Middle East Technical University, 1989. PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1997. Lecturer in International Relations, Middle East Technical University from 1996 to 1998. Research assistant in International Relations, Middle East Technical University from 1987 to 1995. Assistant editor of METU Studies in Development. Member of the International Academic Board of Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans. Author of several books and articles. Abdelmoughit Tredano is a Professor of International Law at University Mohammed V, Rabat. Founding member of the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights (OMDH), 1988. Founding member and Former Chairman of CERAB, 1997. Director of Alternatives magazine, and columnist. Founding member of Association Alternatives. Vice Chair of Association Alternatives (1995–2003). Editor of the Confluences collection. Editor of Trait d’Union magazine. Chairman of the IRESS. Maria do Rosário Vaz BA and MA in International Relations and Lecturer at Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, UTL, Lisboa, and member of the Western Mediterranean Working Group/Defence Research Department, National Defence Institute, Portugal. Jude Wanniski, (1936–2005) a journalist, economics expert and opinion-maker. BA in Political Science and MS in Journalism from the University of California, Los Angeles. Associate editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1972 to 1978. Founded Polyconomics in 1978. Advisor to Gov. Ronald Reagan from 1978 to 1981. He appeared frequently in the broadcast and print media, and wrote a weekly commentary for the Polyconomics website. His daily “Memos on the Margin” appeared at Wanniski.com, and he presided over a free “Supply-Side University”. Author of The Way the World Works, Gateway, 4th ed. 1998.

This page intentionally left blank

xiii

Contents Preface Mendo Castro Henriques and Mohamed Khachani About the Authors

v viii

Introduction Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin Mohamed Khachani

3

Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization Mendo Castro Henriques

18

Part I. Migration Management Playing with Fire Francis Ghilès Institutional Framework and Policy Developments with Regard to Migration in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Georgia Papagianni Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations Fatih Tayfur

35

38 48

Part II. Migration and Security Immigration, Secularization and Euro-Islam Jean-Claude Monod Migrations in the Mediterranean: From Economic Needs and Security Geopolitics to a Total Co-Operation Approach Abdelmoughit Tredano

57

64

Part III. Citizenship and Integration Integration, Security and Migration Houria Alami

71

Civil Society in Israel Inacio Steinhardt

75

Citizenship and Integration Sidney Shipton

84

xiv

Part IV. Mediterranean in the International Context Racism and Anti-Racist Measures Conditioning Migrations in the Mediterranean Jean-Yves Camus A New Grammar for a Common Understanding. The Concept of Security Between the State and the Individual: Security as Socially Embedded Lorenza Sebesta An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005 Jude Wanniski

97

101 107

Part V. Emerging Security Threats in the Region Hizballah and the War on Terror Ely Karmon Strategic Defense Initiative: Distance from Disorder Is the Key to Winning the Terror War William S. Lind

119

126

Part VI. Security: Prospects and Developments The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective Massimo de Leonardis

137

Western Initiatives in the Mediterranean Paula Pereira

145

Portugal and the Maghreb Countries: Emerging Economic Trends Maria do Rosário Vaz and Mónica Marques da Silva

150

Workshop Programme

159

Author Index

163

Introduction

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

3

Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin Mohamed KHACHANI Professor of University of Mohamed V and President of the AMERM – Association Marocaine d'Études et de Recherches sur les Migrations, Morocco

Abstract: The history of Mediterranean societies is a crossroads of exchange within the basin. Until the second half of the 20th century we can observe that migratory flows are mainly North-South, as Europeans had been a people of emigration since the great discoveries. The 1960s represents the turning point when Europe became a big centre of immigration, as people from the Southern shore dreamt of better jobs and a better life on the North shore. Due to restrictive laws on immigration, smuggling flourished, and nowadays it is a large-scale phenomenon that concerns both shores, and is boosted by world economic inequities.

Introduction As the point of intersection between the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe, this basin has always been the focus of major networks whose roots are deep within the interior of all three continents, and which here meet other cultures and other civilisations. This reality is due to the geography of the Mediterranean basin, and to the fact that the sea connects three continents and reduces the distance between faraway places. In the Mediterranean basin, the history of societies is deeply connected to migratory flows. Over time, the creation of empires, conquests, and colonisation have forged migratory circuits and networks. But if the common view is that the Mediterranean represents a crossroads of exchange between both shores, we can see that throughout history there have been moments of openness, such as in the days of the Roman Empire and the mare nostrum, and moments of rupture where this sea played the role of a frontier, as a mare clausum. Within this basin, the modern era has seen a series of mutations in these migratory movements. In this respect, the 60s constitute a turning point. Europe, which had developed a tradition of emigration since the discovery of the new world, became a land of reception, and since the early 90s its migratory policy has been increasingly restrictive. The examination of this human mobility in the Mediterranean area leads us onto a multidimensional issue that revolves around 5 themes: I) The historical foundations of this mobility, II) Current forms of migration, III) Evaluation of the phenomenon, IV) The reasons for migrations, and V) Future prospects.

4

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

1. The Mediterranean, some Historical Data In the Mediterranean area, migrations have a long history linked to conquests; the more important ones are the Greek, Phoenician and Roman colonisations around the basin. In the Middle Ages Europe and North Africa were the stage for the Barbarian Invasions from the 2nd to the 6th centuries, followed by the Arab conquest from the 7th to the 9th century, and then the Ottoman conquest from the 14th century onwards. From the 16th century, Europe became a big centre of emigration. The great discoveries offered the conditions for large-scale colonisation, especially in the Americas. i) Indeed, the discovery of the new world exerted an important “call effect” on the European population. Up to the 1960s, we estimate that around 70 million Europeans left the continent to migrate to the Americas, a third of whom came from Mediterranean countries. After 1880, the latter provided the main migratory flows, notably to South American countries. After the increase in 1914 (around one million departures per year), this vast migratory movement would be nearly completely halted by three factors: the outbreak of World War I, restrictive emigration laws, and then the 1929 economic crisis. The periods of high European migration are explained by the demographic dynamism of the old continent where, until de 1830s, the population growth rate was greater than the world average. The contrast between the Mediterranean’s two shores was striking; the Northern shore was a zone of strong migratory pressure, the Southern shore was the zone of the “rare man” (the life expectancy rate was very low). Colonial conquests and the need for labour force in order to develop the Southern countries attracted Spaniards and the Italians in particular, who satisfied this labourforce need. They were involved in the first forms of salaried work on the Southern shore. The available data for the Italians show the importance of these flows coming from the North.

Table 1: Immigrant Italian population in the Southern Mediterranean in 1925 Turkey Algeria Egypt Morocco Tunisia

12,732 37,000 45,106 12,258 91,000

Source: Commissariato Generale dell'Emigrazione, Gli Italiani all'estero, 1925

At the start of the 20th century, in order to maintain migratory flows to the colonies, France developed a tradition as a receiving land. We note two immigration flows: one from the Maghreb countries, the other from Central Europe (mainly Poles), flows that increased after World War I. These flows dried up with the great crisis of the 1930s. However, they continued to flow from another country, Spain, especially farm labourers and Republicans fleeing the Franco Regime during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

5

After World War II, the period of the glorious thirty years becomes familiar, with diversified flows. Migratory flows developed between the less advanced countries of Southern Europe and Northern countries (France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, etc.): Italians (coming mostly from the Mezzogiorno and the poor Islands) and Spaniards, at first, then Portuguese, Greeks, and also Yugoslavs1. ii) On the Eastern shore, the earliest country to develop a culture of emigration was Lebanon. Today we estimate that 5 million Lebanese are settled in foreign countries. Emigration was above all the result of the Maronites who left the country in successive waves: towards Egypt in the 19th century, towards black Africa at the end of the 19th century, and towards the American continent2. But Lebanon was also a country of immigration. We can identify three waves: since World War I until late 1920s, Armenians, fleeing persecution in Turkey; Kurds; and third wave was Palestinians expelled from their land by the first Arab-Israeli war that followed the creation of the State of Israel. The number of Palestinian immigrants swelled after each Arab-Israeli conflict3. iii) On the Southern shore, the first migratory movements date from well before the 19th century. The Arab conquest created a population movement from the East towards the West of the current Muslim world. The foundation of the Muslim State of Andalusia (711-1492) favoured a human flow towards the Iberian Peninsula. With the Muslim expansion, the Berber tribes, mostly from North Africa, settled in this region: the Znatas, the Masmodas, the Nafza and other tribes whose names still have an impact on the toponymy of Spain, such as the Albarracin, the Benicarlo, the Bénicacem, the Mequinensa, the Senija4, etc. Since then, movements have taken place within the “Dâr-al-Islam”. The destinations of North African migrants have been within North Africa and the Middle East, but sometimes this mobility has outgrown this space. On his journey, Ibn Battouta pointed out the presence of North Africans in different regions of Africa and Asia5. In the Middle East, this is often elitist emigration searching for knowledge, or even people who, after their pilgrimage to Mecca, decide to stay for good in these countries. The traces of these movements are still perceptible to this day; they are conveyed by the settlement of families of North African origin in the region: the Idrissi, the Maghrebi, the Bakkali, the Badaoui, etc., and even at urban level, such as the district of Al Maghariba in Jerusalem, for example. At the end of the 19th century, a new form of migration developed in the Maghreb: seasonal emigration towards Algeria, fulfilling the needs of French agricultural colonisation, which played a very important role in Western Algeria. Before 1912, we estimate this flow to have been 15 to 20,000 per year. Several regions were sending these migratory flows, in particular the former Spanish protectorate zone in Morocco, 1

Cf Encyclopédie Universalis, Vol. 10, p. 1090. Since 1975, a great number of Lebanese people escaped the war, finding refuge in Western countries or in the oil-producing Gulf countries. The Lebanese diaspora was always very dynamic: business men, merchants and intellectuals played important roles in the receiving countries. 3 A fourth wave of immigration concerns Syrian people who fled their country in mass from 1958 to 1975. Syria would be governed in 1971 by Hafez al-Assad. In 1995, the number of Syrian immigrants was estimated at around 800.000 people. Cf Encyclopédie Encarta 2003. 4 VIGUERA, Maria J. Las relaciones humanas entre Al Andalus y el Maghreb. In Atlas de la Inmigracion magrebi en Espana. Ed U.A.1996. 5 HARAKAT, Ibrahim. Annachat Al Iqtissadi Al Islami Fi al Asr Al Wassit. Edit Afriquia Acharq. Casablanca. 1996 p. 246. 2

6

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

the Rif. By the 1950s, the Spanish authorities estimated that in a normal year, this movement involved more than a third of the male adult population, a percentage that increased noticeably in years of bad harvests6. For its part, Morocco welcome thousands of Algerian migrants: 15,000 in 1936, 33,000 in 1947 and even more during the war of liberation, when “solidarity with this fraternal people was expressed in the most spontaneous way”7. All the same, in the 1930s, there was a large Moroccan community in Tunisia, of nearly 5,000 people. But the Northern shore, and more precisely France, was also a destination for migratory flows from the Maghreb during the colonial period. Decolonization went hand in hand with a return flow of Europeans. Depending on the case, these flows were more or less intense: 200,000 Europeans left Morocco, 120,000 left Tunisia, and 800,000 left Algeria, from where the autochthonous military harkis who had served the French army also left (around 100.000).

2. Migratory Flows Since the 1960s: Forms of Migration In the 1960s, Europe was living the era of the “glorious thirty years”, and its labour needs were enormous. Three main centres of emigration keep these flows going: 1st North Africa: mainly towards France, but also Belgium and the Netherlands. 2nd Southern Europe: Italy, Spain and Portugal, countries of emigration at the time, towards France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. 3rd Eastern Europe, Greece (600,000 people from 1960 to 1977), former Yugoslavia, but also Turkey: mainly towards Germany. This labour migration was originally temporary as the German term Gastarbeiter (invited workers) indicates. Male individuals constitute this wave of emigration. In the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, after being a recipient of migratory flows during the Ottoman Empire, became a migrant-exporting country. From that time, Turkey included a migratory policy in its development strategy, believing that migration constitutes a factor for regulating the labour market and an appreciable source of currency. That is what led to the signing of several labour-force conventions with different host countries: Germany in 1961, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium in 1964, France in 1965, etc. In the Southern Mediterranean, Egypt constitutes an important centre of emigration but, with the distinctive feature that the Gulf states and Libya remain major destinations, and the latter remains the only country in the South that is a country of immigration. These destinations became attractive after the oil crises that allowed these hydrocarbon-producing countries to develop an important economic infrastructure that needed a large labour force.

6 L’Annuaire de l’émigration (Edited by Kacem Basfao and Hind Taargi).Fondation Hassan II Pour les MRE 1994. Rabat. During this period the number of seasonal migrants in the Oranaie region is estimated at almost 50,000 people. 7 LIAUZU, Claude. Histoire des migrations en Méditerranée occidentale. Editions Complexes. Brussels, p. 45.

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

7

After 1974, the European crisis that followed the first oil crisis that shook Western economies in 1973, and the rise in unemployment, caused the reversal of migratory policies; they would cause a slow-down in the flow of migrants heading to Europe. This restrictive policy came with the four main forms of emigration; some of these existed before but have increased since then: i) Emigration within the context of the family took over from the individual emigration. Joining one’s family, as provided in bilateral labour-force agreements, was authorised by virtue of the principle according to which family offers a “protective circle that favours the sociocultural adaptation of the immigrant and guarantees economic solvency”8. Due to its scale, this process, which mainly benefited migrants already settled in Europe, changed the purpose of migrating from temporary to permanent. It also altered the age and gender structures of the foreign population in the various receiving countries; this created a rejuvenation, and above all a feminisation, of the immigrant population in Europe. This phenomenon was very important in certain countries like France (where, for example, the share of women among the Moroccan population increased from 26.7% in 1975 to 39% in 1982, and where the number of Algerian women settled and so encouraging the family to rally, during the same periods of time, was ten times superior to the number of men9. The proportion of Tunisian women also shows a tendency to increase from 30.9% in 1975 to 38.2% in 1982, reaching 41.1% in 1990.10 In Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, we note the same tendency. Family rallying allowed the settlement of numerous families in those countries; on the other hand, at this time it remained marginal in other countries of recent immigration, such as Spain and Italy. In this wave of emigration, overall one notes two categories of women: those generally from rural backgrounds, who continue living as they did in their village, with the sexual labour division, tasks and role-distribution that existed in the family organisation of their country of origin (taking care of the home and the children); and those who, even without work experience and after being inactive for a time, began working out of necessity, or influenced by the models of the receiving country. ii) But women’s presence in the economic space of the receiving countries is not limited to this category of women who emigrated to be dependent on men. The phenomenon is more obvious among the Moroccan women, and developed mainly from the second half of the 1980s11. Women migrate more and more as autonomous economic entities; in particular single, divorced or widowed women, but sometimes married women with or without children. They search for work in the receiving countries, because they wish to improve their living conditions. Available data from Italy shows the growing feminisation of migratory movements: 8 ADRI L'insertion socio-professionnelle des femmes d'origine étrangère. Savoir et Perspectives .June. 1994. p. 81. 9 KHANDRICHE, Mohaed (ed) Le nouvel espace migratoire franco-algérien. EPISUD 1999, p. 114. 10 GHARSALLI, Mohamed Nacer. “Migration internationale: Flux migratoires et population tunisienne résidente à l’étranger”. In CERED Migration internationale Actes du séminaire. Rabat June 6th-7th 1996. 11 KHACHANI, Mohamed. Les femmes maghrébines immigrées. Communication to the 24th International Population Conference organised by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. Salvador da Baía. Brazil. August 18th-24th 2001.

8

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

Table 2: Residence permits issued to North African women from 1994 to 1999

From 1992 to 1999 the number of migrants multiplied by 3.5. In the case of Moroccans it more than quadrupled. If emigration in a family rallying context had essentially cultural causes, autonomous female emigration has fundamentally economic causes; the crisis that hit Mediterranean economies from the late 1970s created dysfunctions that intensified from the beginning of the 1980s. iii) Since 1990, emigration flows towards the traditional receiving countries surged again, with illegal migration networks taking over from legal circuits. Within that space, illegal migration is not a recent phenomenon. Since the 1950s, and above all the 1960s and 1970s, it has existed in parallel with legal migration. However, this form of immigration was tolerated. Indeed, it is not hard to recall that from 1950 to 1975, the majority of destination countries for illegal migration accepted this unauthorised presence, and had not even drawn up laws to stop it. The lack of control over illegal immigration at the time was justified by General de Gaulle’s Ministry of Social Affairs, which explained that it was needed by French economy12; the Belgian minister Servé used the same argument before Parliament. In this context, illegal migration offered great financial and social advantages to entrepreneurs; it was the era of the “glorious thirty years”. Only after the 1973 crisis and the first oil crisis did the context started to change. Today, the phenomenon has been taken to another dimension since Schengen. The name of this small Luxembourg wine-producing village has since become linked to an armoury of regulations and administrative dykes to control migratory flows upstream. The arrangements made after the Schengen agreement was signed in June 1990 (setting up of visas, strict control of borders, and an extremely selective system for issuing work permits) reduced legal emigration. Have these measures stopped the phenomenon? We are forced to conclude that all of these measures failed to stop the phenomenon of illegal migration. It seems clear that trying to control such flows by implementing “full controls” is an illusion. Every day, in difficult conditions and sometimes risking their lives, thousands of people try to cross the borders into Europe in search of better living conditions in the countries of the Northern shore. Those planning to emigrate illegally try different ways to access European Union (EU) territory. The three main point of entry remain the Turkish-Greek border, the Italian coastlines and the Strait of Gibraltar, which remains the most media-covered

12

VAILLANT, Emmanuel. L’immigration.Coll. Les essentiels. ED Milan. France. 1996.

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

9

due to tragic daily events involving pateras (raft) and what the Spanish press term the “wetbacks”.

Table 3: Illegal emigration in Spain. Indicators

The number of pateras intercepted by the Spanish authorities multiplied by 23 over six years (1994-2000). 1995 constitutes a turning point in the increased use of pateras, when the number quadrupled from 34 in 1994 to 130 in 1995. The number of intercepted people on pateras since 1999 is more than 60,00013. The evolution of this phenomenon was marked by the birth of new illegal emigrant profiles. The changes observed in this form of emigration happened in four ways: Gender: male illegal migration became mixed; more and more women try their luck in the same difficult conditions as men did. Spanish guards now frequently intercept pateras with women on board. (In its June 23rd 1999 edition, ABC newspaper, reported the case of an intercepted patera with 15 women on board near the Moroccan coast of Ceuta). Age: minors illegally emigrate by hiding inside lorry trailers, under coaches or inside containers. Their presence has become visible in some Spanish and Italian cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome, etc.). Those undertaking this form of emigration are often abandoned children or working children who tend to harbour plans to emigrate. The importance of this phenomenon can be observed from a survey on child labour conducted in Morocco. The conclusions of this survey revealed that 18.2% of children under 15 years of age (13.2% of girls and 23.2% of boys) plan to emigrate in the future14. The destinations favoured by these children are Spain and Italy15. Education level: at first, those planning to emigrate illegally were illiterate or usually had a low level of vocational training, but now they are increasingly educated, qualified and graduated from vocational training schools. In receiving countries, these emigrants hold jobs at the bottom of the social ladder, such as tomato and strawberry harvesters, or run small businesses and have other minor jobs on beaches.

13

EL PAIS, August 16th 2003. BENRADI, M, Guesous, Khachani, M and Tebbaa, J. Le travail des enfants au Maroc. Association Marocaine d’Aide à l’Enfant et à la Famille. Casablanca. 1995. Non-published document. 15 Spanish statistics, under-estimating the real numbers, indicate that the number of Moroccan minors residing illegally in Spain has increased greatly, from 382 in 1998 to 705 in 1999, and 1134 in 2000. See Maroc Hebdo international N° 454 of 2nd-7th March 2001.P8. In Italy, on January 31st 2002, of a total of 7,921 unaccompanied minors, Albanian children represented 50% (4,018), followed by Moroccans (17.4%). See Caritas: IMMIGRAZIONE. Dossier Statistico. 2002. p.176. 14

10

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

Regions of origin: candidates for illegal emigration come from North African countries, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Morocco to the West and Turkey to the East have become transit spaces and are tending to become countries of immigration. Indeed, with regard to Africa, more and more young Africans of both genders cross the desert by different means in order to reach North Africa, aiming to finish their journey in a European country. This crossing is sometimes made in suicidal conditions. A dispatch by AFP on this issue reports the death by thirst of 93 Africans in the desert on Libya’s southern border after the lorry they were being carried in broke down16. Those who pass through Morocco come from nearly 40 African countries. Malians are the most numerous, followed by those from Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana and Cameroon. When one evaluates this phenomenon, it is advisable to note that due to its nature it is difficult to measure illegal migration. Figures for illegal immigrants regulated or arrested are sometimes available, but contradictory assessment are easy to make, depending on the various sources of information. The International Organisation for Migration assesses that the stock of illegal migrants in the EU countries is 1.5 million people, which is lower than the 2.6 million people without papers in the early 1990s. This assessment by the International Labour Office includes seasonal workers and asylum seekers that have stayed in the country after their asylum applications were rejected17. Some assessments that we present simply for information, to show the hopelessness of evaluating this form of emigration, suggest that 500,000 illegal migrants enter Europe every year (Europol) 18. In Italy, for example, we estimate that there is one illegal migrant for every 10 inhabitants19. In Spain, we estimate the figure to be anything from 300,000 to 700,000 illegal migrants20. iv) Elitist emigration: the exodus of highly qualified people is a great challenge for the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPC). This new migrant profile coincides with the emergence in the North of a new form of growth, highly dependent on grey material from the South. The retirement of the “baby boom” generation and the lack of specialists in some countries of the EU, particularly in the new information and communication technologies sector, has forced these countries to open recruitment agencies in several Southern countries. Data on such recruitment is rare but, some indexes reveal the importance of this exodus, such as the existence in France of associations created by migrants: Fédération des Ingénieurs Maghrébins de France, Amicale des Médecins d’Origine Maghrébine de France, Association des Anciens de l’Ecole Nationale Polytechnique d’Alger, Association des Médecins Algériens de France, l’Association des Informaticiens Marocains en France, Association des Avocats Marocains de France and the Savoir et Développement association that gathers together Moroccan

16

Le Monde of May 19th 2001. Quoted in Council of Europe. Les caractéristiques démographiques des populations immigrées. Ed. Conseil de l’Europe. 2002. p. 27. 18 Caritas. Immigrazione. Dossier Statistico. 2002. Edizione Nuova Anterem. 2002. P. 128. 19 TANDONNET, Maxime. L’Europe et l’immigration après le sommet de Nice. Migrations et société. Vol 13. No.74. March-April. 2001. 20 El Pais of August 16th 2003. 17

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

11

researchers from different areas in different French regions, Canada and the United States21. This “inverse transfer of technology” that allows receiving countries to increase their scientific potential intensifies the imbalance between the two shores of the Mediterranean. This “brain drain” concerns not only the Southern countries but also the Northern ones for two reasons: on one hand, this elite represents one of the rarest resources of the MPC; on the other hand, their education required time, high costs and benefited from important public subsidies. The phenomenon is taking worrying dimensions and affects not only qualified people that have problems finding a job, but also those who are locally employable, vital skills for ensuring that the MPCs’ economies are well up to creating a free-trade zone.

3. The Phenomenon Dimension In the light of this evolution, what is the volume of MPC immigration in EU countries? The number of immigrants coming from MPC to Europe is very difficult to evaluate due to the scale of illegal flows and the number of naturalized immigrants, sometimes creating a divergence between statistical sources (for example, between Eurostat statistics and those from migrant-exporting countries). At present, we count more than six million migrants from the MPC residing in EU countries. Among this population, and in order of importance, Turkish migrants constitute the largest community (50.3%), followed by North Africans (41%). North African migrants mainly come from Morocco (22%), Algeria (around 13%) and Tunisia (5.8%). It is a dispersed population, but strongly represented in some EU countries. The Turkish population occupies first position in Germany and the Netherlands. North Africans occupy first place amongst non-Community foreigners in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain; they occupy second position in Germany and the Netherlands (behind the Turkish migrant population). The assessment of migrants’ stock and its distribution across the various destination countries confirms the importance of the migratory phenomenon, now a social phenomenon, not to say a culture one, in the majority of the Mediterranean Partner Countries.

21 KHACHANI, Mohamed. L'émigration élitiste Sud-Nord: le cas du Maroc. In Annuaire de la Méditerranée 2001. Ed du GERM. 2002.

12

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

Albania 1%

Croatia 2% Bosnia Algeria 0% 13% Egypt 1%

Turkey 50%

Morocco 22% rest of MPC 1%

Syria 1%

Jordan Lebanon 0% 2%

Israel 1% Tunisia 6%

Picture 1: Mediterranean Partner Countries Population residing in EU countries

4. The Causes of Migration In order to understand this phenomenon we must at first know its causes. The phenomenon’s explanation is complex enough: emigration is a product of multiple internal factors, but it would not have as much importance if other appealing factors did not exist in the receiving countries22. A decision with such major consequences as leaving one’s home, social environment and living elsewhere is not taken lightly. The commitment is only equalled by the tenacity that frequently follows the decision to leave. 4.1 Causes in the Countries of Origin This infatuation with the Mediterranean’s north shore can be explained by various factors. The migratory process results from the combined effect of two types of factors: generating factors and initiating factors. These cause it to exist, speed up and continue. 4.1.1 Generating Factors i) The emigration phenomenon fundamentally expresses the economic inequalities that distinguish the two shores: national income (NI) per capita in the MPC is very low compared to the main destination countries for migratory flows. Apart from Israel and Lebanon, it is 10% lower than the European Income per capita.

22 EUROSTAT. Facteurs d’attraction et de répulsion à l’origine des flux migratoires internationaux. National report - Le Maroc, prepared by Fadlollah, A., Berrada, A. and Khachani, M. 2000. KHACHANI, M. L’émigration Sud-Nord dans le contexte du partenariat euro-maghrébin: les facteurs «d’impulsion». Contribution to the Mediterranean Conference on population, migrations and development, organized by the Council of Europe. Palma de Majorca October 15th -17th 1996.

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

13

Table 4: Percentage of GDP/inhabitant according to the EU

Other internal discrepancies add to the discrepancy between the two spheres: one resulting from the distribution of incomes between different social categories, together with development discrepancies between the various internal regions of the countries of origin. ii) The majority of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean economies suffer great economic instability. The rhythm of economic growth is conditioned by the primary sector. In spite of clear efforts to develop the irrigation, agriculture remains dependent on climatic hazards. Due to highly fluctuating agricultural GDP, the recurrence of drought years during the last two decades has had a negative impact on growth.

Table 5: GDP annual growth rate

This up-and-down growth instability produces destabilizing effects on the employment market. It makes us think clearly about absorption of the job-supply deficit problem, and additional labour-supply satisfaction. iii) In spite of the advanced state of demographic transition in the MPC, population growth remains high. This has a direct effect on the size of the active population and creates an important additional labour supply, which the local labour market cannot satisfy. Thus, unemployment affects a large proportion of the population. Under the force of structural adjustment policies and the withdrawal of the State23, this scourge has taken on worrying dimensions, highlighting inequities and forcing a large proportion of the population into poverty. In countries in which emigration constitutes a way of regulating the labour market, this tendency, with its difficult conditions, has been worsened by the fact that this scourge mainly affects young people, i.e., the population category with the highest tendency to emigrate. Low income levels can also explain this migratory pressure. In this respect, for the “working poor”, i.e., people that have a job but do not earn a good enough salary to live 23 The State, traditionally a job creator, enormously reduced its contribution to the employment market. Less State has generated less public investment and by consequence less employment. In Morocco, for example, a state that created an average of more than 40,000 jobs per year between 1979 and 1982, created no more than 10,000 to 15,000 jobs between 1983 and 1994, and an average of 16,854 from 1995 to 2001.

14

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

decently and grow, pay differentials remain important and are a great draw for potential emigrants. 4.1.2 Spurring Factors Although economic causes are emigration factors, that may not be enough to spur potential emigrants to emigrate. Sometimes, the incubation of such a project is set in motion by other appealing factors; these spurring factors set in motion emigration mechanisms and prompt an effect that bridges the gap between a latent interest and actually carrying out the project. i) The image of social success displayed by emigrants who return to their countries for annual holidays. This image backs up the widely-disseminated media idea of El Dorado. ii) Audiovisual impact: indeed, the communication revolution has prompted a trivialization of words; the low price of the “magic box” makes it affordable to periurban and rural populations. Through the images diffused by ten or so channels, the beds of the underprivileged are carried away each night to a magical world that makes them aim for emigration. iii) Geographic proximity: Turkey has a terrestrial border with the European Union. To the West, Europe is just 14 km from the Moroccan coast: the Spanish coast can be seen from the Moroccan coast between Tangier and Ceuta. If these generating and spurring factors support a strong propensity to emigrate, it is also fuelled by factors emanating from receiving countries. 4.2 Appealing Factors in Receiving Countries i) The dream of emigrating is also a product of taboo; the development of this form of migration is the consequence of European migratory policy based on the drastic reduction of visas and rigorous control of borders, as dictated by Schengen. Nonetheless, these measures, as we have stated before, have had perverse effects; paradoxically they have developed illegal emigration and have mainly had the effect of raising the cost of crossing the most prohibitive borders. This cost is proportional to the repressive character of the measures taken by EU countries. In these conditions, and in spite of the disappointment that an emigrant might face, returning home is not an option; in any case he cannot come back to his country empty handed and display his failure to his own family. ii) There is a specific labour demand in receiving countries. Due to costs and flexibility, this demand responds to the needs of a secondary market, characterized by jobs with no security and/or that are socially undesirable. This demand comes mainly from sectors as agriculture, the construction industry and services. Demand is particularly strong in the informal sector, which in Europe’s Latin countries represents between 20% and 25% of GDP. These sectors, in particular, take great financial and social advantage of the illegal labour force, which is reputedly docile and less expensive. Sanctions imposed on employers who make use of illegal labour, under current legislation, does not appear to be a dissuasive factor. To a great extent, this economic

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

15

appeal explains why in practice the new wave of illegal migration is hidden by the media and is totally absent from official discourse24. This dialectic of legal rejection and economic appeal has favoured what we call the of “illusion trade”. iii) The “illusion trade” is an activity that takes on dramatic proportions. The structured networks formed on both shores to transfer illegal migrants to EU countries provide their services at exorbitant prices; in Morocco, for example, candidates for emigration pay sums that vary from $600 to $5,500, depending on whether their smugglers are Moroccans or Spaniards25. Price can be higher if the service includes the promise that work documents will be in order – sometimes a groundless promise26.

5. Perspectives for the Future To conclude this analysis, we can see that each attempt to control the phenomenon needs to act on the underlying causes that create and support it, knowing full well that the task is very complex, particularly hard and can be long. Action on the causes is sometimes up to MPC governments and sometimes up to EU countries. In evaluating the migration issue in the Mediterranean area, changes in the future will fall within a more global context that boils down to three key ideas: i) Demystifying the security syndrome and breaking away from the “migratory risk obsession”. The security approach in the case of immigration has shown its limits, and border controls have show themselves to be of limited effectiveness (we don’t stop the sea with our arms, as Abdou Diouf, former President of Senegal, once said). It is more judicious to adopt a more preventive and promotional approach than one of security and protectionism. From this perspective we must: - firstly break away from the “migratory risk obsession”, - organize a “migratory order” between the countries that export and receive migratory flows, - adopt reasonable and humane policies, based on the conclusion that in decades to come, immigration will not only be a European realty, but also a need. That is why we must create a contractual framework between the EU and Eastern and Western partners for controlled and regulated immigration. ii) Rethinking the issue in its demographic dimension, given that in less than a decade Europe will face a great workforce deficit. According to the writers of the Blue Book: “ from the 170 million supplementary waterside residents in 2025, 68% will be born in Arab countries, 22% in Turkey, and only 10% in Europe”. 24 For example, what would "the hell under greenhouses of El Ejido", very profitable for the Spanish economy, be without this labour force? 25 According to Moroccans illegally resident in Spain, Spanish networks take part in trafficking in the Strait ; they operate from the occupied enclave in Ceuta. The anachronistic colonial status of the city makes it a trap door for trafficking humans to the northern shore. Cf. Attar, B & Khachani, M : Emigracion clandestina : una responsabilidad compartida. CAMBIO 16 N° 1565 of December 3rd 2001. 26 It is difficult to assess the profits made by networks involved in this human trafficking. At international level, the turnover of mafia networks is estimated at 5 to 7 billion dollars per year. Cf. Peter SALKER : Travailleurs sans frontières, l’impact de la mondialisation sur les migrations internationales. Bureau International du Travail. 2000.

16

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

Recorded population growth in EU countries27 over the next 25 years will be just 3.5%, rising from 376.4 millions to 388.3 million inhabitants. There will be three demographic hotspots: Turkey, Egypt and North Africa. Thus, it is revealing that the most populated country of the region will be a country from the Southern Mediterranean. Germany (84.169 million inhabitants) will be dethroned by Egypt (89.525 million inhabitants), and a country such as Spain, whose population is currently about 40% higher than that of Morocco will have the same population as the latter by 2025.

Table 6: Demographic indices in the main migratory-flow exporting countries PSEM Algeria Egypt Jordan Lebanon Morocco Syria Tunisia Turkey Other MPCs Total European Union

Annual population average growth rate (1990-1999) 2.2 1.9 4.4 1.8 1.8 2.8 1.6 1.5 -

Population in 2000

Projection for 2025

30 64 5 4 29 16 10 65 10 233 376.438

49.888 89.525 10.240 39.188 19.566 13.142 85.974 17.373 324.896 388.3

Source: World Bank. 2001

iii) Rethinking cooperation policies and making them more dynamic in order to support growth in migrant-exporting countries, and consequently generate employment – the only way to mitigate migratory pressure. In the wake of globalization, at different times MPCs have signed agreements with the European Union. The outcome of these agreements requires a boost to the former’s economies in order to make them more successful and so more competitive. The argument that considers free trade as an alternative to emigration is only conceivable as an adjustment mechanism over the long term, and under specific conditions. The underlying hypothesis, which is sometimes implicit, is that free trade (combined with external capital contributions) could allow the start of an economic convergence process and would contribute to the reduction of development gaps between Europe and MPC. In this way, the process could very significantly reduce migratory flows28. This is barely feasible, because it seems that Europe’s project for the Mediterranean may have placed too much store in the process of integration by Southern countries’ markets.

27 The average fertility rate in EU countries is 1.47% ; the highest rate is observed in France (1.9%), the lowest belongs to Spain and Italy (1.25%). 28 AZZAM, Mahjoub. L’émigration et la dette" in. Marier le Maghreb à l’Union Européenne. In PANORAMIQUES 3rd quarter 1999. N° 41.

M. Khachani / Migratory Movements in the Mediterranean Basin

17

The multiplication of agreements made on this basis seems to constitute a panacea for the creation of an integrated Euro-Mediterranean space. But limiting the liberalisation of trade only to industrialised products forces signatory countries into making restrictive readjustments and worsens the employment situation, which is already very critical in these countries. Added to these handicaps is the weakness of financial support. Implementation of the MEDA programme was much delayed. The MEDA II programme will have to cope with MEDA I’s handicaps. The amount indicated for MEDA II is 5.35 million Euros, to which we must add 7.4 billion Euros guaranteed by the EIB. Another handicap is the weakness of foreign investment in Southern-shore countries, where the level is well below the investment flows from EU countries to other areas of the globe. This accords with the conclusions of the Lisbon summit on investment in the Mediterranean (29th February – 1st March 2000). In this respect, the EU’s contribution can be fundamental. By creating employment, the investment made contributes to holding back the wave of prospective emigrants, but to some extent still satisfies additional labour requirements.

Conclusion Alfred Sauvy said: “If the wealth of the world does not go where men are, naturally men will go there where the wealth is” 29. Put in these simple but clear terms, the problem concerns the countries of the north shore. These countries will not keep pockets of misery away from their borders for ever via regulation. Each attempt to moderate the phenomenon needs to act on the underlying causes that create it and support it, knowing well that the task is very complex and very long, and concerns every governments of the region. We need to give a more tangible dimension to international solidarity and more real sense to dialogue and the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, a project whose stated goal is to turn the Mare Nostrum into a haven of shared peace and prosperity.

29 An idea shared by Jaime Ignacio Gonzalez, the Spanish government delegate for foreigners and immigration, when, supporting the planned reform of the law governing foreigners, he recognized that as long as economic inequalities remain in the world, migratory pressure will also remain. Cf El Pais of August 16th 2003.

18

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Natural Right in Islam: a Bridge to Modernization Mendo Castro HENRIQUES Professor of Catholic University, Lisbon and Director of Research Department at Instituto da Defesa Nacional, MoD, Portugal

Abstract: Natural right is a foremost factor of the dialogue in the Euro-Mediterranean World, a great regulator for building the democratic state, international relations and respect for human rights in general, and penal law. Secular and religious allegiances converge in acknowledging it as the key factor for acknowledging human rights and ensuring social pluralism; for sustaining the law’s primacy in the state-building process; for maintaining the counterbalance of civic duties and rights, without which no political leadership can be sustained; for promoting the supremacy of international law; and for legitimising the power of supranational organizations.

Introduction As European Union and NATO strengthen their initiatives with South Mediterranean partners – the Barcelona Process since 1995, and the Dialogue for the Mediterranean since 2002 – evidence accumulates that soft power issues hold the key to cooperation at different levels: a) multinational level; b) states and their respective national interests; c) private corporations with their goals in a market economy; d) institutions of civil society and their public goals. At every level of governance, cooperation revolves around understanding the nature and mutual potentialities and shortcomings of the co-operators. Dialogue between both shores of the Mediterranean needs to overcome misperceptions and allay mutual fears resulting from different stages of modernization and different perceptions of modernity itself, in both South and North. If societies do not equate the real issues of modernization they are condemned to “play with fire”, assuming that migration from South to North is a fatality and missing opportunities of investment and industrialization in the South Mediterranean countries.1 There are no few misunderstandings in this issue. Western culturalists conceive that the Islamic world cannot modernize because of religious-based priorities: faith over reason, community over the individual, Moslems versus “others”.2 European countries such as 1

As Francis Ghilès argues in this book. See LEWIS, Bernard, What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, New York, 2002. LEWIS coined the term "clash of civilizations" to describe the relations between the Muslim world and the West in a 1990 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. See also HUNTINGTON, Samuel P., “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993); the Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World 2

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

19

France receive Maghreb migrants but do not give them representation rights. American exceptionalism, i.e. the US’s self-perception as being the “end of history” and the “centre of the world”, runs counter to the multilateralism encouraged by the US. On Islam’s side the law known as Sharia3, understood as an integral part of belief, and intruding upon the public and private lives is a tremendous obstacle to modernity. Its adoption, covering not only religious rituals, but also aspects of day-to-day life, politics, economics, banking, business or contract law, and social issues causes delays in modernization and may cause death penalties.

1. Multiple Modernities The problem with these conventional approaches is that they operate within a narrow and deterministic concept of modernization understood as a convergence towards a uniform society, favoured by “progressives”, abhorred by “traditionalists” or “fundamentalists”. A framework of analysis for the Mediterranean countries’ has much to benefit from what Shmuel Eisenstadt called “multiple modernities”.4 Such a framework demonstrates that tradition is not necessarily an enemy of development. The disruption of traditional lifestyles does not assure the creation of a modern and viable society; sometimes, it only leads to disorganization and social delinquency. Some of the great successes of social and economical modernization - such as England and Japan - reached a compromise with traditional behaviours. The 20th century history of totalitarian regimes, USSR and China, showed that indicators of modernization, such as alphabetization, media diffusion, formal education and urbanization, did not originated neither nurtured the growth of liberating and "rational" institutions. Thus, the "developmentalist" paradigm of modernization was destroyed by the acknowledgment of several paradoxes. Tradition can either hinder or facilitate transition to modernity; in contrast to the concept of " civilizational shock", the ‘meeting between civilizations’ has historically been more lasting and efficient; the modernization process does not necessarily follow the European standard. Tradition is a general reservoir of behaviours and symbols of each society whereas “traditionalism” or “fundamentalism” is a radical reaction to modernizing forces; concepts such ‘society in transition’, ‘collapses of modernization’ and ‘failed states’ are debatable because they assume a deterministic evolution; modernizing societies are able to reorganize traditional behaviours, symbols and forces, after the emergency of Western models.5 Order, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Ernest GELLNER: “Muslim societies in the modern world present a picture which is virtually a mirror image of Marxist ones. They are suffused with faith, indeed they suffer from a plethora of it…” in “Civil Society in Historical Context,” International Social Science Journal 43, no. 3 (1991): p. 133. 3 Also Shar 'ah, Shari'a, Shariah or Syariah, the Arabic word for Islamic law. Most Sunni Muslims follow variants of Sharia such as Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki or Shafii, while most Shia Muslims follow Jaafari. 4 EISENSTADT, S. N., Modernization, Protest and Change, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1966; EISENSTADT, S. N., “The Reconstruction of Religious Arenas in the Framework of ‘Multiple Modernities,’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2000). 5 EISENSTADT, S. N., A Dinâmica das Civilizações, Lisboa, Cosmos, 1991.

20

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

Conventionally, ‘modernity’ was understood as a historical period, the economic and socio-political transformation that followed the scientific and technological developments flowing from the rationalist way of thinking after the European Renaissance. This “great transformation” included a major shift from religion to democracy as the basis of political legitimacy. Actually, ‘modernity’ or ‘modernization’ is a civilizational process that emerged first in Europe but that was global, combining with national and regional identities, and with particular religions and traditions. Each contemporary society is a result among other possible outcomes; a linear process of evolution of societies does not exist; no course of events is the result of causes previously anticipated as necessary; in the worldsystem, each country or group of countries finds itself in a specific stage of modernization. As we adopt this approach, we overcome the narrow and deterministic concept of ‘modernity’ as convergence towards a uniform society, and we get a framework to analyse the “great transformation” of the Euro Mediterranean world. 6 A key softpower factor of modernization is natural right. I presented some reflexions on it Madrid, at the NATO ARW organized by CESEDEN on 21 March 2004, coincidentally the week following the terrorist attacks.7 In October 2004, in the foreword to De Legibus by Francisco Suárez, I explored natural law as a basis for alliance between secular and religious currents.8 In March 2005, at the Lisbon NATO ARW, jointly organized with Mohamed Khachani, I looked at the subject from a security perspective.9 After translating a book by young Moroccan thinker Rachid Benzine10 I returned to the issue at the Christianity and Islam Colloquium.11 Later, at the 1st International Conference on the Mediterranean, in Rome in October 2005, I looked at some of the praxeological perspectives.12 At the colloquium on Natural Right and Historicity, at the Oporto Faculty of Law on 8 November 2005, I introduced a dialogue with Islam.13 In this article, I endeavour to emphasize that the modernization of the Muslim Mediterranean countries is facilitated by the natural right doctrine contained in the Qur’an and Sunna but hindered by Sharia. The authoritarian and democratic regimes in the Mediterranean arch from Morocco to Turkey are characterized by the predominance of the Executive power and the bureaucracy and by the reduced importance of the legislative bodies and parties. As those tutored democracies are pledged in modernizing societies and economic development, their governments prefer to deal directly with interest groups and watch closely social movements and expressions of public opinion. The discrepancy between the modernization goals and the persistence of traditional Islam compels them to adopt steady institutional framings. As this discrepancy favours fundamentalist eruptions, those regimes must choose between yielding to Islamist parties enforcing brutal repressive 6

HUNTER, Shireen (ed.), Modernization and Democratization in The Muslim World, Washington, CSIS, 2005. The paper “Security in the Mediterranean” was expanded and published as “Si nolis bellum para pacem. Mediterranean Security and the rule of Law”, Lisbon, Nação e Defesa, Autumn-Winter 2004. 8 SUÁREZ, Francisco, De Legibus, Lisbon, Tribuna, 2004. Translation of the first 1612 Coimbra edition by Gonçalo Moita and Luís Cerqueira. Introduction by Gonçalo Moita. Foreword by myself. 9 NATO Security in the Mediterranean ARW, Lisbon, 4-6 March 2005. 10 Os Novos Pensadores do Islão, Lisbon, Tribuna, 2005. 11 Organized by GEPOLIS, Faculty of Theology and Luso-Arabian Institute, Lisbon, 26 May 2005. 12 Conference organized by Centro Alti Studi per Difensa, Italy, on 25-27 October 2005 in Rome. 13 Organized by Paulo Ferreira da Cunha. 7

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

21

measures, or strengthen modernization processes based on the rule of law. The predominance of this “third way” is reinforced by the natural right doctrines in the Qur’an and Sunna.

2. Modern Islam It is easier to define natural right than to operationalize it.14 Beyond interests, subjective evaluation and arbitrariness, there are permanent norms for man’s behaviour as a part of humankind and member of a whole. Natural right is based on the principle that Man is a social being with inherent prior rights, irrespective of the rights that the state and society decide to grant. This stance may, or may not, be religiously grounded. The great Abrahamic religions confirm the primacy of the dignity of Man and, as such, natural right is a bridge between religions.15 Against the Positivistic and the Classical objective school, modern doctrine of natural right assigns it a variable content, both in history and in internal and international organizations.16 It is a fundamental source for establishing norms for public life across multiple cultures. As the great regulator for building the democratic state, international relations, respect for human rights in general, and penal law, natural right is the foremost factor for the dialogue in the Euro-Mediterranean World. It is the key factor for acknowledging human rights, resisting breaches of human well-being and ensuring social pluralism; for sustaining the law’s primacy in the state-building process; for maintaining the counterbalance of civic duties and rights, without which no political leadership can be sustained; for promoting the supremacy of international law; and for legitimizing the power of supranational organizations. Now, in Islam, there is a clear interdependence between the political and religious spheres, expressed in the concept of the community of believers (oummah). If we are to understand about what happened in the past and is happening today in the Muslim world, we must appreciate the universality and centrality of religion as a factor in the lives of the 14 Essential résumés on the subject include ROMMEN, Henri, Le Droit Naturel, Histoire Doctrine, Paris, Egloff, 1945; STRAUSS, Leo, Natural Right and History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1953; and more elementary, SÉRIAUX, Alain, Le Droit naturel, Paris, PUF, 1993. On subjective natural law: VILLEY, Michel, La Formation de la Pensée Juridique Moderne, Paris, Montchrestien, 1968 and Paris, PUF, 1993; Le Droit et les Droits de l’Homme, Paris, PUF, 1983 and 1990; BARRET-KRIEGEL, Blandine, Les Droits de l’Homme et le Droit Naturel, Paris, PUF, 1986; and UNGER, Roberto Mangabeira, Law in Modern Society, New York, The Free Press, 1976. 15 Objective natural right is established by HERVADA, Javier, Introducción Crítica al Derecho Natural (Pamplona 1981, 10th ed. Pamplona 2001) p. 8: “When one speaks of natural right, the purpose is to affirm that Man is society’s central reality, that Man does not stand before others as a being who can be treated according to their whims, but a worthy and demanding being, bearing rights inherent in his own being. The dignity of Man contains the basis of all law, such that beyond the scope of who Man is and whom he represents there is no right, but only domination and injustice, even if the instruments take the form of law. What creates right is not power, nor society, but rather what emanates from human beings; that is why the nucleus of right which is borne by Man marks the dividing line between legitimacy and illegitimacy, between legal action and anti-legal action of power and of social groups.” 16 KREIJEN, Gerard (ed.), State Sovereignty and International Governance, Oxford, OUP, 2002. In particular von GEUSAU, Frans.

22

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

Muslims. In contrast to other great religions, "Islam from the lifetime of its founder was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history and experience".17 For Moslems, religion "constituted the essential basis and focus of identity and loyalty”.18 And “most of the significant political and social movements in modern Muslim history have drawn heavily on Islam as a unifying and motivating force”19 Modern Islamic movements display a constant dimension of Renaissance or Awakening (Naha), which gives them a common methodology and ideology. These 19th century movements arose in response to European colonization. They responded to the conquest of Egypt and the colonization of India by Britain; the colonization of the Maghreb countries by France and Italy; the dismembering of the Ottoman Empire by the Western powers in 1918; and the colonization by Britain and France of the Arab countries that had been under the Ottoman yoke. The creation of and Western support for the state of Israel, in 1948, the Suez War against Nasser in 1956, and the wars waged by the US and international coalitions against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 are part of a new historical panorama of independent Muslim nations and an American-led West. The conquest of Egypt launched by General Bonaparte on 1 July 1798 was especially resonant for the renaissance of the Arab world. Although it only lasted three years, it revealed Muslim vulnerability and it instilled a desire to adopt Western techniques and values. The Enlightenment and the ideals of the French Revolution would become known before scientific ideas and rationalism. Sharia doctrinaires resisted, but other elites adopted European ideas that were compatible with and beneficial to Islam in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey. The Albanian sovereign Mehmed Ali (1769-1849), wanted to take Egypt into the modern world. Sheik Rashid Rida (1801-1873), from Al-Azhar University and educated in France, wanted to reform Shari'a in line with the French Civil Code model. The leading pro-Europeanization writer was Taha Hussein (1889-1973), who wrote that Egypt belonged to the Mediterranean and Western world. Tunisia secured autonomy from the Ottoman Empire and developed a close relationship with France from 1840 onwards. Khayr al-Din (1822-1890) established democratic-type institutions and overhauled the Muslim state. In Turkey, Sultan Abdulmagid (1839-1861) initiated reforms (Tanzimat) that were subsequently stifled by his successor’s authoritarianism. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk (1880-1938) secularized public life by separating State and oummah, but keeping the building of mosques, the training of immans and even Friday sermons centralized under the Directorate of Religious Affairs. This policy of reforming Islam, from the mid-19th century until the Second World War, displays a healthy reaction to Islam’s self-absorption. The intention was to reform political 17 LEWIS, Bernard, The return of Islam in Michael Curtis, ed. Religion and Politics in the Middle East, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1981, p.11. 18 Idem. p.12. Cf. PIPES, Daniel, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power, New York, Basic Books, 1983, pp. 15-16. 19 VOLL, John O., Islam; Continuity and Change in the Modern World, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1982, Ch. 3 and ESPOSITO, John, Islam and Politics, 2nd ed. rev. Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1987, Ch.2.

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

23

life, society and religious knowledge. 20 However, the results were frustrated by European hegemony and the internal decay of Muslim societies. The so-called "great reformers"21 – Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida and Sayyid Ahmad Khan – tried to change the norms and values of Muslim societies in line with the criteria of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. However, their successors were not of the same calibre, for various reasons. The end of colonial conquests brought the substitution of Europe by the US. Since 1940, Muslim countries have found their new hopes frustrated, with the muddle of socialist pan-Islamic revolutions. From the early 1950s, Arab nationalist revolutions – thawras – defined Third World and Socialist objectives. The reformers opened the way to two major kind of movements, islamist and modernizing. Hassan al-Banna (assassinated in 1949) founded the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Pakistani Abu Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979) founded Jama'at-i islami ("the alliance of Islam"). The Indian Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) and the Egyptian Ali Abderraziq (18881966) founded critical Islamic movements. Hassan al-Banna strived to turn Egypt back to an Islamic society; its law would be based on the Koran and the Sunna, with a Muslim caliphate. He displayed a concern for social justice but rejected Western values. Sayyed Qutb (1906-1966, hanged at the order of Nasser) endowed the Muslim Brotherhood with a body of doctrine. Mawdudi, an observer of the clashes between Hindus and Muslims, regarded Islam as an alternative ideology. An outstanding critical reformer is Muhammad Iqbal, the spiritual father of Pakistan. He embraced the best of the theological, philosophical and mystical inheritance of Islam and of Western philosophy in his work Rebuilding Religious Thought in Islam. Believing that religious thought results from inter-cultural exchange, he proposed an open Islam. Another outstanding reformer was Ali Abderraziq. In 1925, he published Islam and the Foundations of Political Power, in which he challenged the legitimacy of the caliphate tradition, the public relationship between the secular and holy, and the muddling of political and religious spheres, and of history and faith.22 Abderraziq saw the political role of Mohammad in Medina as an exception, and he rejects the traditional Islamic idea of power established by revelation. That "great illusion" had deprived the Muslim peoples of effective solutions. The “Islamic" state was a secular, not religious, entity. As the Egyptian Muhammad Sais said in Islamism against Islam: "God wanted Islam to be a religion, but men tried to convert it into a policy". The efforts of 19th century Islamic reformers opened the way for the secularization that prevailed in the 20th century. Sharia became a private affair in most Muslim countries after the end of WWII. Yet secularization was shaken by the failure to build states without taking account of religious institutions, as in the Iran of Rheza Pahlevi, and to a lesser 20 Al-Mânar [Beacon] magazine by Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida is an example. HOURANI, Albert wrote of Abduh: “He tried to build a barrier against secularism, but indeed he created a bridge that could be transposed in both directions”. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939, Cambridge, CUP, 1983, Ch. 7 Some of Abduh’s disciples developed towards total secularism. Others developed the Salafiya movement in the direction of an Islamic state that respected Sharia. 21 Os Novos Pensadores do Islão, Ch. 1. 22 Al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm. Excerpts from the book in ESPOSITO, John L., Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives, NY, OUP, 1982, pp. 29-37. HOURANI, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Cambridge, CUP, 1983, pp. 183-88 presents the author’s thesis and the violent criticism it received.

24

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

degree in Pakistan. Even Muslim societies that strive for a secular state – such as in Iraq and Syria, dominated by the Ba’ath party – must deal with the implications of Sharia as private law. As Islamic doctrine demands jurisdiction over questions of morals, new thinkers and reformers of Islam struggle with a dilemma: either they infuse old doctrines with new life and adapt them to current needs, or they look for a non-religious source of inspiration. According to secularist Muhamad Abduh, in agreement with the goals of Abderraziq, Muslim societies should be free to organize their own government and institutions. However, a Muslim needs the cultural resources of Islam for his identity. The Koran is a monument to the Arabic language and poetry, and to Muhammad, its outstanding messenger. As Fazlur Rahman wrote, “the difficulty for the Islamic secularist is to have to prove the impossible, i.e. that Muhammad, as he acted as legislator or politician, acted in a secular and extra-religious way".23 Of the two kinds of reforms of public law undertaken in the 19th century, James Norman Anderson says: “the Sharia was more and more widely displaced in practice – in such matters as commercial law, criminal law, and much else – in favour of codes of largely alien origin, applied by a system of secular courts; and secondly, that even in the sacred sphere of family law (administered as this still was, in most of the countries concerned, in specifically Sharia courts) a number of most significant changes were made in the way in which it [Sharia] was interpreted and applied".24 Herbert Liebesny explained that Shari'a was dislocated by European-type secular legislation in successive phases. The first circle to fall was commercial law; then came penal law, property law, contract law and torts. Inheritance and family law have been less affected. 25 However, even the practical violation of Sharia has been disguised by keeping it unbroken in theory. As J. N. Anderson notes, for a Muslim it is a greater sin to deny divine revelation than to disobey it. Spoken homage to Islamic law may go hand in hand with the appeal to the doctrine of necessity (darura), rather than adapt to the requirements of contemporary life. The emergence of "new voices of Islam"26 or "new Islamic thinkers"27 shows that using necessity (darura) as an excuse is no longer sufficient. The minority who propose the restoration of Sharia demand an end to any concessions to contemporary life. Much more numerous are those who take the benefits of modernity and the secularization of public life for granted. Self-determination, democratization and freedom of speech, belief and association would be destroyed by the return to full Sharia. As secular public law has developed, Muslim women have acquired educational, professional and civic opportunities that they will not abandon. Given the premise that all Moslems believe in the fundaments of Islam (which is why the term “fundamentalist” is questionable), “the question to be asked is not the crude, 23

RAHMAN; F., Islam. p. 229. ANDERSON, James Norman D., Law reform in the Muslim World , London, University of London, Athlone Press, 1976, pp. 2-3 and p. 33. 25 LIEBESNY, Herbert, The Law of the Near and Middle East, Albany State University of New York Press, 1975, p. 56. 26 ESPOSITO, John L. (ed.) Voices of Resurgent Islam, New York, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 3-5. 27 BENZINE, Rachid, Os Novos Pensadores do Islão, Tribuna, 2005, (trans. Mendo Henriques). 24

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

25

falsely dichotomous ‘Is Islam compatible with political development?’ but rather ‘How much and what kinds of Islam are compatible with (or necessary for) political development in the Muslim world?".28 It is tangible policies that establish compromises between religious references and secular public right: “It is not easy to imagine a contemporary society in which Islamic institutions of another age continue to play a vital role as some proponents of an ‘Islamic society’ seem to champion, nor is a new identity without a prominent Islamic element very likely”.29 Currently, Islamic countries can be classified according to whether they aim to comply with the totality of Sharia, or review and revise it, as the source of right and law. For all, Sharia is “humanity’s duty”, a moral and pastoral ethic and theology, a spiritual aspiration, and a ritualistic and formal observance. It embraces all public and private law, hygiene, and even courtesy and good manners.30 The offence of apostasy (ridda) is variously persecuted in all Islamic countries, particularly Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.31 Most of the population considers it a heresy to repudiate any part of Sharia, which is a barrier to modernization and secularization. In the international sphere, Sharia authorizes the aggressive use of force to propagate Islam, and does not recognize equal sovereignty with non-Moslem states. Domestically, it breaches principles of human rights, and authorizes criminal persecution by decree (fatwah) for religious reasons, such as the notorious cases of Salman Rushdie and Abu Zayd.32 “Old reformers” and “new thinkers” of Islam have overcome such obstacles, showing that Sharia does not have a divine origin, having been constructed by early jurists from Islam’s basic sources. It is the product of interpretation, and of a logical derivation of the wording of the Koran and the Sunna, as well as other traditions.33 The deconstruction of those sources and such development shows that, as historically established, Sharia will never be a source of self-determination, and it creates insoluble problems in the modern world. The only way of facing up to these divergent imperatives is to show that the Koran and the Sunna support natural right, and that Sharia is a perversion. Secular public right in Moslem nation-states has opened the way for compatibility with international legal criteria. However, the construction of the state without religious humanism, as was seen with pan-Arab socialism, left out the jus-naturalist construction of

28 HUDSON, Michael, “Islam and Political Development”, in John Esposito ed. Islam and Development: Religion and Sociopolitical Change, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1980, p. 5. 29 DONOHUE, John, “Islam and the Search for Identity in the Arab World” in ESPOSITO, John L. (ed.), Voices of Resurgent Islam, p. 59. 30 For an overview of Sharia see RAHMAN, Fazlur, Islam, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1979. 31 The fact remains that apostasy is a capital offence in the various schools of Sharia as illustrated by the ongoing (April 2006) case of the Afghan Abdel Rahman. For an optimistic approach see KAMALI, Mohammad Hashim, Freedom of Expression in Islam p. 92: "The practice of early Islamic leaders, particularly the RightlyGuided Caliphs, was consistently determined by the Qur'anic norms which seek to protect the integrity of the individual conscience." 32 Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwah of February 1989 against Rushdie says: “I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death”. In 1994, Abu Zayd was divorced from his wife Ibtihâl, against the wishes of both, by Egyptian courts who judged him to be “apostate”, and he took exile in the Netherlands. 33 Os Novos Pensadores do Islão, Ch. 3.

26

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

the democratic state, of penal justice, and of human rights. Currently, Islam is showing that political and religious reform can be mutually supportive, provided natural right mediates them.

3. Rule of Law The state’s structure and organization, and the division and exercise of its powers, are the starting point for any debate about public right in Islam. The constitutional structure determines the relationship between state bodies and citizens, and through this, individual rights, freedoms and guarantees are exercised and each state conducts its international relations. Despite the religious unity resulting from Sharia, Moslem peoples are organized into nation-states, and will be for the foreseeable future.34 Many sociological, economic and political issues are associated with political and legal constitutionalism. However, without minimizing their importance, the fact remains that the nation-state has taken root in the Islamic world ever since European colonization brought with it its power structures and concepts.35 However, the nation state was not born of Muslim history and cultural traditions. As with other African and Asian peoples, there is a long process of adjustment and reformulation of institutions and practices before democratic rule of law is achieved. The guiding principles come from the Far Western European countries, such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal. Although in historical Islamic “constitutions” Sharia had a limited say as to how the organs of government functioned and their relationship with the population, early jurists and subsequent generations did not think in terms of “positive right” as distinct from religious and ethical matters, and still less in terms of constitutional law. Furthermore, historical “constitutions” were lacking as regards the rights and well-being of “citizens”, because they excluded women, slaves and foreigners, which are fatal flaws from a constitutional viewpoint. In current Islamic constitutionalism, public authority is exercised in accordance with the law. The government is responsible for law and not men, in line with the Western constitutional model. By conforming to universal standards, Modern Moslem nation-states ensure equal citizenship rights for their population, such as equality before the law and participation in governance. In addition, they provide the legal resources to develop and fulfil individual identities.36 There are two strong arguments to back the validity of constitutionalism and its application to non-European political traditions: one moral and the other empirical. Moral justification is the principle of reciprocity, common to all cultural traditions, whereby one must treat others as one would want to be treated by them. Agreeing to place oneself in the 34 Even not colonized Arab countries, as Saudi Arabia, adopted the governance structures of the modern nationstate. 35 PISCATORI, James, Islam in a World of Nation-States, Cambridge, CUP, 1986, Ch. 2 and 3. 36 ESPOSITO, John L. (ed.), Islam and Development, pp. 49-70 and 87-106.

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

27

“other’s” position and decide if one accepts his/her status is the supreme test of the universality of natural right. The empirical argument is that democratic constitutionalism is the free choice of the vast majority of the world’s peoples. Thus, domestic and external indicators confirm that constitutionalism not only combines legitimate means and desirable ends in a rational and effective way, but that it must respect the procedures of rule of law and democracy, so as to balance the demand for social justice with individual freedom. That path has still to be completed by most Moslem states.

4. Penal Law The state maintains public order and preserves citizens’ security via the power of punishments affecting individual life, freedom and property. That such drastic consequences should be necessary to protect public and private security should not obscure the risks of abuse and manipulation. Imposing penalties does not just imply the possible loss of freedom and property, but also social stigma and psychological suffering. So it is no surprise that the administering of penal law is severely limited and subject to rigorous scrutiny by national constitutions and international agreements. Sharia’s principles and rules regarding penal law appear in general treaties on Islamic jurisprudence, and identify three categories of offence: hudud, jinayat and ta’zir. Hudud are offences for which a specific punishment exists, with no prior judgement nor appeal. Jinayat covers murder and bodily harm, and is punished either by pure retaliation (qisas) or payment of financial compensation to the victim and relatives (diya). Ta'zir relates to the discretionary powers of governors and judges to reform and discipline the accused. Given their nature, they do not take a specialized criminological approach to proof and procedure. Moreover, there are passages of the Koran and the Sunna that specify requirements for hudud-type offences. For example, the hadd (the singular of hudud) for fornication (zina) requires four male witness of the act of copulation, a requirement that is debated by jurists themselves.37 It is an acknowledged fact that penal law defined by Sharia contains the most glaring breaches of natural right. As illustrated by recent experience in Iran and Sudan, its implementation results in undesirable cruelty and negative political effects. However, the rudimentary nature of Sharia has always given plenty of leeway for judges whose job it is to implement it. Almost all modern Moslem states have long since superseded Sharia as their penal law, and have incorporated the rights arising from relevant international agreements into their national constitutions. The vast majority of Moslem states have adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), even if to protect the rights of foreigners within their borders. International criteria concerning penal law pertain above all to procedural aspects, to ensure a fair determination of the accused’s innocence or guilt. Other safeguards relate to legal aid, the independence of the courts and the ability to (and conduct of an) appeal. But 37 TAYMIYYA, Ibn, The Public and Private Law of Islam; Encyclopaedia of Islamic Jurisprudence, 3 vol. Kuwait, Awqaf, 1969.

28

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

beyond such procedural issues lie others, such as the principle of legality, and the punishment and treatment of prisoners. The principle of legality makes visible what is prohibited by penal law, so that everyone knows the rules. It is deemed unjust to punish those who break the law without having had sufficient opportunity to comply with it. Crime and punishment must be defined as precisely as possible, before punishment is imposed accordingly. As a corollary, courts must make the strictest possible interpretation of penal legislation. In line with the individual’s fundamental freedom of action and presumed innocence, nobody must be punished unless it is for conduct which he/she knows to be forbidden. Finally, there is a general principle underlying the state’s power to impose sanctions. Every society decides upon the reach of its penal law within a framework of constitutional legitimacy. Imposing sanctions and penalties is an exercise in national sovereignty, provided that such decisions are taken by legitimate representatives and within the appropriate bodies. But punishments and sanctions have to conform to social consensus, especially the expectations of ethnic, political and religious minorities. The dictatorship of the majority is all the more insufferable when it affects penal law. National sovereignty over the content of penal law is not a mask for imposing the beliefs of the majority on the minority. Under democratic rule of law, penal legislation must conform to the constitutional guarantee of basic rights. Any discrimination based on race, religion, or gender is unacceptable, as it is unconstitutional. If such legislation is decreed, it must be annulled via the body and procedure established for that purpose. This is a problem of content, and not just the form of law, because the validity and compulsory nature of the criteria of penal law are based on a moral judgement, which is that of natural right. The best argument in favour of such criteria is this: as they are the minimum we would ask for ourselves, our conscience obliges us to demand them for others.

5. International Law The purpose and function of international law is to regulate the relationship between member states of the international community in line with principles of mutual equality and justice before the law, so as to ensure the peaceful coexistence, security and well-being of states and their citizens. In the interest of world peace and justice, it is not only desirable but also imperative that states’ actions conform to international law. Obviously, there is a chasm between the paradigm of international law and its practice, but the deep inadequacies of law in practice do not negate the paradigm; nor does the debate on the unacceptable status quo in international relations prevent a realistic view of the desired aims. In that sense, the definitive test of international law is each state’s ability to achieve national freedom without wounding the interests of the global community, as protagonists of international law. States are the main entities with rights and duties, and with the capacity to act. Because it was developed by 17th century European nations, international law reflected their perceptions and interests: American, African and Asian peoples were not qualified to

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

29

belong to the civilized community of nations, and were not involved in its creation.38 Since the end of World War II, decolonized territories and peoples have begun making their contribution. Consequently, law has become truly international, reflecting the perceptions and interests of all nations. The development of international law must be approached from the viewpoint of relationships of power between states. These are the bases for internal and external processes of international relations, including the formulation and implementation of international law. The validity and usefulness of such approaches are easier to understand in the jus-naturalist domain: not confusing what the law is with what it should be does not mean eliminating the reference to duty, says the jus-naturalist paradigm. Each state’s perceptions of its own national interest (formulated by the predominant political class) change over time. That change is shown by developments in contemporary international law, especially the right to self-determination, restrictions on the use of force in the international sphere, and the promotion of human rights. In this sense, Moslem states have abandoned Sharia principles that contradict the essential aims and principles of international law. In line with the reciprocity principle, they recognize in all states, Islamic or otherwise, the same degree of sovereignty; they repudiate the “religious right” to use force to propagate Islam, and the clandestine use of force.39 For the overwhelming majority of Moslem citizens, the quality of Islam achieved via peaceful voluntary conversion is superior to that achieved by the use or threat of force. A Moslem community maintained by legitimacy and justice is superior to a community united by repression.40 This positive evolution should not lead one to overlook the problems arising from the chasm between international law in theory and practice, nor to underestimate the tendency of powerful states to apply international law selectively. The process is dynamic, given that conformity by all participants generates positive developments, and the failure of some of them to comply leads to others’ efforts being frustrated.

6. Human Rights What are known as basic constitutional rights relate to human rights issues in the modern nation-state context, i.e. issues linked to democratic rule of law and penal law. However, there are also human rights recognized and promoted by international institutions, expounded in the context of the international legal system, especially those emanating from the United Nations. The universality of the principles set forth in Article 1.3 of the UN Charter obliges all states to cooperate in the indiscriminate promotion of respect for human rights and basic freedoms. Following on from the UN Charter, regional declarations for Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia set forth human rights criteria and how they should be implemented. This

38

SUÁREZ, Francisco, De Legibus, op. cit. Foreword, pp. 47-54. HAMIDULLAH, Muhammad, Muslim Conduct of State, Lahore, 1966. 40 According to Mahmoud Taha, the Mecca model is superior to that of Medina. Cf. An-Na’im, passim. 39

30

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

is termed jus cogens, one of its main principles being the repudiation of genocide and all forms of religious, ethnic, language- and gender-based discrimination. Within Islam, Sharia denied women and non-Moslems dignity equal to that of Moslem men. When Sharia was created by the founding jurists in the 8th and 9th centuries from original Islamic sources, it was natural to restrict the reciprocity rule. “Others” were deemed to be just Moslem men. The tendency at the time was to create a closed society. What made it unsuitable was its crystallization by Islamic power.41 “It is true that the Koran and the Sunna were revealed as bearers of basic principles more or less similar to those of the Bible, and were expressed in the form of “cases” to be solved, always in a very precise context as regards place and time. It is also true that Moslem law subsequently created and developed Sharia itself over very many centuries, at every step referring to the personal opinion (ra’y) of its jurisconsults (fuqahâ), the analogous reasoning (qiyâs) that they widely practised, and the majority consensus (ijmâ) of the jurists of each canonical school”.42 The development of secular law in Islam, especially since 1948, has widened “others” to include all human beings of any gender, religion, race or language. Moslem states abandoned the predominance of historic Sharia law as they began to exercise their right to self-determination without breaching the rights of other peoples and individuals. Signing of the convention on the final abolition of slavery dates from 1926, and condemnation of persecution and discrimination against religious minorities dates from the 1950s.43 Condemnation of gender-based discrimination took final shape in 1979. In September 1981, the Islamic Council for Europe presented the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam to UNESCO, following the universal Islamic Declaration (12 April 1980) and a draft Islamic Constitution (10-12 December 1983). The Islamic Conference Organization approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, ratified in Cairo on 4 August 1990 by the 45 foreign ministers. The Arab League promulgated the Arab Human Rights Charter on 15 September 1994. International declarations and treaties, which recognize universal human rights, are imperative for all states. In Islam’s case, what is important is that those rights be accepted as universal not only because they appear in declarations and treaties, but because they are recognized as natural human rights, which the Koran can support. For natural right to be effective in changing the attitudes and policies of Islamic majorities, recognition of “others” has to be valid and credible from the believer’s point of view. Just as Western religious and cultural traditions managed to overcome limitations on “others” from the inside, so Islam has to overcome the hostility and resentment created by Sharia within its own cultural tradition.

41 A typical case in which morals and religion act as forces to close society and prevent an open society. BERGSON, Henri, Les Deux sources de la morale et de la Religion, Paris, 1929, Ch. 1. 42 Comment les trois Déclarations islamiques des Droits de l'Homme, publiées entre 1981 et 1994, accueillentelles la Déclaration universelle de 1948 ? BORRMANS, Maurice, Islamochristiana, no. 24, 1998. 43 CAPOTORTI, Francisco, Study of the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, New York, UN, 1979.

M.C. Henriques / Natural Right in Islam: A Bridge to Modernization

31

Conclusion The main obstacle to ensuring the effective implementation of jus-naturalist criteria – going beyond religious and cultural boundaries – is that each tradition has its framework of reference, and the validity of its precepts and norms is derived from internal sources. For each tradition to be able to relate to others without claiming superiority for itself, natural right supplies a standard: the principle of reciprocity. Universal human rights criteria are assumed to the extent that the principles of “giving to each what is his own”, “harm nobody” and “live transparently” are articulated by each cultural and religious tradition. The moral and logical strength of such principles can be understood by any individual, irrespective of cultural tradition or philosophical persuasion. The reciprocity principle invites us to put ourselves in the place of the “other” – someone of another race, gender, or religion – and ask ourselves what human rights we should demand. The universal answer is the basis of trans-cultural human rights. Starting from that basis, one can debate other major issues, such as the relationship between aims and means in the implementation of rights, the hierarchy of different rights, and the legitimacy of exemptions from specific obligations in emergency situations. Natural right responds to the impoverishment of criteria for human action in the field of public governance. Whether expounded by objectivist or subjectivist jus-naturalists, the conclusion is the same: the triumph over “domination and empire” depends on the predominance of natural right. In the past, early modern Western rationalism was not constructed in opposition to faith, as it sought to counteract clear fallacies advanced by religious authorities. The vindication of subjective natural rights by Suárez, Grotius, Hobbes, Rousseau and Kant was not destructive of religion per se. Nowadays, the submission to God in Islam does not prevent progress and individual initiative, if the separation of the public and private domains, or politics and religion, is carried. The South Mediterranean challenge of modernity does not concern “the relevance and applicability of foreign models” but a new compromise between modernization and tradition as enshrined in natural right.

This page intentionally left blank

Part I Migration Management

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

35

Playing with Fire Francis GHILÈS Senior Fellow of the European Institute of the Mediterranean in Barcelona, France

Abstract: Although migrants are much needed to fill the labour gap and generate entrepreneurial energy in an ageing Europe, many right-wing parties refuse to recognize this as they promote anti-immigration policies. A choice has to be made between European partnership and national sovereignty, given that we are dealing with old prejudices and new fears. Islam is treated in the media as a terrorist and an economic threat. However, representation and non-discrimination are the best route to integration.

A few months ago, the new European commissioner for justice sought to reverse the logic of Europe’s stalled immigration debate: instead of seeking a Europe-wide regime imposed from above, he suggested a bottom-up approach. The European green paper on immigration aims to encourage six months of public discussion with the hope of setting clear conditions and rules for economic migration in order to fight illegal immigration. In no way would such a policy interfere with the right of individual countries to limit their intake of newcomers – it might allow some migrants, however, to obtain a permanent work-residence permit on the model of the American green card. The commissioner has reversed the usual debating roles and cast the antiimmigrant forces as the ones whose policies risk changing European beyond recognition. If it does not devise a plan for legal immigration, Europe will have the same number of illegal ones - 20m are projected to arrive over the next two decades on current trends and, given the ageing of the continent’s population, there is no reason to believe that these trends will not persist. If unchecked, Europe’s labour shortage could result in a 22% decline in capital income by 2050 according to the ILO. New immigrants do not simply fill a labour gap; they generate entrepreneurial energy. Comparisons with the US are not necessarily helpful. Immigrants to the US are more flexible than natives and do not threaten their jobs. Once immigrants become native, they cease to be as flexible. This system is tolerated in the US but I doubt whether it would be in Europe, not least because on this continent we work shorter hours than across the Atlantic. Furthermore, in the US, immigrants can move freely across the economy – in Europe it is impossible to move from Lisbon to Nice, or Vienna to London. In order for that to be true – and it would be of great economic benefit to all countries – national governments would have to surrender control over immigration policies. This is unlikely in the near future. But how long can you allow a European minority such as the Lithuanians to move freely around Europe while denying that right to the millions of Arabic-speaking people who have often lived, worked and paid taxes in France and Belgium for decades? At least the current debate might have the virtue of making some Europeans understand that immigration policy is not an accident that results from a mismanagement of asylum policies. When listening to some British Conservative Party or Spanish Partido Popular stalwarts, let alone many Italian politicians, one could be

36

F. Ghilès / Playing with Fire

forgiven for thinking that was the case. Reading the speeches of many leading politicians of right and left, one could be forgiven for not appreciating that immigration is akin to an informal wage settlement on which the broader prosperity of European societies depends. How is it that so many Spanish, French, Italian and British political leaders refuse to admit that half the restaurants in their major and much beloved historical cities would close down were it not for those they brand as a menace in their rabble-rousing speeches? How is it they never walk their streets early in the morning to see who cleans them? How is it they never admit to the contribution that underpaid and highly qualified immigrant doctors make to keeping the wards of many of their state hospitals open? If we turn to the title of this session, “Citizenship and Integration”, we must not be afraid to say that our governments have shied away from fighting discrimination. In France there are no MPs of North African extraction, no mayors of any city of any importance, no senior executives, or very few. A report commissioned by Nicole Notat, the former Secretary General of the CFDT trade union concluded, in the late 1990s, that discrimination against well-qualified French people of North African origin was a major problem. A second report was published recently: has anything changed in practise despite the fact that mixed marriages are legion and that many French people are quite colour blind? In Spain, the authorities have given preference to Latin American immigrants, to Romanians and to Slavs over Moroccans. In successive programmes to legalise foreigners living in Spain, staged in 1991, 1996, 2000 and 2001, the percentage of Moroccans among those receiving residency papers declined from 45% to 33%, 27% and 9%, respectively. No doubt the security of Spain and its business and foreign policy interests are better served by having Romanians rather than Moroccans. It is easy to attack the Spanish government for legalizing 500,000 illegal immigrants but could the critics please explain how one is to manage a country’s finances and security, let alone drug policy without detailed knowledge of more than half a million people? Could we be told whether “No hay Moros en la costa” [there is no danger of invasion] is government policy and whether we are still ruled by the Catholic Kings who expelled the Jews and Moors from Spain in 1492? In Italy, and despite what the Italian Commissioner is doing in Brussels, the BossiFini law, offered as a gesture to the far-right coalition partners, and particularly the Lega Nord´s anti-immigration and anti-Muslim supporters, will, when finally enacted, bring tighter restrictions on asylum, along with draconian new rules on illegal work and work permits. Though Italy will have to conform to the EU directives on asylum to which it is bound, regulating such things as reception, procedure, and treatment, the generosity of spirit seen at earlier EU meetings has long since evaporated, as governments agree lowest possible standards rather than best practices and resist signing away control over immigration. Although neat and orderly on paper, Italy’s refugee and asylum policies, along with its immigration policy, are in the same state of chaos as they are throughout the whole of the European Union. In a broader European context, immigration is, without any shadow of a doubt, the leading problem that requires our leaders to choose between European and national sovereignty. Europe’s unregulated internal borders are making our broader European frontiers that much weaker. My guess is that a European immigration policy will be put off, yet again, but we should be warned of the possible consequences of refusing to face facts. Europe is built on shared values and the issue of immigration is complex, touching as it does deep-seated fears and prejudices. Confusion reigns over the

F. Ghilès / Playing with Fire

37

distinction between illegal immigrant and bona fide asylum seeker, fanned by a xenophobic press – the public pulled one way by their awareness of the need for cheap foreign labour and the other by unreasoned fears of invasion by Arab terrorists. The mantra of Islamic terrorism – which is quite the most misleading pseudoconcept spawned by 9/11 – continues its admirable career, notably in the media: television has, in recent years, transformed the press into the media and, after the Washington Post demonstrated that journalism can be mightier than a president of the United States, modest style in the press was doomed. Television, with its roots in advertising and show business, thinks of modesty the way Count Dracula thinks of sunrises. Journalists today too often think of themselves as knight protectors of the moral order. There are three kinds of writers in our generation and, in inverse order of worldly consideration, they are the reporter, who writes what he sees; the interpretative reporter, who writes what he sees and what he construes to be its meaning; and the expert, who writes what he construes to be the meaning of what he has not seen. As a former journalist, I am maybe a little hard on the trade. Remember, the Institute for International Economics, no less, commissioned a study in 2003, which found that there is no evidence that Islam restricts economic growth. To think that such a body should feel the need to commission research to counter the widely-held view that Muslim societies are intrinsically less conducive to capitalism than those dominated by other religions. “If one is concerned about economic performance in predominantly Muslim regions or countries, conventional economic analysis may yield greater insight than the sociology of religion” the study says. The author of the report said that his results aroused suspicion bordering on disbelief among colleagues when he first produced them. Maybe that is because it was conducted in the wake of 9/11. In such a climate of bigotry and ignorance, there is little reason the media will be spared. Citizenship goes hand in hand with taxation: the old adage “no taxation without representation” might be applied more seriously in Europe. As for integration, there is no better way than via legal work. Those North Africans who are educated achieve as much as any European. So do Turks. Applying the twin principles of representation and absence of discrimination when recruiting would still leave other difficult questions related to social values and religion – which are interwoven in an inextricable way – to be addressed. But unless our politicians, our media and our experts behave with a greater sense of responsibility and a less crass ignorance of history than is all too often the case, I fear we might be in for a bumpy ride.

38

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Institutional Framework and Policy Developments with Regard to Migration in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Georgia PAPAGIANNI Adviser, Foreign Affairs Ministry of Greece

Abstract: Issues of migrations are bilaterally and regionally debated as a key element in the framework of Euro-Mediterranean relations. The Communitisation of asylum and immigration issues, and the emergence of the Schengen Space imposed common policies on border controls against illegal immigration. Migration by sea needs cooperation with third countries in order to achieve joint management and control, and tailor-made approaches to each country. As dialogue between cultures urges us to struggle against racism and xenophobia, the request for immigrants’ social integration and rights to equal treatment in employment and occupation, we hope this cooperation will be enhanced.

Introduction Migration-related issues constitute beyond any doubt a key element in the framework of Euro-Mediterranean relations, both at regional and bilateral level. It is true that the importance of the migration component was not sufficiently reflected in the initial 1995 Declaration of the Barcelona process, since this did not elaborate extensively on this point. However, one should not lose sight of the fact that migration related issues have traditionally been important in relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean, and that since the beginning of the 1990s the EU Member States have progressively enhanced their co-operation in this field.1 Subsequent Euro-Med Ministerial Conferences have underlined the necessity of strengthening co-operation on Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) matters, whilst calling for the enhancement of political dialogue and the study of partnership measures in the various areas concerned.2 It is worth underlining in that regard, on the one hand, the 1

It has even been convincingly argued that the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership scheme was up to a certain degree materializing the Commission’s 1994 Communication on migration. See Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on Immigration and Asylum policies, COM (94) 23 final, 23.2.1994. See also Commission of the European Communities, Strengthening of the Mediterranean Policy of the Union: Proposals for implementing a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, COM (95) 72 final, 8.3.1995. See on this point AGHROUT, A. and ALEXANDER, M., “The Euro-Mediterranean New Strategy and the Maghreb Countries, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 2, 1997, pp. 307-328. According to the authors the Commission Communication, which identified the root causes of migration pressures and singled out economic disparities as the most significant, stressed the necessary integration of an active migration policy into general development policies and external economic relations of the EU. 2 For some useful presentations and comments on the development of the migration component within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership see AUBARELL SOLDUGA, G., “Migration and the Euro-Mediterranean partnership”, paper presented at the Fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research meeting of the Mediterranean Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

39

fact that migration issues were closely linked to “soft security” issues that were dealt with in the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), and on the other hand, the particularly significant growth of immigration since the second half of the 1980s and the concomitant problems of controlling it that occurred in southern EU countries.3 Moreover, a brief examination of data regarding the demographic and employment situation on both shores of the Mediterranean as well as the main policy concerns of the Euro-Mediterranean partners prove by far the increasing salience of migration related issues within the framework of the EMP agenda.4 The main objective of this paper is to provide a brief presentation of the institutional and policy developments with regard to migration in the framework of the EMP. Given the fact that the EMP co-operation framework comprises two tracks, a bilateral and a regional one, the present analysis will examine developments at both of these levels. However, developments in the EMP migration policy agenda cannot be fully understood unless these are examined in the context of EU advances in integration in this area. It has been convincingly argued, on the one hand, that the uneven development of the three Barcelona baskets and the initially limited progress on migration-related matters was due to the lack of EU experience in these matters, and on the other hand, that the subsequent increasing salience of the migration policy agenda was a reflection of the expansion of the EU’s own JHA agenda in the post-Tampere era.5 In light of the above, the paper will endeavour to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the migration agenda not only within the EMP framework stricto sensu but also at a more general EU level.

1. Institutional Framework Given the fact that the EMP has a two-track institutional basis – both regional and bilateral – the institutional framework will be examined following both of these tracks. As far as the regional track is concerned, issues relevant to migration are examined within the framework of the more general institutional structures of the EMP; meaning the Euro-Mediterranean Conferences of Foreign Ministers, Senior Officials’ Meetings, the EuroMed Committee and the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum.6 It needs Institute, Florence and Montecatini Terme, 24-28 March 2004 and GILLESPIE, R., “Reshaping the Agenda? The Internal Politics of the Barcelona Process in the Aftermath of September 11”, in JΟNEMANN, A. (ed.) Euro-Mediterranean relations after September 11: international, regional, and domestic dynamics, Frank Cass, 2004, pp. 21-36. 3 On these points see EDWARDS, G. and PHILIPPART, Eric, “The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: Fragmentation and Reconstruction”, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 2, 1997, pp. 465-489. 4 For an overview and a brief analysis of these data see KHALATBARI, B. and LAUTERFELD, M., “Under Full Sail in a Millennium of Migration? Enlargement in the East and “Push and Pull Factors” in the South, in JACOBS, A. (ed.) Euro-Mediterranean co-operation: enlarging and widening the perspective, Centre for European Integration Studies, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn, 2004, pp. 74-84. 5 GILLESPIE, R., “Reshaping the Agenda? The Internal Politics of the Barcelona Process in the Aftermath of September 11”, op. cit. 6 For an overview of the EMP institutional framework see BISCOP, S., Euro-Mediterranean Security: A Search for Partnership, Ashgate, 2003, PANEBIANCO, S., “The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in Perspective: The Political and Institutional Context” in PANEBIANCO, S. (ed.) A New Euro-Mediterranean Cultural Identity, Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 1-20 and PHILIPPART, E., “The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: A Critical Evaluation of an Ambitious Scheme”, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 8, 2003, pp. 201-220.

40

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

to be mentioned that while there have not been any Sectoral JHA Ministerial Meetings, there have been several ad hoc Euro-Mediterranean meetings at senior officials level – the first such meeting was held in Montpelier in June 2001 and began a dialogue in preparation for a regional JHA programme. Moreover, one needs to highlight the importance of the EuroMed Civil Fora, which have widely contributed to spreading the concept of multiculturalism and the importance of civil society, as well as that of the various Euro-Mediterranean networks, which contribute to the exchange of experiences and know-how and to reinforcement of the EMP through active cooperation between organizations and similar operating in EMP partner countries (i.e. EuroMeSCo (a non-governmental network of foreign policy institutes), Jemstone, Remfoc etc).7 At bilateral level, it is worth recalling that a series of bilateral arrangements ties the EU to each of the Southern Mediterranean countries. These bilateral arrangements known as association agreements8- have gradually broadened their scope by including JHA provisions, to a different extent. Implementation of the provision of the relevant agreements takes place in the “Migration and Social Affairs” and “Justice and Security” subcommittee. Finally, at EU level most external-relations issues regarding migration policy are dealt with in the framework of the High Level Working Group for Migration and Asylum (HLWG), created in 1999. The initial terms of reference for this specialised external relations group were limited to the elaboration of five country-oriented Action Plans,9 - including an Action Plan for Morocco – but have since been amplified.10

2. Policy Developments 2.1 General Background to EU JHA External Relations Policy Given the increasing salience of JHA matters at EU level, the need to integrate this new policy area into the general framework of EC external relations appeared imperative. Thus, during its meeting in June 2000, the General Affairs Council examined a Presidency report on the priorities and policy objectives for external relations in the field of JHA, which was subsequently submitted and approved by the Feira European Council.11 This report stressed the need for the Union to integrate JHA matters fully

7 PANEBIANCO, S., “The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in Perspective: The Political and Institutional Context”, op. cit. 8 Except in the case of Israel which has had along standing free trade arrangement with the Union, and Turkey which has a customs Union agreement preparatory to its becoming a member of the EU. Only Libya has not yet engaged in such an agreement, because it is currently only an observer to the Barcelona process. 9 Terms of reference of the High Level Working Group on Asylum and Migration, Preparation of Action Plans for the most important countries of origin and transit of asylum seekers and migrants, Council doc. 5264/2/99 REV 2 JAI 1 AG 1, 22.1.1999. 10 Modification of the terms of reference of the High Level Working Group on Asylum and Migration (HLWG), Council doc. 9433/02 JAI 109AG 20 ASIM 18, 30.5.2002. 11 European Union priorities and policy objectives for external relations in the field of justice and home affairs, Council doc. 7653/00 JAI 35, 6.6.2000. See the Presidency Conclusions of the Santa Maria da Feira European Council, 19 and 20 June 2000; Press Release of the meeting of the Council of General Affairs, 13 June 2000. See also the European Parliament Report on justice and home affairs: EU priorities and policy objectives for external relations, A5-0414/2001, 21.11.2001.

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

41

into its external policy so that comprehensive, integrated, cross-pillar action could be carried out by the Union as a whole. The lines of action that the EU is currently combining in its relations with third countries with regard to migration-related issues might be summarized as follows: 2.1.1 Visa Policy, Border Controls and Return Policy Following the full implementation of the Schengen Agreements and the subsequent integration of the Schengen acquis within the EU framework, the “continental part” of the EU has been transformed into an area without internal borders. Consequently, the vast majority of EU Member States – with the exception of the UK and Ireland – as well as close co-operation third countries associated with Schengen –i.e. Norway, Iceland and Switzerland – are bound by common rules regarding visa policy, crossing of external borders, freedom of movement and return of third-country nationals. As far as visa policy is concerned, the EU has adopted a Regulation determining the list of countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the external borders and those whose nationals are exempt from that requirement.12 Moreover, the Schengen Common Consular Instructions provide for detailed rules regarding the issuing of visas. It is worth mentioning here that all the EuroMediterranean partners figure in the so-called “black list” of the EU Visa Regulation. However, the Council, in order to facilitate the issuing of visas, in accordance with the Schengen acquis, to persons participating regularly as national representatives in actions to promote Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, has adopted Council Conclusions establishing certain flexible arrangements in that respect.13 Moreover, the management of external borders is also extensively discussed at EU level. The Commission has prepared a Communication on the matter14 on the basis of which the Spanish Presidency prepared an Action Plan adopted by the Council in June 2002.15 In late March 2004 the Council also reached political Agreement on the Commission’s proposal for the establishment of an Agency for the management of external borders, which has become operational since 1 January 2005.16 At the same time, one of the areas where most of the attention was focused in the post-Amsterdam era was the fight against illegal migration and the formation of a European return policy. In addition to a series of concrete legislative measures adopted by the Council, the Commission adopted two Communications on return policy, one in November 200117 and the other in October 2002.18 In parallel, the Community has

12 Council Regulation 539/2001 of 15 March 2001 listing the third countries whose nationals must be in possession of visas when crossing the external borders and those whose nationals are exempt from that requirement, OJ L 81/1, 21.4.2001. 13 See Draft Council Conclusions on flexibility in issuing visas to participants in Euro-med meetings, Council doc. 6254/03 VISA 30 COMIX 88 MED 6, 13.2.2003. 14 See Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament “Towards integrated management of the external borders of the Member States of the European Union”, COM (2002) 233 final, 7.5.2002. 15 Plan for the management of the external borders of the Member States of the European Union, Council doc. 10019/02 FRONT 58 COMIX 398, 14.6.2002. 16 Council Regulation No 2007/2004 of 26 October 2004 establishing a European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union, OJ L 349/1, 25.11.2004. 17 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on a Common Policy on Illegal Immigration, COM (2001) 672 final, 15.11.2001.

42

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

focused a lot of its efforts on readmission policy. The EU has elaborated a model readmission clause to be included in Community Agreements,19 and is also negotiating readmission agreements with several third countries, including Morocco and Algeria.20 Additionally, in the light of the seriousness of the situation created by the increase of illegal immigration by sea into the EU, emphasis was also placed on the need to cooperate more closely with third countries. In its April and June 2002 Conclusions, the Council underlined the absolute necessity of effective cooperation with the countries of boarding, departure and transit of illegal migration flows.21 Then, the European Council of Seville highlighted the importance of ensuring the cooperation of countries of origin and transit in the joint management of migration as well as in border control and readmission issues.22 On the same occasion, the European Council asked for a systematic assessment of relations with third countries that do not cooperate in combating illegal migration. This assessment should be taken into account in relations between the EU and its Member States and the country concerned, in all relevant areas. Insufficient cooperation by a country could hamper the establishment of closer relations with the Union. Certain Member States had been in favour of a harsher drafting and were actively promoting the idea of imposing sanctions on third countries. In the end a much more neutral drafting was chosen.23 Subsequently, in its Conclusions of November 2002 the Council reaffirmed these concepts, provided further elaboration and has also identified nine countries with which relations should be intensified, among which are Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Turkey.24 The matter was addressed again at European Council level at Thessaloniki. Heads of State recognised the importance of developing an evaluation mechanism to monitor relations with third countries which do not cooperate with the EU in combating illegal migration. The Commission was invited to report annually on the results of the above monitoring.25 Subsequently, the Council adopted Conclusions on the matter in November 2003,26 which while underlining the need of a case-by-case based

18 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on a Community Return Policy on illegal residents, COM (2002) 564 final, 14.10.2002. 19 Council decision on the inclusion of model readmission clauses in Community agreements and in agreements between the European Community, its Member States and third countries, Council doc. 13409/99 MIGR 69, 25.11.1999. 20 As far as Morocco is concerned, the conclusion of a readmission agreement was one of the measures recommend in the 1999 HLWG Action Plan for Morocco. 21 Council Conclusions on measures to be applied to prevent and combat illegal immigration and smuggling and trafficking in human beings by sea and in particular on measures against third countries which refuse to cooperate with the European Union in preventing and combating these phenomena, Council doc. 10017/02 JAI 142 RELEX 122 MIGR 57, 14.6.2002. 22 European Council of Seville, 19 and 20 June 2002, Presidency conclusions, pts 34 to 36. 23 It seems that while the idea of sanctions was promoted by the UK and Spain, it was blocked by France and Sweden. See ‘Les Quinze ne sanctionneront pas les pays d’émigration illégale’, Le Monde.fr, 22.6.2002. 24 General Affairs Council Conclusions of November 2002 on intensified cooperation on the management of migration flows with third countries, 13894/02 ASIM 47 RELEX 227, 14.11.2002. It is worth noting that the Commission has already prepared a first report on relations with the nine countries identified in the November 2002 Council Conclusions. See Commission Staff Working Paper Intensified Cooperation on the Management of Migration Flows with Third Countries – Report by the Commission’s Services on the implementation of the Council Conclusions on intensified cooperation on the management of migration flows with third countries of 18 November 20002, SEC (2003) 815 final, 9.7.2003. 25 Thessaloniki European Council, Presidency Conclusions, pts 19 to 21. 26 Draft Council Conclusions on the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation mechanism for third countries in the field of the fight against illegal migration, Council doc. 15292/03 ASIM 72 RELEX 447, 25.11.2003.

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

43

examination, established a list of indicators.27 The Commission was invited to present its first annual report before the end of 2004. Last but not least, it needs to be mentioned that in addition to the above the HLWG has already elaborated a series of fiches providing an overview of relations between the EU and a series of third countries, including several Mediterranean partners.28 2.1.2 Co-development Policy More recently, cooperation with third countries has been viewed with a wider lens. The Commission issued a Communication regarding external relations and in particular development issues.29 The Communication endeavoured to put migration policy back in its broader context, by taking into account the driving forces of international migration and discussing issues such as push and pull factors and the brain drain. After thoroughly examining the Communication, the Council has adopted Conclusions on migration and development.30 The Council Conclusions try to strike a fair balance between migration and development interests and contain a series of short and mid-term policy measures for the Commission to follow, with a view to paving the way for an increasing synergy between migration and development cooperation. Most recently, starting from the idea that granting incentives in the field of legal migration would motivate third countries to cooperate in the fight against illegal migration, the prospect of establishing quotas at European level for the entry of third country nationals has also been examined, but without leading to any concrete measures. Similarly, the Commission has prepared a study on the more general issue of the relationship between legal and illegal immigration and invited Member States to cooperate fully with the Commission to this end.31 2.1.3 Integration Policy One of the main policy issues included in the Tampere European Council Conclusions was the need for a more rigorous integration policy aimed at granting third country nationals rights and obligations comparable to those of EU citizens. Therefore, and notwithstanding the lack of any Treaty provision on integration policy,32 both the Commission and the Council have dealt extensively with the issue in the post-Tampere era.

27 Such as existing national legislation aimed at preventing and combating illegal migration as well as participation in international instruments; efforts in migration management, border control and interception of illegal immigrants; cooperation in readmission and return issues; and cooperation on visa policy and possible adaptation of their visa systems. 28 Inter alia Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. 29 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament “Integrating migration Issues in the European Union’s relations with third countries: I. Migration and Development, II. Report on the effectiveness of financial resources available at Community level for repatriation of immigrants and rejected asylum seekers, for management of external borders and for asylum and migration projects in third countries”, COM (2002) 703 final, 3.12.2002. 30 Draft Council Conclusions on migration and development, Council doc. 8927/03 DEVGEN 59 RELEX 160 JAI 123 ASIM 25, 5.5.2003. 31 Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – Study on the links between legal and illegal migration, COM (2004) 412 final, 4.6.2004. 32 It is only in the Draft Constitutional Treaty that a relevant provision has been included.

44

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

First of all, the Council has adopted two Directives implementing the principle of equal treatment: one of a more general character,33 and, a second, specifically concerning equal treatment in employment and occupation.34 Moreover, the Council has also included provisions regarding integration in two of the main Directives that have been adopted on legal migration, namely the family reunification35 and the longterm residents Directives.36 More recently, integration policy was also examined independently and under a much broader framework. The Commission issued a Communication on the interlinked issues of immigration, integration and employment in early June 2003.37 Following the Commission Communication the Council adopted Conclusions on the development of integration policy in June 2003.38 The issue was brought to the attention of Heads of State during the Thessaloniki Summit.39 Progress on integration policy has been constant. National contact points meet on a regular basis. The Commission has already decided to finance a series of pilot projects and has also recently prepared its first annual report on migration and integration.40 Furthermore, in autumn 2004 the national contact points network presented the results of the exchanges of information in the form of a handbook on integration for policymakers and practitioners, and Justice and Interior Ministers examined this issue in depth in the course of their informal meeting in Groningen in autumn 2004 under the Dutch Presidency, when they also adopted a set of policy guidelines on the matter. 2.1.4 Financing Finally, special attention has been given to the financial aspects of the relevant policies. Recognising growing financial needs and the fact that these should match the increasing political ambitions of the Union in the area of JHA, the issue of financing was brought vigorously to the forefront of the EU agenda. An annex to the Commission Communication on external relations provides a useful list of the amounts spent for JHA-related issues as part of external relations policy. And a new budget line was created in 2001 mainly in order to finance the projects handled by the HLWG within the framework of implementation of the relevant Action Plans: budget line B7-667. 33 Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29 June 2000 implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, OJ L 180/22, 19.7.2000. For a discussion of the negotiation process see Tyson A., “The negotiation of the European Community Directive on Racial Discrimination”, EJML, Vol. 3, 2001, p. 199-229 and Ellis E., “The Principle of Non-Discrimination in the Post-Nice Era”, Arnull A. and Wincott D. (eds.), Accountability and Legitimacy in the European Union, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 291-305. 34 Council Directive 2000/78/EC establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, OJ L 303/16, 2.12.2000. 35 Article 7 (2) of Council Directive 2003/86/EC of 22 September 2003, on the right to family reunification, OJ L 251/12, 3.10.2003. 36 Article 5 (2) and 15 (3) of Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003, concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents, OJ L 16/44, 23.1.2004. 37 Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on immigration, integration and employment, COM (2003) 336 final, 3.6.2003. 38 Council Conclusions on the development of a policy at European Union level on the integration of thirdcountry nationals residing in the territory of the European Union, 10622/03 MIGR 52, 17.6.2003. 39 European Council of Thessaloniki, 19 and 20 June 2003, Presidency Conclusions, pts 28 to 35. 40 Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – First Annual Report on Migration and Integration, COM (2004) 508 final, 16.7.2004.

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

45

Finally, according to a recently adopted Regulation, a new programme for financial and technical assistance to third counties has also been established: the so-called AENEAS programme.41

3. Migration Issues in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership The increasing salience of migration-related issues, in particular within the framework of EU relations with third countries, is reflected within the framework of the EMP as well. Justice and Home Affairs references are present in both the first and the third baskets of the EMP.42 However, there has been uneven development of the Barcelona baskets. The reason is twofold. On the one hand, the EU was initially lacking the necessary experience, not to mention competence, in dealing with migration matters. On the other hand, the interests of the partners were deeply diverse. Whenever the Europeans had raised the question of migration for debate within the EMP, southern partners had responded by expressing grievances over the xenophobia and racism encountered by migrants in the EU, while calling for greater mobility across frontiers to be achieved through the Partnership.43 In fact, the relationship between security and border control is contradictory to labour-market demands and the strategic importance that issuing countries grant to emigration.44 In other words, the response involved the Euro-Mediterranean partners linking ostensible first-basket issues with third-basket issues. The Europeans eventually came out in favour of locating the emerging migration agenda in the third basket of the EMP. In light of the development of JHA matters within the EU, there is now a more serious attitude to the idea of a partnership in JHA.45 From 2000, JHA went on to become one of the main domains of EMP activity. First of all, the Santa Maria da Feira Summit adopted a Common Strategy on the Mediterranean Region, which could be seen as the Union’s emphasis on the security dimension of the Barcelona Process.46 In the Feira Common Strategy, the need for collaboration with Mediterranean partners is established in the field of migrations in order to approach migrations from a global perspective. The Common Strategy proposes the development of a common initiative for the integration of nationals of partnership member-countries with legal residence and long-term permits, via the gradual equality of their status with that of EU citizens.47

41 Regulation (EC) No 491/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 March 2004 establishing a programme for financial and technical assistance to third countries in the areas of migration and asylum (AENEAS), OJ L 80/1, 18.3.2004. 42 Nonetheless one should not neglect the fact that the three baskets are interlinked. It has been convincingly argued that the pursuit of asymmetric short-term trading interests of the EU would contribute to the kindling of a demographic bomb, since the Arab MPCs would be hit by tough Free Trade Zone competition, with which they cannot cope in their current conditions. On this point see KHALATBARI, B. and LAUTERFELD, M., “Under Full Sail in a Millennium of Migration? Enlargement in the East and “Push and Pull Factors”, op. cit. 43 GILLESPIE, R., “Reshaping the Agenda? The Internal Politics of the Barcelona Process in the Aftermath of September 11”, op. cit. 44 AUBARELL SOLDUGA, G., “Migration and the Euro-Mediterranean partnership”, op. cit. 45 EDWARDS, G. and PHILIPPART, Eric, “The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: Fragmentation and Reconstruction”, op. cit. 46 BISCOP, S., Euro-Mediterranean Security: A Search for Partnership, op. cit. 47 AUBARELL SOLDUGA, G., “Migration and the Euro-Mediterranean partnership”, op. cit.

46

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

Following the September 11 events, the focus on terrorism was considerably sharpened, to be accompanied at the EMP Foreign Ministers’ meetings in Brussels in early November 2001 by an emphasis on dialogue between cultures and civilizations and the need to combat racism and xenophobia.48 At the same time, regular meetings of JHA senior officials were established parallel to senior officials’ political and security meetings. Subsequently, a framework document on co-operation in the area of JHA was adopted by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs during their meeting in Valencia in April 2002.49 The Valencia framework document includes co-operation in the development of matters related to the social integration of immigrants, migrations and human movements, and the fight against illegal immigration and human trafficking. 50 The importance of co-operation on migration issues has been further recognized and reaffirmed at all subsequent EMP Conferences.51 Moreover, it has also been reflected in the financial plans for EMP co-operation. On the basis of the Valencia Regional programme, a so-called “MEDA/JAI” Programme was established, with a budget of EUR 6 million. Last but not least, one needs also to underline the fact that regional and subregional co-operation in the Mediterranean also constitutes part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, which builds on the “acquis” of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership by fully integrating a tailor-made approach adapted to each country or group of countries.52 It is worth mentioning in that regard that JHA issues have been selected as a key priority area for enhanced co-operation with neighbouring countries within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy.

Concluding Remarks In a few months, the EMP is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary in November 2005 in Barcelona. Euro-Mediterranean partners are in the process, on the one hand, of assessing the progress already achieved, and on the other hand, of preparing to relaunch the whole process. As for the progress already achieved, one could argue that inasmuch as cooperation with regard to migration related issues is concerned it is not satisfactory; at least within the strict framework of the EMP, since one should not lose sight of the more general EU JHA external relations agenda. The steps forward taken at Valencia

48 GILLESPIE, R., “Reshaping the Agenda? The Internal Politics of the Barcelona Process in the Aftermath of September 11”, op. cit. 49 Regional Cooperation Programme in the field of Justice, in combating drugs, organised crime and terrorism as well as cooperation in the treatment of issues relating to the social integration of migrants, migration and movement of people, framework document adopted by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Valencia, April 2002. 50 AUBARELL SOLDUGA, G., “Migration and the Euro-Mediterranean partnership”, op. cit. 51 i.e. see paras. 31 and 32 of the Presidency Conclusions of the Euro-Mediterranean Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs at the Hague, 29-30 November 2004. 52 Commission Communication “Wider Europe-Neighbourhood: A new framework for relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbours”, COM (2003) 104 final, 11.3.2003 and Commission Communication “European Neighbourhood Policy – Strategy Paper”, COM (2004) 373 final, 12.5.2004.

G. Papagianni / Institutional Framework and Policy Developments

47

are often criticized as being tentative and partial and lacking in overall strategic coherence.53 Inasmuch as the future perspectives of this policy field is concerned it could be argued that the future of the EMP will be determined inter alia by the following factors: on the one hand, the relationship between the EMP and the new European Neighbourhood Policy; and on the other hand, by the increasing salience of relations with third countries with regard to migration-related issues. Given the importance that migration-related issues have progressively acquired at EU level it is expected that cooperation in this field will be enhanced. It is worth noting that EMP partners are currently examining the possibility of holding ministerial meetings on justice and home affairs. One cannot but foresee enhanced co-operation in this field and, most importantly, a balanced and comprehensive approach.

53 GILLESPIE, R., “Reshaping the Agenda? The Internal Politics of the Barcelona Process in the Aftermath of September 11”, op. cit.

48

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations Fatih TAYFUR Professor, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Abstract: Turkey, due to its geographical location, surrounded on one side by unstable locations, on the other by the EU, has long given a strong emphasis on hard security, that is, on military power. However it is gradually becoming more sensitive to soft security issues, which it considers a way of conflict prevention, a way to avoid hard security matters. Its geographical location makes it also not only a transit country to migrants seeking access to the EU, but also a destination one, which has led Turks to consider migrations as a soft security issue, given that uncontrolled illegal migration may have serious repercussions for Turkey, be it as a destination country or a transit one. Turkey is now negotiating a number of migration management policies with the EU and with migration source countries.

1. Turkish Understanding of Security Traditionally, perhaps due to its history and geopolitical and geostrategic location in the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkish understanding and perceptions of security have been defined by a strong emphasis on military security.1 In other words, in Turkish Foreign and Defence Policy perceived threats and risks, and preventing and containing them, are most of the time considered in the hard security domain. This is because the immediate external geography in which Turkey has defined its security environment includes the unstable regions of the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean the Caucasus, the Black Sea, Central Asia, and the Balkans. In the post-Cold War period, this region, in which the Turks define their vital security interests, can be called the “Greater Eastern Mediterranean” region (GEMED).2 Indeed, GEMED is disturbed by territorial, ethnic and economic conflicts and rivalries, and is open and vulnerable to interventions from both the regional and extra-regional powers. For instance, ArabIsraeli conflict, the war and the American occupation of Iraq, tension between the US and Iran, and Syria, the problems and rivalries between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus and the Aegean Sea, problems between Azerbaijan and Armenia, instabilities in

1 For more information on Turkish perceptions of security in the Mediterranean see, TAYFUR, M. F., “Turkish Perceptions of the Mediterranean”, EuroMesCo Papers, No.8, March 2000; TAYFUR, M. F., “The Turkey/Greece/Cyprus Security Complex and the EU Enlargement: Implications for the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and Eastern Mediterranean Relations”, EuroMesCo Papers, No.28, March, 2004; and AYDIN, M., “Security Conceptualisation in Turkey” in BRAUCH, H. G., et. al., ( eds), Security and Environment in the Mediterranean, (Springer-Verlag: Berlin), 2003, pp. 345-355. 2 For GEMED region see, TAYFUR, M. F., “Susan Strange Goes to the Eastern Mediterranean” Perceptions, Vol.VIII, No.2, June-August 2003; and TAYFUR, M. F., “The Turkey/Greece/Cyprus Security Complex and the EU Enlargement: Implications for the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and Eastern Mediterranean Relations”, EuroMesCo Papers, No.28, March, 2004.

F. Tayfur / Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations

49

Georgia, Ukraine, and Central Asian Republics etc, and their spill over effects on Turkey are some of the main hard security concerns of the Turks. However, Turkey’s central geographical location in the GEMED provides opportunities to the Turks as well. Geographical control of the oil and trade routes, sea and air transportation, communications lines, and water resources, and thus control over the safe and free flow of the wealth generated in the GEMED, give the Turks important roles in the distribution of wealth, power and sphere of influence, and allocation of rewards among regional and global actors in the GEMED, in the postCold War period. Accordingly, the Turks are very sensitive about developments in the GEMED region which could directly threaten its military and economic security and the well-being of its people. Until now those real and perceived threats in the GEMED region have been largely defined in the hard security domain. The Turks have a holistic understanding of security, meaning that security is an indivisible phenomenon and in practice it cannot be separated into hard and soft security. Security has always contained both military and civilian characteristics. Not surprisingly, in this security environment an established and common understanding in Turkish foreign and defence policy thinking is the secondary status of “soft-security” issues. The Turks think that focusing on soft security issues would be a narrow approach to international relations.

2. Turkish Understanding of Soft Security However, the Turks are gradually becoming sensitive and responsive towards soft security issues and problems in the post-Cold War period. Indeed, this is a very recent phenomenon and the prospect of EU membership has played an important role in the Turks’ inclusion of soft-security issues in their foreign and defence policy agendas. Yet, Turkey understands soft security more as a method or policy to deal with threats and problems rather than a phenomenon in itself.3 In the Turkish understanding of soft security, what differentiates soft security measures from hard security is that in the soft security domain, the use of military force is neither automatic nor preferable. Soft security measures have a preventive nature, and require a long term strategy and financial commitment. According to the Turkish Foreign Office, one of the important characteristics of the post-Cold War period is the increasing importance of the soft security policies and methods employed to deal with conflicts.4 The Turks also emphasise that there are no clear dividing lines between hard and soft security threats, and thus soft security issues can easily become a hard security threats in the post-Cold War period.5 Accordingly, states should not wait until soft security threats evolve into a hard security matter. Rather, the aim of states is to neutralise and prevent the potentially damaging and 3 See, ZİYAL, U., (Undersecretary of Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Reconceptualisation of Soft Security and Turkey’s Civilian Contributions to International Security, Foreign Office Information Paper, Ankara, 2004. 4 ZİYAL, U., (Undersecretary of Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Reconceptualisation of Soft Security and Turkey’s Civilian Contributions to International Security, Foreign Office Information Paper, Ankara, 2004, p. 2. 5 ZİYAL, U., (Undersecretary of Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Reconceptualisation of Soft Security and Turkey’s Civilian Contributions to International Security, Foreign Office Information Paper, Ankara, 2004, p. 2.

50

F. Tayfur / Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations

sometimes violent consequences of soft threats through cooperation and dialogue among themselves before they become hard threats. The international community should respond swiftly to conflicts in the initial phases and put pressure on the conflicting parties, urging them not to take steps to intensify the conflict. Here, in accordance with their holistic understanding of security, the Turks see civil-military cooperation as an important component of this policy. It seems that a common understanding in the Turkish Foreign Office is to see softsecurity issues as “conflict prevention measures” and a “civilian contribution to security”.6 Thus, they tend to assess the changing agendas of international organisations from this perspective. According to the Turks, for instance, the UN has focused more on conflict prevention strategies for the maintenance of international peace and security. Here, building national capacities and supporting the role of civil societies through specialised UN agencies are presented as soft-security measures implemented by the UN. NATO, on the other hand, has also included soft security policies into its agenda. NATO’s peace mission in Afghanistan since the summer of 2003, and the development of “Provincial Reconstruction Teams” for the establishment and consolidation of a secure environment in interaction with the local authorities, is considered as a part of NATO’s soft security policy implementation. Finally, the EU’s police missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia are the other soft security examples emphasised by the Turks who conceptualise soft security as a “conflict prevention strategy.”

3. Migrations 3.1 Turkish Position and Turkish Perceptions of Migrations Among others issues, migration has probably long been one of the most important soft security issues facing Turkey. Although clearly the EU has played an important role in starting a discussion and initiating the regulation of migration issues in Turkey, it is believed by the Turks that even if there were no prospect of EU membership Turkey would have to be interested in the migration issue due to its external environment and daily practice.7 For the Turks, the EU has merely accelerated and shaped this process. It is a fact that Turkey faces a large numbers of illegal migratory flows because of its geographical location between the poor and instable “source countries” in Asia, the Middle East and the Black Sea region and the well-off “destination countries” in Europe. In fact, historically Turkey has always sent and received influxes of migrants to and from overseas. Thus, Turkey has always been both a “target” (for Russians, Moldavians and other former Soviet Bloc countries’ citizens) and “source” country (mainly to the EU area). In addition to this, in the last 20 years Turkey has turned into a “transit” country for Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Pakistani and African (irregular) migrants on their way to Europe. Recently, illegal migration has begun to be seen an important threat to public order and security in Turkey, because of the activities of organised criminal networks and illegal migrants involved in illicit activities: theft, narcotic drugs 6 ZİYAL, U., (Undersecretary of Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Reconceptualisation of Soft Security and Turkey’s Civilian Contributions to International Security, Foreign Office Information Paper, Ankara, 2004, pp.4-8. 7 Interviews with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, April 2005.

F. Tayfur / Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations

51

and prostitution.8 Accordingly, migration has already become an issue and is going to occupy the agendas of the Turks increasingly in the future. Until very recently, among Turkish people migration was mostly identified with that of Turkish guest-workers (gastarbiters) who emigrated to industrialised European countries during the 1960s. However, as a result of the increasing interest in immigration issues, Turks have become aware of the fact that Turkey itself has for years been a country of immigration and asylum. Turkey received more than 1.6 million people between 1923 to1997.9 Most of these immigrants were from the Balkans. It also took in thousands of Jews and Germans in the 1930s, and Jews from Nazi-occupied areas during the WWII; thousands of asylum seekers from Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War; Iraqi and Iranian asylum seekers during the 1980s; almost half a million Kurdish refugees from Iraq in 1988 and 1991; and Bosnians, Albanians, Pomaks, Bulgarian Turks, Kosovars, and Meskethian Turks migrated to Turkey between 1989 to1999. Accordingly, the increasing number of irregular and illegal migrants in recent times has unsettled the Turks and forced them to take new legislative measures to regulate the flow of immigrants. According to the Turks, chronic poverty, lack of opportunity, repressive and autocratic regimes that deny their people basic rights and freedoms, violence and civil wars and subsequent insecurity cause many people to leave their homelands for those destination countries where social and economic opportunities, and living conditions, are disproportionately higher.10 Within this framework, the Turks believe that immigration is a relatively new and multidimensional phenomenon, and nobody knows exactly what to do and how to deal with this issue effectively.11 Since the issue of migration includes legal, illegal/irregular migration, asylum, illicit human trafficking and migrant smuggling, national governments and international organisations ranging from NATO to the OSCE and the OECD are all interested in this issue. Rich countries are interested and demand implementation of effective migration policies for reasons linked to economic considerations and human rights issues. These countries conceptualise the issue of dealing with migration as “migration management”. According to the Turks, this means a policy of “how to select and admit the migrants who might be of use and, at the same time, how and, especially, where to contain those unwanted ones”.12 In the post-Cold War period, international organisations are increasingly interested in migration issues too, and accordingly while the Council of Europe is trying to establish a “Migration Agency”, the EU is trying to form a common immigration policy. NATO, on the other hand, is especially interested in the containment of illegal migration in the Mediterranean region. It is wondering whether the organization could play a functional role in dealing with migration and whether NATO forces in former Yugoslavia can be used in this task. In Turkey’s opinion, since the end of the Cold-War international organizations that have lost their focus are looking for new a new role for 8 Turkish Views of Combating Illegal Migration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KYGY, paper prepared for the Turkey-EU 8th Subcommittee Meeting, July 2002, pp. 3-4. 9 See, KIRIŞCI, K., Reconciling Refugee Protection with Combating Irregular Migration: Turkey and the EU, paper prepared for the Council of Europe Regional Conference on Migrants in Transit Countries: Sharing Responsibility for Management and Protection”, Istanbul, 30 September-1 October, 2004, p. 1. 10 Turkish Views of Combating Illegal Migration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KYGY, paper prepared for the Turkey-EU 8th Subcommittee Meeting, July 2002, p. 1. 11 Interviews with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, April 2005. 12 Interviews with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, April 2005.

52

F. Tayfur / Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations

themselves.13 However, none of them has yet formed a policy of their own and they reveal a disorganised picture in their migration policies. The issue of migration is still handled and carried out at national governmental level. Turkey thinks that illegal migration can only be prevented and contained effectively through joint and coordinated policies and action at international level. However, international coordination should not only take place between source and transit countries but must include the destination countries as well.14 For instance, preventing illegal migration at the borders of transit countries must at the same be the responsibility of the destination countries. The financial and technical aspects of strengthening border controls require the cooperation and collaboration of the destination countries. In this respect, the security and control of Turkey’s 2,949 km land border and 6,530 km costal border, (especially its long borders with Iraq, Iran and Syria) are very difficult and costly, and require major financial and technical cooperation. According to Turkish officials, it is transit countries that have been shouldering the burden of a phenomenon which is created and caused by factors beyond their borders and control. Since illegal migration is a risk and a threat to the security and stability of rich destination countries, the burden must be shared equally by these countries as well. 3.2 Turkey’s Practice in Migration Issues In Turkey, according to the 1951 Geneva Agreement, full refugee status is given only to those people who come from the West (Europe). In other words, those who come from the East are not accepted as refugees but are given the right to stay in Turkey temporarily until they are accepted or given refugee status by a third country. In addition, the administration of these temporary refugee issues is carried out not directly by Turkey but by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The Turks do not want to change this practice because they fear that Turkey will become a dumping area for refugees if they take over the duties of the UN Commission. This is primarily because neither destination (mainly the EU countries) nor third countries are willing to accept these refugees, and the source countries have little motivation to sign readmission agreements.15 On the other hand, Turkey has been asked to start negotiations to sign a readmission agreement with the EU, as a part of the harmonisation of Turkish policies with that of the EU. Here, again, the Turks have long been reluctant to sign such an agreement because, once again, they do not want to become a dumping ground for third-country immigrants and political and economic refugees unwanted by the Europeans. However, probably due to Turkey’s stronger position in prospective EU-Turkish negotiations, the Turks are now preparing to open up negotiations with the EU on this issue.16 13

Interviews with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, April 2005. Turkish Views of Combating Illegal Migration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, KYGY, paper prepared for the Turkey-EU 8th Subcommittee Meeting, July 2002, p.2. 15 Interviews with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, April 2005, and see also, KIRIŞCI, K., Reconciling Refugee Protection with Combating Irregular Migration: Turkey and the EU, paper prepared for the Council of Europe Regional Conference on Migrants in Transit Countries: Sharing Responsibility for Management and Protection”, Istanbul, 30 September-1 October, 2004, pp. 5-6. 16 Interviews with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, April 2005, and see also, KIRIŞCI, K., Reconciling Refugee Protection with Combating Irregular Migration: Turkey and the EU, paper prepared for the Council of Europe Regional Conference on Migrants in Transit Countries: Sharing Responsibility for Management and Protection”, Istanbul, 30 September-1 October, 2004, p. 6. 14

F. Tayfur / Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations

53

In accordance with Turkey’s EU national program, the Turks, in cooperation with the EU, have initiated a process of strengthening border controls and developing better institutional and technical capacity at borders to prevent illegal immigration. In 2002, Turkey established “The National Task Force on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, and this Task Force prepared and has been implementing an action plan on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings”.17 Moreover, in order to harmonize Turkish legislation with that of the EU, a project on migration and asylum was completed between March 2004 and March 2005 in cooperation with a team from Denmark and Britain.18 And very recently (in April 2005), Turkey finalised and accepted an “Action Plan on Migration and Asylum” which envisages a change in the Turkish approach to combating migration from “administration of migration” by security (police) forces to the “management of migration” by civilians. The Turkish Foreign Office defines this change as a shift from “enforcement” to “management” in dealing with migration issues.19 At international level, in order to combat illegal migration effectively and to encourage other states to take serious measures, Turkey has already signed readmission agreements with Greece, Romania, Syria and Kyrgyzstan; started negotiations with Bulgaria, the Russian Federation and Ukraine; and exchanges of views on the draft text of agreements are being held through diplomatic channels with Belarus, Jordan, Macedonia, Sri Lanka, and Uzbekistan. Additionally, readmission agreements have been proposed to Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, Morocco, Georgia, India, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Mongolia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan and Tunisia.20 Besides this, Turkey readmits Turkish nationals, nationals of third countries who have departed from Turkey by aeroplane, and third-country nationals having valid Turkish residence permits. The Turks also actively participate in international forums for combating illegal migration, such as the Budapest Group, the Bern Initiative, the IssykKul Dialogue, the Global Commission on International Migration, the Centre for Information, Discussion and Exchange on the Crossing of Frontiers and Immigration, the Dialogue on Mediterranean Transit Migration, Border Police Conferences, and the Bali process.21

Conclusion It seems that, although soft security issues are still considered as secondary issues in mainstream Turkish Foreign and Defence Policy thinking, the increasing importance especially of illegal migratory threats to the EU, and Turkey’s daily experience and increasing experience of illegal migration as both a destination, source and transit country in recent times, are causing the Turks to reconsider migration as an important soft security threat and prompting them to combat illegal migration. However, the Turks have not yet developed a comprehensive, established independent understanding of soft security in Turkish Foreign and Defence Policy. Soft 17 For more information on the National Task Force see, Ministry of Foreign Affairs information paper on “Trafficking in Human Beings”, 2005. 18 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, information paper on “Illegal/Irregular Migration”, 2005. 19 Interviews with Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, April 2005. 20 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, information paper on “Illegal/Irregular Migration”, 2005. 21 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, information paper on “Illegal/Irregular Migration”, 2005.

54

F. Tayfur / Turkish Perceptions of Security and Migrations

security is simply seen as a method or measure to deal with conflict-prevention and an indivisible part of hard security by the Turks. In other words, it is seen as a tool to prevent conflicts before they become hard security threats to peace and stability. In this vein, dealing with migration is more of a conflict-prevention measure and – probably much as many European states view the issue – a legal, mechanical and technical issue for keeping unwanted foreigners away from the borders. Downplaying the humanitarian aspect of immigration, and overlooking both people’s misery and suffering, and one’s social and ethical responsibilities and any consequences, are probably the basic shortcomings to be questioned in the immigration policies of all states, supranational bodies and international organisations.

Part II Migration and Security

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

57

Immigration, Secularization and EuroIslam Jean-Claude MONOD Research Fellow, C.N.R.S., France

Abstract: Islam is the second religion in many European countries, not as a religion of immigrants, but as the religion of European-born citizens. We can even speak of an European Islam. This was an unforeseen situation, not only to European countries, but also to Islamic ones. However, with the aid and promotion of European governments, Islamism in Europe is becoming “secularized”, adjusting itself to take part in European societies and to have a political voice. In spite of attacks like 9/11, generally speaking we can say that the radical Islamism of the seventies has given way to a more integrationist one. Islam has already become a part of Europe.

I will speak here less of my own work than of various contributions to a workshop on “secularization and migrations” that I have been organizing for a couple of years, with a French immigration specialist, Patrick Weil. was also a member of the recent government commission formed to implement the principle of laïcité (secularization) in today’s France. Among other things, this commission (Stasi) proposed the controversial measure of banning all conspicuous religious signs, including the Muslim veil (or headscarf), from French public schools. I was personally not convinced of the worthwhile nature of this decision, but it raised some interesting problems and debates. The general argument of our workshop was as follows: one can say that over the last two or three centuries, a general process of secularisation has marked the West and beyond. This process has produced a certain separation between State and religion, pushing the latter into a private or "social" sphere, distinct from public affairs. In this very general sense, we can say that all Western countries are "secularized" today: religion is not the source of laws; religious faith or practice are no longer an obligation; religious pluralism is regarded as an essential dimension of a modern society; etc. Yet the forms of this secularization were and are diverse: the "separation of the Church and State" in France (which defines laïcité) since 1905, and in Spain since 1978; "secularization" which accepts public funding and action of and by Churches (in education, for instance) in the German - and more generally protestant – world; sometimes a State religion, such as Lutheranism in Denmark; or American "civil religion", which combines the idea of a "wall of separation between the State and Churches” with public references to God or to religion, etc. Today, these forms are forced to take into account the presence of religious minorities which have not necessarily passed through the same process as Christian Churches have in the West: pluralism, disestablishment, separation from the State, and the granting of autonomy to secular rights, the arts, moral or sexual behaviour, toward religious dictates, and so forth.

58

J.-C. Monod / Immigration, Secularization and Euro-Islam

It is clear that the most important questions in Europe are raised by Muslim minorities, with Islam becoming the “second religion” in many European countries. As French researcher Olivier Roy puts it, today, it can no longer be said that Islam, in Europe, is a religion of immigrants - Muslims are less and less immigrants (from Maghreb, Turkey, Africa) and more and more the children and grand-children of former immigrants who came from these countries in past decades: these children are born and educated in Europe and endowed with European nationalities. So, today there is today a "European Islam": Islam has become a constituent part of Europe, but a part whose political and public recognition is still difficult. What interested us in our workshop was to study a kind of dialectics, a double transformation: the transformation of Islam under the effect of the European secularized context; but also transformation of the models of secularization, challenged by the permanent residence of a vast Muslim population in Europe. As a theme of this workshop today is forward-looking, I would firstly like to stress the fact that this situation had not really been anticipated by European governments and societies, nor by the Muslim countries of origin. It was not foreseen, owing to a specific view of immigration (and emigration), and because of a specific view of secularization. The idea that there was a vast resident Muslim population was not obvious to European countries such as France, which long “contained” Islam in its colonies, but not much on its own soil. For countries of immigration, for a long time the arrival of immigrants has been seen as an economical necessity – the need for labour, mainly for unskilled tasks, for work in factories, etc. Immigrants were mainly workers. Unskilled working immigration stopped throughout Europe in 1974, in reaction to the economic crisis and the rise of mass unemployment. In France, there had been immigration from Algeria and other Maghreb colonies, mainly in the fifties, but the really large waves of Muslim immigration took place during the sixties. But immigration was often thought as a way of adjusting to economic needs: to deal with the economic crisis, the Giscard d’Estaing government once planned to send back a half million North African immigrants, mainly Algerians. The plan failed because associations, left-wing parties, Churches, of the Conseil d’Etat, etc. mobilized to oppose it. But this very plan is significant, because it shows that at the end of the seventies, part of the government’s staff could think that this Muslim population was not destined to stay in France, to dwell here, and the topic of “zero immigration” continued to haunt political discourse. The idea of a large ad enduring Muslim community in France only entered minds during the eighties, and only then became an ideological theme for the extreme right party, the Front National. On the other hand, the idea that secular Europe would be a place where hundreds of thousands Muslims would reside, live, and not just stay for a while, was not really anticipated or theorized in the Islamic world. A German researcher, Rainer Brunner, pointed out that this was not the traditional vision of emigration from an Islamic viewpoint. According to the majority of ulemas, Muslims were preferably supposed to emigrate within dar al islam, in countries which an Islamic culture and government. If they went to non-Muslim countries, to dar al harb, they were supposed not to live there for a long time, certainly not a lifetime, and not to dwell with their families ; they should only stay there for a while, before returning to their Muslim homes. It is only recently that long-term residence, settlement

J.-C. Monod / Immigration, Secularization and Euro-Islam

59

in non-Muslim countries, has really been acknowledged and “theorized”, as shown by the development of a new kind of juridical Islamic literature, studied by Rainer Brunner: fiqh al aqalliyat, the right of minorities, which in this instance means Muslim minorities. Yousouf al Quaradawi published a volume of essays on this theme in Cairo in 2001. This change is also being theorized because of the apparition of new Islamic scholars and intellectuals who are addressing an audience of young European Muslims, the second and third generation children of immigrants: Yousouf al Quaradawi, on television; or Tarik Ramadan in France, who holds conferences and writes books about the issue of how young European Muslims must live their faith in secularized Europe, France, etc. In recent months in France, T. Ramadan seems to have concentrated the ambiguities and the potentially contradictory developments of Islam in Europe: he has long been seen as the perfect representative of an “enlightened” Islam, he has studied philosophy, he has written books about a “humanist Islam, etc. But more recently, several papers and books have accused him of playing a double game, and having two discourses: radical when speaking to young Muslims in the French suburbs, and moderate with the French media or associations, etc. and to be a disguised neofundamentalist. This leads us to a wider debate . A classic question today is whether this euroIslam will undergo a “secularization process” similar to that which Christian churches underwent in previous centuries. This process led them, often against their will, finally to acknowledge the value of religious pluralism, the right of every man and woman to believe or not, to change religion, the right to abandon religion, and the value of human rights and democracy. The problem is that (at least in France) we tend to think of every religion according to the pattern of the Catholic Church, as a centralized organization that can speak with one voice and say what it thinks of such themes as human rights, democracy, etc. And when we speak of “the Islamic community”, we assume it is homogeneous and unitary, whereas it is in fact highly fragmented, including in Europe. Turning to practice, one could say that there has already been a de facto secularization of Islam in Europe. Here, there is no obligation to practice (except social pressure, but without any mean of legal coercion, no Islamic courts, etc). This situation opens up the possibility of individual redefinition of one’s practice, to live one’s faith freely, to adapt religious prescriptions to the to context, to different interpretations, etc. Statistics about Islam in Europe are unreliable, but it is estimated that 80% of Muslims in Europe do not regularly go to a mosque (there are considerable differences depending on to country of origin, whether it be Turkey, Algeria, Senegal, etc.). But between non-practising people and “integralist” or neo-fundamentalist individuals, there is a large range of different behaviour. A French sociologist, Nancy Venel, attempted to build a typology of the behaviour of young French Muslims, both towards Islam and towards being French and their French citizenship. She describes a number of them as “accomodateurs”: people who want to build their own way of living Islam and, at the same time, to change French society in such a way that it really integrates its Muslim citizens. Of course, there is a trend opposed to this de facto secularization and individualization: a re-Islamization which is openly opposed to the West and promotes “integralist” Islam, which wants to build up the ummah, and gives its own interpretation of “European Islam”: not Islam in Europe, but Islamization of a part of Europe: what Gilles Kepel calls a “Reconquista à l’envers” – an inverted Reconquista.

60

J.-C. Monod / Immigration, Secularization and Euro-Islam

There are some radical Islamists who proclaim, for instance, that Spain has been an “Islamic land” for centuries, ever since Muslim Andalusia, and that the jihad is valid here to “free” it from Christian occupiers. In its extreme form, this vision can lead to links with terrorist actions, as seen in Madrid. But of course, this applies only to an extremely narrow category of Muslims. But the effect it has upon the general perception of Islam in Europe is catastrophic. Let us turn now to the other side of our problem: how have Western governments reacted both to new trends and to this new situation? I will focus only on France and the USA – firstly because this was the axis of our workshop in Paris, but also because both France and the USA are two long-standing countries of immigration and because they have claim to a certain “universality”, as homelands of declarations of human rights, of modern democracy, etc. There is another reason, linked with more recent events: France and the USA have criticized one another specifically about how they have acted and reacted to the growth of radical Islam and its possible drift into terrorism. France criticized the war in Iraq; the American government criticized the French law banning headscarves from public schools. In fact, this last criticism came not only from the Bush government, but also from many American scholars. Some researchers argued that Protestant secularization and the American form of “civil religion” were more favourable to the integration of Islam than French laïcité, which retains an element of confrontation with Churches. Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri (Reed College) has worked on Islam in American political life. He notes that Islam finds its place as an Abrahamic religion in the indeterminate references to “God” or religion that are usual in American political speech. A sign of this is the inclusion of Muslims in (American) political rituals such as the opening of congressional sessions, with Muslim prayers, and the celebration of Eid al Fitr at the White House. If we compare this with France, it is true that we do not find such symbolical integration here: religious references are not admitted in the political discourse of representatives of the State, nor in its symbolism. As we know, a government commission proposed the banning of headscarves and all conspicuous religious signs from the public schools, and the French government took up this proposal. But the same commission had also proposed the introduction new public holidays, that would demonstrate public acknowledgment of religious pluralism: Aïd El Khebir and Yom Kippur, rather than just Christmas and other “Christian” festivals... but this proposal was rejected. So there was nothing to “balance” the impression that a law had specially been made to ban the Muslim veil. Of course there are, in France and elsewhere (Turkey, Algeria), advocates of French laïcité: the feeling is that its history of opposition (to the clericalism of the Catholic Church, which was, at that time, antidemocratic and anti-republican) makes French secularism more aware of the threat of fundamentalism, and a more efficient system to resist its strategies. For instance, in Great Britain fundamentalist activists use the theme of multiculturalism, or protestant-liberal pluralism and tolerance, to freely develop aggressive sharply anti-West propaganda, which also represents a threat to the unity of British society. Some people in France argue that because the (French) Republic does not acknowledge collective rights and any community other than the national one, this prevents the formation of sub-groups that could impose “communal” rules on their own members, producing fragmentation and creating obstacles to equality. In my opinion, this republicanism is both a good and a bad thing: it is a good thing because it allows

J.-C. Monod / Immigration, Secularization and Euro-Islam

61

individuals, in principle, to be free of their origins, should they so wish. (This was an interesting, if not really convincing, argument about the veil: this temporary and local measure would be necessary to free young girls from “Islamic” pressure exerted on their conscience, which is to say it would ensure that they would be free to wear the veil or not, when they came of age). On the other hand, in France, there has been much criticism of the American government’s religious rhetoric and style, especially the concept of an “Axis of Evil”, and anything that has the ring of a new version of the Crusades, in quasi-symmetry to Bin Laden’s call for a “Holy War”. French secular rationalism argues that such mottos risk nurturing a “clash of civilizations” as expounded by Samuel Huntington, and that it would be far better to avoid any mixing of theology and politics in the “war on terror”. It also questions the relevance of the Axis of Evil concept as an analytical and strategic pattern, and ultimately questions the idea that the war in Iraq has increased security in the region and in the world. Nevertheless, both the American and French governments have also launched “positive” political initiatives to identify, foster and nurture a “liberal” Islam: an Islam as distant as possible from that promoted and distorted by Al Quaida. In December 2003, the French government decided to establish a French Council for the Muslim Cult (CFCM). The aim was to build a better organization of what the law of 1905 calls “le libre exercice du culte” – freedom of religious practice – which must be guaranteed by the State. Everybody agreed that there was a lack of mosques, and that this fact fostered the development of unofficial places of prayer and meeting, in car parks, cellars, and so on. This situation led to the impression of Islam being dispensed in an anarchic way, sometimes involving radical preachers and networks. The strategy of French governments was clearly to regulate and control the Muslim “market”, but also to integrate Muslim associations, even the (moderate) Islamist ones (only those which condemn terrorism and violent action, of course) into the political game of representation, to try to build a better expression of Muslim civil society. It was a controversial process for many reasons. One controversial point is the place that the consultation process gave to the UOIF (Union des Organisations Islamiques de France), a moderate Islamist organization. It is expected that by including an Islamist organization, it will help to prevent its radicalization and the drift of French Islamism towards a strategy of rupture and violence, to transform it into a kind of mediator, or go-between. This leads to a more general question: can we expect and hope for an evolution, a transformation of (some) Islamist movements into something similar to ChristianDemocratic parties? This – present and future – question will be my last point. There have been several books in France about the history of Islamist movements from the sixties to today. Some researchers in France have talked about a failure of radical political Islam (O. Roy in 1991 in L’échec de l’islam politique, and Gilles Kepel in 2000, in Djihâd : expansion and decline of Islamism) Roughly summarized, the argument is as follows: during the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, Islamism appeared as a new, radical movement that offered a rupture, a radical alternative, both to secular ideologies (socialism, nationalism, liberalism) and to the authoritarian, non-democratic and military regimes of the Middle East and the Arab world.

62

J.-C. Monod / Immigration, Secularization and Euro-Islam

At the end of the seventies, with the failure of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the growing success of Islamism in Morocco, Algeria, etc., Islamism appeared to be an expanding wave, a political project that gained huge success in a number of Muslim countries – the electoral triumph of the FIS at the beginning of the nineties in Algeria was an impressive expression of that wave and of popular enthusiasm invested in Islamism. But during the nineties it encountered many difficulties – internal difficulties – linked with the need to specify its political and social content, beyond the rejection of the other political ideologies; and external difficulties linked to its repression and its radicalization into violent action. An example of internal difficulty: in Iran, the Islamic Republic was obliged to open the way the reformers. An example of external difficulty: in Algeria, after the interruption of the electoral process, the civil war began and the rising numbers of mass murders exhausted the population and finally cut off Islamist groups from their popular support. The Islamist movement has never been as united as the name suggests. Rather, it has become more and more divided into rival groups and strategies. Of course, this apparently contradictory idea of a decline in Islamism was discussed in the French review Esprit, for instance, in September 2001 – the attack on the Twin Towers seemed a direct negation of this thesis. But according to the researchers I have quoted, this attack and others did not “destroy” their interpretations: beyond their spectacular dimension, they were more the sign of a flight from the real failure of political Islamism, by seeking to provoke an international clash and an uprising of all Muslim people. It does not destroy the conclusion that radical Islamism is losing its attraction as a political project that could be realized by an Islamic State. Indeed, the one-off “success” of Al Quaida led to the breakdown of the radical Islamist State of the Taliban. Today, radical Islam is a transnational network, but its political and national success seem weak. During the nineties, political Islamist forces that wanted to last changed their behaviour, their discourse, and their strategy: they moderated their opposition to the “system”; they accepted the principles of pluralism and parliamentarianism (where it exists); they adopted a cautious, conservative approach to social transformations; and they evolved toward sort of Christian-Democratic parties – a clear model for the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. According to several researchers, this is an essential evolution of Islamism in the nineties, mainly evident in Turkey, but also in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, and other countries. The peaceful reformist way is preferred to the radical, revolutionary way. One could almost speak of a secularization of Islamism, in this sense. The aim is to negotiate participation in political life, and to avoid repression; to play human rights and democracy against the authoritarian tendencies of the governments of the Middle East, and against military regimes. As a conclusion, I would come back to my own work about secularization: I think that we must not think of secularization as an evolutionary process, or a historical “necessity”. One can no longer assume that modernity rhymes with a mere decline in religion; it is more a transformation of religion and its place in society. And concerning Islam, I think it is very difficult to be at all certain about its how it will evolve, both in Europe and elsewhere. Certainly, Islam is involved in a dynamic of secularization in Europe, and the attractiveness of radical Islamism remains marginal. But I also think that it is too soon to speak of a failure of political Islamism: its birth was a surprise for

J.-C. Monod / Immigration, Secularization and Euro-Islam

63

many Western scholars, who thought that the “direction of history” were secularization and progress. So let us not turn its survival or growth into another surprise by prematurely announcing its decline.

64

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Migrations in the Mediterranean: from Economic Needs and Security Geopolitics to a Total Co-operation Approach Abdelmoughit TREDANO Professor at the University Mohamed V Rabat and Vice Chair and founding member of Association Alternatives, Morocco

Abstract: Migration is a central issue in Euro-Mediterranean relationships: Europe needs a qualified labour force and risks not being able to replace its population; North African countries are facing the “brain drain” phenomenon. Debating migrations is imperative if it is to be seen as a stabilisation factor and not as a cause of the deterioration of European identity. A security policy of border controls is not enough and has reached its limits; instead, a cultural revolution should occur on both shores and the migration/crime/terrorism/Islamism equation should vanish from discourse. A global geopolitical approach is needed, in which co-development and burden-sharing are the matrices.

Introduction Migrations have always existed; everyone agrees this is not a recent phenomenon. What is new are the underlying challenges. They are numerous and colossal. They are of an economic, social and cultural nature, and increasingly have a strategic connotation. The migration issue has become an important challenge in the relationship between both coasts of the Mediterranean; it is not just a technical or economic issue. It is a far more complex issue than is currently realized by decision-makers1. For economic and demographic reasons it has become imperative in general relations between Euro-Mediterranean countries, and nobody can dispute this established fact; this is explained by statistics on the different levels of development on either side of the Mediterranean. "By 2020, in 90% of the countries of European Union, the replacement of generations would no longer be assured"2. A United Nations report points out that "To maintain the number of active people in the European Union, it will be necessary to receive 25 million additional immigrants 1 KHACHANI, Mohamed - Les Marocains d’ailleurs, la question migratoire à l’épreuve du partenariat euro-marocain. Rabat : l’Association Marocaine d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Migrations, 2004. 2 This assessment was made in 2003 i.e. before the last EU enlargement to10 Eastern European countries; not having exact numbers and possible extrapolations, the problem of the ageing of the European population and its need for new financial support mainly remains very strong, particularly if we take into account the political and economic fusions which are constituted under our eyes. Enlargement only alters the problem for a few years. See Delphine Nakache, "La migration: une priorité stratégique pour l’Union Européenne dans le partenariat Nord/Sud", November 2003. Available at: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/DelphineNakacheCIMADE.pdf.

A. Tredano / Migrations in the Mediterranean

65

from 2003 to 2026 - and even more - a total of 159 million - if the current ratio between active people and inactive people is to be maintained"3. To understand the issues of migration, one has to put it in a world context. It is necessary to develop a more global approach instead of a technical and bureaucratic one. We must also make an effort to think it as a factor of stabilization and avoid continuing to see in it a cause of the deterioration of European identity. Moreover, any approach that is unaware of the regional and especially the international geopolitical dimension cannot account for the reality of migration, and will not find the means for optimal management of migratory flows (with better cohesion within the host country and less negative consequences in the country of origin). My presentation will centre on the following two themes. 1. Reports, distorted perceptions and failures. 2. Global geopolitical approach: from a security approach to a vision based on regional integration.

1. Reports, Distorted Perceptions and Failures 1.1. Statistics and Reports Everyone agrees that migration is more necessary for the Northern shore of the Mediterranean; all demographic indices suggest this. The ageing of the European population is one reason. Economic changes and the need for a qualified population are another key factor, and this explains how the issue has become very important in EU foreign policy. The transfer of the migratory issue from the social and cultural sphere to the political and security sphere since 2000, the multiplication of bilateral or multilateral conventions on the migration issue, and finally the process of regularising (at regular intervals) the migrant population backs up this established fact. This regularisation shows the failure of security-based management of the phenomenon. 1.2. A different Management Everyone can see that EU migratory policies, mainly based on border controls and security management, have reached their limits. The ever-increasing number of rafts reaching different EU shores, and illegal migrants crossing on regular flights, show that nothing can stop such movement. Moreover, the Mexican example with the United States of America backs up the idea that another way must be found: there are 10 million illegal Mexican immigrants in the USA. Faced with the failure of security policy and with the challenges of migratory flows, it stands to reason that a cultural revolution should occur in the receiving countries, both at the decision-making level and within the different European countries’ populations; education absolutely must focus on the following key ideas. 3

Quote from D. Nakache. Idem.

66

A. Tredano / Migrations in the Mediterranean

1.2.1. Avoiding Confusion and Misrepresentation The migration/crime/terrorism/Islamism equation must vanish from discourse and press articles, which sometimes, by using language of “convenience” and/or in bad faith, understand the implications of such an equation. The demonization of Islam (Islam = Jihad = conquest) and security-based management of fundamentalism, and giving respectability to the regimes in power on the other shore of the Mediterranean, are attitudes and behaviour that must be re-examined in a serious and courageous way. 1.2.2. Depoliticize the Migratory Issue Creating a Trojan horse every time one loses an election is fundamentally prejudicial to the need of a serene and confidant environment in relationships between both shores of the Mediterranean. It is important to avoid certain reductionist approaches, such as those which consider that Islamism may be diluted by development. Indeed, true development policies in the Southern Mediterranean are necessary, but it is not enough to stabilize the relationships between the two shores. Actually, the problem is more complex and more profound than that, because it concerns an identity and civilisation crisis involving different components of the Arab-Muslim world, where those from the Southern shore of the Mediterranean belong.

2. Global Geopolitical Approach: from a Security Approach to a Vision Based on Regional Integration Migration management must be based on a new approach, with co-development as the matrix. Three preliminary questions must be taken into consideration: 2.1 New Conceptualisation and Perception of the Migration Issue Beyond slogans, the migratory question must be formulated as a factor for stabilization and regional integration. As such, it concerns everybody. In the future, migration should be based on two imperative ideas: whereas on one hand it responds to an economic need, on the other hand it should suppress the cultures of neither the receiving nor sending countries (mutual integration and enrichment). Between the Anglo-Saxon “communitarian” thesis and French “assimilation” theses, one can develop different ideas, as long as the approach is collective and above all nonunilateral. Equally, migration must not compromise the chances of development in the Southern countries (it must prevent the brain drain). 2.2 New Approach to Good Governance Relationships between North and South are needed to effect a genuine change in concepts, not to say basic knowledge of discourse and the means that manage it.

A. Tredano / Migrations in the Mediterranean

67

On a global level, all policies between the two shores must be decided jointly (avoiding the kind of the PAS impasse and the “quasi-unilateral” dimension of the Barcelona Process), and they must be shared4. At the good governance level, the North’s policies towards South should be inspired by certain principles and avoid certain pitfalls. The risk that the international order may face is to go back to a sort of international complicity, similar to that which occurred during East-West rivalry, and in which all lapses were allowed. Nowadays, the Islamic and terrorist «threat» risks permitting all forms of indulgence. Moreover, a two weights two measures policy is unlikely to restore confidence and thus gain the support of peoples on the Southern shore of the Mediterranean, and thus establish new relationships with the North. These peoples do not understand how can we condemn coups d’état (for example, in Nigeria, Niger and Togo), and close our eyes to the hereditary principle of certain “Republics”, and/or organise harassment against a democratically elected president like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. 2.3 Mediterranean Global Security Relationships between the North and South of the Mediterranean must come within the context of a global framework. This framework presupposes that EU security cannot be confined to that one area of the Mediterranean, but to that which includes an ArabMuslim world, not to say the world itself. But this raises an unavoidable preliminary issue: Europe must be autonomous in its common diplomacy and defence vis-à-vis American power. This does not mean being anti-American or anti-Atlantic. European and American steps should be taken jointly to establish peace in conflicting areas, and it should preceded by containment policies: the European alignment to marginalise Libya (Lockerby), and two weights two measures in the Middle East. As well as this global approach, what is needed is a kind of segmentation of basic knowledge about security and development in the Mediterranean: the global approach of the Barcelona Process was considered a source of degeneration (discussion). In short, the migration issue must be viewed within a triptych frame: migration – global security – development. It should also be viewed in a joint way, and be based on a new approach towards international relations, starting with certain considerations: • • •

The common destiny of mankind: unity of the world and its material limits The imperative character of international cooperation The gradual substitution of confrontation by cooperation

Such an approach may seem fundamentally idealist. However, it is the only way to assure peace and security among peoples, and above all the survival of mankind.

4

LAMLOUM, Olfa - L’enjeu de l’Islamisme au cœur du Processus de Barcelone. Available at: http://www.ceri-sciencespo.com/publica/critique/article/ci18p129-142.pdf.

This page intentionally left blank

Part III Citizenship and Integration

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

71

Integration, Security and Migration Houria ALAMI Professor at the University Mohamed V Rabat and Chairwoman, AMERM – Association Marocaine d´Études et de Recherches sur les Migrations, Morocco

Abstract: With regard to migration and integration in Europe, Islam is the centre of attention. Islam is no longer distant: it is a part of Europe. Nowadays, integration for Muslims occurs in a difficult context. Migrations lead to cultural confrontation, due to a process of negotiation and transformation of ideas. This conflict then becomes a challenge to culture, with a bearing on security.

Introduction The Mediterranean area is of great strategic importance for stability and peace, but the challenges are important. Among the various challenges to ensure security in the Mediterranean, the cultural challenge is central. In other words, it is a question of creating the conditions for dialogue and comprehension between people and cultures. The integration of migrants legally installed in Europe is a part of this process. However, the concept of security, such as it has been developed in recent years, has muddled the objectives of integration: it has transformed the question of immigration into a problem of security, which has imposed limits on the concept of integration at a time when the project of constructing the EU (European Union) has given a new dimension to questions linked to citizenship and integration. Far from the objectives of dialogue and comprehension, which are part of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, security constitutes an obstacle to such communication. For instance, due to its geographical position and the importance of its migratory movements towards Europe, Morocco is in a difficult situation. This position is taken into account in the majority of decisions taken not only through bilateral relations but also at EU level. The EU answers are particularly security-oriented, and Morocco is confronted with the need to define the contours of its own security in this context. Migration, a threat to security: reality or myth? A mixture of representations or complete objectives? Which types of interconnections can one deduce from the relationship between security and integration? Can successful integration help to reduce factors of conflict which feed the thesis of security? Is security not a socially constructed problem? These are the essential questions, which require rapid replies.

1. Integration Integration has several dimensions: at host-country level, brings the destination country and migrants face to face; at international level, it forms part of cooperation agreements

72

H. Alami / Integration, Security and Migration

between destination countries and countries of origin. Finally, it has a trans-frontier dimension because of the bonds established between the migrants across borders. Integration is a broad subject that permeates all dimensions of the migratory phenomenon: this means that we risk taking an overly generalist view of the question. The term is, moreover, in constant evolution and is not subject to a sufficiently precise consensual definition between societies. With regard to populations of immigrant origin, but who are European citizens by birth or naturalization, the concept of integration deserves some clarifications to ensure that it is used fairly, and reflects developments and the new contours. In addition, the fields of integration are numerous, with each country having its own specific features: integration policies vary considerably from one country to another. Finally, although immigrants have invested in many fields of citizenship, the subject is sensitive insofar as it is primarily focused around the cultural question and connected with the security question. Migrants have certain rights linked to the nature of their citizenship, but discrimination still prevails thanks to the identity problem. For these reasons, integration continues to cause controversies that are linked, superimposed, or opposed, depending on the situation. We live in a time of integration, but also of openness to the Mediterranean environment from which these populations come. In other words, to integrate populations of different cultures it is also necessary to establish trusting relations with the countries from which they come. From this point of view, migrants could play a vital role which would no longer be based on conflict, but rather on co-operation.

2. Security The realization that Moroccan immigrants have settled in Europe, together with the structural transformations of migrant communities, have largely contributed to changing the migratory picture and modifying the representations and perceptions of emigrant and immigrant countries and societies, as well as policies. Euro-Mediterranean relations have developed around sets of themes that bind migration and security. Since the 1995 Barcelona Declaration, the integration of legally settle immigrants has been the focus of negotiations between national entities, within the co-operation framework governing relationships between certain labour-supply countries, such as Morocco, and the European Union. And certain rights are recognized for the countries from which the immigrants come, such as the opening of arts centres, agreements that are established for teaching Arabic, etc. From this point of view, the connection between integration, citizenship and security is established. It is within this context that the strategy of the Moroccan ministry for Moroccans resident abroad is to help Moroccan immigrants "to attain their full citizenship in the country of residence and country of origin". At the same time, the question of security is not being overlooked, but the Moroccan authorities seek to define it differently. They specifically refuse to link it to illegal migration, and also insist on joint co-operation on this issue. However, even though theoretically it is at the top of the EU migration agenda, integration policy suffers from the absence of a precise consensual definition of what is understood by integration. Indeed, the approach is rather general: it primarily recommends mitigating migrants’ linguistic deficiencies and knowledge of the host country, and proposes, in a vague way, to promote dialogue between cultures and to

H. Alami / Integration, Security and Migration

73

make it possible for the states of origin to intervene in matters of cultural distinctions. In reality: Islam is the centre of concern. Islam is regarded as a parameter for evaluating the institutional capacities of Morocco to manage not only its internal political conflict but also its foreign relations. In all agreements, the Islamic threat implicitly occupies a central place. The religious question is particularly sensitive, since in Europe it is seen as a private matter, given that it raises questions concerning such rights as wearing a headscarf, the recognition of mosques, chaplaincy in prisons and hospitals, certification of halal meat, cemeteries, slaughtering of animals for the Aïd el Kébir festival, etc. It is also at the centre of conflict because it is used by Moslem immigrants to raise questions about the citizenship in states that thought that they had solved the problem of disassociating politics and religion. Ultimately, this is because it is associated with terrorism. How does Morocco play a part? In Morocco, a new way of dealing with religion is being developed. As for migration, even if changes in government policy take shape, they remain, for the time being, all the more imperceptible than previous practice, which was difficult to identify.

3. Migration The type of discourse one hears leads one to believe that the issues are insurmountable. Cultural confrontation is indeed visible on an international scale. It is also active within countries. But cultural conflicts themselves are the sign of a process of negotiation and transformation of ideas. In the case of migration, sending and receiving countries seem tormented by the belief that they are being rejected by each other. The reality is more complex: living together, many are engaged in debates on the direction of integration. Today, the image of the Muslim world that is disseminated is largely negative. It is based on regressive behaviour and values, which lead to fundamentalism and irrational reactions. It disguises an ideology of insecurity, itself founded on the irrational. This deterministic vision of the Moslem world creates doubt about the ability of Moslem populations to integrate into modern societies. The conditions for successful integration are strongly handicapped nowadays by a difficult context, which makes culture a challenge for national and international relations, characterized by an unequal balance of strength. On the one hand, there exists global and national discourse containing positive values as regards democracy and equality; but on the other hand, there is internal and external discourse which maintains a deterministic vision of the Moslem world, and those migrants whose religion and/or culture is Moslem, and which is the antithesis of equality. This discourse is so powerful that it chokes the values of democracy and equality, and results in rejection. Far from supporting dialogue, these prejudices maintain a limiting vision of the other side’s ability to listen and comprehend. At the same time, Muslim immigrants mobilize Muslim culture to express their points of view. Identity thus serves as a strategy to face up to provocation, because of its capacity to react within society. This strategy of identity-assertion can in fact be seen as a movement of integration, based on a culture of resistance. This difficult context is itself characterized by a double dimension of integration. Integration itself does not only concern immigrants, stricto

74

H. Alami / Integration, Security and Migration

sensu. It relates to the integration of Moslems on a worldwide scale. In other words, the question is not simply that of the "integration of the immigrants"; it is a much greater problem of "integrating Moslems into arrangements between nations". In both cases, cultural assertiveness is the consequence of conflicts and exclusion, which raise the question of diversity: in countries where they are minorities and historically have recently arrived, the clamour for identity raises the question of relations with others – those who are different; on an international scale, Moslems claim their right to universal involvement. Immigrants pose several types of challenges to European identity, which help to reinforce perceptions of insecurity. The challenge is initially territorial, insofar as it raises questions about the traditional attributes of European political space. It is also a challenge to institutions, insofar as it obliges them to think about the dissociation of citizenship and nationality. Lastly, with the introduction of Islam, which exacerbates passions, immigration becomes a challenge to culture. All these factors disrupt the systems of beliefs. They mark the end of certainty for many of them. Some feel obliged to revise their certainty about Islam and the Moslem world, and to agree to re-examine their assumptions, based on their model of society. Others – Moslems – should be ready to question their culture and inner beliefs, and to take a more objective view of the differences between themselves and the others. Dialogue cannot be turned into a simple slogan. On the contrary, it is demanding and painful, because it requires a certain ceding of beliefs which are deeply rooted in the mind, and a questioning of historical limits. Host societies feel constrained to understand, because Islam is no longer distant, but now occupies their own space and is part of their own world. In other words, Islam must be dealt with from within. It is a question of knowing if it is necessary to understand Islam or to understand Moslems, and if it is possible to disassociate one of the other. Indeed, although a religious dimension exists, it is insufficient for understanding the complex reality. The dialogue to be engaged in is not necessarily a dialogue of religions. In other words, the direction of the religious claim deserves to be explored. Religions work as a stabilizer of identity, making it possible to give body to a collective subjectivity. It facilitates the creation of a collective consciousness and a well-structured representation system. Consequently, the question is not: how can one reject universal value? But, why does one appear to reject them? As for migrants, they negotiate their place in the society in which they live and express the demands of integration, which are not only cultural, but also political and social. It is this cultural recomposition that can transform the terms of integration. But inasmuch as it calls for difficult changes, it results in conflict, which interconnects with the issue of security. This change represents a turning point in the history of relations between Moslems and the rest of the world, both within each national society and on an international scale. Many of the differences of opinion, contradictions, and even the intensity of controversies, are more than anything signs of specific questions being raised about how long change will take.

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

75

Civil Society in Israel Inacio STEINHARDT President of Israel-Portugal Friendship Association, Tel Aviv, Israel

Abstract: The State of Israel could easily have been classed as a "civil society", long before the expression assumed its present meaning. The kibbutz was perhaps the precursor of a civil society in its authenticity. In the past 30 years, Israeli society has split into sectors and has diversified. Israeli cultural-spiritual, socioeconomic and political institutions are undergoing a deep structural change. The socio-cultural stew that is Israeli society has cooled considerably. To a growing extent it has solidified and fragmentation has set in. Gradually, the Israelis are taking part in the creation of a new public space, which they did not know before – "civil society". 69% of the respondents to a 2002 survey declared that they belonged to civil society organizations. Palestinian society is also learning from the Israeli experience in making its first steps into a civil society of its own. The various components of civil society in Israel are still lacking structural links between them. This will probably be the next stage in the ongoing development process of civil society in Israel.

Introduction Awareness of the concept of civil society as a sector between government and those governed has gradually gained currency in Israel during the last decade. In the analysis of civil society in this country, three main periods may be considered: - The pre-State years before 1948, when predominantly East- and CentralEuropean Zionist-Socialist immigration pioneered the agricultural development of the country, at the same time as some wealthy immigrants came to invest in its budding industry; - The period between the Declaration of Independence in 1948 and the end of the 1970s, during which the new State had to find the financial means to absorb large waves of impoverished immigrants under the strong hegemony of the predominant Labor Party. - The period after 1978 when the spiritual-cultural, ideological-political, and socioeconomic nexus which characterized the first thirty years of existence, while not totally disappearing, certainly lost its socio-political influence “… Israeli public debate has been inundated with an avalanche of books, conferences, public reports, and media coverage, all relating to a cardinal change that Israeli society is apparently undergoing: ‘the privatization of Israeli culture’, which has gradually been transforming Israel into a ‘multicultural society’.” 1

1 YOHAH, Yosi and SHENHAV, Yehouda “The Multicultural Condition”, Theory and Criticism, n.º 17, Fall 2000. pp. 163-188.

76

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

Yet writing about two seminars that took place in March 2002, analyst Avirama Golan, in the "Haaretz" newspaper, commented that "the more the expression 'civil society' becomes accepted, the less civil Israeli society becomes'. 2 One of the reasons behind such an observation is probably the fact that the term civil society has been given many variant interpretations, and in this aspect Israel is probably not very different from the rest of the world.3 Another is specific to the State of Israel which, as a political entity, has emerged from a society in formation that could easily have been classed as a "civil society", long before the expression assumed its present meaning.

1. The Pre-state Years The relatively small Jewish community which developed in the country under Ottoman, then British, rule already enjoyed many aspects of self-government. Israel's "founding fathers" brought with them from Eastern Europe a militant socialism, which was much easier to implement in their new homeland than in the old one, because most of the new communities were started from scratch by people whose only assets were the work of their hands and a motto – "we came to build our Land and to build ourselves". The kibbutz was perhaps the precursor of a civil society in its authenticity. It was a totally egalitarian society, to which every individual contributed to the best of his ability and received in return all his needs to the extent of the collective means. Every aspect of life of each member of a kibbutz was characterized by his or her individual participation in the collective, taking part in the debates and decision-making that affected the society, voting and being eligible for all the administrative functions. The kibbutz was the main source for nation-wide voluntary work as well as the keystone of civil and political participation. The kibbutz cannot but be considered as a pioneering pre-civil society experience. The emergence, out of necessity, of the first health, security, welfare, education and recreation services, and the history of each phase these services have undergone, are in themselves fascinating subjects of research. Incipiently broad national organizations also emerged, such as the Jewish Agency, for immigration and some political issues, the Jewish National Fund, for the purchase of land with funds collected from Jews abroad, the Histadruth, the first trade union system, the Kupat Holim, for medical insurance and services amongst others. Since independence the State of Israel has made large use of the continued functioning of those institutions, enabling the government to deal with the pressing demands of independence, immigration absorption, economic development and very real ongoing security threats.

2

GOLAN, Avirama, "Haaretz" Newspaper, March 18th. 2002. HENRIQUES, Mendo Castro - "Que há de novo na sociedade civilª .- Nação e Defesa, Janeiro de 2004; Revista da Universidade Nova, Janeiro de 2004. 3

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

77

2. Between Independence and the 1970’s The day the last British soldier left the country, and the immigration boycott was lifted, hundreds of thousands of concentration camp survivors, who were waiting in refugee camps in Europe and British detainee camps in Cyprus, created a huge wave of desperate immigrants finally returned to their ancestral homeland. The exceptional absorption process included immediate incorporation of all ablebodied immigrants into the integrated army, the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.) that resulted from the disbandment of the previous autonomous self-defense militias. Israel, while no doubt a country in formation and of immigration absorption, cannot be accurately compared with other immigrant societies such as the United States, Canada and Australia, in their formative years. People came to those countries to integrate into new nations and new societies. Jews considered themselves returnees who had come back to their ancestral country. They possessed a common heritage which had, however, been molded by other cultures in the course of 2000 years of exile. It is therefore still a melting pot and will remain so for a long period to come. The ongoing activity of the pre-State national organizations not only provided the services but also the organizational infrastructure of the young State and its strong democratic foundations. Youth movements of different political trends were part of the same civil society formation. Even the Army embraced certain components of civil society, such as agricultural pioneering units, the Nahal, and the women teacher-soldiers, and served as a tool for social integration of a people committed to a common task of defense. The European, socialist and Zionist ethos of the first thirty years resulted in a society characterized by: - Spiritual-cultural predominance of European streams of Zionism; - Ideological-political predominance of a socialist world-view and political Establishment, both in the centralist-governmental version of the labor party (Mapai) and the trade unions’ head organization (Histadrut). - Socio-economic predominance of the public and State over the private economy, with relative socio-economic equality. The question may be posed as to whether the State of Israel today portrays an ideal type of liberal democratic regime. This question should be broadened to ask whether there is any country in the free democratic world which doesn't feature a mix of ideal democratic policies coupled with semi-democratic or non-democratic ones. "Land of Paradoxes" – the title that Yael Yishai has chosen for her book on "Interest Politics in Israel"4 – seems to accurately represent the often contrasting characteristics of Israel's vibrant, struggling democratic nature. Israel, being created by statute – the UN decision of 1947 and its own 1948 Declaration of Independence – is at one and the same time a Homeland for the Jewish People, a specific type of democracy, a Jewish democratic State, and an "ethnic democracy", along with such democratic states as Estonia, Slovenia and Latvia. The Declaration of Independence in 1948 defined Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state, committed to the "ingathering of the exiles," and to guaranteeing equality to all its citizens. 4 YISHAI, Yael "Land of Paradoxes - Interest Politics in Israel" - State University of New York Press, 1991, title and p. 309.

78

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

There is no democratic state in the world that does not confine its democratic rules to the limit of not endangering its sovereignty and the existence of its nationals. Being the only Jewish State in the world, if Israel were to compromise with the demands of its Arab citizens and become a "State of all its citizens" without any limits, this would be the end of it's raison d'être. So Israel is a Jewish State, a fact that is challenged not only by the Arab sector of the population, but also by some Jewish humanistic intellectuals. This is another paradox. The State guarantees full liberty of speech and political rights to all its citizens. In a broad sense the Jewish majority accounts for 80% of the population of Israel. However, unbelievable as it may sound, when writing an article on minorities in Israel, I have counted 53 different sectors, Jewish and non-Jewish, each sector fiercely defending its own belief and its rights to a peculiar lifestyle. Minority citizens including the Arabs, Bedouins and Druses take an active part in the economy of the country, in its universities, professional sectors, law and justice and represent the State of Israel abroad as diplomats up to the rank of ambassadors They form part of the political life of the country, electing and being elected for Parliament, representing their own political parties, as well as other nation-wide parties. They use their parliamentary status to bluntly criticize the attitudes of the Israeli government both on the podium of the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) and in public speeches in Israel and abroad, including in countries which are in a formal state of war with Israel. A former personal adviser to the late Palestinian chairman Arafat and today of the new Palestinian leader, Mohmed Abbas, is an Israeli Arab and very active serving member of the Israeli Knesset. Attempts to ban any member of the Knesset when his public attitudes are considered by a broad political consensus as detrimental to the country's security have always been rejected by the judicial establishment of the country, including the Supreme Court. But it is not only against the sometimes hostile attitudes of a few members of the ethnic minorities that the State has to defend itself. For example, the orthodox religious sectors – both Jewish and Moslem – on the one hand, and the secular sections of the same ethnic communities on the other, form important and influential political interest groups. Civil rights interest groups have been very active in their attempt to neutralize what they regard as religious coercion. They have not been more successful in that than the religious leaders which battle to impose the Halachic law (Jewish religious law) on the country. This involves such issues as business and transport on the Shabbat, selling and consumption of non-Kosher foods, civil marriage, burials, etc. This explains why after 56 years of independence Israel is still a democracy without a constitution. It is governed by a number of "Basic Laws" and the common law. In spite of major NGO lobbing for a constitution, it has been impossible so far to reach a compromise between the different sectors that would permit the voting of a civil constitution. So "… the disharmony between declared advocacies and practiced strategies is one of the paradoxes of the Israeli polity… "- quoting again Yael Ishai5. 5

Ibdem, p. 334.

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

79

A "Civil Revolution" which has been demanded by civil society organizations, and even promised by certain powerful politicians, has never come about. The activist character of Israeli citizens is currently manifested in the Army itself. While the judicial system is absolutely exempt from political influence, there is an absolute general consensus that the Army has to fulfill government decisions without any consideration of the political opinions of the soldiers, unless there is absolute evidence that the orders received are immoral or illegal. This is an important exception. However recent developments in the political arena concerning the Israeli presence in the Palestinian territories have created the threat of two opposite classes of "refuseniks" amongst military servicemen and reservists: those who invoke conscientious objections to taking part in certain retaliatory actions against the Palestinian population, on the one hand, and on the other those who for equally strong convictions refuse to take part in the forceful evacuation of Jewish settlers from the same territories.

3. New Political Ideologies Over recent decades Israeli cultural-spiritual, socio-economic and political institutions have been undergoing a deep structural change. The fact that Israel has been a parliamentary democracy with a multiparty system from the day of its birth has, for three decades, bestowed great power on the hegemony of one major political party, the MAPAI Labor Party. It has since passed the test of several peaceful transitions of power. In the past 30 years, Israeli society has powerfully split into sectors and has diversified. Parallel to this splintering, Israel’s founding ideology, which acted as a unifying “cultural melting pot,” has lost its former enthusiasm. The social-cultural stew that is Israeli society has cooled considerably. To a growing extent it has solidified and fragmentation has set in. "… a country imbued with political paradoxes" – explains Yishai in the aforementioned book – "It is ruled by potent political parties and an intrusive state machinery; it is inhabited by a vociferous population reflecting a tremendous cultural and demographic variety…".6 It is on this complex chessboard that the relative size of the tertiary sector in Israel has been growing at a high speed in recent decades. A survey conducted a couple of years ago in 22 developed States places Israel in fourth place in the world - after Holland, Ireland and Belgium. When, in 1981, a new law for registration of Non-Profit Associations (amutot in Hebrew) was implemented, 401 amutot were registered. At the end of 2002, there were 38,833. At an estimated growth rate of between 1,500 and 1,700 a year, at the end of 2004 their number was probably over 43,000. The multiplicity of interest groups results in spirited debate – often very blunt – between the different cultures and their elites. It occurs not only between the Jewish majority and the minority ethnic groups, but also – and more so – between the different sectors of Jewish society. Yet beneath this apparently hopeless situation lies hidden potential for harmony, largely attested to by historical and current facts that do not attract outside attention

6

Ibdem, Preface – iii.

80

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

easily. Civil institutions, whether they are defined as such or not, have played and will play a decisive role in implementing this potential. I will not ignore the huge problems that this society faces: the diversity of the cultures that split it, and the current social struggle between them to set the rules of the game and for the distribution of common resources. There has also been severe deterioration of some moral values since 1967, as a consequence of the conflict and friction with the Palestinian population in the occupied territories. However the negative aspects of the situation are not predominant. They do certainly make the headlines in a much easier way and therefore hide the much brighter side of the merging of cultures, and of the mutual acceptance of ethnical and religious difference. As a way of life, the kibbutz has lost much of its original purity and some say it is in decline, a statement which not all its members accept. The new kibbutz, in some sort of modified form, is still in the process of being created. However the socialist way of life, of which the kibbutz is only one expression, has largely influenced civil society in Israel. The average Israeli citizen is highly motivated to intervene in societal issues, either by founding and taking part in organized movements or by offering creative solutions to specifically identified issues. A number of Israeli NGOs are devoted to preventing human rights violations in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and promoting people-to-people initiatives, personal and professional connections, and seeking solutions to put an end to the ever-increasing violence and misunderstanding. Other important NGOs are active in nation-wide education to prevent road accidents, violence in the family and in safeguarding probity and transparency of governance. Furthermore Israelis tend to contribute with their expertise in adapting solutions to their own problems to the peoples of less-developed countries or, as in the case of natural disasters, to any part of the globe. It is worthwhile noting the fact that Palestinian society is also learning from the Israeli experience in making its first steps into a civil society of its own. The large majority of Israelis choose to be involved in some sort of voluntary work, not necessarily under the umbrella of any particular registered institution. This is particularly true for retired people who find a way to continue to contribute their expertise and free time to welfare, social or cultural work. It has been proven that when the scope of the issue is not specific to one sector of the population, such movements do not take ethnic boundaries into consideration. I am thinking, for instance, of the board of an organization about which I reported a couple of years ago: "Chefs for Peace". The chairman and initiator of this very active organization is an Armenian Christian from Jerusalem, the treasurer is a Jewish Holocaust survivor, the secretary a young Moslem Palestinian lady. Other members are a Christian Arab Chef from Haifa, a Jewish Jerusalemite of Moroccan origin, a restaurant owner whose parents came from Germany and North Africa, and the son of a Greek Orthodox mother and a Moslem father. The latter, when asked how he would define himself ethnically, did not hesitate to state: I am a human being who loves peace… and cooking". I have given you this description, ladies and gentlemen, which only appears to be uncommon, because it is a good example of the complexity of the social structure of Israeli society, in which such a voluntary civil institution operates in perfect harmony.

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

81

The current multicultural Israeli situation is made up, according to Baruch Kimerling in his book The End of Ashkenazi Hegemony,7 of seven main cultural communities: secular ashkenazis; eastern, mostly "traditional" orthodox; non-Zionists or anti-Zionists, National-Religious; Russian; Ethiopian; and Israeli Arabs. To this one should add the foreign workers' communities, which however are in the process of considerable reduction by repatriation. These eight communities, with their own diverse sub-streams and splits, will have to find a way to co-exist, with mutual relationships of relative tolerance even if short of a national consensus. The sudden growth of tertiary-sector institutional non-governmental organizations has been due to the weakening of the founding cultural-political ideology of the State of Israel, and of the Welfare State. This disintegration is occurring simultaneously at two parallel levels: one, the disintegration of national consensus, and two, the diminishing influence of the predominant social strata that led that consensus and kept it current – European, Ashkenazi, socialist and Zionist. New political ideologies are gradually transferring the management and delivery of social and civic services to non-governmental, freely-created, civil institutions, not by default, but as the result of a larger, gradual social change strategy. Gradually, Israelis are taking part in the creation of a new public space, which they have not known before: "civil society". 69% of the respondents to a 2002 survey declared that they belonged to civil-society organizations. The specified aims of the non-governmental associations registered in the Amutot Register are as follows: roughly 29% in education, 15% in culture, 15% in religion, 12% in social services, 10% in philanthropy, and all others account for the remaining 19%. Besides the registered amutot there are many private citizens involved in communities, in universities and in social clubs. We are therefore witnessing a restructuring of the social balance of power, policy and decision making between the three social sectors (of government, business and civil society) in the State of Israel. Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon, one of the leaders of ICS – Activists for Israeli Civil Society, sees the necessity of a country-wide network of regional civil councils composed of non-governmental civil institutions (NGO's)8 ICS proposes a premeditated and orderly transfer of the management of these services to free and non-governmental civil institutions. This will encourage citizens to assume greater initiative and responsibility, raising the quality of the services and reinforcing democracy in Israel. At the margins of the state are not only a wide range of bodies which are stateowned or financed (public corporations, universities, etc.) but also a number of unique institutions – the most important of which are the Histadrut (central labor organization) and the Jewish Agency – whose existence, as explained above, preceded Israeli sovereignty, and which have continued since then to perform quasi-state functions, most notably in the field of social services.

7

KIMMERLING, Baruch, "The End of Ashkenazi Hegemony", Keter, Jerusalem, 2001. BEN-AHARON, Yeshayahu, "Why Israeli Society Needs Non-Governmental Civil Institutions" January 2003, p. 1. 8

82

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

Conclusion The question is posed whether this process will not place NGOs in a dependent position in relation to the government for financing, and thus being subject to its strict control. Other authors state that: “the growing financial dependence of third sector organizations upon the government impairs their independence and hampers their ability to act as representatives of specific interests and as promoters of social change.” This is what Avirama Golan fears when she claims that "the more the expression 'civil society' becomes accepted, the less civil Israeli society becomes". The share of the tertiary sector in overall employment in Israel is almost double the average of the 22 States, and is higher than those of the USA and Britain, where the tertiary sector is especially large. The data also indicates that one tenth of overall economic activity in Israel takes place in the tertiary sector, which also provides more than 9.3% of overall paid employment in the entire Israeli economy. Together with voluntary work, tertiary-sector employment rises to 10.7% of overall employment. The trend to organize civil-society institutions to play an active role in the defense of civil rights has naturally had its parallel in the Arab sector of the State of Israel. Within the framework of the organized state, whose loyal citizens they are, the Arabs of Israel have an understandable difficulty in identifying themselves with the prevailing symbols of the Jewish state. They see themselves as part of the Palestinian people and many of their charities are intended for the Palestinian population of the Palestinian Authority territories. The anomaly of the Arab political position in Israel is that, while formally fully fledged members of a democratic polity organized along universal lines, these citizens are subject to a wide range of incentives and controls which render them far more subordinate than Jewish Israelis to the will of the (Jewish) politicians and bureaucrats who manage the state. "Israeli Jewish society knows little about the Arab society, it is suspicious towards it, and holds stereotypes against it" – claims the Arab sector of Israel. The different components of civil society in Israel are still lacking structural links between them. This will probably be the next stage in the ongoing development process of civil society in Israel.

FOR FURTHER READING - KIMMERLING, Baruch – "The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society and the Military" – Los Angeles and Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001. - ZAIDISE, Eran – "The Role of Civil Society in Developing and Consolidating Democracy: Evidence from Israel" - European Consortium for Political Research Joint-Sessions of Workshops - Uppsala, Sweden, April 13-18, 2004. - FLEISCHMANN, E. “The emergence of the Palestinian Women’s Movement 1929-1939”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 29 (3), Spring 2000. - HAMMAMI, R., HILAL, J., and TAMARI, S., Civil Society and Governance in Palestine, EUI Working Papers, RSC, n. 2001/36, Badia Fiesolana, San Domenico (Fi), 2001. - SIMONI, Marcella – "Sustainability an Peace: Civil Society in Israel/Palestine in the 1990s" – Venice Summer School in Analysis and Governance of Sustainable Development – VIU, Island of San Servolo, Venice, 9-14 June 2003.

I. Steinhardt / Civil Society in Israel

83

- ROBINSON-DIVINE, D., “From civil society to sovereign state: the Israeli experience and the Palestinian quest”, in KARSH, E.(ed.), Israel: the First Hundred Years, vol. I. Israel’s Transition from Community to State, Frank Cass, London, Portland, OR, 2000. - SHAFIR, G. and PELED, Y., "Being Israeli. The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship" Cambridge University Press, 2002. - YISHAI, Yael – "The Guardian State: A Comparative Analysis of Interest Group Regulation" Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, Vol. 11, No. 2, April 1998 (pp. 153– 176).©1998 Blackwell Publishers.

84

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Citizenship and Integration Sidney SHIPTON Co-ordinator of the Three Faiths Forum – Muslim/Christian/Jewish Trialogue1, United Kingdom

Abstract: The Three Faiths Forum is an interfaith initiative established in January 1997 to bring Muslims, Christians and Jews together at all levels (and especially at grass roots level) in a spirit of understanding and mutual respect through dialogue between the three Abrahamic monotheistic religious communities.

Introduction First may I thank you for inviting me to this important workshop on Security and Migration in the Mediterranean. I want to make it quite clear that I am not an academic but a non-practicing lawyer working in the voluntary not-for-profit sector for many years. Since 1997 I have been the Co-ordinator of the Three Faiths Forum – Muslim/Christian/Jewish Trialogue although I have been involved in interfaith activity for many years, in fact, since my student days and I believe passionately in this work. To discuss citizenship and integration there is one word that is of paramount importance, namely, ‘dialogue’. Through dialogue we get integration but not, I hasten to add, assimilation. Of course this is not the sole and only answer but it is of considerable importance in the context of this workshop.

1. The Background to Interfaith Activity in the UK To make a presentation on the activities of the Three Faiths Forum I must first give something of the background to interfaith activity, with specific reference to the UK. I firmly believe that we in Britain have taken the lead, and continue to take the lead, in this field. It was in 1942, during World War Two, that the Council of Christians and Jews was formed and which led to the formation of the International Council of Christians and Jews – which today consists of some 40 member organisations worldwide. I am not afraid to use the terms religion or faith because I believe they are of importance in the context of what we discuss today. Perhaps we can use the words faith, religion and heritage interchangeably. 1.1. The Jewish Community Until comparatively recently in historic terms, there was only one minority community in the UK, namely the Jews. It has been suggested that the first Jews who came to the British Isles were slaves from the Holy Land taken prisoner by the Romans and 1

Star House, 104 - 108 Grafton Road, London NW5 4BA; e-mail: [email protected].

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

85

brought over with Julius Caesar in 55 BC. There does not appear to be any documentary evidence as to this, but certainly Jews were part of the Norman invasion force of William the Conqueror in 1066. Jews continued to be a minority community in Britain until King Edward expelled the community in 1290 and although some Jews remained, hiding their religion, it was not until the mid-17th century that Jews were re-admitted by Oliver Cromwell, when Britain was a Republic. He acceded to the request of Menasseh Ben Israel of Amsterdam. (Jews had arrived in the Low Countries from Portugal and Spain when they were expelled from Spain in 1492 and a few years later from Portugal.) Today the British Jewish community is a well established and integrated but small community of approximately 300,000. 1.2. The Muslim Community The Muslim community has been in existence in Britain for several hundred years but they did not come from the Mediterranean area. They came primarily as seamen, (known as Lascars), who were recruited by the East India Company from Yemen, Bengal, Assam, Sind and Gujarat. Of course, some did settle in British ports, including London and there were a number of Muslim businesses (such as the Mohammed Baths in Brighton, founded by Sake Deen Mohammed). When the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 even more Muslim sailors arrived. Some married and settled in British ports such as Cardiff, Liverpool, South Shields and Tyneside. However, today we must note that the bulk of the Muslim population came from Pakistan in the 1950s (and some from Uganda, when President Idi Amin decided to expel his Muslim community). Today the Muslim community in Britain is estimated at two million (see Table 1).

Table 1. Academic estimates of the origin of Muslims in Britain in the late 1990s. Country or region of origin Lower estimates Higher estimates Bangladesh 180,000 200,000 India 120,000 160,000 Pakistan 520,000 610,000 Middle East and North Africa 230,000 350,000 Other 150,000 180,000 Totals 1.2m 1.5m

All population figures are “guesstimates” since, in the last census following a great deal of controversy, questions as to religion and ethnicity were voluntary, although completing a census form is compulsory in all other respects. It is important to note that the background of Muslim populations differs from country to country. For example, the majority of Muslims in France come from North Africa and the majority in Italy come from Libya. Also, the majority of Muslims in the world are not from Arab countries or the Mediterranean area.

86

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

2. The Three Faiths Forum The Three Faiths Forum was set up in January 1997. Sir Sigmund Sternberg, who then held an honorary position on the Council of Christians and Jews in UK, suggested that the Council should become a Council of Muslims, Christians and Jews. For various reasons this suggestion was rejected and Sir Sigmund then resigned from the Council of Christians and Jews and together with Sheikh Dr. M.A. Zaki Badawi KBE and Rev. Dr. Marcus Braybrooke DD set up the Three Faiths Forum. I was appointed Coordinator. 2.1. The Three Co-founders Let me say a word or two about the three co-founders of the Forum. Sir Sigmund Sternberg, a businessman devoted to interfaith relations, is the President of the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain. In 1998 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion for his interfaith work. He is the sole Patron of the International Council of Christians and Jews, and one of only two Jewish Papal Knights in the UK. Sheikh Dr. M.A. Zaki Badawi KBE is Principal of the Muslim College in London, Chairman of the Council of Imams and Mosques UK and former Chief Imam and Director of the Islamic Cultural Centre and Central London Mosque in Regent’s Park. Dr. Badawi is a leading moderate Muslim. Rev. Dr. Marcus Braybrooke DD, Joint President of the World Congress of Faiths, is known worldwide for his work over many years in the field of interfaith activity. He is a former Director of the Council of Christians and Jews and has recently been honoured with a doctorate by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace. 2.2. Charitable Status The Three Faiths Forum then applied for charitable status and a legal battle began with the Charity Commission, who strangely enough did not consider that the promotion of interfaith understanding was for the benefit of the community, but after seeking a legal opinion from a well-known expert on charity law, within days charitable status was granted. (The Charity Commission issued a press statement declaring this was a departure from their present practice, and a new approach. It was also mentioned in their Annual Report - see Appendix 1 and 2.)

3. The Work of the Three Faiths Forum The basis of the work of the Three Faiths Forum is comparatively simplistic, in that the major activity is to promote understanding and mutual respect between the three Abrahamic monotheistic faiths. Islam, Christianity and Judaism all spring from the Hebrew Scriptures and the prophets, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses and thus have much in common.

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

87

3.1. The Advisory Board The Three Faiths Forum works at several levels. First, it has an Advisory Board, where approximately 50 representatives of Islam, Judaism and Christianity come together every couple of months to hear reports and to act as a think tank. Although one cannot claim that all branches of the three Abrahamic monotheistic faiths are represented, through a process of regular rethinking and co-option, the Advisory Board maintains a good representation. Something one often forgets is that there are many differing groups within each of the three faiths, for example regarding Christianity we have representatives not only of the Protestants and Catholics but also the Greek Orthodox and the Salvation Army. With regard to Judaism, there are representatives of the United Synagogue (middle of the road Orthodox), Reform, Liberal, Conservative and even Ultra-Orthodox. It may well be that the Advisory Board of the Three Faiths Forum is one of the few places where we can get so many different religious communities within one faith to come together. The Jewish representatives can also be divided into Ashkenazi (or European tradition), the Sephardi (or those with their roots in Spain and Portugal who were dispersed in 1492 when they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula) and lastly, Jews from Iraq, who trace their roots back several thousand years, to the time when Jews were expelled from the Holy Land to Babylon. The Muslim Community can be divided between Shiite and Sunni, and the important minority community, the Ismaili who often host Advisory Board meetings at their excellent central London venue. I should mention that Advisory Board meetings are never held in the same place but alternate between Muslim, Christian and Jewish venues, for example, meetings have been held in the East London Mosque, the Ismaili Centre, in the aptly named Jerusalem Chamber in Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, the West London Synagogue and for the convenience of some of our Members of Parliament, we have met at the House of Commons and Portcullis House. 3.2. Local and Regional Activity The second level which the Three Faiths Forum works is possibly the most important, namely at the local or regional level. That is to say, at grass roots, since the good relations between the leadership of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities do not always percolate down to the local level. Local groups are therefore a priority and have been formed recently in the County of Surrey, where the inaugural meeting was held at Guildford Cathedral and an excellent group is at work in South Central England, focussing on Winchester. In East London we find one of the largest Muslim and Jewish Communities and the East London group has been working effectively for some time. As we are purposely a loosely structured organisation, the local groups prepare their own agendas and the only guidance we lay down is that like the Advisory Board, meetings should take places alternately at churches, synagogues and mosques. One group, in fact, had the equivalent of what the British call a ‘Pub Crawl’ and had its members walk and visit most of the mosques, churches and synagogues in their area, over the course of a weekend.

88

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

3.3. The Specialist Groups The third level on which we work is through our Medical Group, where Muslims, Christians and Jews involved in medicine and medical matters come together to discuss controversial matters such as abortion, euthanasia, mental health, genetic engineering and other similar subjects. These meetings are open to all, but with the proviso that individuals shall not be quoted so that discussions are not inhibited in anyway. A lawyers group is in the process of being formed where Muslim, Christian and Jewish lawyers will come together to discuss matters of mutual interest. 3.4. Colleges and Universities A new field of activity in the last couple year has been our endeavours to promote and form Three Faiths Forum groups in universities. The first such group has been formed in the world famous Eton College (a public school in the British sense, not the American!). Eton College is a Christian foundation but has had Jewish students for some time, together with a Jewish tutor or chaplain. When the number of Muslim students increased, Eton appointed a Muslim tutor. Such appointment appeared in the press and I immediately wrote to request an opportunity to meet. Quite rightly, the Head of Eton College asked me to wait until the Muslim tutor had settled in, which of course I did and some months later I was invited to the college to speak to the three tutors or chaplains who agreed almost immediately to the setting up of a Three Faiths Forum. In fact, the Muslim tutor has since been speaking at other schools and universities promoting the Three Faiths Forum and several have expressed an interest in setting up their own Three Faiths Forum groups. 3.5. Annual Meeting with Ambassadors to the Court of St. James At the request of the Three Faiths Forum an invitation was sent to all the ambassadors accredited to the Court of St. James by Sir Anthony Figgis, HM Marshall of the Diplomatic Corps, to a meeting on 22 October 2003 to meet the leadership of the Three Faiths Forum and to hear a presentation on the work of the Forum. Approximately 70 Ambassadors, High Commissioners, Ministers and Counsellors attended the event at St. James’s Palace. The second meeting called by Sir Anthony Figgis on behalf of the Three Faiths Forum was held on 26 October 2004 to meet with the leadership of the Three Faiths Forum, and more particularly four Iraqi representatives of the Iraqi Institute for Peace, for a briefing session (See 3.7). 3.6. Joint Meetings with other Like-minded Organisations The Three Faiths Forum endeavours to hold joint meetings with other organisations and this has included a joint meeting with the Royal Society of Medicine when Sheikh Dr. M.A. Zaki Badawi KBE spoke on organ transplants; with the Globe Theatre Education Department, where a well-attended seminar on “Shakespeare and Islam” was arranged; with St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, where a joint meeting was held with the Muslim Council of Britain; and with the Immigration Advisory Service on the problem of asylum seekers.

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

89

A relationship has been established with the International Centre for Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral with regard to the Middle East and the Alexandria Process. 3.7. The Three Faiths Forum and the Iraqi Institute for Peace Fadel Alfatawi, Dr. Hamid Al-Sherifi, Sheikh Maher Al-Hamra and Jamal Al-Baddri, representative leaders of the Iraqi Institute for Peace, came to London in November 2004 at the invitation of the Three Faiths Forum for an intensive round of meetings. The Iraqi Institute for Peace (IIP) was the outcome of the Baghdad Religious Accord agreed in February 2004, at the initiative of Canon Andrew White, co-Director of the International Centre for Reconciliation of Coventry Cathedral. Leading Shi’ite and Sunni clerics and representatives of all Iraq’s other religious groupings formed the IIP, and its first association with an outside body was with the Three Faiths Forum. The four leaders met with Baroness Symons, Secretary of State for International Development at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; William Chapman, advisor to the Prime Minister at Downing Street; Godfrey Stadlin and Maqsood Ahmed of the Faith Communities Unit at the Home Office; David Johnston, the Chargé d’Affaires at the US Embassy; Sir Evelyn de Rothschild of the Interfaith Foundation; Ian McCartney, Chair of the Labour Party; and Alex Goldberg and Priya Lukka of the Commission for Racial Equality. The four representatives of the IIP also held discussions with Prof. Malcolm Grant, the Provost of University College London and Prof. Michael Worton, and visited Cambridge University, where they met Prof. David Ford and members of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme. As the visit coincided with the month of Ramadan, the fast was broken at dinners hosted by the Iraqi Ambassador, Dr. Salah al Shaikhly, the Muslim College and the West London Synagogue.

4. Mutual Problem Solving So what does the Three Faiths Forum do? Well, in the first instance, the main activity is to bring Muslims, Christians and Jews together at the grass roots level, but there is also the objective of mutual problem solving. 4.1. Animal Rights and Animal Slaughter Muslims and Jews every so often are targeted by so-called animal rights groups and the government of the day is then asked to ban the Muslim and Jewish methods of slaughter of animals for food. The Jewish method of shechita and the Muslim method, which comes under the heading of Halal are, according to leading veterinary experts, probably safer and less painful to the animals than the use of the stun gun, which so often misfires or misses its target creating a more painful method of slaughter. Muslims and Jews can and do combine to fight against any proposed banning legislation. (It is an unfortunate fact that while Muslims can eat meat from animals slaughtered in the Jewish method, it does not work the other way round!)

90

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

4.2. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia Muslims and Jews (as well as of course Christians) can and do combine, against those racists who practice both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The terms anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have well-know meanings, and although one can argue that Arabs are Semites and therefore fall under the heading of anti-Semitism or that Islamophobia is a “fear” of Islam and is not anti-Islam, nevertheless both terms have taken on a particular meaning and no useful purpose is served in the game of semantics. 4.3. Faith Schools A third issue is that of faith schools. In Great Britain there have been Catholic and Anglican faith schools for many generations and Jewish faiths schools have increased in number during the last century. In English law, if certain criteria are followed, faith schools can obtain 80% funding from Government sources. Accordingly, the Three Faiths Forum has done its best to help Muslim schools obtain funding similar to Christian and Jewish faith schools. There are, of course, points to watch in supporting faiths schools. In any of the three Abrahamic religions, one can only supports faith schools where secular education is of a high quality, since regretfully there are faith schools which may concentrate too much on the religious aspect of the faith, to the detriment of general education. Faith schools have consistently topped the educational league tables and many send their children to faith schools for the general ethos and high standards. In Britain, there is a good example in Liverpool of a Jewish high school where the Jewish population has reduced considerably. 80% of the pupils who attend King David “Jewish” High School today are non-Jewish. Within the Muslim community, just the same as there were (and still are) in the Jewish Community, there are those who believe that faith schools segregate the children who attend from the outside world. The pros and cons can be considered by the Muslim community with the knowledge that similar discussions have taken place in the Jewish community. There are, of course, many other local matters that can and do arise, but of course the question of the Middle East and the Israel/Palestine conflict is uppermost in the minds of many Muslims and Jews. The Three Faiths Forum endeavours to put this issue on the backburner at first, on the basis that once Muslims, Christians and Jews, at all levels, begin to understand and respect each other and know each other, it is then easier to discuss the complex problems of the Middle East, and although agreement may not be reached, at least one is able to argue and discuss with people one knows, rather than with strangers, when verbal violence can be the only outcome. 4.4. The International Level Lastly, I must point out that The Three Faiths Forum was founded as a national organisation in Great Britain but has become more and more involved on the international level. First, the Three Faiths Forum is affiliated to the International Council of Christians and Jews whose constitution permits any organisation which is involved in promoting better relations between Christians and Jews, (whether or not other religions are involved) to be affiliated. The Abrahamic Forum of the International Council of

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

91

Christians and Jews was created to permit discussions between all three Abrahamic faiths. Secondly, due to the fact that observers on the Advisory Board represent the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), in recent years the FCO has begun to send visiting delegations to meet the leadership of the Three Faiths Forum and to listen to presentation on the activities of the Forum. For example, following a visit from an Albanian delegation, the first ever Interfaith Conference was held in Albania, followed by a second conference there last year, at which the Three Faiths Forum was represented. Delegations from Bulgaria, Ghana, Cameroon and even Iran have participated in such discussions with the Three Faiths Forum at their request. Leaders of the Three Faiths Forum have visited Paris, where an Interfaith seminar was held at the British Embassy. In Belgium, meetings took place in the European Parliament in Brussels. Meetings also took place hosted by the German Ambassador in Belgium, with a view to establishing a forum in Belgium.

Conclusion In conclusion, I believe the Three Faiths Forum can be used and is being used as a model in many countries, particularly those bordering the Mediterranean, and the approach of people meeting others at grass roots level is, with respect, probably more important than speaking with academics, professionals and leaders of organisations. I hope and trust that this presentation has been of some assistance in opening up new ideas which can relate to security and migrations in the Mediterranean. And in parenthesis, let me mention by way of an apology that the reason I left this workshop for half an hour earlier on, was because I met with some local leaders from the Abrahamic community, and it looks as though Lisbon will soon have its own Three Faiths Forum.

Appendix 1. Charity Commissioners Press Release PROMOTION OF RELIGIOUS HARMONY 1.

Decision

The Commissioners have concluded that the promotion of religious harmony for the benefit of the public is a charitable purpose. The Commission will accordingly consider applications from organisations established for such purposes for registration as a charity. 2.

Background

The Commissioners have received applications from organisations with objects which can generally be described as promoting religious harmony2. The Commissioners, therefore, considered whether or not they should recognise that to promote religious harmony for the benefit of the public is a charitable purpose. 2 Although how this was expressed varied and this object was not always directly stated, but was inferred by the Commission from an examination of the activities of the organisation.

92

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

3.

Recognition of a New Charitable Purpose

The Commissioners’ policy on how it recognises new charitable purposes is set out in the Review of the Register booklet RRIA3. Broadly the Commissioners first determine whether the new purpose is analogous with the purpose recognised by the Courts or the Commission. The second step is to decide whether the purpose results in a real and substantial benefit to the public at large or a sufficient section of the community. 4.

Analogies

The Commissioners considered that to promote religious harmony is analogous to the existing charitable purposes namely: i) the promotion of equality of women with men4 ii) the promotion of racial harmony5 iii) the mental and spiritual welfare and improvement of the community6. 5.

Public Benefit

Whether or not to promote religious harmony is a purpose for the benefit of the public is a question of law to be answered by forming a view on the evidence in light of current standards and social and cultural considerations7. If tangible and objective benefits cannot be shown, public benefit can be demonstrated by evidence of the “approval by the common understanding of enlightened opinion for the time being”8. 6.

Evidence of Public Benefit

The Commissioners considered that the public benefit in eliminating both racial and sex discrimination is manifestly beneficial to the public without the need to consider evidential proof and that the public benefit of eliminating discrimination on the grounds of religion and promoting religious harmony is of the same order9. Nevertheless, they noted that their view is supported by evidence that i) the promotion of religious harmony and tolerance could result in tangible benefits of reduction in conflict and crime. In addition, understanding other’s religious beliefs leads to more appropriate provision of services both in the public and private sphere ii) there is a common understanding of enlightened opinion that promoting religious harmony and tolerance is for the benefit of the public in view of the following: i. The Human Rights Act 1998 which incorporates Articles 910 and 1411 of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law

3

Available on the Commission’s website www.charitycommission.gsi.gov.uk. Halpin v Seer Ch Comm AR 1977 para 34 (Women’s Service Trust). 5 Ch Comm AR 1985 para 24. 6 The most recent discussion of this purpose is in the Commissioner’s decision of 17.11.1999 on the application for charitable status by The Church of Scientology which is available on the Commission’s website under “Decisions of the Commissioners”. 7 A detailed explanation of the law is set out in the Commission's Review of the Register paper RR8 “The Public Character of a Charity” available on the Commission’s website. 8 National Anti-Vivisection Society v IRC [1947] AC 31 @ 49. 9 See McGovern v Attorney General [1982] Ch 321, Slade J @ p 333 on the requirement of public benefit. 10 Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. 4

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

ii.

iii.

7.

93

European Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation in employment, occupation and vocational training. The religious strand must be implemented by 2 December 2003. Towards Equality and Diversity – The consultation paper issued by the Department of Trade and Industry setting out the Government’s plans for implementing this European Directive12.

Considering Future Applications for Registration

In order for the Commission to be satisfied that any particular organisation is established for the purpose of promoting religious harmony, it will need to be satisfied that the particular activities it carries out are capable of furthering the purpose. The Commissioners recommend that an organisation sets out the means by which it will pursue this purpose in its objects to assist this consideration. 8.

Charities Recognised as Furthering this Purpose

On 14 June 2002, the Commission registered The Friends of Three Faiths13 as a charity furthering the purpose of promoting religious harmony. The charity was also accepted on the basis of the advancement of education. This charity was established by leading members of the Christian, Islamic and Jewish faiths and promotes its purpose principally by establishing multi-religious discussion groups both locally and amongst people from particular professions such as doctors.

Appendix 2. Extract from Charity Commission Annual Report 2004 The following is an extract from the Charity Commission’s Annual Report and relates to your charity: Promotion of Religious Harmony In 2002, the Commissioners considered an application to register The Friends of Three Faiths Forum, an organisation established by leading members of the Christian, Islamic & Jewish faiths to promote religious harmony by enabling people of one faith to understand the religious benefits of others. Recognising its analogy to the existing charitable purposes of promoting equality of women with men, promoting racial harmony and promoting moral or spiritual welfare or improvement of the community, the Commissioners concluded that the promotion of religious harmony could be recognised as a new charitable purpose. The Friends of Three Faiths Forum was registered under number 1092465. Since this new purpose is about promoting harmony or reducing conflict, it is not restricted to promoting harmony between religions that are recognised by charity law. 11 Right not to be discriminated against in the exercise of a substantive right on the grounds of religion (amongst other factors). 12 & another European Directive on Race. 13 Registered number 1092465.

94

S. Shipton / Citizenship and Integration

This means it also embraces “beliefs” as defined in human rights case law i.e. beliefs which are “more than just mere opinions or deeply held feelings” which involve “a holding of spiritual or philosophical convictions which have an identifiable formal content”. It includes the promotion of harmony between believers and non-believers.

Part IV Mediterranean in the International Context

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

97

Racism and Anti-racist Measures Conditioning Migrations in the Mediterranean Jean-Yves CAMUS Political Scientist, CERA – Centre Européen de Recherche sur le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme, France

Abstract: After 9/11 the French attitude towards Mediterranean countries experienced some change. Racism against Muslims and violent racist incidents increased, and Islamophobia is spreading among the French, including the intellectual elite. Despite the Front National not being particularly strong, its antiIslam ideology is spreading, making people see Islam as a threat to the French modus vivendi. The idea of a “clash of civilizations” that sees all Islam as terrorist and fundamentalist, and also the new trends of cooperation with Eastern Europe, have endangered the historic ties between France and the Mediterranean countries.

Does the extent of the racist prejudice in France harm relations between France and its neighbours on the southern side of the Mediterranean? Is the legacy of the Gaullist foreign policy of cooperation between France and Third World countries on the decline? Is there something specific about the political and intellectual situation in France, in the post-9/11 era, which questions the traditionally close relationship between Paris and Maghreb countries, Muslim countries and the Arab world in general? Those are the few issues I shall try to address here. My first point is that racism is indeed on the rise in France in 2005, and that it mostly targets two groups: Jews (most of whom are Sephardic Jews from North Africa) and Muslims; in both cases populations which come from the Mediterranean. The present political situation in France is marked by an increase in the number of racist incidents of a violent nature, both anti-Semitic incidents and attacks directed at the country’s four to six million-strong Muslim community. According to figures released in January 2005 by the Ministry of the Interior, 1 513 racist or anti-Semitic incidents were reported in 2004, an increase of 81.63% over the 2003 statistics. In 2003, 833 such acts were reported, compared to 1 313 in 2002. The majority (950) of the reported attacks in 2004 were targeted at the Jewish community (which numbers 600 to 700 000), but there is a growing feeling of uneasiness among French Muslims, caused by the widespread Islamophobia which in several areas of France develops into a full climate of harassment (on the island of Corsica, there were 107 anti-Muslim acts in 2004, including shooting at prayer rooms and imams, compared to 15 such acts in 2003)1. My personal feeling is that the post-9/11 attitude of French public opinion towards Islam, Muslim countries and the Arab world in general have become clearly negative, 1

Ministry of the Interior, press release, December 29th, 2004.

98

J.-Y. Camus / Racism and Anti-Racist Measures Conditioning Migrations in the Mediterranean

and that, despite the relative setback of the political forces of the extreme-right (the Front National) there is now a widespread consensus in France on the need for change in the country’s traditionally benevolent immigration and asylum policy. According to a survey published in December 20032, 57% of those who say that “immigrants do not integrate easily, or not at all”, name “the Muslims” as a particular category of nonintegrated foreigners, while 48% name “people from the Maghreb”. Also, 14% of those surveyed said that “French Muslims are not French people like the rest” and 24% do not agree with the opinion that “practice of the Muslim religion should be facilitated”. This is how society at large thinks. But many prominent individuals within the ranks of the mainstream conservative political parties share similar beliefs. This is proven by the controversy surrounding the future accession of Turkey to the EU (which, in France, is mainly opposed on religious grounds), and by the fact that part of the Right is calling for a shift in immigration policy which would, if implemented, automatically favour newcomers from “European” or at least “non-Muslim” ethnic stock3. In a very significant political move, the leader of the neo-Gaullist UMP party, Nicolas Sarkozy, has advocated a change in French immigration policy4, which would follow the guidelines set by the European Commission’s “Green Book”, published on January 15th, 2005. Thus, France would allow foreigners to come on the basis of quotas, which would not be set according to nationality, but according to the immigrant’s professional or academic qualifications. For the time being, the Raffarin government has refused to change the rules. But the Minister of the Interior, Dominique de Villepin, has declared he is in favour of a new law which would support the policy of “chosen immigration”, that is, allowing foreigners to work in France for a limited period of time, and with the goal that “those foreigners would not necessarily be there to integrate”, but would go back to their native country after the end of their working contract. This, of course, would have many consequences for relations between France and the countries of North Africa, as well as Turkey and the countries of West and sub-Saharan Africa, whose nationals account for the major part of immigration to France. In other words, any quota policy, whether the quotas are of an ethnic or professional nature, tends to discriminate against less-skilled workers, who mostly come from the aforementioned countries. In order to have a clear picture of how French people of Muslim or Arab origin, or nationals of Muslim or Arab countries, are accepted within French society, one also needs to remember that a strong extreme-right political party, the Front National, has existed since 1972 and has become a significant political force since 2003-2004. The party has taken 12-15% of the national vote in most general elections since 1986, and its president, Jean-Marie Le Pen, came a surprising second in the 2002 presidential election, polling 16.9%. That is an all-time high score for the extreme-right since 1945. The anti-immigration policy of the FN calls for immediate and total repatriation of all immigrants to their home countries, rescission of all naturalisations granted since 1972 and the banning of dual citizenship. These proposals, of course, apply to all foreigners,

2

The survey can be found at: http://lesrapports.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/BRP/044000129/0003.pdf. In a move to restrict immigration, the Mouvement pour la France, Philippe de Villiers’ party, proposes that social benefits granted by the State to foreign families which have children be paid in the country of origin and not in France, so that migrants are encouraged to come to France alone. This proposal would, of course, be mostly detrimental to the families from North Africa and Africa. 4 Declaration on January 27th 2005. 3

J.-Y. Camus / Racism and Anti-Racist Measures Conditioning Migrations in the Mediterranean

99

but there is something specific to the racism of the Front National5: the history of French colonization; the loss of the French Empire and the war in Algeria are at the core of the party’s ideology. Therefore, the propaganda of the Front National is very much directed against Islam: Muslims and immigrants from the former French colonies. This particular brand of racism could have remained on the fringe of the political spectrum, as the Front National does not hold public office at national or regional level. However, in the aftermath of 9/11, the prejudice against people coming from south of the Mediterranean has also increased within mainstream intellectual circles. In October 2003, Claude Imbert, editor of the weekly magazine Le Point said on TV that “Islam as a religion – to say nothing of Islamists – carries a debilitating load of archaic thinking (…) that makes me an Islamophobe”. Also, the famous novelist Michel Houellebecq was sued by the Great Mosque of Paris and cleared of all charges in October 2002, because he had said in an interview that: “The most stupid religion is Islam. When one reads the Koran, you’re really broken down”. This fact, and the ruling of a Paris court which, in October 2002, cleared the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci of all charges of racism, despite the content of her book, La rage et l’orgueil6, really tells something about the degree of acceptability of anti-Muslim prejudice in today’s France. And what is really new is that this prejudice is clearly directed at Islam as a religion, whereas formerly anti-Arab prejudice was mostly grounded in ethnic stereotypes going back to the colonial era. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to speak or write about such topics as the politics of the Arab world, the situation in the Middle-East, the terrorist threat, or the status of Islam in France, with the serenity and scholarship that are expected of academics and (real) journalists. The French Academy is staffed by highly professional and knowledgeable specialists in North-South relations and the Arab world. Such names as Bruno Etienne, Gilles Kepel; Rémy Leveau; Jocelyne Césari; Benjamin Stora; Franck Frégosi and many others immediately come to mind, but those are not the experts you will see on television or interviewed in the newspapers. Those who advocate a dialogue between the cultures on both sides of the Mediterranean are now clearly outnumbered, at least outside the Academy, by the experts sécuritaires (security experts) who follow the neo-conservative school of thought, or support the idea of a “clash of civilizations” which, in the French case, would mean breaking with a centuries-old tradition of French foreign policy, rejecting a cultural legacy and, finally, ignoring the constraints of geopolitics, for France is indeed a Mediterranean country. The picture, of course, is not all gloomy: France is still regarded, in North Africa, Africa and the Middle-East, as a country which has kept an independent foreign policy. The bonds of the French language and a common, if conflictual, common history with the Maghreb countries, are still strong. And, what is most important, the debate on the immigration issue, as well as the 2004 law on the display of religious signs in public schools, which of course targeted the Muslim hijab and associated religious clothing, have not greatly tarnished the reputation of France within the Muslim world. But there are other reasons to think that the Mediterranean has lost some of its importance when it comes to the definition of foreign-policy priorities. My first point here is that the French vision of a united Europe mostly relies on the notion of a “privileged relationship” between France and Germany, this since the 5

The Front National has a twin party in Portugal, the insignificant Partido Nacional Renovador, which polled less than 0.5% in the February 2005 general election. 6 FALLACI, O., Paris, Plon: 2002.

100

J.-Y. Camus / Racism and Anti-Racist Measures Conditioning Migrations in the Mediterranean

conclusion of the State Treaty between the two countries, in 1963. As a consequence, and more and more so since the crumbling of the Soviet bloc, and more recently after the extension of the European Union to several countries of Central Europe and the Baltic area, the main axis of French European policy is clearly Paris-Berlin-Moscow, while most of the French State’s efforts, when it comes to industrial and trade policy, focus on gaining new markets in China and South East Asia7. The consequence is that cooperation with the emerging countries of the South, and with those countries bordering the Mediterranean, has become a second-rank concern. This is best exemplified by the decision of the Foreign Trade Minister, François Loos, to draw a list of 25 “target countries” to which the French State wants to encourage exports. Those are, first of all, the “big emerging markets” (China, India, Russia, Brazil, Poland); then “strategic markets” (Japan; the USA; Germany), and only in third place, the Maghreb countries, which the minister says, “should be helped in their economic take-off, in order to contribute to the stability of the Euro-Mediterranean region”, which is in the first place a security concern8. My second point is: what if the European Union, now that it has enlarged further eastwards, and will continue to do so in 2007 and after, considers the Mediterranean an area of lesser importance? What effect will it have on French foreign policy, once the European Constitution has given more powers to the Commission when it comes to a common foreign and defence policy? And finally, what would be the effect, in Turkey and most of the Muslim world, of a “No” vote when the referendum on the entry of Turkey into the European Union is called, given that currently 57% of voters say they would vote “No”, despite President Chirac’s backing for Ankara9. To conclude, my perception is that the Mediterranean is seen, by a significant part of the French population, as an area of conflict which poses a threat to the security of France, but also to the cultural heritage of the French people and the values of secularism that are so central to the country’s Republican tradition. The reason is undoubtedly the fear of terrorism, Islam and religious fundamentalism, a fear which has become openly expressed precisely at a time (since the 2002 presidential election) when the Front National has begun to decline, and which has been fuelled by more acceptable individuals and groups. Therefore, it is fundamental, if we want to foster cooperation between France and the countries south (and east) of the Mediterranean, to explain that there is much more to Islamic and Arab civilizations than the Islamist groups which distort their religion; and that there is much more to the history of our relations with the Mediterranean than the clash between Christianity and Islam, the Crusades and colonization.

7 French exports to China grew by 9.5% in 2005, although the market share of French goods in China has declined constantly since 1997. 8 Source: press release January 24th 2005. available at www.dree.org. 9 Survey published on February 11th by the weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles.

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

101

A New Grammar for a Common Understanding. The Concept of Security between the State and the Individual: Security as Socially Embedded Lorenza SEBESTA Professor, University of Bologna, campus of Buenos Aires, Italy

Abstract: Migrations are closely linked with security. Migrants that want to escape the lack of security in their origin countries, may find new problems in their countries of destination. Neither the realistic nor the liberal approach provide satisfactory answers to this question. A third approach is possible, as shown by official EU strategy, but it is complicated. This third approach deals with a new concept of security, differentiating state and societal security and analysing the root causes of migrations. A dynamic concept aimed at coping with the change that characterizes the international system.

1. Three Main Linkages between Migration and Security The linkages between migration and security are straightforward and multifaceted at one and the same time. Migrations, as we experience them today in the Mediterranean area, are mostly linked to "push" factors: economic, political and/or social concerns make people feel insecure at home and "push" them to face yet another set of insecurities. Migration is, indeed, a risky experience for most of the people involved, as it frequently occurs under very uncertain circumstances. Last but not least, a sort of spill-over effect frequently follows from the two previously stated weaknesses, whereby this insecurity percolates through the societies where migrants try to make their living. In a kind of vicious circle, crossing borders is eventually seen as a threat in itself. Migration, in the words of the Copenhagen School, becomes “securitized”, which means that it is withdrawn from the arena of discussions and negotiations, and encapsulated within a new genre of discourse. Whenever this happens, democratically based rules can be suspended or renegotiated, and the standard criteria for rule-making can be overlooked. Security takes priority, but this kind of security does not just focus on one category of citizen (those living in the territories where immigrants converge), but, in extreme cases (when, for example, laws restricting civil liberties are approved) it makes citizens as a whole antagonistic towards the state.

102

L. Sebesta / A New Grammar for a Common Understanding

2. Two Different Approaches to Security The complexity of this “challenge to security” goes beyond any analysis based on a “realistic” approach – whereby, from Machiavelli onwards, the state’s essence is to be found neither in its ethical goals nor the quality of its institutions, but in its ability to survive (internal struggles and/or external threats). This ability, which becomes, in Machiavelli's vision, the mundane and most essential goal of the "prince", can be attained, first of all, by military means (all will recall the authors' distain for the profeti disarmati – unarmed prophets). The military function, therefore, is seen from Machiavelli onwards as the main and most relevant security resource for a state. As such, the “realistic” vision can be seen, on the one hand, as progress towards modernity, in the sense that it disentangles God (ethical concerns) from the state (survival concerns) and subordinate military actions to political goals – something that Carl von Clausewitz summed up masterfully when he defined war as a mere continuation of politics by other means. Liberals, on the other hand, place the individual at the centre of the stage and strike a solid link between security and justice. Under this view, the security of the individual (entailing, according to Locke, life, liberty and property) is not necessarily subsumed into the security of the state, but is subsumed to the existence of a sphere of justice for everyone. According to the Kantian declination of this vision, this sphere of justice has to be universal in order to be truly effective. The imposition of universal rights is the only possible way to reach an effective sense of security and, thus, to leave behind once and for all the Hobbesian situation of fighting between men, which is primarily rooted in fear. The question of security is solved by solving this original and permanent individual risk. Through the progressive juridicization of the political arena, everyone can have their rights granted, irrespective of their territorial roots. Despite allowing for a principle of order which is much more appealing to our modern times (and conscience) than weapons, this view is based on a dangerous assumption: that rights are primarily granted, and reached, through jurisprudence and respect for laws. In reality, the most basic right to life for those 45 million who die every year of hunger and malnutrition cannot possibly be granted through laws and courts, but must be coped with through political programmes and endeavours. So, neither the “realistic” vision, by categorizing immigration as a "threat" to be confronted by military means, not the liberal view, which formalizes the search for security through the granting of universal rights (a search which is materially impossible), seem to be viable options for solving most of our concerns today.

3. A controversial middle way A middle way, however, is hard to find. Take this classic definition by Arnold Wolfers, for whom “(…) while wealth measures the amount of nation’s material possessions, and power its ability to control the actions of others, security, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threat to acquired values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked” (Wolfers, 1968, p. 150). This definition is interesting in more than one respect, but we will try to focus on just one aspect of it: its reference to the “absence of threats to acquired values”.

L. Sebesta / A New Grammar for a Common Understanding

103

Wolfers seems to refer here to “acquired values” as a non-controversial issue, implicitly taking for granted the existence of one coherent national community with a given, immutable, set of values. The conservative nature of the assumptions underlying Wolfers’ definition is rather evident. Indeed, frequently, security problems arise during (and because of) the definition of new values by different (or new) social groups sharing the same territories, and the reference to “acquired values” seems to elude this crucial problem. In this sense, the approach seems to share some weaknesses of the realists, whose doctrine is clearly “status quo oriented”. Every change tends to be seen by realists with suspicion, because it is considered futile (many attempts at change are ineffective), perverse (when trying to solve problems, most of the time change just creates new ones) and frequently jeopardizing results already achieved (Guzzini, 2001). But change and disorder, as compared to order, have increasingly come to represent the texture of international society and the system of states after the end of the Cold War. Therefore, we tend to identify security with those mechanisms aimed at coping with disorder more than those identified by realists as valuable for retaining a certain relative power structure within the international arena. Secondly, Wolfers clearly distinguishes wealth from security, whereas we are nowadays conscious that massive threats to the life of people come, first of all, from underdevelopment – and are, therefore, linked to the lack of wealth – whereas largescale aggressions, as we will see in a minute, are now "improbable". This credo has been endorsed not only by documents written by progressive scholars and political advisors, such as those in the group which wrote the document entitled A human security doctrine for Europe. The Barcelona report of the study group on Europe’s security capabilities (2004) - but also by the official European strategy entitled "A Secure Europe for a Better World", proposed by Javier Solana and adopted by the Heads of State and Government at the European Council in Brussels, on the 12th of December 2003. The first paragraph of the first chapter of this documents ("Global challenges") reads: "The post Cold War environment is one of increasingly open borders in which the internal and external aspects of security are indissolubly linked. Flows of trade and investment, the development of technology and the spread of democracy have brought freedom and prosperity to many people. Others have perceived globalisation as a cause of frustration and injustice. These developments have also increased the scope for non-state groups to play a part in international affairs. And they have increased European dependence -and so vulnerability- on an interconnected infrastructure in transport, energy, information and other fields". And it goes on: "Since 1990, almost 4 million people have died in wars, 90% of them civilians. Over 18 million people have left their home as a result of conflict. In much of the developing world, poverty and disease cause untold suffering and give rise to pressing security concerns. Almost 3 billion people, half the world’s population, live on less than 2 euros a day. 45 million die every year of hunger and malnutrition. AIDS is now one of the most devastating pandemics in human history and contributes to the breakdown of societies. New diseases can spread rapidly and become global threats. Sub-Saharan Africa is poorer now than it was 10 years ago. In many cases, economic failure is linked to political problems and violent conflict. “Cross-border trafficking in drugs, women, illegal migrants and weapons accounts for a large part of the activities of criminal gangs. It can have links with terrorism". Therefore, the EU is prepared, at least theoretically, to follow a broader concept of security in order to define its own external policy.

104

L. Sebesta / A New Grammar for a Common Understanding

Let's now wait and see how the EU will fill the gap between principles and practice. Waiting for that to be done, it is important to stress again that the classic oversimplified approach, which still unfortunately underlies most day-to-day national policies in Europe, not only makes it difficult to understand the origin of the link between migration and security. What is more frightening is that it legitimises policies which, at their best, are not very influent and, at their worst, are counter-productive in respect of the security question they aim to solve. States try to safeguard “their” citizens from what becomes perceived as a permanent threat inherent in the immigration phenomenon as such. As a result, policies tend to concentrate, with repressive measures and with quotas, on the last act of a long interconnected chain of threats, whose principal victims are the migrants themselves. Thereby they are reinforcing more than solving, security problems. In order to escape the danger of oversimplification, it is necessary, I think, to go back to the complexity of the relationships between migration and security and try to disentangle some preliminary points.

4. Differentiating States and Societies The first step should consist in defining security as such. Security’s scholars, up to the revolution brought about first by the so-called English school (Hedley Bull, Martin Wight, etc.) and, elaborated, mainly but not only, by the Copenhagen school in the 90s (Ole Weaver, Berry Buzan, etc.), rooted their definition in an undeclared assumption that states are "black boxes" and whatever happens within their borders should be dealt with by other disciplines (mostly sociological), and by other analytical instruments (social sciences). This artificial disciplinary division, while it seems to help us to concentrate on relatively few and detectable issues (making possible the construction of "beautiful" theories, with few variables and clear causal linkages between them) oversimplifies reality and indeed appears to be misleading. From a theoretical point of view, what is the state, if not the territorial political system which, in a Hobbesian sense, was born out of the desire of men (and women) to escape from the dangerous and fearful state of nature and create a peaceful society? According to this classic definition, the state was born from a common concern for the security of the people living within its borders. The state and its citizens are linked through a double political linkage (a pactum societatis among them, to create the society, and a pactum subjectionis between them and a superior power, to whom they delegate the coercive function, in order to grant efficiency and viability to the political system). First of all, the state has to prevent violence from spreading within society; it does so establishing laws and ensuring they are respected. The means originally attributed to the state in order to do this have been used, over time, to exert another kind of function: let’s call it external security. The state has become, according to the classical Weberian definition, the sole provider of the legitimate monopoly of force – vis-à-vis both internal and external threats. The defence of frontiers, of citizens living within them and their values appear to be lumped together here. But this has seldom been the case. In the first half of the 20th century, Europe witnessed various instances of this dilemmatic relationship. Some states have been responsible for genocide, others have exposed their populations to the mortal risks of a total conflict, and others have denied them civilian liberties.

L. Sebesta / A New Grammar for a Common Understanding

105

History has taught us, beyond any doubt, that states and societies are not necessarily connected by a symbiotic relationship in the field of security. Ole Weaver, back in 1993, wrote some illuminating suggestions on the topic, when he pointed out the fact that society and states should be two different objects of reflection for security scholars (Hedley Bull had, indeed, already begun pondering over this in the Seventies), and society should be considered a priority target for analysis nowadays. According to Weaver, what is original, and frightening, in the contemporary world, is that more and more social groups feel the need to look for protection and identity outside the state where they live. This protection is sought either in international groups/organizations or in foreign countries – in short, anywhere, but not necessary within “their” own states and, more and more frequently, in opposition to those states. How can the state better protect the security of society (or societies) living in its territory? The state’s ability to grant protection for people living within its borders has apparently increased over time, as Charles Tilly aptly points out after analysing raw data on the likelihood of being murdered in modern societies (Tilly, 1990). This phenomenon has been linked to various elements, including technological progress, the spread of democracy and the consolidation of the rule of law. Indeed, a countertendency has been emerging over a span of time which differs from country to country, whereby, because so many find it impossible to free themselves from underdevelopment and due to processes linked to the so-called globalization, more and more states have been exposed to devastating economic crises, and their citizens struck by “capability deprivation”. This has been the case, for example, for sub-Saharan countries, cited in the official European strategy document of December 2003. Actually, as Amartya Sen noted, development is linked not only to rising GNP per capita, but to "capacitating factors" such as education, sanitary system, civil and political liberties, a lack which, de facto, deprives people of an opportunity for betterment. Therefore, a long-term strategy devoted to improving security in the Mediterranean (and in the global world as such, as we know that security is global too and can rarely be limited to specific geographic areas, while instability has a tendency to spread with no respect for physical or artificial borders) should focus on these issues first of all. Secondly, and no less relevantly, priority should be given to integrating immigrants. This is not just an ethical concern. On the one hand, we live in progressively more polarized societies, were the richest and the poorest are gradually drifting apart. This polarization is not just an American phenomenon; it has been noted in Europe too, were, despite the concentration on structural-fund and development policies favouring under-developed areas, countries such as Portugal and Greece still register increasing differentiation between rich and poor. This polarisation has an obvious impact on the way immigrants are perceived and on the way they can insert themselves into the labour market. On the other hand, the rule of numbers, as Charles Moskos (Moskos, Woods, 1988) aptly showed, says that minorities need to adapt to the rules of the majority if they want to be “accepted”. But the question is: which rules?. What if being accepted by adopting the rules imposed by the majority is perceived by migrants as a denial of their own values which, as Wolfers sees it, are so important to each individual’s perception of one’s own security (and identity)?

106

L. Sebesta / A New Grammar for a Common Understanding

New technologies, the new opportunities to travel and exchange information, give those people access to international networks where, instead of being socialized within the societies where they live, they can be socialized in a broader community, keeping faith with their original identity. This phenomenon can be considered an enrichment. But it can also be turned into a common menace. It is maybe too early to try and articulate any specific prescription from previous theoretical warnings. Without doubt, if the EU wants to mould its external policy on the values it promotes within its borders, as art. I-2 of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe seems to imply, it is necessary to conceptualise a comprehensive and common immigration policy rooted in the assumption that the first and foremost security concerns to be answered are those experienced by people who are "pushed" to migrate. "The Union" says the above-mentioned article "is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail." Let's work on that.

Selected bibliography AA.VV. (ed. Alexandra Barahona de Brito), O Novo Multilateralismo. Perpectiva da União Europeia e do Mercosul. Relatório, Lisboa, Instituto de Estudos Estratégicos e Internacionais, 2001. BECK, Ulrich, Un mondo a rischio, Torino Einaudi, 2002 (original edition Das Schweigein der Wörter. Uber Terror und Krieg, 2002) BULL, Hedley, The Anarchical Society, New York, Columbia University Press, 1977 GUZZINI, Stefano, “The Different Worlds of Realism in International Relations”, in Millenium, vol. 30, n.1, 2001, pp.111-121. MOSKOS, Charles, WOODS, Frank R. (eds), The Military. More than just a job?, Washington DC, Pergamon-Brassey's, 1988. SEN, Amartya, Development as freedom, New York, Alfred A.Knopf, 2000. TILLY, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990, Cambridge, Basil Blackwell, 1990. WAEVER, Ole, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda, London, Pinter, 1993 “A human security doctrine for Europe. The Barcelona report of the study group on Europe’s security capabilities”, Barcelona, 15 September 2004 WOLFERS, Arnold, Discord and Collaboration, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press, 1968 (ed. orig. 1962). "A Secure Europe for a Better World", document proposed by Javier Solana and adopted by the Heads of State and Government at the European Council in Brussels, on the 12th of December 2003, reproduced in full text in www.iss-eu.org. My approach has also been based on the discussions held during two workshops organized in the context of the project “Peace and war in the Mediterranean”, held at the University of Bologna – see the website www.puntoeuropa.it/peaceandwar.

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

107

An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005 Jude WANNISKI Chairman of Polyconomics, United States of America

Abstract: The end of the Cold War represented the victory of capitalist democracies over the socialist model, which meant the extension of USA influence and example. The only superpower faces now the role of leading an unbalanced world, and reducing the chance of conflict with other world powers that might challenge its dominant position. The national security concept implies defining the questions of jurisdiction within its empire and it is somewhat undermined by the Wilsonian idea of self-determination. Although this new world needs a benevolent America, the steps taken by the Bush administration seem to drive the superpower in an opposite direction.

1. An American Empire Part I The end of the Cold War in 1991 marked not only the end of the Soviet experiment in communism, but also the dawn of a unique epoch in the history of civilization. For the first time since all of humankind lived in the Garden of Eden, there is now only one nation alone on earth that clearly sits atop the global pyramid of power. Throughout the history of the world, there have always been several national experiments in political economy underway at the same time. Even at the peak of the Roman Empire’s dominance of its portion of the civilized world, other empires thrived in Asia, Africa and in the western hemisphere. In a quest for an ideal, each was experiencing a variant form of governance, testing separate evolutions of social, cultural and economic organization. In the Pax Britannica of the 19th century, England was the dominant imperial power in its realm, on which the sun never set. Neither the United States nor Russia were under its sway, however. The U.S. was engaged in its own experiment in political economy, while czarist Russia was still attempting to make dynastic capitalism work. These trial-and-error strivings for perfection continue today around the planet, but for the moment the United States alone dominates the entire world’s experimentation in organization. Without exception, every nation-state looks up to the United States as the undisputed leader in history’s long march. Each wishes to know what we have in mind. How shall we proceed to organize ourselves in this new American empire? What is the nature of the new world order that accompanies the first singular leader in all of history? How shall we go about determining the limitations on our powers and the extent of our responsibilities? The questions are different than any we have ever encountered, requiring that our people think about the world differently than we ever have before. There is no historic guidebook to help us at this frontier of boundless

108

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

opportunity. All the rules have been written for a world of adversarial divisions. This means we must think through with extraordinary care the steps we take and the paths we choose. Major missteps can only mean we will lose this pre-eminence and find new power pyramids forming to challenge our leadership. To avoid that possible occurrence, we might first do well to think through where we have been. At the start of the 20th century, the newer democratic structures of the United Kingdom, France and the United States were still in competition with the dynastic forms that had prevailed throughout the history of civilization, chiefly in the AustroHungarian empire, Russia, China and Japan. The First World War essentially ended dynastic rule as a serious competitor to democratic rule. The world was left with three major forms of democracy, according to its broadest definition -- a system that theoretically allows any citizen, including those of the lowest birth, to rise to political leadership of the nation. In other words, leadership emerging from the common pool. Prior to the industrial revolution that began in the 18th century, there were never sufficient resources to educate entire populations from birth in preparation for leadership. The masses permitted themselves to be taxed in order to finance the educations of a small elite, who would be able to guide them through adversity. This pattern was broken with the French Revolution, coincident with popular rebellion against the use of the increased national wealth to finance a leisure class instead of relevant political leadership. As more national wealth was freed to educate a larger share of the population, the selection pool for political leadership was broadened. In the West, religious leadership was drawn from the common pool beginning with Moses, a man of ordinary birth who by a quirk of fate was educated by the dynastic elite to where he could liberate his people. With the birth of Christ, the masses demonstrated that from among them a spiritual messiah could arise without the help of a dynastic elite. From the French Revolution through the 19th century, there was an acceleration of the process, by which the selection pool for leadership positions in all aspects of society was broadened. Ordinary people demonstrated a willingness to die in battle in order to preserve the gains of this expansion of democracy. At the armistice of WWI, the United States found itself atop one of the three power pyramids, representing the nations considered the capitalist democracies. The Soviet Union emerged as the leader of the socialist democracies. Germany emerged as the leader of the fascist democracies. The term democracy seems discordant when linked with socialism and fascism, because we equate democracy with competitive elections in multi-party systems. Yet socialist and fascist democracies draw their leadership from the broad, common pool. The difference is that their competitive elections occur in one-party systems, with individuals advancing up the ranks as they do in corporate democracies. Alas, except where mandatory retirement rules are observed, such corporate democrats who rise to the top tend to stay there until removed by death or force of arms. WWI was supposed to be the war that would end all wars, making the world safe for democracy. The assumption was that democracies would always find ways to settle their national differences with peaceful instruments. The Wilsonian concept of a League of Nations, which embodied that ideal, obviously assumed too much. Our own democracy almost did not survive the differences, north and south, on the slavery question. The three power pyramids were unable to contain their differences and were driven to the use of force, first in World War II, in which the capitalist and socialist powers teamed to defeat the fascist. This left the two remaining power pyramids to compete. The coincident discovery of the atomic bomb in the United States -- led by émigrés

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

109

from the fascist states -- changed the history of warfare, making it impossible for the two remaining power blocs to settle their differences through direct confrontation. In the Cold War, so named to distinguish this new form of global antagonism, lower levels of force were used in the battlefields of Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan as well as in lesser skirmishes in Africa and South America. The Cold War ended with the economic exhaustion of the socialist democracies. Gueorgui Markossov, who was political counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Washington as the Cold War came to an end, believes the single event that most discouraged his superiors in Moscow was their observation that even as the U.S. budget deficit was rising during the Reagan arms build up, taxes had been cut and interest rates were falling. "It seemed like magic," says Markossov, now an official with the International Monetary Fund in Washington. With this triumph, the United States and its style of democratic capitalism now extends its reach, its example and its influence to every corner of the planet, without any apparent threat to its national security. Our ever-vigilant national security watchdogs continue to imagine potential military threats, but in each instance these appear to be relatively trivial residual problems of the Cold War. Having faced down a Soviet menace of 10,000 nuclear warheads, our military leaders are not really worried about a bomb being acquired by a North Korea or Iran or some other straggler from the Cold War chess games. The chief reason Americans admire General Colin Powell, I think, is that he understands these pipsqueak adversaries will not use weapons of mass destruction against us unless we try to annihilate them. It was this wisdom that led Powell to call off the "turkey shoot" in Iraq, refusing to heed the urgings of our most ferocious hawks that we mow down Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, capture Baghdad and destroy Saddam himself. It was enough that we demonstrate a willingness to shed American blood to end Iraq’s aggression against its neighbors, once it became clear that Iraq’s neighbors themselves were prepared to shed the blood of their children to halt the aggression. If President George Bush had rejected General Powell’s advice, we might well have achieved our objectives with small additional loss of American lives. The lesson would have been double-edged, however. Observing the awesome, unforgiving might of the United States, every little country in the world would have been forced to think about acquiring a weapon of mass destruction, with which to threaten an America bent on annihilation of their leaders and armed forces in similar circumstances. Just as we understood in the Cold War that our weakness could be provocative to an adventurous and expansive USSR, every nation-state would be alarmed by an American government that displayed carelessness in its use of force. If our own citizens reacted violently against our federal government, following Waco and Ruby Ridge, why should we expect foreigners to exercise restraint? A bullying Uncle Sam invites private militias at home and defensive secret weapons projects abroad. The concept of empire throughout history has had at its core a central authority’s protection of a diversity of people. Empires were always meant to embrace and harmonize myriad cultures, religions, ethnicities, languages. Smaller and weaker groupings of people willingly submit to a central authority if the advantages of membership outweigh the costs. The just application of a protective cloak is paramount in such relationships and remains so today. The Soviet Union, the "Evil Empire," as President Reagan termed it in 1982, began with an idyllic vision of harmony and diversity, in a communal dictatorship of the proletariat. Its decline and fall resulted from the central authority’s ascending taxation of individual freedoms even as collective benefits steadily declined. On the other hand, since its unconditional

110

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

surrender in August 1945, Japan has been relatively comfortable under the protective cloak of the American imperium. There are inevitable frictions having to do with commercial engagements and burden sharing. At times these seem to strain to the breaking point, especially as our government tests Tokyo’s submissiveness. Invariably, though, the Japanese people to this point have been satisfied with the justice available in our imperium. It was our government that backed down earlier this year in our latest trade confrontation, when Tokyo refused to dictate our terms to their auto industry. In addition, their own democracy is transparent enough to persuade us that there is no hidden intent in Japan to develop weapons of mass destruction. For the American Empire to succeed in producing a Pax Americana in the 21st century, we must first recognize that a posture appropriate in a world at war is inappropriate in a world at peace. In the past half century of Cold War, diplomacy was always an important adjunct to our military might. In reorganizing our thoughts for this unique epoch, it is military might that must play the ancillary role to that of creative diplomacy. Japan, for example, has less reason to bend to our will for military considerations. For that matter, so does the rest of the world. The considerations are now subtler, having to do with the trust we can command in managing the peace. The face the United States presents to the entire world should be smiling, open, generous rather than glowering, dark, and threatening. (Father is in the background, ready to discipline if necessary; Mother is in the foreground, offering to teach.) House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is struggling to find his way in this direction, refers to himself as a "cheap hawk." Jack Kemp, another global optimist, says he is a "heavily armed dove." Yet neither has really broken from the Cold War perspective that has shaped their political careers. They are still quick to rattle sabers and the B-2 flying brontosaurus. This widespread perspective is not satisfied that U.S. spending on national defense is greater than the rest of the world combined. Old habits die hard. Part II Of the geopolitical intellectuals who have been pondering American foreign policy from this new, unipolar perspective, the most interesting is Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy, the quarterly published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In its spring 1995 issue, Maynes contributed "Rethinking Intervention," an important assessment of American power and how little of it we can make use of now that we are king of the hill. Where the Gulf War led to the surmise that we could use our unchallenged might to stamp out brush fires around the globe, the experience since has been the opposite: As advanced countries have repeatedly learned, in a struggle between the technically sophisticated and unsophisticated, there is often a mismatch in political determination just as large as there is in technical capability. The West in general has a high capacity to kill but a low capacity to die. The equation is often reversed among the targets of the West’s wrath. America learned about the differences between capacity and determination in Vietnam, the French learned in Algeria, and the Russians in Afghanistan. And that is the overlooked lesson of U.S. involvement in Somalia. The task the United States set for itself was not infeasible, but the Clinton administration grossly underestimated the price others were willing to pay to stop the U.S. Marines. CIA officials privately concede that the U.S. military

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

111

may have killed between 7,000 and 10,000 Somalis during the engagement. America lost only 34 soldiers. Notwithstanding that extraordinary disparity, the decision was to withdraw. In his 1978 book, Shattered Peace, the best single volume on the origins of the Cold War, Daniel Yergin recounted how little our possession of the atomic bomb counted as a diplomatic weight in our post-war negotiations with the Soviets, inasmuch as they knew we could not threaten its use over mere political disagreements. The wartime alliance between the U.S. and USSR unraveled, he demonstrates, according to this axiomatic observation: In a system of independent states, all nations live rather dangerously. Therefore, the reduction of dangers becomes a nation’s objective in international politics. A country will take actions and pursue policies that it considers defensive, but which appear ominous, if not threatening, to rivals. And so a dialectic of confrontation develops. Yergin’s book is most useful in understanding how easy it might be to promote a hostile relationship with China, which had been an ally in the last years of the Cold War with the USSR. If there is any single nation state that has the capacity to break loose from a Pax Americana and assemble a new hostile power pyramid, it is China. It is up to the United States to prevent that from happening, but neither U.S. political party has put forth the kind of creative diplomacy required. It will take an American foreign policy that the Chinese people can confidently see is one that truly wishes them well. By that we should understand that there are optimists and pessimists in Beijing, as there are in every national capital including ours. If we cause China’s optimists to be defeated in their internal debates with the pessimists who argue that Uncle Sam wishes them ill, we will have turned China into a perpetual adversary. Joseph W. Nye, Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration and soon to be director of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, earlier this year noted the debate between those who wish "constructive engagement" with China and those who propose "containment." He argued for the former: "If you treat China as an enemy, China will become an enemy. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have a policy of containment toward China now, you’ve written off the chance [that China won’t become an enemy]." If Beijing believes the world’s superpower is actively preparing for an adversarial relationship, it of course has no choice but to prepare for that eventuality itself. It is not sufficient for Washington to insist that China "behave itself" before we treat it with generosity of spirit. We are in the most powerful, secure position of any nation in the history of the world. If we cannot now be patient and understanding of those who were on the losing side of history’s great experiment with communism, we never will be. On the central issue of Beijing’s relationship with Taiwan, it seems obvious that it is only a matter of time before there is reunification, on terms acceptable to both. The United States should allow that process the widest possible latitude, intervening only when asked by one party to assist in a positive diplomacy with the other party. The same attitude should apply to the rest of the world. In the Cold War chess game of Great Powers, there were pawns on both sides that were either captured or sacrificed. These populations are now scattered helplessly around the world, still not quite sure what hit them. They include most of the countries of the developing world

112

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

which tried to stay out of the crossfire, but also those nation-states that really had little choice but to choose sides for the sake of survival. This group includes North Korea, Libya, Iraq and Iran, Cuba and fractured Yugoslavia. The people of each wish to have the Cold War behind them too, as long as it does not require their abject humiliation. We should treat them all as we did the Japanese stragglers on the Pacific islands, who surrendered some years after the armistice, only when they saw it was honorable to do so. In this spirit, we should consider declaring a general amnesty, a clean slate, which would initially involve lifting all the economic embargoes we have in place. In this fresh start, we should count all nations most favored, as a mother does all of her children. It would be up to each to respond as they might. A supreme act of confidence and generosity of this kind could easily unlock parallel impulses in every community on earth. With a clean slate, our global political leadership is immediately liberated from the complex task of settling old scores that are still tied to the Cold War alliances. Many of us suspect that the crisis in the old Yugoslav federation has more to do with settling old scores with the Russians, our adversaries in Afghanistan, and the Muslims, our allies in that Cold War battle, than with the Wilsonian concept of self-determination. Our indecisiveness whether to intervene is simply a reflection of this ambiguity among our political leaders. If the Serbs were truly the aggressors, the Bosnian Muslims would have little trouble rallying the world to their cause, in a repeat of the alliance assembled against Iraq in the Gulf War. Part III A central task of the members of this American Empire, which of course includes every nation on earth, is to sort out the rules of intervention in the new world order. It is nothing more than a matter of deciding questions of jurisdiction. We know within our own United States that it makes little sense to send the Marines into Manhattan to settle a family feud. The neighbors have first jurisdiction, then the precinct police, then the borough police, the state police, the national guard, and finally, when all else fails, the federal armed forces. If we had kept these jurisdictional lines clear, Waco and Ruby Ridge might not have happened. In the Gulf War, there was not support for U.S. intervention until Kuwait’s neighbors -- particularly Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- roused themselves and cited an Iraqi aggression that seemed sure to spread. Even then, President Bush carefully rounded up our allies in Europe, asked for congressional approval, and gave Saddam one last chance to withdraw before he pulled the trigger. The jurisdiction made sense and the local police made it clear they could not contain the outlaw aggressor. It thus seemed our national security was sufficiently at stake to warrant deployment of troops and treasure. In writing of the "national security" concept as it emerged in WWII, Yergin observed that it is "not a given, not a fact, but a perception, a state of mind." And what characterizes the concept of national security? It postulates the interrelatedness of so many different political, economic, and military factors that developments halfway around the globe are seen to have automatic and direct impact on America’s core interests. Virtually every development in the world is perceived to be potentially crucial. An adverse turn of events anywhere endangers the United States. Problems in foreign relations are viewed as urgent and immediate threats. Thus, desirable foreign policy goals are translated into issues of national survival, and the range of threats becomes limitless. The doctrine is characterized by expansiveness, a

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

113

tendency to push the subjective boundaries of security outward to more and more areas, to encompass more and more geography and more and more problems. It demands that the country assume a posture of military preparedness; the nation must be on permanent alert. There was a new emphasis on technology and armed force. Consequent institutional changes occurred. All of this leads to a paradox: the growth of American power did not lead to a greater sense of assuredness, but to an enlargement of the range of perceived threats that must urgently be confronted. In the Balkans, neither American jurisdiction nor its national security is at all obvious. The neighbors cannot even agree that Serbia committed aggression against Bosnia. Indeed, in 1991, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III explicitly labeled the dispute a civil war, citing a parallel with our own, in which President Abraham Lincoln refused to recognize the right of the Confederate States to self-determination. Democracy will not work if ethnic or religious minorities can opt out of a democratic federation when it becomes inconvenient to stick around. The Wilsonian idea of selfdetermination is antithetical to that of Lincoln, which requires a family to debate an issue until it is worked out instead of splintering into smaller and smaller nation-states. In an unpublished monograph written in 1992, Nationalism and the State, Reuven Brenner of McGill University in Montreal noted the trouble the Wilsonian idea has caused, having "found its way into the United Nation’s 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law, with a predictable unsatisfactory distinction between the right of self-determination and the right of secession." According to Brenner, the idea originally took hold in the Wilson administration for two reasons. First, was the hope that "the new nation-states emerging from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire would counter-balance the German nation-state." Second, was the hope that "nationalism as an idea of linking people, establishing loyalty and achieving international recognition of political legitimacy, would prove to be a strong competitor to the communist doctrine. After all, the latter also sought to link people, demand their loyalty, and obtain political legitimacy -- but was based on the notion that allegiance to social classes should dominate those of ethnicity, religion, language, culture." The internationally recognized principle may even have made things worse by raising expectations of any group which had any grievances, and who could now appeal in the name of "self-determination" to the new Great Powers (which, when it was in their interests, were happy to comply). Such expectations could only start conflicts or prevent them from being settled more quickly. Events leading to World War I showed how this happened in the past. [Bosnia] shows how this same process is happening before our eyes. As much as the GOP congressional leadership would love to intervene in Bosnia, to reward the Muslims and punish the Serbs, it has been correct for President Bill Clinton to hesitate. To intervene without jurisdiction makes the United States the aggressor, "Americanizing" the war, as President Clinton, the British, the French and the Russians have understood. As in the dispute between China and Taiwan, a logical approach to the strife in the Balkans is to stand by until we are asked to intervene by one party or the other to offer our diplomatic skills. In the July 31 National Review, former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher offered a brief essay on "Why America Must Remain Number One." Her fears are of a vague Orwellian future if the United States does not remain the dominant power atop the global power pyramid, with the dark influences of a future "Europe" leading the way, "a fully fledged state with its own flag, anthem, army, parliament, government, currency, and eventually, one supposes, people. I am not alone in warning that this

114

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

could stimulate both the United States and Japan to safeguard themselves by forming similar protectionist empires. The world might then drift toward an Orwellian future of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia -- three mercantilist world empires on increasingly hostile terms." Well, yes, but the arguments play against contrived fears, rather than genuine opportunities. Implicit in Lady Thatcher’s comments, after all, is a British desire to guide the United States in its new imperial role, from its long experience in that occupation. She would have us lead an Atlantic superbloc, remaining dominant over this brooding, restless "Europe," which means keeping our "legions" stationed there "for the foreseeable future." Thus, if we contain Europe with London’s help, "America remains the dominant partner in a united West, [and] then the West can continue to be the dominant power in the world as a whole." The West will contain the East. Somehow, this kind of imperial style seems much more regal and condescending than what an American imperium should be contemplating. At one time I thought it might take another century or so for the world’s political leaders to work out questions of jurisdiction in this new unipolar world. However, the masses of ordinary people seem to be doing it themselves, always pushing in the direction of orderly and logical spheres of influence and responsibility. The Great Powers used to work at balancing power, but the drive of ordinary people to improve upon civilization inevitably overwhelmed the dynastic leaders who played at these great games. The great opportunity in this new beginning of history rests with the ability of our country to do the balancing with wisdom and magnanimity, with democratic consultation rather than noble condescension. The United States, after all, is unique itself in the family of nations. It is the only nation that began as a state, one that brought forth a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal. The success of this experiment, which has drawn from a leadership pool that contains the children of every nation on earth, is now in a position to teach and guide the world at large. It is a benevolent American Empire that is now our responsibility, one that should hold back its threats of military might in order to influence by example.

2. The Geopolitics of 2005 As much as I would like to be upbeat about the course of the world in the coming year, the problems are such that even wishful thinking doesn’t seem to work. It’s not that the problems are insurmountable, but that the political community seems determined to look for solutions in the wrong places. If I were President, here is how I would fix the world: 1. Fix the dollar to gold at $400 oz. Not all geopolitical problems are the result of economic errors, but correcting this major error would immediately make all the geopolitical problems easier to deal with. Even if the Fed fixed at the current price, $444 oz, it would take several years at relatively low rates of inflation for the general price level to equilibrate. China might be able to absorb the implied inflation without changing its dollar peg if the market understood the Fed would maintain the price at this relatively high level. One result: The U.S. currentaccount deficit would fade because the rest of the world has more unrealized

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

115

potential than we do, which means they would become net importers of capital and the U.S. would become a net exporter. 2. I’d announce that U.S. troops will be completely out of Iraq before the end of 2005 and that it will be up to the Iraqi people to sort out their political differences. I’d even make it clear the invasion was unnecessary because there was, after all, no threat to the region from Saddam Hussein. I’d offer to stay just to secure the border against further infiltration by the Iranians, who are now entering Iraq in droves and getting I.D. cards so they can vote in the January elections. Iraqi nationalists, wary of the Iranians, would like this gesture while we pull out. 3. As soon as the Palestinians elect a new president in January, I would invite him and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Camp David to negotiate a final settlement, reviving the stated goal of a two-state solution in 2005. The outlines of a final settlement are well known -- including shared sovereignty of Jerusalem. The only missing ingredient is an American willingness to give Israel a push. 4. I’d make it clear to Ukraine’s new president Yushchenko that Washington’s relationship with Moscow is more important than its relationship with Kiev, and not to expect overt or covert moves to further undermine Vladimir Putin’s authority in what should be a strategic partnership in the region. 5. I’d make it clear to Beijing that if it expends its political capital in working out a modus vivendi with North Korea over the nuclear issue, one that brought it back under the auspices of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, I’d be content to let bygones be bygones with Pyongyang and proceed to normalization. 6. I’d make it clear to Tehran that as long as it ratified the new protocol to the NPT, which authorizes the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct intrusive inspections at sites suspected of treaty violations, we could also proceed to normalization of diplomatic relationships. I’d ask Britain, France and Germany to assist in this diplomatic initiative. There are a few other odds and ends I would take care of before getting too far into the new year, mostly having to do with getting some credible supply-siders into policy positions involving economic policies in Africa and Latin America. The top six moves I’d make, though, would not take much effort at all and the world would soon be celebrating. Instead, here’s how things appear to be headed: 1. The Fed will stick to its "measured pace" of dollar mismanagement, building in further domestic inflation and causing commercial dislocations with all our trading partners as the dollar weakens further. 2. Iraq will disintegrate into civil war, with President Bush assured by his neo-con advisors that the best possible outcome will be a three-state solution. (We note Henry Kissinger already buying into this line.) The Kurds will get the northern oilfields, the Shi’ite majority the southern oilfields, and the Sunni Muslims will get an empty bag. Israel might be happy, assured of an oil supply from the Kurds, but it’s hard to see how this outcome would benefit U.S. security interests. Iran would get from Iraq what it couldn’t in its 8-year war with Saddam.

116

J. Wanniski / An American Empire and the Geopolitics of 2005

3. The superficial progress we see now with Sharon’s baby steps in the Gaza Strip will be stretched out again and again, with no push at all from the Bush administration. Again, we see Kissinger, now part of the neo-con pack that has always opposed a Palestinian state, arguing against "imposing" a peace, or even a concept of a peace. With no real movement toward resolution, Osama bin Laden will be in the driver’s seat and the budget will double for Homeland Security. 4. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an "expert" on Russia, will persuade the President to be "even-handed" in his relationship with Yushchenko and Putin, which of course further drives a wedge between Kiev and Moscow and forces Putin to think of Washington as a strategic adversary. A Cool War for starters. 5. North Korea could easily have been reeled in by Colin Powell at the start of the Bush administration and is still ripe for a genuine diplomatic initiative. Instead the White House has shown no interest in making the kinds of personnel changes that would enable that to happen. Pyongyang will retreat into deeper paranoia and Beijing will assume the U.S. has firmly decided to play the imperial card in the Far East, and will further boost defense spending. More Cool War. 6. The mullahs of Iran, willing to give the civilian/military reformers a shot at getting along with the Great Satan, will have taken all the guff they can from the U.S. State Department. They will seriously consider pulling out of the NPT, since the U.S. refuses to permit it to have the rights accorded a signatory anyway. And with no IAEA to make sure they don’t have the means to acquire a nuke, they will acquire a nuke, and Israel will conclude it has to bomb the suspected Iranian sites.

Part V Emerging Security Threats in the Region

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

119

Hizballah and the War on Terror Ely KARMON1 Senior Researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), Israel

Abstract: Adding to permanent tensions in the Middle East, the Hizballah movement and its strategy of international terrorism provide the Islamic insurrection in the Palestinian territories with the means to its political objectives. Since September 11th 2001, this organization has taken the lead in the fight against Israel and its allies, particularly the U.S.A. Recent events have galvanised Hizballah towards the intensification of its violent strategy, gathering support in other Islamic organisations outside its main area of action.

Introduction Hizballah is an odd religious and political movement: it was born of terrorism in the 1980s, developed guerrilla warfare capabilities in the 1990s, and, by the beginning of the new millennium, had matured into an important Middle East strategic player, capable of influencing the course of peace and war in the region. At the organizational level, Hizballah has evolved significantly: from a loose, mysterious umbrella group under the guidance of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran; to a movement collectively led by various shaykhs and warlords; to a well-knit, disciplined organization under the guidance of its own charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Some analysts have claimed that Hizballah's focus lies primarily on the liberation of occupied Lebanese lands, and secondarily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to one such analyst, Hizballah "has no operational interests, other than diplomatic, beyond these spheres. The party may indeed have a global reach, but for almost 2 decades that reach has not produced credible threats outside the LebanonIsrael theater."2 This view depicts the organization as simply one of many "Islamic national liberation movements," which have "little interest in operations outside their immediate environment."3 Many analysts also believed that Hizballah 's participation in the 1992 Lebanese parliamentary elections, along with changes in the posture of Iran and Syria, its two principal state sponsors,4 would transform the organization into a political party. Contrary to these assessments, however, Hizballah continued to use international terrorism as a strategic tool for advancing its goals, albeit more cautiously and 1 This chapter was extracted from KARMON, Ely, “Fight on all Fronts: Hizballah, the War on Terror, and the War in Iraq”, The Washington Institute Police Focus, n.º 46, December 2003. pp. 1-3 and 22-29. 2 HAJJAR, Sami, Hizballah: Terrorism, National Liberation, or Menace? (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002), p. 35. Available online : (www.carlisle.arrny.mil/ssi/pubs/2002/hizbala/hizbala.htm). 3 Ibid., p. 36. 4 At the time, Iran was beginning to focus on various internal issues, while Syria was pursuing the peace process with Israel.

120

E. Karmon / Hizballah and the War on Terror

clandestinely. The organization's role in major terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires (in 1992 and 1994) and against the Khobar Towers U.S. military complex in Saudi Arabia (1996) testify to this fact. Hizballah regards terrorism not only as a legitimate military strategy, but also as a religious duty, part of a "global jihad." It sees itself as the vanguard of the world Islamist movement, with an obligation to lead by example and encourage weaker groups.5 Hence, even its efforts to achieve local goals, such as the establishment of Islamic rule in Lebanon, have taken on an international dimension. The various key developments that have occurred in the region since 2000 have only strengthened Hizballah and enhanced its reputation among sympathizers as a leading actor in the fight against Israel, the United States, and other enemies of Islam. These events have also renewed the organization's commitment to terrorism. In particular, following Israel's May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hizballah's leaders became convinced that they could achieve their Islamist goals by actively supporting a Palestinian terrorist campaign against Israel and by conducting their own attrition attacks from the north, a strategy supported by Iran and Syria. Subsequent developments, including the Palestinian intifada, the post-September 11 war on terror, and the war in Iraq, have led Hizballah to escalate this strategy, reinforcing the organization's status as a threat to international peace. The chapters that follow outline Hizballah's record of international activity over the past two decades and offer a detailed assessment of the organization's response to developments since 2000. Of particular interest is the manner in which Hizballah has attempted to exploit these developments without altering its long-standing ideology, strategic approach, or international scope.

1. Hizballah and the War on Terror The events of September 11 2001 played a major role in galvanizing Hizballah to intensify its strategy and violent activities. The group's spiritual leader, Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, acknowledged that "the stage after September 11 is similar to a major earthquake" and that "Islam is living a crisis that it never witnessed in all of its history."6 Indeed, the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, the subsequent U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, and the ensuing "war on terror" all threatened to rob Hizballah of the strategic gains it had made following the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Bush administration's post-September 11 policies also raised the possibility that both Hizballah and its state sponsors might eventually be targeted in a continuing campaign against the "axis of evil”. In response, the organization decided 5 Even al-Qaeda has readily acknowledged Hizballah's importance to the global jihad movement. For example, in an audiotape released in February 2003, Osama bin Laden cited Hizballah's 1983 suicide bombing of the U .S. Marine barracks in Beirut as the first "American defeat" at the hands of Islamist radicals. He also mentioned the "explosion in Khobar," emphasizing that it compelled U .S. forces "to evacuate their big headquarters from the cities to bases in the desert." See PAZ, Reuven, "Global Jihad and the Sense of Crisis: Al-Qaedah's Other Front," Occasional Papers vol. 1, no .4 (Project for the Research of Islamist Movements [PRISM], March 2003) .Available online (www.e-prism.org/pages/ 4/index.htm). 6 "His Eminence Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah's Reading of the Developments in the Region, Praising 'Iranian Rationality' and Assurance about Hizbullah's Fate," from Fadlallah's official website (available at www.bayynat.org.lb/www/english/EventsCom/mustakbal.htm). The article summarizes undated interviews with Fadlallah conducted by Qassern Qassir for the Beirut-based al-Mustaqbal newspaper.

E. Karmon / Hizballah and the War on Terror

121

to escalate both its attacks on Israel and its support of the Palestinian intifada, primarily as a means of obstructing U.S. action in the region and concentrating international attention on the Palestinian arena.

2. From September 11 to Afghanistan In the days following the September 11 attacks, a cautious Fadlallah declared that "no religion justifies such action" and that the suicide terrorists did not die as part of a holy war.7 Similarly, Hizballah released an official message expressing regret for "the loss of innocent lives”8. At the same time, however, the organization claimed that the United States had brought "this level of hate" upon itself because of its "oppressive" policies. Hizballah also warned Washington against taking advantage of the attacks in order "to practice all sorts of aggression and terrorism”.9 Despite these statements, Hizballah's leaders appeared reassured by the U.S. approach during the first weeks after September 11. The Bush administration, eager to find allies in its fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, courted both Iran and Syria despite their presence on the State Department's list of countries supporting terrorism. Washington also reportedly proposed to acknowledge Hizballah's social and political role and "forget" the past "attacks on American citizens, soldiers, and interests ...if the party confined its activity to domestic work ...stopped attacks in Shebaa Fanns, and stopped its support for the Palestinian intifada”.10 Lebanese sources even claimed that U.S. representatives had asked to meet with Hizballah leaders, but were rebuffed. Hizballah's attitude and language became much more aggressive after the United States began its campaign in Afghanistan. U.S. relations with Iran became more strained, and the State Department placed Hizballah on its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. Washington also designated three of the organization's most senior operatives (including the infamous Imad Mughniyeh) as most-wanted terrorists. In response to these and other measures, Fadlallah accused the United States of engaging in "a precautionary offensive to stop Hizballah from supporting the Palestinian intifada and from resuming its military operations against the enemy."11 Hizballah leaders took a self-confident, accusatory, and threatening stance against Washington, declaring their resolve "not to be afraid [of] the American campaign”. 12 Hassan Nasrallah warned the United States that it would "make a big mistake if it chooses our field for its forthcoming war against terrorism, because all Arab and Muslim countries support the

7 FISK, Robert, "Taliban Find They Have Few Muslim Friends," Independent (London), September 18 2001. 8 KARAM, Zeina, "Hezbollah Regrets Lives Lost in Terror Attacks, but Blames U.S. Policies," Associated Press, September 16 2001. 9 Ibid. 10 NASIF, Nicholas, "Writer Views Resistance 'Crisis' for Lebanon, Syria; Notes Hizballah 'Mistakes,"' alNahar (Beirut), December 27 2001, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East and South Asia (FBIS-NES-2001- 1230), December 30 2001. 11 See note 1. 12 AL-AMIN, Ibrahirn, "Article on Hizballah's Reaction to Inclusion in U.S. Terror List," al-Safir (Beirut), November 14 2001, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East and South Asia (FBIS-NES-20011114), November 14 2001.

122

E. Karmon / Hizballah and the War on Terror

resistance and the intifadah”.13 He pointed out that "the weapon of martyrdom" – the suicide bomber – was Hizballah 's most potent asset, one that could be used to "defeat the enemy and terrify it in its heart”. Hizballah's self-assurance was based on the active support of Syria and Iran as well as the Lebanese government's firm commitment to the organization's stance against Israel. Beirut denied that Hizballah's influence extended beyond Lebanese territory and refused to freeze the organization's financial assets, claiming that it was merely a local political party whose primary goal was resistance against the Israeli occupation. Even Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa declared that U.S. policy toward Hizballah was not binding on any Arab country.14

3. Escalating the Intifada As discussed previously, Hizballah increased its activity in the Israeli-Palestinian arena following the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, largely in order to achieve a strategic breakthrough and realize its goals more quickly. This activity took two forms: a war of attrition against Israel from the north (under a deterrent umbrella of long-range rockets and missiles), and increased support to, and operational involvement in, the Palestinian intifada. Hizballah hoped that this double pressure would break the resolve of the Israeli people and government, leading to the dissolution of the "Zionist entity”. After the fumes of Ground Zero dissipated and al-Qaeda and the Taliban were routed in Afghanistan, it became clear that the United States was feverishly preparing the next stage of its global war on terror and intensifying its stance against rogue regimes hungry for weapons of mass destruction. Growing evidence of an impending military campaign against Iraq showed Hizballah, Iran, and Syria that they might be targeted more quickly than expected. Consequently, Hizballah sought a strategy that would obstruct the continuation of the war on terror and the advance of U.S. forces close to its borders, thus impeding developments that could place it and its sponsors under enormous diplomatic, economic, and military pressure. Hizballah 's leaders quickly decided that further escalation of the intifada would be more effective than wearing Israel down through gradual attrition. From their perspective, the last hope of preventing U.S. action against them was to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a crisis point that threatened regional stability. This assessment was reinforced by the reactions of the various players in the Middle Eastern drama: • Arab regimes were frightened that the bloody events in Palestine, as transmitted by al Jazeera and other media outlets, would inflame the Arab masses and lead to political instability • Al-Qaeda began to put more emphasis on pro-Palestinian slogans and activities, particularly in leaked videos of Osama bin Laden and his deputies • Israeli leaders publicly declared that they would strive to avoid a "second front" at all costs 13 "Hizballah Chief: U.S. Makes 'Big Mistake' If It Chooses Mideast for Its War," al-Safir (Beirut), November 27 2001, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Near East and South Asia (FBIS-NES-20011127), November 27 2001. 14 Untitled report from the Middle East News Agency, November 21 2001.

E. Karmon / Hizballah and the War on Terror

•

123

The Bush administration asked Israel, Arab leaders, and European allies to help keep the Israeli-Palestinian arena quiet, at least until the slowly mounting Iraq crisis was resolved.

From the outset, Hizballah seemed quite assured that its strategy was working. The situation in the West Bank and Gaza steadily deteriorated as militants from Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine became increasingly involved in terrorist activity alongside suicide bombers from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Israel was unable to find an operational solution to this growing threat. In fact, under the constraints of U.S. regional interests and international pressures, the Israeli government initially hesitated to respond in force to escalating Palestinian violence. Hizballah also stepped up its military support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and various Palestinian factions via weapons smuggling. For example, the organization was involved in the Iranian attempt to transport fifty tons of weaponry to the PA on board the Karine-A, a ship captured by Israeli Navy commandos in the Red Sea in January 2002. Had these weapons reached their intended recipients, they would have "dramatically ...widened the scope of terror against [Israel] for a long time”.15 Around this same time, Hizballah also attempted to smuggle Katyusha rockets to the Palestinians through Jordan.16 From Hizballah and Iran's point of view, even the Karine-A fiasco had some positive consequences. The ensuing crisis between the Bush administration and the PA, along with the resultant marginalization of Yasir Arafat, served to strengthen Hamas, PIJ, and the more radical elements in Fatah and Tanzim. These developments also removed the risk of Israel and Arafat reaching any sort of peace agreement.

4. Cooperation with al-Qaeda? In January 2002, U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld claimed that Tehran had helped al-Qaeda and Taliban members escape from Afghanistan through Iranian territory. Soon thereafter, media reports claimed that a senior al-Qaeda operative had met with Hizballah leaders and discussed relocating al-Qaeda's base of operations to Lebanon.17 Both Nasrallah and Fadlallah deny having any sort of links with al-Qaeda. According to Fadlallah, Hizballah's Shiite goals are different from those of al-Qaeda, a radical Sunni organization that considers Shiites "a renegade faction of Islam”.18 Nevertheless, cooperation between Hizballah and al-Qaeda is quite feasible. Leaders from both groups share links from their past stays in Sudan, a country that has harboured members of many different terrorist organizations over the years. For example, Ali Mohamed, a former Green Beret sergeant and one of several individuals indicted in connection with the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, testified that he had been sent to Sudan between 1991 and 1993 to organize a meeting 15

O'SULLIVAN, Arieh et al., "'No Doubt Arms Ship Is PA's,"' Jerusalem Post, January 6 2002. Nasrallah proudly declared that the Palestinians had requested the weapons and that Hizballah considered it a religious duty to provide them as a strategic deterrent against superior Israeli military power. Hassan Nasrallah, interview by Hiyarn Shahud, al-Majallah (London), March 24-30 2002. 17 EVANS, Michael, "Al-Qaeda in Secret Talks with Lebanon Terror Group," Times (London), February 1 2002. 18 DAKROUB, Hussein, "Muslirn Cleric Rules Out Al-Qaida-Hezbollah Partnership," Associated Press, July 7 2002. 16

124

E. Karmon / Hizballah and the War on Terror

between bin Laden and senior Hizballah operative Imad Mughniyeh. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss "their common goal of forcing the United States to withdraw from the Middle East”.19 Mohamed also added "authority to earlier reports that Iran's Ministry of Information and Security had called a terrorist conclave in Tehran in 1996 that included [Mughniyeh] and a senior aide to [bin Laden]". Indeed, Mohamed's testimony served as "the first credible, public evidence not only that [Mughniyeh] and [bin Laden] have been collaborating, but that Iran has been backing them”. In addition, Hizballah opened its training camps in Lebanon to members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) of Algeria, two terrorist organizations that have provided al-Qaeda with some of its most important operatives. For example, according to one of the GIA's founders, the group at one point sent two teams to receive training in such camps.20 On the ideological front, Hizballah leaders have often belied their claims of sectarian differences with al-Qaeda by calling for cooperation between Shiites and Sunnis, particularly in light of recent developments in the region. In March 2002, Fadlallah stated the following: I call upon the Muslim Religious Scholars to consolidate Muslim unity among the two major sects of Sunni and Shiite. We should transform the political and jihad unifying positions into cultural and ideological meeting places, the Muslim religious scholars must wage a campaign to call for Islamic unity on all public occasions, and concentrate on the common issues that have to do with Muslims' fate, especially [now] that the arrogant powers have put both Muslim sects of Sunni and Shiite in the same category as being part of 'the axis of evil'.21 In November 2002, Nasrallah warned of "the great dangers that are threatening our region and nation at this stage", particularly the "American-Zionist project" to redraw the region's "political map”.22 Given these factors, he argued, "We are coming across a time in which the Moslems, all Moslems, especially the Shiite and Sunnite, need to unify and cooperate, while each one may maintain his ideological thoughts, concepts, and religious matters. They all must cooperate in order to restore al Quds and defend the Palestinian people, their religion, and their prophet Muhammad". In this framework, it is interesting to note the formation in Lebanon of a new movement, "Muslims without Borders". The organization, which was created in August 2003 after a series of consultations between nineteen Islamic movements and groups in Lebanon, considers itself "another point of view on Islamic reform". It announced its official birth "at a political-religious festival at which a number of clerics and political figures spoke about 'Islamic unity'”. The makeup of Muslims without Borders "suggests that it is a type of solidarity movement between a team from the Islamic 19 BEARDEN, Milt, and JOHNSON, Larry, "A Glimpse at the Alliances of Terror," New York Times, November 7 2000. 20 CHIKHI, Ornar, interview, al-Majallah (London),January 14-20,2001. 21 "Islamic Unity and Sectarian Differences", from the "Our Stand This Week" section of Shaykh Mohamrned Hussein Fadlallah 's website, March 26 2002. Available online (www. bayynat.org.lb/www / english/ standthisweek/ standI20123.htm). 22 NASRALLAH, Hassan "Word of Secretary General of Hizbullah His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on the International Day for al Quds”, November 29 2002. Available online (www.nasrallah.net/english/hassan/ khitabat/khitabat069.htm).

E. Karmon / Hizballah and the War on Terror

125

Group (Al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah) and the Islamic Unification Movement in cooperation with (Sunni) religious figures and Hizballah". The movement claims that "it is moderate, and does not promote fanatical or outmoded ideas". At its inaugural "festival", however, the imam of the Jerusalem Mosque in southern Sidon asked the audience, "Is it acceptable for anyone to despise Hizballah's sacrifices simply because it is Shiite? And is it acceptable for us to despise Usama Bin Laden because Saudi Arabia has stripped him of his Saudi citizenship?".23

23 18. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, World News Connection, "Media Debut in the Absence of 'Al-Jama'ah al- Islamiyah' and .Dar al-Fatwa': Muslims without BordersIslamic Moderation Which Repudiates Violence", translation of an untitled, unattributed report that originally appeared in al-Sa.fir (Beirut), August 11,2003.

126

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Strategic Defense Initiative: Distance from Disorder is the Key to Winning the Terror War William S. LIND Director of the Centre for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C., United States of America

Abastract: The United States faces a world in which the Westphalia order is no longer observed; the state is vulnerable, suffering from a legitimacy crisis, which can only be overcome by a policy that distances it from centres of disorder and moves it closer to centres of order. The actors of this new scenario are not only states, but also ideological movements. As Islam can be a source of disorder, it is advisable to isolate oneself from it (and let it fold back on itself). The advisable grand strategy should be a military strategic defensive coupled with a powerful strategic and tactical counter-offensive; the offensive strategy, undertaken by the current Administration, is a mistake. Instead of a closed political system and a model of multiculturalism within the USA, there should be a pursuit of an open political system and Americanization should be encouraged in order to prevent domestic chaos.

In the cacophony of an election year, one matter of prime importance seemed to be agreed by all parties: in the so-called War on Terror, America must remain on the offensive. Immediately before George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, the White House released as an excerpt, “America is on the offensive against the terrorists.” Speaking to the Congress of Tomorrow in Philadelphia later the same month, Bush said, “No question, we will win the war on terror by staying on the offensive. This administration and this leadership is committed to making sure we stay on the offensive against the terrorists.” He told the American Legion, “We’re on the offensive against terror, and we will stay on the offensive against terror.” Following the Madrid railway bombings, the Washington Post reported, “Bush’s aides said he began talking to other world leaders about his determination to remain on the offensive in the war on terrorism.” It sounded as if the ghost of von Schlieffen prowled the halls of the Bush White House. The offensive strategic orientation of John Kerry was subtler but present nonetheless. In March 2004, speaking to the International Association of Firefighters, Kerry said, “I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the War on Terror; I believe he’s done too little.” And in a speech at Drake University in December 2003, where he laid out a broad foreign-policy vision, Kerry said, “From the Battle of Belleau Wood to the Battle of the Bulge, from Korea to Kosovo, the story of the last century is of an America that accepted the heavy responsibility of its historic obligation—to serve as not just a beacon of hope, but to work with allies across the world to defend and extend the frontiers of freedom…To provide responsible leadership, we need ... a bold, progressive internationalism—backed by undoubted military might—that commits

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

127

America to lead in the cause of human liberty and prosperity.” This is strong Wilsonianism, which by its nature puts America on the strategic offensive. There is little doubt that “being on the offensive” sounded good to most voters. But if the objective is to design a strategy that brings victory in the War on Terror, a different approach may have much to recommend it. That oft-quoted if seldom read Prussian, Carl von Clausewitz, believed that the defensive was the stronger form of war. Early in his book On War (a German friend has a first edition; he notes, “It is in perfect condition. It was in a regimental library, so it was never touched.”), Clausewitz writes, “defense is simply the stronger form of war, the one that makes the enemy’s defeat more certain … We maintain unequivocally that the form of warfare that we call defense not only offers greater probability of victory than attack, but that its victories can attain the same proportions and results.” In a direct swipe at most of what is being said and written at present, he perorates, “So in order to state the relationship precisely, we must say that the defensive form of warfare is intrinsically stronger than the offensive [emphasis in original]. This is the point that we have been trying to make, for although it is implicit in the nature of the matter and experience has confirmed it again and again, it is at odds with prevalent opinion, which proves how ideas can be confused by superficial writers.” And, perhaps, by candidates for high political office. What might a defensive strategy in America’s War on Terror look like? Before we can approach that question, we must address two other points. First, the threat America faces is not merely terrorism, which is only a technique. The threat is Fourth Generation warfare, which is a vastly broader phenomenon. Fourth Generation war marks the greatest dialectically qualitative change in the conduct of war since the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years War in 1648. It has three central characteristics: • The loss of the state’s monopoly on war and on the first loyalty of its citizens and the rise of non-state entities that command people’s primary loyalty and that wage war. These entities may be gangs, religions, races and ethnic groups within races, localities, tribes, business enterprises, ideologies—the variety is almost limitless; • A return to a world of cultures, not merely states, in conflict; and • The manifestation of both developments—the decline of the state and the rise of alternate, often cultural, primary loyalties—not only “over there,” but in America itself. Second, no state armed forces know how to defeat Fourth Generation opponents militarily, and thus far none have been able to do so. Politically, the most fundamental characteristic of the Fourth Generation, a crisis of legitimacy of the state, is not recognized in any national capital. Combined, these two facts render many states extraordinarily vulnerable to Fourth Generation opponents. Col. John Boyd, USAF, America’s greatest military theorist, defined grand strategy as the art of connecting to as many other independent power centers as possible, while isolating the enemy from as many independent power centers as possible. The grand strategic question facing the U.S. is how to do that in a 21st century that will increasingly be dominated by non-state, Fourth Generation forces. The answer begins by considering why the state first arose toward the end of the 15th century. Medieval Europe was a highly ordered, cultured, and successful society. It was brought down primarily by the plague, a point of more than historical interest in a world where many non-state forces may be able to carry out biological attacks. After the medieval order fell, it was succeeded by disorder, which led naturally to a strong desire for order, which in time was supplied by the state.

128

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

As we already see in those parts of the world such as West Africa where the state is disappearing, the state, like the medieval world, is followed by disorder. A Fourth Generation world will be one where disorder spreads like mold in a damp bathroom. What does Colonel Boyd’s definition of grand strategy mean in such a world? It means America’s grand strategy should seek to connect our country with as many centers and sources of order as possible while isolating us from as many centers and sources of disorder as possible. This is the only reasonable chance of preserving something called the “United States” in a 21st century dominated by Fourth Generation war. And, as we will see, it leads toward a defensive, not offensive, military strategy. What do we mean by centers and sources of order? First, places where the state still stands. The state arose to bring order, and in portions of the world it continues to do so. While the crisis of legitimacy of the state is universal, that does not mean it will everywhere reach catastrophic proportions. Those places where the state endures not simply as an empty form will remain centers of (relative) order. America is already connected to those places in a wide variety of ways and should strive to remain so. Actions such as the war in Iraq that tend to isolate us from successful states run counter to our interests. In a Fourth Generation world, surviving states will not be the only centers of order. One of the central characteristics of the Fourth Generation is a return to a world where culture will often be more significant than statehood, and some cultures tend toward order. An example is Chinese culture, which extends well beyond the borders of the Chinese state. Order is the highest Chinese virtue; so, at least, Confucianism would suggest. As people around the world transfer their primary loyalty from the state to a wide variety of other entities, some of these entities may also emerge as sources of order. Religions may become sources of order; we see that happening today as Christianity grows in places of chronic disorder such as Africa. Ideologies may be centers of order, depending on the ideology. Businesses and other commercial undertakings may be sources of order. So might mercenary armies. Because some, perhaps many, sources of order in the 21st century will not be states and may even appear strange or disreputable, the people who run foreign ministries may find it difficult to imagine building connectivity to them. But that is one of the novel actions the Fourth Generation will require. One of the primary centers of disorder in the 21st century will be failed states— areas where the state has either disappeared or become simply one more criminal gang among many. Current examples include much of Africa, Somalia, Mesopotamia (following America’s destruction of the Iraqi state), Afghanistan, parts of the former Soviet Union, and the West Bank of the Jordan River. These areas represent the future for much of the world. Just as some cultures are likely to be centers of order, others will be centers or sources of disorder. One culture provides an example of the fact that centers and sources of disorder may not be identical—Islam. Because Islam is a religion of rules, it is capable of providing internal order in Islamic societies. As Robert Kaplan has noted, a stranger with a fat wallet can walk safely through some of the poorest Islamic slums. Islam, however, is likely to be one of the principal sources of disorder in a Fourth Generation world, even while some parts of the Islamic world may be centers of order. The reason is that Islam demands its believers wage endless jihad in the dar al harb, the nonIslamic world (literally the “world of war”), and a world where the state is weakening will be a happy hunting ground. The long-standing Arab military tradition of irregular

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

129

light cavalry warfare is especially well-suited when adapted with modern technologies and carried out at operational and strategic levels. Indeed, that is much of what Washington now calls terrorism. One important way in which centers of disorder will also act as sources of disorder will be by producing hordes of refugees and emigrants. It is natural to flee disorder. But as some European countries have already discovered, accepting refugees from centers of disorder imports disorder. Just as people from highly ordered cultures, such as Germans or Scandinavians, take order with them wherever they go, so people from disordered places are bearers of chaos. The ways of life necessary for survival in centers of disorder—lying, cheating, stealing, and killing—become habits, and they are not easily left behind. Other centers and sources of disorder will to some extent mirror centers of order: religions, ideologies, commercial enterprises (the drug trade is already a powerful example), mercenaries, and so on. One source of disorder that will not have a mirror image is disease. Centers of disorder will become breeding grounds for plagues and diseases of every sort, and some of them will travel well. West Nile virus is already a growing concern in the U.S. and it is merely the forerunner of a vast Pandora’s box. The fact that some diseases may be genetically engineered as weapons of war will make the danger all the greater. The Bush administration appears to recognize dimly that the fundamental fault line of the 21st century will be that between order and disorder. In his Sept. 25, 2003 speech to the United Nations, Bush declared, “Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides, between those who seek order and those who spread chaos.” The administration errs in assuming that the forces of order are the stronger party, and this assumption underlies its offensive strategy. But because the root of Fourth Generation war lies in a crisis of legitimacy of the state, and the state is still the main agent of order in the world, the forces of order in the 21st century will be weaker than the forces of disorder. When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, it assumed order would be easy to maintain or restore because the Iraqi state would endure. The actual effect of the invasion was to destroy the Iraqi state and replace it with chaos. This brings us to the next question: what do we mean by “connect” and “isolate”? Connection is easy enough to understand. Goods, money, people, and ideas all flow freely with minimal barriers. Americans view those to whom we are connected as friends, extending help in times of need and also asking for and receiving assistance, including in war. Commercially, we buy their products and sometimes they even buy ours. “Isolate” is more difficult to understand, in part because in the lexicon of the present foreign-policy establishment, “isolationism” is a term of opprobrium. But as America learned on Sept. 11, a Fourth Generation world will be a place where our physical security will depend on our ability and willingness to isolate ourselves from certain forces. What isolation means will vary from case to case, but in some situations it will require actions that appear harsh by current standards. For example, we may find it necessary to prohibit people from certain places from entering the U.S. We may need to profile on a variety of bases, including religious belief and ethnic origin. Isolation may also inflict hardships on Americans, as when we must avoid becoming dependent on imports such as Middle Eastern oil. In general, isolation will mean minimizing contacts that involve flows of people, money, materials, and new primary loyalties, such as religions and ideologies, into the

130

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

United States. Flows in the other direction will generally be less dangerous, except for the fact that one-way relationships are difficult to sustain. They tend to become reciprocal, which means importing danger. Americans will require a newfound selfdiscipline in a Fourth Generation world, realizing they cannot have it all (and have it cheaply) without creating serious threats to America’s homeland security. In terms of foreign relations, isolation will more often apply to regions where the state is weak or has vanished. But it will sometimes be necessary for us to isolate ourselves from other states, especially states that exist in form but not in reality. Unfortunately, friendly relations will leave open the door to the non-state elements that are the real powers within the hollow form of the other state, and those powers may be threats to us. Saudi Arabia may soon be a state that falls in this category. How does this isolate the enemy, which in our strategy means centers and sources of disorder, from other independent power centers? Here, our proposed grand strategy works indirectly, in a way John Boyd might appreciate. To use one of his favorite expressions, it folds the enemy back on himself. As the offensive strategy of the Bush administration has demonstrated, when we choose to engage centers and sources of disorder, attacking them militarily or demanding reforms inconsistent with their cultures, we provide an external threat against which they can unite. Conversely, if we isolate ourselves from them, we will help them focus on and thus accentuate their internal contradictions. This is a classic case of inaction being a form of action. The Islamic world offers an example. Islam mandates jihad against all nonIslamics, which means Islam will always be a threat to the U.S. But Islam itself is also riven with internal conflicts. Those internal conflicts are now minimized because Islamics can call for unity against an external threat. Even so, internal conflicts persist: many Shi’ite Iraqis blame car bombings in Shi’ite areas on Wahhabi Muslims. In Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam, Michael Vlahos argues that what we are seeing in the Islamic world today follows an age-old pattern. Purist elements arise that accuse existing Islamic governments of straying from Islam; they triumph, only to find that pure Islam cannot govern; attempting to make things work, they also become corrupt; and new purist elements gather to bring about their overthrow. This cycle could work to America’s advantage if she isolated herself from it, because it focuses Islamic energies inward. As Boyd would say, it tends to fold Islam back on itself. What are the implications for the conduct of strategy, the military component of grand strategy? First, note that no strategy is a hard and fast rule that can be applied mechanically. Strategy is an art; its conduct, as Helmuth von Moltke said, is a matter of expedients. In the conduct of strategy, the engineering approach to problems favored by Americans is not useful. Past attempts along engineering lines, such as the Weinberger Doctrine and the Powell Doctrine, resulted only in pseudo-strategies that were useless in the real world. Real strategies do not seek to create templates but rather inform and shape specific actions, harmonizing them and giving them a coherence that will often be visible only in retrospect. Within this context, one of the first implications of our recommended grand strategy is that America’s current military strategy—a strong strategic offensive coupled with a weak tactical offensive—is wrong. Strategically, we are launching military attacks on perceived opponents worldwide, or at least threatening to do so, under a doctrine of preventive war. But tactically, our attacks are weak because it is relatively easy for our real enemies, non-state forces, to sidestep them.

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

131

Both Afghanistan and Iraq provide examples. America took the strategic military offensive, invading both countries. But in Afghanistan, on the tactical level, both alQaeda and the Taliban survived our attempts to destroy them and are now coming back. The reason they could do so is that our Second Generation armed forces fight by putting firepower on targets, and Fourth Generation forces are very good at making themselves untargetable. Even in Operation Anaconda, when al-Qaeda stood and fought, the inability of the Second Generation American Army to fight a battle of encirclement (something that is central to Third Generation tactics) allowed the enemy to escape with small losses. The situation in Iraq is similar. For the most part, the Iraqi armed forces did not contest our advance to Baghdad. Whether that was part of their strategy is not yet known. But the result was to leave those forces alive and armed to serve as a basis for a guerrilla war. The non-state forces that are emerging from the wreckage of the Iraqi state are proving to be as untargetable as those in Afghanistan. Instead of a strategic military offensive coupled with a weak tactical offensive, our grand strategy would urge a strategic military defensive coupled with a powerful strategic and tactical counter-offensive. In simple terms, this means we would leave centers and sources of disorder alone militarily (and in other ways) unless they attacked us. But if they attacked us, our response would be Roman, which is to say annihilating. The logic of a defensive strategy is almost self-evident. If our grand strategic goal is to connect ourselves to order while isolating ourselves from disorder, we will not want to undertake military offensives aimed at other states that are themselves centers of (again, relative) order. If successful, such offensives will usually result in the destruction of the opposing state and its reduction to a new center of stateless disorder. Offensives against centers and sources of disorder run directly contrary to the goal of isolating ourselves from them. As we see both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the most thorough way to enmesh ourselves in a center of disorder is to invade and occupy it. A strategically defensive military posture is a necessary outgrowth from our recommended grand strategy. The second part of our prescription, an annihilating counteroffensive, needs some elaboration. Here again, Clausewitz is helpful: What is the concept of defense? The parrying of a blow. What is its characteristic feature? Awaiting the blow. It is this feature that turns any action into a defensive one; it is the only test by which defense can be distinguished from attack in war. Pure defense, however, would be completely contrary to the idea of war, since it would mean that only one side was waging it. Therefore, defense in war can only be relative, and the characteristic feature of waiting should be applied only to the basic concept, not to all of its components. The challenge facing an annihilating counterstroke is not theoretical but practical: how do we accomplish it? There may be some instances in which our Second Generation armed forces can do it, for example by carpet bombing from B-52s. Should we ever succeed in transitioning the American armed services to the Third Generation, more options would open up, such as large-scale battles of encirclement. But in some cases, unconventional weapons will have to be employed. When that is the case, it will be imperative that the employment of unconventional weapons follows instantly after a successful attack on the United States. As Machiavelli would understand, such a reaction must appear to be a “spasm” on our part, not a calculated act. In 1914, had Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia within 48 hours of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, she might well have

132

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

gotten away with it. While the world, in shock over the 9/11 attack, might have accepted an apparent American spasm with unconventional weapons, it also might have objected that any first use of such weapons would be the end of efforts to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But in fact, from a Fourth Generation perspective, the genie of WMD is already out of the bottle. The Fourth Generation threat is not states delivering nuclear weapons by ballistic missile but non-state actors developing genetically engineered plagues that can be delivered anonymously by shipping container (small nuclear weapons, bought or stolen, may come the same way). The technology already exists, and unlike that required to build nuclear weapons, it does not require much in the way of facilities. It is knowledge-based, and the knowledge is or soon will be universally available. Such plagues can be more, not less, devastating than nuclear weapons. A defensive military strategy that includes an annihilating counterattack is consistent with our grand strategy of isolating centers and sources of disorder while folding them back on themselves, yet it runs no danger of being perceived as weakness on our part. On the contrary, it both demonstrates and demands more strength of will than is currently evident in the Washington establishment, in either political party. The next implication, or perhaps precondition, of our grand strategy is one that is very difficult, yet essential, to grasp. America itself may not remain a center of order in a Fourth Generation world. As dangerous as the importation of Fourth Generation war into America is, more dangerous still is the Fourth Generation war that America may develop from within. To survive the crisis of legitimacy of the state that lies at the heart of Fourth Generation war, a state needs two qualities: an open political system and a unitary culture. At present, America has a closed political system, dominated by an establishment that is in essence a single political party, and she is pursuing a policy of multiculturalism that enhances and exacerbates cultural frictions. While an open political system and a unitary culture are to some degree fungible—Japan’s unitary culture will probably allow the Japanese state to survive despite its closed political system, while Switzerland’s open political system preserves legitimacy despite three distinct cultures—any state that has neither is likely to experience a crisis of legitimacy. At the least, we cannot assume that the United States will not experience such a crisis, to the point where self-generated Fourth Generation war is not even a possibility. Police departments in some large American cities would be quick to note that they are already facing Fourth Generation opponents on the streets. There are, of course, steps the American state could take to minimize the chance of Fourth Generation war developing here. The most urgent is to end the current de facto policy of open immigration. Because multiculturalism works against acculturation of immigrants, mass immigration from other cultures is a clear and present danger in a Fourth Generation world. When large numbers of immigrants retain a primary loyalty to their own cultures rather than to the American state, they provide an ideal base for Fourth Generation war. More broadly, if America is to avoid Fourth Generation war on her own soil, she needs to address the two origins of the crisis of legitimacy of the state. That means opening up the political system and abandoning multiculturalism for a policy of encouraging what used to be called Americanization (and is in fact the adoption of Anglo-Saxon norms, at least in the public square). Americanization means actions such as restoring America’s public schools as primary centers of acculturation, a role they played effectively a century ago, and making English the only legal language in public

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

133

business. Opening the political system means actions such as giving third parties a real chance against the two major parties, term limits, putting “none of the above” on the ballots, reducing the power of money in politics (what American politicians call “campaign contributions” are recognized in the rest of the world as bribes), making much more use of ballot initiatives and referenda, and restraining the judiciary from legislating. On the grand strategic level, where foreign and domestic policy unite, avoiding Fourth Generation war on America’s own soil (regardless of its source) means recognizing that in a Fourth Generation world, the enemy is disorder itself. This does not mean that the answer to the Fourth Generation threat is to increase the raw power of the state through ill-considered legislation such as the Patriot Act. On the contrary, giving the state extra constitutional powers will exacerbate its crisis of legitimacy. The American Constitution, as it was created and understood by the founders, is a means to a new legitimacy, not an obstacle to it. America’s ability to prevent the spread of Fourth Generation war elsewhere in the world will be small. Overt American military support to states facing Fourth Generation threats will most often be counterproductive because it will undermine the legitimacy of the government the United States is fighting to uphold. The more relevant question is how an America that has succeeded in avoiding the Fourth Generation at home might relate to a world where the state is generally in decline. The Islamic world, as noted, may not everywhere be a center of disorder, but it is likely to be a vast source of disorder. Isolating ourselves from it will mean weaning ourselves from dependence on Arab oil (Russian oil could substitute, at least for a while). Because China may be a major center of order in the 21st century, those voices in Washington that see war with China as inevitable represent folly. From a Fourth Generation perspective, America and China are united by the most powerful of all strategic common interests, an interest in the preservation of order. China should be viewed as a strategic ally of the first importance, under any government that can maintain China’s internal unity. Latin America is likely to be an area where the crisis of legitimacy of the state sharpens and Fourth Generation forces grow more powerful. Isolating the United States from the resulting disorder will above all mean effective immigration control. Africa is already being devoured by Fourth Generation war, which is not surprising in a region where states were never real and most governments are kleptocracies. The rapid spread of Christianity could provide a countervailing force, but Africa’s future is probably war, plague, famine, and death. Isolating America from Africa will be necessary but should not be difficult, barring pure imbecility on the part of American politicians. India’s future is uncertain; her national unity depends on maintaining the veneer of the Raj, which is wearing a bit thin. Isolating America from a disordered India, should India crumble, would not be difficult. Europe’s future, like that of the United States, is not so assured as some may assume. Europe has imported an enormous source of disorder in the form of immigrants from other cultures, many of them Islamic. It is by no means impossible that the 21st century will see Europe compelled to undertake a second expulsion of the Moors. If Europe is to survive, it will have to bring its birthrate up substantially. Russia is an important part of Europe, and regrettably it is a part where the state is now fragile. The U.S. missed a golden opportunity to forge an enduring, strategic alliance with Russia when Communism fell; to the degree that opportunity has not been lost—

134

W.S. Lind / Strategic Defense Initiative

largely through inane American actions such as going to war with Serbia on behalf of Islam—it should be pursued. One theme shines through this brief circumnavigation: the requirement that America not be dependent on any part of the world that is a center or source of disorder. Here, the implication is less for American foreign policy than for American economic policy. While the United States need not pursue a policy of autarky, it does require what might best be termed full economic independence. That is to say, we need to be able to manage on what we’ve got if we have to, in terms both of natural resources and manufacturing capability. By now, one point should be clear: a defensive strategy oriented toward a Fourth Generation threat leaves us with an entirely different frame of reference from the one that now prevails in Washington. Everything changes, in what would be the greatest alterations in American grand strategy, military strategy, and force structure since 1917. Nothing illustrates better the magnitude of the challenge than the response a defensive strategy and its logical outgrowths would surely elicit from those in power. “Is such a transformation even imaginable politically?” they will ask. Their answer, stated or implied, will be, “Certainly not.” At the same time, the question that the decline of the state, the state’s loss of its monopoly on war, and the rise of the Fourth Generation poses is, “Would even these changes be sufficient to enable the United States to protect itself in a world dominated by Fourth Generation war?” The distance between those two questions measures the likelihood that the American state will survive the 21st century.

Part VI Security: Prospects and Developments

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

137

The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective Massimo DE LEONARDIS Director of the Department of Political Science, Catholic University of Milano, Italy

Abstract: After the Second World War the Mediterranean gained a new importance in the context of a broader concept of security. NATO decided to play a role in the southern Mediterranean countries since the stability of this region, so different from the northern part, proved to be vital to the security of the alliance. Having this in mind, NATO created a dialogue initiative, the Mediterranean Dialogue, with the objective of contributing to “security and stability in the Mediterranean (…) to achieve a better mutual understanding and to correct any misunderstandings of the Alliance’s purposes…”. It is not only the history behind this dialogue initiative - not yet a partnership - but also its successful development, that is addressed in this text.

We might naively ask what is the link between migrations and European security. In the Middle Ages the Respublica Christiana was shaped by the meeting of the Roman Empire’s heritage, Catholicism and barbaric invasions, but modern and contemporary Europe no longer sees large immigrations. The battle of Lepanto in 1571 and the siege of Vienna in 1683 halted the last major naval and land attacks by the Ottoman Empire. The 19th century witnessed the colonial expansion of Europe at the height of its world power, and in 1880 the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck could state: “When I learn of the sufferings of a black … in some parts of the world, I may pray for him, but I cannot take them into account in shaping German policy”.1 Nowadays, European statesmen cannot take the same stance, not only because our conscience wouldn’t allow that, but also because the sufferings of human beings have become a political and security problem. Already in 1966 Pope Paul VI affirmed in his Encyclical Populorum Progressio: “Nowadays, development means peace” (§ 87). Stability in the Mediterranean is affected by economic and demographic imbalances. More of 40% of the basin’s population lives in countries on the southern shores, which produce only 6% of total GNP. According to estimates by the Bureau International du Travail, by 2025 the active population of the Maghreb countries and Egypt will double and will be mainly concentrated in urban areas; every year more than one million people will appear on the labour market. This large human wave may cause a shortage of food and water, an upsurge in unemployment and large migrations across the sea; at the same time the fertility index in EU countries is now about 1.58, considerably lower than the 2.1 that is necessary to maintain the level of population. Northern Africa itself is also likely to be massively invaded by people from black Africa wishing to cross the Mediterranean. For its part, Europe is depending on North 1

Cit. in LANGER, W. L., L’Europa in pace 1871-1890, tr. it., vol. I, Firenze, 1955, p. 336.

138

M. de Leonardis / The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective

Africa and the Middle East for its energy needs. Three countries, Algeria, Libya and Egypt account for 80% of energy supplies in the Mediterranean. Algeria alone accounts for 60% of the entire production of gas, and supplies 70% of Spain’s needs. Whereas during the Cold War the Southern front was known as the «Cinderella of NATO», the post-bipolar world has seen the Mediterranean take centre stage, in the context of a broader concept of security. The 1991 Strategic Concept declared that the Alliance wished “to maintain peaceful and non-adversarial relations with the countries in the Southern Mediterranean and Middle East” and formulated NATO’s key security concerns in the region: “The stability and peace of the countries on the southern periphery of Europe are important for the security of the Alliance, as the 1991 Gulf war has shown. This is all the more so because of the build-up of military power and the proliferation of weapons technologies in the area, including weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles capable of reaching the territory of some member states of the Alliance”. At the end of its list of “other security risks”, the Strategic Concept mentioned “the disruption of the flow of vital resources and actions of terrorism and sabotage”. NATO countries were careful to talk of “risks” and “challenges”, as distinct from “threats”, in order not to fuel of Arab countries’ perceptions of a menacing West. This perception derived from the Arabs’ sense of strategic insecurity as a consequence of the end of East-West confrontation, which had been regarded as a reassurance against Western dominance. The efforts of Western military alliances, NATO and the WEU, to play a greater role in the region were itself seen as a possible threat to Arab countries, which also feared that Eastern European countries in the future would have the lion’s share of the West’s financial assistance. France, Italy, Spain and Portugal have been in the front line to press for a dialogue with the countries of the Mediterranean’s southern shore, but the idea of extending the Partnership for Peace model to them was met with much scepticism. Actually, the Mediterranean’s history and geopolitics seemed to dictate a more cautious approach. In geopolitical terms we may talk of a “wider Mediterranean”. France’s Fernand Braudel, in his important historical work, noted: “The Mediterranean (and the surrounding Greater Mediterranean) is like the men who shape it”.2 We may consider the map of the Mediterranean according to different intellectual outlooks, giving prominence to the different geographic route linking this sea to the rest of the world: the Atlantic, the Sahara, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, Europe. For example, the United States look at the Mediterranean primarily as the place “where the Gulf begins”. Whereas the Atlantic, notwithstanding the recent difficult relations between Europeans and Americans, is the expression of a common civilization and a common institutional framework, of which the Atlantic Alliance is the main example, the same cannot be said of the Mediterranean, which instead represents a frontier separating worlds that are not homogeneous from the point of view of religion, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, politics, democracy and authoritarianism, and economics, development and underdevelopment. After the Cold War, NATO had to stabilise and integrate two areas, identified as potential arcs of crisis: Central-Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. In Europe, just the heritage of the Cold War, with its clear-cut border and the political, economic and military structures organizing both blocs, offered institutional models for re-unification. In contrast, the Mediterranean was characterised by the lack of a clear border and benchmark institutions. 2

BRAUDEL, F., Civiltà e Imperi del Mediterraneo nell’età di Filippo II, tr. it., Torino, 1999, vol. I, p. 168.

M. de Leonardis / The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective

139

The conflict between East and West obeyed parameters common to both rivals. In the current international system, the Mediterranean’s Northern and Southern shores form a strategic theatre in which agreed rules do not necessarily exist. The common task is to marginalize extremists, convince the greatest number of states to accept the rules of the international community, and to obtain the cooperation of Arab and Muslim states in opposing fundamentalism, which threatens Europeans but perhaps threatens moderate governments in the Islamic world even more. I will quote a statement by the Speaker of the Moroccan House of Representatives in 2003: “We want to dialogue because NATO is interested in development and in the fight against crime, drugs and terrorism. Morocco is also interested in that, and we want to cooperate. We can re-unify the Mediterranean Sea in a new way, based upon freedom, democracy and prosperity”. NATO’s Athens Council Statement of 10th June 1993 marked an important step towards greater NATO commitment in the Mediterranean: “Security in Europe is greatly affected by security in the Mediterranean. Consequently, we encourage all efforts for dialogue and cooperation, which aim at strengthening stability in this region. The example of our improved understanding and cooperative partnership with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe could serve to inspire such efforts”. Meeting in Brussels on 1st December 1994, NATO foreign ministers stated their readiness “to establish contacts, on a case-by-case basis, between the Alliance and Mediterranean non-member countries with a view to contributing to the strengthening of regional stability” and directed the Council in Permanent Session “to develop the details of the proposed dialogue and to initiate appropriate preliminary contacts”. On 8th February 1995 the Mediterranean Initiative (later renamed Mediterranean Dialogue) was officially announced. It intended “to contribute to security and stability in the Mediterranean as a whole, to achieve a better mutual understanding and to correct any misunderstandings of the Alliance’s purposes that could lead to a perception of threat”. The necessity to dispel wrong perceptions was clear after US Defence Secretary Perry had spoken of a threat to NATO security coming from North Africa, at the conference on security in Munich on 5th February of that year. On the same day, in an interview to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, NATO Secretary General Claes had declared that Islamic fundamentalism was “at least as dangerous as Communism was” and that it was irreconcilable with democracy. A few days later Claes recanted, stating that religious fundamentalism, whether Islamic or of any other type, was not NATO’S business, while the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for European and NATO Affairs, Joseph Kruzel, speaking to AFSOUTH in Naples on 27th February, gave a reassuring interpretation of Perry’s words. He highlighted cooperation opportunities with Dialogue countries and envisaged a future arrangement inspired by the Partnership for Peace, even mentioning the possible admission to NATO of Southern-shore countries. In his opinion, the threat from the South was not related to Dialogue countries but to rogue states such as Libya. The difference between the PfP and the MD appears evident if one compares the official wording of the former with the earlier PfP Invitation document: “This new programme goes beyond dialogue and cooperation to forge a real partnership … Active participation in the Partnership for Peace will play an important role in the evolutionary process of the expansion of NATO”. The logic of the Dialogue is progressive in nature and principle and will develop in an “evolutionary” fashion, that could lead either to strict adherence to the notion of a “dialogue”, which would imply the need and

140

M. de Leonardis / The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective

opportunity to enlarge the range of participants, or move towards a true “partnership”, which needs to be selective and graduated. The Mediterranean Initiative’s first six years were characterised by six separate ongoing dialogues, despite the introduction of the multilateral element into briefings. Countries increasingly took part in cooperative activities, even if many of them had to be self-financed by participants, because the economic resources allocated by NATO were largely inferior to those given to the PfP programme. The passive attitude shown by NATO’s and Dialogue countries’ officials during their talks was due to the lack of trust, but above all to the uncertainty about the future of the Initiative. Particularly important was the action of Italy and Spain, supported by Portugal. France, on the other hand, was interested in the Mediterranean but did not give strong support to NATO action, since she had an autonomous approach and preferred forums of dialogue in which the United States were not present. Washington did not oppose the Mediterranean Initiative, but paid little interest to it and wanted no interference in the Middle East peace process. In the ‘90s the “wider Mediterranean”, in particular the Gulf and the Middle East, witnessed growing divergences between European countries and the United States, that found an echo in the speech delivered by Secretary of State Albright at the Atlantic Council in December 1997. As one writer remarked, the United States saw Europeans as “free-riding appeasers” of States which threaten US interests, while Europeans considered Americans “simplistic crusaders” who try to assert their unilateral authority over the allies. Towards the rogue states, Americans played the “bad cop” and Europeans the “good cop”. Very few Americans considered Europe as a full partner in the Middle East. Among Dialogue countries, Israel, Jordan and Algeria greatly appreciated NATO’s Initiative. Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia showed a certain criticism toward the political dialogue and preferred instead the enhancement of practical cooperation. Mauritania was particularly interested in resolving its disputes with Morocco, and in environment and water resources. Some Arab countries wished to make a minimal political commitment, owing to the anti-Western and anti-Israeli sentiments of their public opinion, however they understood the importance of cooperation in the military and science fields, where NATO expertise can be of great help. The Mediterranean Dialogue was mentioned in the 1999 Strategic Concept: “The Mediterranean is an area of special interest to the Alliance. Security in Europe is closely linked to security and stability in the Mediterranean. NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue process is an integral part of NATO's co-operative approach to security. It provides a framework for confidence building, promotes transparency and cooperation in the region, and reinforces and is reinforced by other international efforts. The Alliance is committed to developing progressively the political, civil, and military aspects of the Dialogue with the aim of achieving closer cooperation with, and more active involvement by, countries that are partners in the this Dialogue” (§ 38). In March 2001, NATO senior officials completed the first round of visits to MD capitals, in order to exchange views, opinions and national perspectives about the initiative. A month later, Israel became the first Dialogue country to have stipulated a security agreement with the Alliance. Jordan and Algeria subsequently signed security agreements with NATO. The tragic events of 11th September 2001 did not cause any diffidence between the Alliance and the MD countries. On the contrary, they led to cooperation in fighting terrorism and helped to give the Dialogue a greater clarity of purpose. NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels in December declared: “We applaud the unambiguous

M. de Leonardis / The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective

141

stand taken by our Mediterranean Dialogue partners, which have unreservedly condemned these attacks. We reaffirm our willingness to provide assistance, individually or collectively, as appropriate and according to our capabilities, to Allies and other states which are or may be subject to increased terrorist threats as a result of their support for the campaign against terrorism”. For fundamentalists, terrorism is a powerful weapon for overthrowing pro-Western elites in North Africa and the Middle East. The degeneration of the Israeli-Palestinian problem affected the security of these two peoples dramatically and offered a pretext for Islamic violence. The presence in Europe of large Maghreb communities, whose members are in some cases not sufficiently integrated, gives extremists a useful network of logistical bases that can be used to attack the population. The strengthening and deepening of relations between NATO and MD countries was now considered among the Alliance’s highest priorities. All NATO members became more interested in the Dialogue, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom. In a conference on NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue, held at the Italian Parliament on 30th September 2002, Secretary General Lord Robertson spoke about terrorism and the collapse of the Middle East peace process, highlighting the “continuing volatility of the Mediterranean region” and its impact on Western security. Referring to the Dialogue, he mentioned its role in dispelling misconceptions and building confidence, and pointed out that “it can help eradicate any notions there may exist about the West being pitted against the Arab world”. The Prague summit of NATO Heads of state and government in November 2002 decided “to upgrade substantially the political and practical dimensions” of the MD “as an integral part of the Alliance’s cooperative approach to security”. In this respect, it encouraged “intensified practical cooperation and effective interaction on security matters of common concern, including terrorism-related issues, as appropriate, where NATO can provide added value” and reiterated that “the Mediterranean Dialogue and other international efforts, including the EU Barcelona process, are complementary and mutually reinforcing”. Occasional consultations have been held in the field of proliferation, but the Alliance has wisely avoided entering this subject, in order to shelter the Dialogue from the problems occurring between Israel, a nuclear power, and Egypt, which advocates a nuclear free-zone in the Middle East. The disputes between Israel and Egypt, as well as the problem of proliferation in the Broader Middle East region cannot be solved inside the NATO Dialogue, but need to be addressed within a more extended framework. Among MD partners, Mauritania is the only country to be involved in a thorough exchange of information on this topic. Although the Intelligence Unit of the military structure is open to MD countries, information sharing between the Alliance and its Mediterranean partners is at an extremely low level. Yet, the contribution of some MD countries to Active Endeavour through intelligence sharing and the common interest in fighting terrorism seem to open the possibility of strengthening this kind of cooperation. The possibility of MD naval forces’ participation in the operation was envisaged at the Istanbul Summit, but no concrete decision has been taken in this regard. The approach of Colonel Khadafi to the West opens the possibility of Libya’s future participation in the MD, while the admission of Syria is out of question at the moment.

142

M. de Leonardis / The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective

Italy, the first European power to have lost her colonies after the Second World War, has a long tradition of Mediterranean policy3 and both in NATO and in the EU has always advocated giving priority to the region, as well as taking national initiatives. One example is the Regional Seapower Symposium between Navies of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, organized by the Italian Navy in Venice every two years since 1996. Another is ANSAmed, recently founded by our national press agency, ANSA. ANSAmed produces around 150 news items and features a day in English and Italian. The service will shortly be available in Arabic as well. ANSAmed does not represent the particular viewpoint of any Mediterranean country or institution, but should serve as a communications platform for all the different areas providing news. ANSAmed has in fact signed a number of cooperation accords with the region’s leading press agencies and will shortly sign further agreements with other media outlets. Security in the Mediterranean will only be obtained through a long process, which will include close contacts between North and South, preventive diplomacy, counterproliferation, negotiation, deterrence and crisis management. NATO MD may be considered an exercise in preventive diplomacy, which sits halfway between long-term policies and short-term crisis management. Today, NATO’s MD involves seven countries – Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia – which have different political systems, economies and cultural backgrounds Yet, each of these countries has a stable government, a legitimate leadership and generally good relations with the West. In addition, every Dialogue country has normalised diplomatic relations with the others. Today, the MD is the second most important co-operative initiative in the Mediterranean after the EU/Barcelona Process, which has great economic resources, and ahead of the OSCE Dialogue, which deals with the topics not covered by the EU and NATO, such as the protection of human rights. NATO is not in the front line in this field, aiming rather to promote political control over armed forces, and in its task of stabilization it must also cooperate with non-democratic regimes. However establishing contacts between the peoples of the MD countries is the best way to foster changes, even in the field of human rights. On the issue of the exportability of democracy, I would just remark that charismatic monarchies and life presidents, or presidents by paternal inheritance, certainly do not comply with the parameters of liberal democracy, but the alternative to them could be worse. Arab countries are mistrustful of programmes parachuted in from outside. For this reason the American Greater Middle East Initiative has been renamed Partnership for Progress and a Common Future with the Region of the Broader Middle East and North Africa, to stress collaboration. A measure of the increasing success of the MD is the United States’ decision to rely on a greater NATO role in the Greater Middle East. President Bush’s inaugural speech aroused strong reactions in the Arab world for indicating the export of democracy as a key element of his second term. But the speech enunciates general guidelines more than an action programme, and members of the Bush administration stated that the United States would adopt a pragmatic approach, as happened in the case of Libya, and that they intend to reward moderate countries, even if they are slow in their reforms.

3 See LEONARDIS, M. De, [ed.], Il Mediterraneo nella politica estera italiana del secondo dopoguerra, Bologna, 2003.

M. de Leonardis / The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective

143

The installation of democracy in the Middle East is a complex and long-term project, even if a trend towards liberalization seems relentless. I would make a specific comment on the relationship between democracy and religion. Only 15-20 years ago nobody would mention religions when discussing international relations or strategic issues. Today we must be aware that our security will be affected, indeed is already being affected, by religious factors. This is nothing new, at least in the Mediterranean, where Christianity and Islam struggled for more than a thousand years. Nowadays, this confrontation no longer takes the form of a military conflict between states, and violence is confined to terrorism. But Europe, which is secularised, is deeply affected by the impact of Islam, which is militant. The French government has come up with a solution for this problem, which I do not consider correct and useful. France has also been the most coherent country (with a somewhat wrong-headed vision), in opposing the mention of Christian roots in the European Constitutional Treaty and at the same time passing a law forbidding the wearing of religious signs in state schools. This was certainly not well-received by Muslims. Rather ironically, some Muslims girls moved to Catholic schools, which allow them to wear the veil. In short, are we sure that parading our secularism will encourage good relations with Islam? Is the idea that the progress of democracy necessarily implies secularisation a reassuring message for Islamic countries? Let me quote the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI: “We have been told that we must not mention God in the European constitution because we must not offend Muslims and the believers of other religions. The opposite is true. What offends Muslims and the believers of other religions is not speaking of God or of our Christian roots, but rather the contempt of God and religion, which separates us from other cultures”. The Roman Empire, the Respublica Christiana in the Middle Ages, the United States with their melting pot, could integrate different cultures and peoples. The question is whether the European Union will be able to do the same, having cut itself off from its Christian roots. The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) has the same objectives as the Mediterranean Dialogue and is aimed at shaping cooperation with countries of the Gulf region, starting with Gulf Cooperation Council members (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), by: 1) assisting them in defence reforms; 2) fighting terrorism; 3) preventing diffidence towards the Alliance via public diplomacy. These initiatives imply a variable-geometry system, in which the watershed is represented by the protection of information. While this is satisfactory in the case of MD countries, in particular those that have signed security agreements, Gulf countries are at the beginning of the cooperation process. On 17th November 2004, NATO’s Chiefs of Staff met for the first time formally with the Chiefs of Defence, or their representatives, of the Seven MD Countries. Another landmark was the Summit of 8th December at NATO Headquarters, when NATO and MD Foreign Ministers had a meeting for the first time ever (in previous years, Egypt had always refused to participate with Israel). The ICI is based on bilateral relations between the countries involved, and NATO and is not committed to a general solution of security problems in the region. MD and ICI countries are united in the field of practical cooperation, since roughly 80% of practical MD activities are proposed to ICI countries. As a matter of fact, whereas the Dialogue began modestly, with briefings and occasional activities, the ICI is based on lessons learned from the MD. The MD is aimed at building trust, and has been of a political nature since the beginning, with the addition of practical activities. At the moment, the ICI only has a practical dimension in the fields of security and public diplomacy: it is aimed mainly at

144

M. de Leonardis / The Role of NATO in the Mediterranean in Historical Perspective

achieving interoperability to enable participants to fight against terrorism and to conduct military operations with the Alliance. Consensus has not yet been reached within the North Atlantic Council about transforming the MD into a real partnership. Nevertheless, the Dialogue already has a multilateral dimension, which the Alliance wants to expand.

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

145

Western Initiatives in the Mediterranean Paula PEREIRA Advisor, National Defence Institute, Portugal

Abstract: Despite tensions and conflicts, the Mediterranean can be considered an area of cooperation, where European states have long provided financial support, particularly in the Maghreb region. The special relationships that have developed are founded on a common history and colonial ties between both shores of the Mediterranean. In this context, Portugal has taken up a privileged position as a partner for the region, since relations with some European states remain strained due to old disputes and conflicts. However, since the 1990s, several initiatives have led to a strengthening of cooperation and significant development in the Maghreb countries. However, some black spots persist in their political, economic and social situations.

Introduction Despite a degree of ongoing tension, overall the Mediterranean, and especially the Maghreb region, can be regarded as an area of regional and international cooperation. Economic ties between the two shores of the Mediterranean have developed considerably since the 1991 Madrid Conference, and especially after the Barcelona Process was established in 1995. However, socio-economic development in each region is very different, resulting in differing negative effects in Europe and in NorthWest Africa. Political relations between different states have been peaceful. The soothing of tensions is aided by the fact that dialogue has become the almost automatic norm. However, despite the progress achieved, relations with the Mediterranean region are still conditioned by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which particularly affects SouthSouth relations, but also those between North and South. The Barcelona Process stagnates on a regular basis, depending on the Middle-East situation. Other attempts at Mediterranean dialogue, such as those launched by NATO and the 5+5 Group, have met with the same obstacles. It is essential to separate the Middle East from NorthWest Africa for negotiation purposes. Europe is the Mediterranean’s most important player, because of its very considerable financial support. This is clearly not enough to influence policy in certain states. In truth, such financial aid cannot be used to exert pressure, because it would leave the door open to American policy, which is far different from Europe’s approach to the region, especially the Middle East. In the case of North-West Africa, some European countries have a shared history with these states, while others have had close links for decades, having been the colonial power, or because they are special trading, and particularly political, partners. As regards bilateral relations, Portugal is becoming a preferred partner of the Western Mediterranean countries. In recent decades, these countries’ links have

146

P. Pereira / Western Initiatives in the Mediterranean

mainly been with France and Spain. However, Portugal’s great influence – and the territorial disputes between Spain and Morocco – have enhanced its role. Since the 1990s the Maghreb countries have seen significant development, despite certain dark clouds affecting the political, social and economic situation.

1. Initiatives in the Mediterranean Western initiatives in the Mediterranean began in the early 1990s, after the first Gulf War, and especially following the 1991 Madrid Conference. The Barcelona Process and NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue began in 1995 and 1994, respectively. The 5+5 Dialogue predates them, being mooted in 1983 but only implemented in 1990. In addition to the 1990 Gulf War, other imperatives have encouraged European countries, the United States and Southern Mediterranean countries co cooperate more closely. Immigration has been especially important for Europe, and the Mediterranean has become a source of risk in numerous ways, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, the region’s various conflicts and tensions, and the huge disparity in economic and social development between the South and the North. As for immigration, between 11 and 15 million Moslems live in Europe. Following the official suspension of “labour immigration” in 1974, the settling of populations became irreversible. The stepping up of policies to welcome family members helped to reorganize and expand families settled on European soil. Thus, the expression of Islamic identity has been a core feature of settlement. It is Islam’s renewed visibility that raises questions and engenders sometimes violent opposition. Most Moslem immigrants in Europe and the United States come from countries where Islam is the dominant or state religion. The integration of those populations into a non-Muslim, pluralist, secular setting has resulted in new ways of living Islamic tradition, moulded by the great variety of cultures of origin, and also the traditions and outlook of each host society. In France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain and Germany, Islam is the second most widespread religion after Christianity. Following the events of 11 September, the situation for Moslem communities in Europe and the United States deteriorated. They were unfairly blamed for the attacks by most local communities, and were seen as terrorists, largely owing to total or partial ignorance about this religious phenomenon. 1.1 The Barcelona Process The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, established in 1995, has ground to a halt or stagnated for long periods, in particular because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the various tensions dividing the Mediterranean’s southern shore. However, it is one of the most complete forums, and one that brings more states into dialogue. The Barcelona Process encompasses politics, security, economics and finance, and social, cultural and human issues. As was to be expected, the economic issue has been the most successful in recent years, although Community MEDA I an II funds for the Mediterranean have only been partially used. Political and security matters have been constantly blocked by the Middle-East conflict.

P. Pereira / Western Initiatives in the Mediterranean

147

On 22 and 23 April 2003, the Euro-Mediterranean foreign ministers met in Valencia. The Valencia Action Plan was adopted, whose aim was to relaunch the Barcelona Process by preparing precise measures to be achieved for each issue covered by the partnership. It confirms the role of the European Union’s higher representatives in areas such as the Charter for Peace and Stability, human rights and democracy. Not only does the Valencia Action Plan have precise objectives, but also more realistic ways of achieving them, and progress is monitored at each meeting. The meeting of foreign minister of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership held in Naples on 2 and 3 December 2003 adopted specific measures to relaunch the Barcelona Process. The partnership’s aims and values were reaffirmed, as was the need to strengthen cooperation and dialogue. But, in particular, the work begun in the following fields in Valencia was completed: -

Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Parliamentary Assembly; A Euro-Mediterranean Bank subsidiary of the European Investment Bank (EIB), which is the majority shareholder, or the Facility for EuroMediterranean Investment and Partnership (FEMIP), strengthened by the EIB; - The Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures. The partnership goes further on policy and security issues. In addition to regular partnership meetings, it was decided to hold ad hoc meetings on terrorism. The aim is to develop a network of contacts enabling partners that so wish to set up a rapid alert mechanism and exchange information. Thus, a dialogue is established for European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), involving experts via the Political Security Committee (PSC). That dialogue may result in members of the Barcelona Process gradually cooperating more on ESDP. We should not forget that some of the Southern Mediterranean partners have already committed themselves to peace operations under the aegis of the United Nations, in the Balkans and Africa. Other measures are underway to strengthen links, such as the training of civilian and military personnel to provide post-conflict humanitarian aid, training in civilian crisis-management, and cooperation between authorities responsible for civil protection, maritime safety and security and the environment. As regards economics and finance, the association agreements being negotiated with each Mediterranean country (Tunisia, Israel, Morocco, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Algeria and Lebanon) were finally signed – the exception was Syria – with negotiations being completed in October 2004. Based on these association agreements, as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy the European Union is drawing up individual action plans for five Mediterranean countries: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Israel and Palestine. Another positive for the region was the signing of the Agadir Agreement in March 2004, by Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. Its purpose is to encourage regional trade and economic integration. To an extent, and depending on how it develops, the agreement is proving that South-South cooperation is possible. 1.2 The NATO Dialogue for the Mediterranean The NATO Dialogue has run up against the same difficulties as the Barcelona Process, and saw no major advances in the 1990s, coupled to the fact that Southern Mediterranean countries are highly mistrustful of NATO, given its military nature.

148

P. Pereira / Western Initiatives in the Mediterranean

In July 2002, the North Atlantic Council set NATO’s Dialogue for the Mediterranean as one of the alliance’s main priorities, and to that end it became essential to forge closer relations between members of the partnership. The participation of Southern Mediterranean countries in NATO-organized conferences and courses for Dialogue for the Mediterranean moved ahead in 2003. In July 2003, at Switzerland’s proposal it was decided that partners from the Mediterranean’s southern shore could participate in meetings, seminars and workshops of the light weapons ad hoc working group. The involvement of Southern Mediterranean states in the fight against terrorism, as part of the Partnership Action Plan against Terrorism, is being considered. That cooperation might include the following: political consultation; cooperation in nonconfidential scientific activities aimed at mitigating the impact of terrorism; information sharing; civil protection; and reform of the defence and security sector. NATO and the European Union are trying to strengthen cooperation in their initiatives for the Mediterranean. That cooperation takes place through the exchange of information between both organizations, meetings on security and stability in the Mediterranean, and the exchange of views between their officials. 1.3 5+5 Dialogue This is the longest-standing initiative to be covered here. It was established by France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Mauritania. Its aim is to promote cooperation between member states. It was quickly brought to a halt by the region’s various conflicts and tensions, in particular Western Sahara, Libya’s isolation, the 1990 Gulf War and the Algerian crisis. The purpose of the initiative was to support North-West African countries in the management of natural resources, the development of economic ties and financial support, immigration, and cultural assistance, with the joint aim of creating an area of peace and cooperation, with no military dimension. In December 2003, the 5+5 Dialogue held its first heads of state and government summit in Tunis. The final declaration stressed security and stability, regional integration and economic cooperation, social and human cooperation, dialogue between cultures and civilizations, and political dialogue. Over the last two years, the 5+5 Dialogue has evolved, and now it also hold meetings on security and defence. As regards bilateral relations, certain European countries, such as France and Portugal, regard the southern-shore countries, especially the Maghreb countries, as a priority region for political and economic links. France’s total aid to Morocco, for example, averages 200 million euros a year, according to the Foreign Ministry. If the Western Mediterranean is a priority for Portugal, as is often stated, the country should position itself in the market so as to become a preferred partner, especially in economic relations. Otherwise it will lose that position to states that are far more active and aggressive in this respect. Tensions between Southern Mediterranean countries have been in decline and have normalized in recent years. Multilateral and bilateral relations with the European Union and the United States have a pacifying effect. Cooperation between these regions has increased considerably over the last decade, moving towards more effective and in-depth dialogue since 2000. The 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States and the numerous attacks that followed in Maghreb and European countries have brought the latter two regions closer around a common cause: the fight against

P. Pereira / Western Initiatives in the Mediterranean

149

terrorism. The economic situation in both Northern and Southern countries is a strong motive for cooperation between the two regions, as is integration of the large NorthWest African communities living in Europe. Such cooperation can only get stronger. It will be very hard to turn back. All of the states in these various partnerships have discovered advantages in them. It is important for Europe to be bordered by stable and peaceful regions. And for Maghreb countries, the economic and social development engendered by such cooperation is essential.

150

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Portugal and the Maghreb Countries: Emerging Economic Trends Maria do Rosário VAZ and Mónica Marques da SILVA Western Mediterranean Working Group/Defence Research Department, National Defence Institute, Portugal

Abstract: The Mediterranean represents a natural area for economic relations to develop between Europe and Africa. This partnership is based on specific sectors, such as tourism and energy, both highly dependent on regional security conditions.

1. Tourism in Inter-Mediterranean Relations: a Forward Analysis of Emerging Trends in the Western Mediterranean Since the Barcelona Conference, tourism has been singled out as one of the main areas of partnership, and the need for Mediterranean states to cooperate in the sector’s balanced development and promotion has been pinpointed. The basic criteria are economic and environmental sustainability, to protect the resources on which the sector depends and boost local prosperity, while engendering security, stability and peace between nations. The tourism industry’s current annual turnover is about USD 3.4 billion, which is 10.9% of world GDP. It employs 204 million people. In the Mediterranean, tourism has become a means towards mutual knowledge and understanding, and is one of its main economic pillars. The sector’s dynamism is closely tied to the region’s stability and its balanced and sustained development.

2. Europe and the Mediterranean, the World’s Two Major Tourism Markets The Mediterranean basin is the world’s number two tourist destination after Europe, for both international and domestic tourism, the main product being sun and sea tourism. The region’s 24 countries receive one third of all international tourist arrivals. According to the WTO, that share is set to fall to 22% by 2020, because at 2% its growth will be slower than the world average of 4.4%. The main reasons for this shrinkage include ageing hotels, diminishing value for money, and the effects of increasing sea and coastal pollution. In addition, there will be competition from a number of recently established tourism basins (East Asia, the Caribbean and Central and Eastern Europe). And one should not forget that the Mediterranean is an area with one of the highest risks of conflict. This has serious repercussions for political stability and prospects for democracy in many coastal Mediterranean countries, and terrorism has been on the increase, particularly by fundamentalist religious movements – Islamic and others – in countries such as Algeria. France, Spain and Italy took two thirds of the Mediterranean’s revenue and represented over 70% of the region’s international arrivals in 2001. Spain has seen the

M. do Rosário Vaz and M.M. da Silva / Portugal and the Maghreb Countries

151

largest growth in international arrivals, becoming the second most visited country in the world. Portugal’s market share was 5.2%, Tunisia had 2.3%, Morocco 1.8% and Algeria 0.4%. Europe generates the largest tourist flows, given the market’s major intra-regional component. That trend has increased since the attacks of 11 September 2001, resulting in a preference for short-distance and short-duration journeys. Europe generates over 400 million international tourist arrivals every year, representing 60% of the world total. That percentage is set to fall.

3. Southern Europe and Portugal: their Importance to the European Market Southern Europe has been the only sub-region with a growth rate above the regional average. International tourism in Europe grew by 4.4% per annum from 1995 to 2000, but in the south growth was 6.7%. This is Europe’s and the world’s second most important sub-region after Western Europe, and its regional market share has increased from 28% to 32%. Of the 7.7 million non-Europeans who visited the sub-region in 2001, 286,000 came from Africa, which is a slight rise. Spain receives 39% of the subregion’s total, with 49.5 million arrivals in 2001, making it first in the sub-region and second in the world. Italy receives 31% of the sub-region’s international arrivals, and Portugal 10%. By 2020, Portugal is expected to take 13th spot for international arrivals to Europe, with about 16 million tourists. Southern Europe has also seen the highest growth rate for earnings from international tourism amongst Europe’s sub-regions, with 4.4% a year, for a total of 88.4 billion euros in 2001. Of that figure, about three quarters were taken by Spain and Italy. Portugal earned 6.1 billion euros, with an annual growth rate of 11%. Growth in the European outbound market was 4.3% per annum from 1995 to 2000, slightly below the world average, with Italy and France amongst the leading countries, and Portugal and Spain still making insignificant contributions. Of the 52.6 million arrivals generated, only 10.2 million were to Africa. North Africa accounted for about half of that flow (5.1 million), and grew by 9.1% per annum from 1995 to 2000, although its market share of European outbound tourism is a mere 1.4%.

4. The Role of Tourism in the Main African Sub-region In 2002, Africa received 29 million tourists. Growth was slightly above the world average, thanks to the development of market niches (cultural tourism, ecotourism, adventure tourism). The region has seen high growth alternate with considerable dips in tourist numbers. Africa’s image is that of a continent more influenced by its own internal problems than by world problems. A period of instability and conflict in one country has a negative impact on perceptions of the region as a whole, because the general public shows no ability to make geographical distinctions. The countries of North Africa, the most visited of the continent’s five subregions, performed extremely well from 1995 to 2000, but were badly affected by the 11 September attacks, as they do not enjoy a strong intra-regional market. Over half of the sub-region’s visitors come from Europe, with France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom predominating. The internal market accounts for less than 10%.

152

M. do Rosário Vaz and M.M. da Silva / Portugal and the Maghreb Countries

Tunisia, which receives over half of all arrivals in the sub-region, and Morocco, which receives over half of all revenues, influence trends in the sub-region. For these countries, tourism is a major source of revenue (6 to 8% of GDP) and currency, together with remittances from emigrants. It is equally important for jobs, employing from 5 to 6% of the active population. Although it contributes less than 1% of visitors to these countries, Portugal is the 10th largest source of tourists to Morocco. International departures from the Libyan, Moroccan and Algerian markets are of little consequence, but Tunisia generates 1.7 million. The preferred destinations are neighbouring countries, Italy and France. Numbers visiting Portugal are insignificant. In Algeria, the improving political situation may make tourism a leading economic activity. However, progress for the sector will be slow. In the medium term, Libya’s altered status within the international community may make it one of the most promising Mediterranean destinations, with annual growth rates of three times the world average, albeit starting from a very low base.

5. Outlook for 2020 5.1. Europe’s Continued Leadership WTO forecasts for the first two decades of the century suggest that the number of international arrivals will almost treble, to 1.56 billion by 2020. Europe will still receive the largest number, but its share will fall to 46% and its growth rate will be below the world average. In 2020, France, Spain and Italy will still be the three leading destinations. Arrivals will grow more slowly in Southern Europe. Long-distance journeys will increase, reflecting consumers’ preference for more distant destinations, unlike what will happen in Africa. As an outbound market, Europe will generate 729 million departures in 2020, representing an average annual growth rate of 3.4%. Southern Europe will achieve the lowest growth rate for departures to other regions, at just 2.9% per annum. 5.2. The African Market’s Growth Potential Africa is expected to see annual growth of over 5%. However, no forecast for Africa reflects its potential, owing to the political uncertainties and social problems affecting many of its countries. Europe should provide the largest number of international arrivals, although its share will fall. Arrivals from Southern Europe are expected to increase at an annual rate of 3%, from 746 000 in 2000 to 1 350 000 in 2020. North Africa will grow at the average world rate. South Africa will still be the region’s most important market, followed by Tunisia and Morocco, each with about nine million arrivals in 2020. This reflects moderate growth in tourist arrivals, caused by competition from long-distance markets such as Florida and the Caribbean, which offer better value for money. To bridge this gap, there will have to be greater focus on niche markets rather than mass tourism. In 2020, foreign departures from Africa will total 62 million. That represents growth of 6.2% per annum since 1995, which is two percentage points above the world average of 4.1%. About half of those departures will be from South Africa, and only 9.3 million (15%) from North Africa. Europe will be the destination for 11.4 million

153

M. do Rosário Vaz and M.M. da Silva / Portugal and the Maghreb Countries

African tourists, which is a market share of 18.3%. Southern Europe will still be one of the regions most visited by North-African tourists, together with the Middle East. Africa offers enormous potential for the European market, given its geographical proximity (no jet lag), the huge variety of destinations, and as the market with the greatest historical, cultural and linguistic ties. If the region is to achieve sustained tourism development, priority must be given to the quality of infrastructure, improvement, expansion and diversification of the tourism product, and image consolidation through active promotion. The repercussions of events like the 11 September attacks should be countered by measures to increase security and rebuild consumer confidence, so as to prevent tourists from fleeing to alternative destinations.

Table 1. WTO forecasts: International arrivals per region, some sub-regions and countries (x 1 million) Base year 1995 World Africa North Africa1* Algeria** Líbya2 ** Morocco** Tunisia** Americas East Asia and Pacific

Europe Southern Europe* Portugal** Middle East Southern Asia Intra-regional (a) Long Distance (b)

565.4 20.2 7.3 0,52 0,05 2.6 4.1 108.9 81.4 338.4 91.3 9.5 12.4 4.2 464.1 101.3

2000 667.7 27.4 10.0 0,86 0,17 4.1 5.0 130.2 92.9 393.4 126.0 12.0 18.3 5.5 544.1 123.7

Forecast 2010 2020

% average growth rate 1995 to 2020

1,006.4 1,561.1 47.0 77.3 12.8 19.0 1.0 1.3 0,41 1.0 5.4 8.6 6.3 8.9 190.4 282.3 195.2 397.2 527.3 717.0 17.4 177.0 13.0 16.0 35.9 68.5 10.6 18.8 790.9 1,183.3 215.5 377.9

4.1 5.5 3.9 3.7 12.6 4.9 3.1 3.9 6.5 3.0 2.6 2.1 7.1 6.2 3.8 5.4

% market share 1995 to 2020 100 100 3.6 5.0 36.2 24.6 ----------------19.3 18.1 14.4 25.4 59.8 45.9 28.2 24.7 2.8 2.2 2.2 4.4 0.7 1.2 82.1 75.8 17.9 24.2

Source: World Tourism Organization (WTO) Notes: (a) Intra-regional includes arrivals with no specified country of origin. (b) Long distance is defined as any journey that is not intra-regional.

6. Portugal’s Direct Foreign Investment in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria3 At first sight, it might seem that direct Portuguese investment in North African countries is most significant and constant in Morocco. However, between 1997 and 2001 the highest level of Portuguese investment was in Tunisia. Against expectations, 1

In the WTO classification, North Africa only includes Algeria, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia. The inclusion of Libya in North Africa does not follow the WTO classification, which places it in the Middle East, with Egypt. To aid comprehension, we felt it better to follow this classification, although this means that it is not possible to provide data on market share. 3 Portugal’s recent treaties with Algeria and Tunisia may have an effect on investment, which is not dealt with in this paper (Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighbourliness and Cooperation between the Portuguese Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, signed in Algiers in January 2005; Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighbourliness and Coooperation between the Portuguese Republic and the Tunisian Republic, signed in Tunis on 17 June 2003). 2

154

M. do Rosário Vaz and M.M. da Silva / Portugal and the Maghreb Countries

investment in Morocco has been falling since 1999. During the same period, Portugal only invested in Algeria from 1998 to 1999, and even then at a very low level.

Graph 1: Direct Portuguese investment in North African countries (euros x 1000). 250000 200000 150000

Marrocos Tunísia Argélia

100000 50000 0 1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

Following notable growth in 1999, thanks to the telecommunications sector, Portuguese investment in Morocco has fallen away considerably. In contrast, Moroccan investment in Portugal was very high in 2001 compared to previous years.

Table 2: Direct Moroccan investment in Portugal Investment Disinvestment Net investment

1997 126 218 -92

Investment Disinvestment Net investment

1997 4 427 644 3 783

1998 524 132 392

1999 105 136 -31

2000 57 144 -87

2001 3 810 287 3 523

Table 3: Direct Portuguese investment in Morocco 1998 13 326 1 052 12 274

1999 177 489 4 677 172 812

2000 68 859 23 451 45 408

2001 66 271 1 516 64 755

Source: Bank of Portugal Unit: Euros x 1000

Investment rules: The “Investment Charter” in place since 1 January 1996 has reduced and simplified the bureaucracy surrounding investment. The same incentives have been adopted for all sectors except farming, which is subject to specific legislation. Thus, foreign investors are treated in the same way as nationals, irrespective of the business sector, and companies’ equity can be 100% foreign-owned. Portuguese investment in Tunisia has fluctuated considerably, peaking at 246.8 million euros in 2000.

155

M. do Rosário Vaz and M.M. da Silva / Portugal and the Maghreb Countries

Table 4: Direct Tunisian investment in Portugal Investment Disinvestment Net investment

1998 18 0 18

1999 2 3 -1

2000 1 3 -2

2001 0 184 -184

2002 0 0 0

2003 0 0 0

2002 4 917 153 362 -148 445

2003 6 455 91 063 -84 608

Table 5: Direct Portuguese investment in Tunisia Investment Disinvestment Net investment

1998 188 356 15 188 341

1999 3 433 23 981 -20 548

2000 255 554 25 214 230 340

2001 7 707 1 519 6 188

Source: Bank of Portugal Unit: Euros x 1000

Foreign investment rules in place since 1994 offer access to most business sectors previously off limits to foreign developers, and they provide common and specific incentives for various sectors. In fact, despite certain limitations, the rules enshrine the principle of freedom of investment, and cover all economic activities except mining, energy and financial services (governed by specific legislation).

Table 6: Direct Algerian investment in Portugal Investment Disinvestment Net investment

1997 0 0 0

Investment Disinvestment Net investment

1997 0 0 0

1998 0 0 0

1999 0 0 0

2000 0 0 0

2001 0 0 0

Table 7: Direct Portuguese investment in Algeria 1998 295 0 295

1999 22 0 22

2000 0 0 0

2001 0 0 0

Source: Bank of Portugal Unit: Euros x 1000

In addition to free access to all economic activities involving the production of goods and services not expressly reserved for the state, Algeria’s investment rules, enshrined in the Investment Code in force since 1993, offer a wide range of incentives for foreign developers. Foreign investors receive the same treatment as nationals, irrespective of the business sector, and companies’ equity can be 100% foreign-owned. Investment can be used to establish a new company, or to revive, restructure or develop the productive capacity of existing companies.

156

M. do Rosário Vaz and M.M. da Silva / Portugal and the Maghreb Countries

7. The Economic Dimension of Security: Energy Highways Europe, and Portugal, rely increasingly on natural gas from North Africa. The growing trend is towards the use of fixed gas pipelines. In Portugal, traffic has been declining at Sines, which is a major port for the transport of oil and petrochemical products and coal. According to statistics from the Sines Port Authority, between January and March 2004 the number of ships handled fell by 8.84% compared to 2003. The quantity of goods also fell by 19.68% compared to the first quarter of 2003. The figures reflect the increasing use of gas pipelines rather than ships. This also adds to European concerns about security in North Africa, because the former increasingly depends on energy from the region.

8. Europe and the United States: Different Energy Dependence Most imports from the Middle East region both to the European Union and the United States are energy-related. The United States has mainly depended on oil, although small amount of liquefied natural gas have been imported in recent years. However, that seems to be changing as other sources of crude emerge in more politically attractive locations, especially Latin America. In fact, the United States depends on the Middle East’s oil far more than Europe does.

Table 8: Oil: 2002 imports and exports (x 1000 barrels/day)

USA Europe Middle East North Africa WORLD TOTAL

Crude imports

Product imports

Crude exports

Product exports

9047 9386 84 167 33471

2310 2508 107 125 10157

26 1348 15811 1870 33471

878 886 2251 750 10157

Source: International Energy Agency

In Europe’s case, the importance of North Africa’s natural gas is growing. One fifth of Europe’s natural gas imports are from North Africa. That dependence will increase, if one bears in mind that gas from Central Asia, and even the Gulf and Nigeria, has to pass through the region. Moreover, gas imports will increasingly use fixed oil pipelines rather than ships. This suggests that European concerns about the region’s security are fundamental, given its major and growing energy dependence. In 1995, Europe obtained 23% of its gas from North Africa: 20.7 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas and 17.8 billion cubic metres via the transMediterranean gas pipeline, out of total imports of 157.5 billion cubic metres for the year, mainly from Russia (117.4 billion cubic metres). Algeria produced 17.7 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas and 17.8 billion cubic metres of pipeline gas; Libya provided 1.5 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas, as did the United Arab Emirates. The United States imported no gas from the region. That same year, a gas pipeline was opened. It starts in Algeria, crosses Morocco and leads to Spain and

M. do Rosário Vaz and M.M. da Silva / Portugal and the Maghreb Countries

157

Portugal. Algeria aims to export 62 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe via this pipeline. Although several European countries have diversified their natural gas supply sources, Portugal has decided to depend solely on Algeria. In that past, that choice has already led to supplies being interrupted.

Graph 2: 1973 and 2004 Regional Shares of Natural Gas Production

Source: Key World Energy Statistics – 2005 edition, International Energy Agency

This page intentionally left blank

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

159

Instituto da Defesa Nacional NATO Advanced Research Workshop Lisbon, March 4–6, 2005

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean: A Prospective Vision Timetable, Organization and Programme

Friday, March 4 Arrival of participants in Lisbon 9:30–12:30

Registration – Workshop venue

15:00

Welcome Address and Workshop Opening Remarks HENRIQUES, Mendo, Instituto da Defesa Nacional, Portugal KHACHANI, Mohammed, Université Mohamed V, Morocco

16:00

Session 1 – Migration Management Moderator: José LAMEGO, Principal advisor for immigrants in Iraq GHILES, Francis, Institut de la Méditerranée, France PAPAGIANI, Georgia, Eliamep, Greece

17:45–18:15

Coffee Break TAYFUR, Fatih, University of Ankara, Turkey COSTA, Helder Santos, ISCSP, Portugal • • • •

Role of States and International Organizations as actors in the Euro-Mediterranean context: sending and receiving countries; new categories, new responsibilities. Combination of the dual dimension of immigration management: external relations with home countries and internal admission, integration and development. Identification of common and complementary threats: mass migration, informal economy, organized crime, trafficking, counterfeiting and smuggling of goods, money laundering. Incidences of Muslim martyrology in present-day organizations.

160

Saturday, March 5 09:00

Session 2 – Links between Migration and Security Moderator: Ramtane LAMAMRA, Algerian Ambassador to Portugal MARQUINA, Antonio, Complutense, Spain MONOD, Jean-Claude, CNRS, France TREDANO, Abdelmoughit, Alternatives, Morocco • • •

Security, human rights, citizenship and integration and the EuroMediterranean agenda. Institutional framework and policy development with regard to migration in the Mediterranean partnership. Cross-cultural inter-confessional collaboration and secularization processes.

11:00

Coffee Break

11:30

Session 3 – Citizenship and Integration Moderator: ALAMI, Houria, AMERM, Morocco STEINHARDT, Inácio, Israel SHIPTON, Sidney, Three Faiths Forum, UK • • •

To what extent could and should European countries develop comanagement of trans-Mediterranean migratory flows? How can economic development and cooperation act in the interests of security? The role of NGOs and informal networks International and strategic components, softening of borders, socio-economic disparities, population structure, unemployment and employment, industrial development and religious differences.

13:30

Lunch

15:00

Session 4 – The Mediterranean in the International Context Moderator: CORREIA, Ângelo, Portugal CAMUS, Jean-Yves, CERA, France SEBESTA, Lorenza, Jean Monnet Chair, Florence, Italy WANNISKI, Jude, Polyeconomics, USA • • •

Key factors for democracy and political management in the Mediterranean. Economics in a global world. Cultural factors: “A new grammar for a common understanding. The concept of security between the state and the individual: security as socially embedded”.

161

17:00

Coffee Break

17:30

Session 5 – Emerging Threats to Collective Security in the Region Moderator: Garcia LEANDRO, Portuguese Army, Portugal KADRY SAID, Mohamed, Al-Ahram Centre, Egypt KARMON, Ely, Intl Policy Inst for Counter-Terrorism, Israel LIND, William Sturgis, USA • • • •

National policies and strategies affecting human rights, rights of minorities and cross-cultural collaboration. International security-management frameworks/multilateral solutions; NATO/Mediterranean dialogue; EU/Barcelona Process; OSE, The Arab League. External national/bilateral actors: US, UK. National security strategies; framework, security concepts, military structures, homeland security and foreign policy. Operational components: policing mechanisms, military, border guards, intelligence and security.

Sunday, March 6 09:00

Session 6 – Security: Prospective and Development Moderator: Ambassador Manuel AMANTE, Cape Verde DE LEONARDIS, Massimo, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Italy PEREIRA, Paula, IDN, Portugal • • • •

Analysis of specific security threats affecting South-East Europe and the Maghreb region. Human rights and citizenship in developed democracies and its extension to governance in the south. Developments in international public law and implications for jus post bellum. Developing national security concepts.

11:00

Coffee Break

11:30

Workshop closing remarks Final summing up. Close of proceedings.

This page intentionally left blank

163

Security and Migrations in the Mediterranean M.C. Henriques and M. Khachani (Eds.) IOS Press, 2006 © 2006 IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Author Index Alami, H. Camus, J.-Y. da Silva, M.M. de Leonardis, M. do Rosário Vaz, M. Ghilès, F. Henriques, M.C. Karmon, E. Khachani, M. Lind, W.S.

71 97 150 137 150 35 v, 18 119 v, 3 126

Monod, J.-C. Papagianni, G. Pereira, P. Sebesta, L. Shipton, S. Steinhardt, I. Tayfur, F. Tredano, A. Wanniski, J.

57 38 145 101 84 75 48 64 107

This page intentionally left blank

This page intentionally left blank

This page intentionally left blank