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Ordinary Egyptians: Creating The Modern Nation Through Popular Culture by Ziad Fahmy (2011)

On June 8, 2010 an Egyptian Google executive based in Dubai, named Wael Ghonim, was stunned by a YouTube video that featured a fellow citizen by the name of Khaled Said, bloodied and disfigured. It turned out that the Egyptian police had beaten Said to death and mutilated his body. Appalled by this short video that ran viral through Arab social media, Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page that came to symbolize the involvement of ordinary people in creating change. “We are all Khaled Said” was the name of the Facebook page, adding the motto “today they killed Khaled, and if I don’t act for his sake, tomorrow they’ll kill me.” This internet-based movement contributed to fomenting the uprising in Egypt that ultimately overthrew the corrupt, 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak. Throughout modern Egyptian history, the media and popular culture have played a crucial role in shaping and informing major political events, as Ziad Fahmy makes evident in Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation Through Popular Culture.

Fahmy argues that the illiterate and lower classes played an important role in forging Egyptian nationalism. Drawing on otherwise unconsulted sources in colloquial Egyptian, such as songs, popular poems, vaudeville plays, and other sources in the spoken and vernacular Cairene dialect, Fahmy shows that popular culture was instrumental in helping to create a new national identity. Fahmy’s study of these sources fills a sizable gap in the historiography of Egyptian nationalism by lending a voice to the majority of the population. While previous research on Egyptian nationalism was built on intellectual history (Gershoni, Rethinking Nationalism and Smith The Ethnic Origins of Nations), Fahmy’s Ordinary Egyptians turned the approach to Egyptian nationalism from elites to non-elites.

The primary problem that Fahmy raises relates to many third world societies. How can we investigate nationalism in societies with more than 90 percent illiteracy? Focusing on Egypt in the last quarter of nineteenth century and the beginning of twentieth, when no more than 6.8% of the population was literate, Fahmy unequivocally discards Eurocentric theories as counterproductive when applied to illiterate societies. Thus he supplements the study of print capitalism by a more inclusive media capitalism, which is better able to account for unnoticed or undocumented cultural occurrences. “Cultural products,” writes Fahmy in the preface, “are not socially relevant unless they are communally and socially activated.” In other words, Fahmy is concerned with the ways individuals and communities communicate with and digest cultural information. Print capitalism was a luxury in late-nineteenth century Egypt. The illiterate population, who couldn’t relate to a written newspaper, still actively participated in creating national identity through the new mass media and entertainment industry. Earlier theories of nationalism that dismissed “orality and direct social interactions” ignored not only the experiences of the vast majority of the population, but more importantly, as as Fahmy notes, paraphrasing Mikhail Bakhtin,they ignored the “social life of discourse outside the artist’s study, discourse in the open spaces of public squares, streets, cities and villages.”

Fahmy stresses the centrality of Cairo and to a lesser extent Alexandria as hubs of cultural activity that radiated and distributed the popular Cairene dialect throughout Egypt. Thanks to the new industrial infrastructure (railroads, telegraph, and post office), the urban areas and the countryside became more connected. New musical and comedic theater troupes could reach more isolated populations. Editors of popular journals, Ya’qub Sannu’, ‘Uthman Jalal, and ‘Abdellah Nadim, defiantly used the colloquial Egyptian language, jokes, azgal (colloquial poetry), and cartoons as a counterhegemonic tools to include the masses in the nascent Egyptian identity.

The second half of Ordinary Egyptians shows popular national identity developing political significance. The more the British colonial authorities (and the elite who were complicit with them) attempted to staunch the press and forcefully impose the press law, the more popular illicit publications became. The masses that took to the streets in the spring 1919 revolution provided undeniable evidence of popular culture’s effectiveness.

Not every popular act, song, or poem, however, should be construed as counterhegemonic or helping in creating the new nation. In Ordinary Egyptians, Fahmy leaves no space for what Rogers Brubaker coined, “National Indifference”. For Brubaker people can be mostly indifferent about their identity and ethnicity. Certainly, people sing national songs, but they also sing and recite poems out of pleasure in the first place, rather than to express sympathy for the nation or animosity toward the British.

Fahmy succeeds remarkably well in discrediting the top-down understanding of cultural diffusion, though he over estimates the role of the capital cities, Cairo and Alexandria, in originating and disseminating culture. His strong point, however, is the discussion of the role of popular culture in Egyptian nationalism. Thus, the contemporary uprisings in Egypt that ousted Housni Mubarak can be seen as a current reincarnation of previous revolutions that were driven, at least in part, by public mass media and popular culture.

You may also like:

Yoav di-Capua’s FEATURE piece on his recent book, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past.

Yoav di-Capua’s blog post about political and social conditions in Egypt eight months after Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011.

Lior Sternfeld’s review of Erez Manela’s The Wilsonian Moment.

Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History by Joseph W. Esherick (2011)

by Huaiyin Li

This book reconstructs the history of the Ye family beginning in the fifteenth century, when its first ancestor was recorded, all the way to the present. The focus of the book is on Ye Kunhou and his son in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and on the Ye brothers (Kunhou’s great great grandsons), who experienced the turbulence of war and revolution under the Republic, and took different paths after the Communist Revolution in 1949. The author’s father-in-law, Ye Duzhang, is one of the key protagonists of the family’s history, which gave Esherick access to a variety of personal sources, including family genealogies, memorials, biographies, poems. memoirs, oral histories, and Ye Duzhang’s personal dossier.

The book is divided into three parts, to cover the imperial, the Republic, and the People’s Republic periods. The surviving genealogies and Kunhou’s volumes of poems illustrate the ways that the Ye ancestors regulated the family by adhering to Confucian mores and conventions, such as filial piety to parents, fraternity among brothers, harmony with neighbors, eschewing involvement with the local authorities and educating boys in Confucian teachings to prepare for the civil service examination. What is particularly interesting in this part is the impressive success of Kunhou and other Ye men of his time in moving up the ladder of the imperial bureaucracy in the nineteenth century. Beginning with the position of a magistrate candidate, Kunhou advanced to the ranks of prefect and circuit intendant, owing to his ability to assist provincial governors in supervising water-control projects and providing logistic service in suppressing the Nian bandits. His two brothers served a county magistrate and a prefect, respectively. His son, Boying, began with a purchased position in the Board of Reveue and eventually escalated to the position of governor, thus surpassing his father’s rank. Surprisingly, none of the Ye men ever passed the civil service exam beyond the initial levels for a degree to qualify them as upper-gentry members. Critical to their successes was the protection they received from the key figures in the military and civil bureaucracy. These patronage networks, as Esherick notes, reflect the overall deterioration of the regular bureaucracy in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Part II begins with an examination of the life of Kunhous’ great grandson, Chongzhi, a banker in Tianjin under the aegis of the famous industrialist Zhou Xuexi in the early Republic and then centers on Chongzhi’s children. Unlike the daughters of the Ye family who received no school education (except for the fifth) and later had unhappy arranged marriages, the ten surviving sons all attended the elite Nankai Middle School. Here Esherick observes an interesting distinction among the sons of different ages. The three older sons followed a conservative pattern of serving family interests, in Chongzhi’s banking business in Tianjin or going into business shortly after graduating from college and they all stick with the loveless marriages prepared by their parents.

In sharp contrast, the younger boys were “born to rebel.” They each had a love marriage of their own choice and they participated in student movements, either against the Japanese invasion or in the Nationalist government’s non-resistance policy. Two of them eventually became members of the Communist Party, enduring the subsequent hardship and personal sacrifice in wartime. One became so troublesome he was expelled from the family and ended up as a comedian who would not resume contact with his brothers for decades. A noticeable exception was the seventh son, who pursued an academic career in China and the U.S., and eventually returned to the New China in 1950 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago despite a well-paid job available to him in the U.S. The younger Ye brothers’ life stories are revealing. What drove them to join the CCP or return to China, as Esherick points out, was not their faith in communism but their discontent with the corruption and dictatorship of the Nationalist regime and their idealist dedication to the cause of national salvation and betterment.

Part III traces the Ye brothers’ family life and political career after 1949. Two of the brothers were victims of the Party’s repeated political campaigns that aimed to tame the liberal intellectuals. They both had to endlessly confess their “wrongs” for befriending or collaborating with Americans in China before 1949 and for criticizing local Party leaders in the 1950s. Both were classified as “rightists,” losing their jobs and even being divorced or alienated by family members. The Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966 turned out to be disaster to all of the Ye brothers. Not only were the two rightist brothers arrested and imprisoned on the charge of being American spies, but the other two brothers, who had joined the CCP before 1949 and served as high-ranking government or party officials in the 1950s and 1960s, were also attacked by Red Guards as “capitalist power holders” and exiled to the countryside for political reeducation. The seventh brother, an American trained scientist, was labeled as a reactionary “academic authority.” They would not be rehabilitated until the early 1970s with the reversal of the radicalism of the Cultural Revolution.

Weaving the vicissitudes of an elite urban family with the turbulence of the entire nation in the past centuries, Esherick presents in this book an exceptionally rich and authentic picture of the Ye men and women experiencing family life, education, government service, local politics, and nationwide movements. Unparalleled in the study of family history in modern China, it will be of interest to all readers interested in China.

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Our review of “The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China.”

Pearl Buck’s Nobel Prize winning book “The Good Earth.”

Photo credits:

All images courtesy of Wikiemedia Commons

Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins (1975)

by Ellen Mcamis

Freedom at Midnight paints a sweeping picture of the tumultuous year of India’s independence from Great Britain in 1947. The narrative style of the book immerses readers in the visual landscape of the falling Raj and allows them to step into the minds of the great actors of this time. This sort of narrative history also contains drawbacks that limit our understanding of this important moment.

The book compresses the story to a tight one-year time frame. This allows Collins and Lapierre to focus on the state-level negotiations on India’s independence. It begins with Louis Mountbatten’s installation as the Last Viceroy of India, and closely follows the negotiations between Mountbatten, Whitehall, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and Mohandas Gandhi as they make the decision to partition India. It then continues with the chaos and bloodshed of the split, until ending with Gandhi’s assassination in 1948. This narrative is undeniably fascinating, however, it also places an almost exclusive emphasis on the “great men” of history. They are represented here as isolated personages who hold the fate of the Indian people in their hands. The people themselves are often lost in this depiction, appearing as faceless masses helplessly reacting to political machinations.

Mahatma Gandhi (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Despite this focus on the agency of the great men, the primary mechanism which forces history forward in the book is destiny or fate. In this account, the British were “a race that God had destined” to rule the Indians, and therefore “naturally acquired” India. Faced with the prospect of division, Mountbatten must “save India” from itself. This device frees Mountbatten and the British from the charge of poorly handling or rushing independence. Instead, they are depicted as contending with historical inevitabilities far more powerful than themselves.

While a current reader does not expect a highly sympathetic and nuanced portrait of India from a book written three years before Edward Said’s Orientalism, and the rise of post-colonial studies, as a narrative with insight into the rush of daily life on the cusp of independence, it remains an enjoyable and exciting read.

You may also like:

Sundar Vadlamudi’s review of “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India.”

Amber Abbas’ review of “Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan.”

Jack Loveridge’s reviews of “Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal,”“Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography,”“The Decline, Fall, and Revival of the British Empire,” and “The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan.”

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V: Interview with Professor Mohammad Amin

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV: Interview with Professor Masood ul Hasan

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Interview with Professor Irfan Habib

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan by Ayesha Jalal (1985)

Reflecting on the origins of Pakistan nearly forty years after the 1947 partition of India, Ayesha Jalal weaves a convincing revisionist narrative of the nation’s birth. Jalal’s focus falls on the political strategies employed by the Muslim League and its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in the run-up to the partition. Though it occasionally suffers from rough transitions and reads much like the dissertation from which it emerged, the work demonstrates great conceptual clarity. Painstakingly researched, Jalal’s work covers roughly a quarter century of Indian nationalist history, sensibly intensifying its focus as it advances through the final years of British rule in India. A blunt but insightful question drives Jalal’s inquiry: “[H]ow did a Pakistan come about which fitted the interests of most Muslims so poorly?”

Jalal pursues this question diligently, methodically investigating the relationship between the Muslim League and its varied constituents. She thoroughly exposes the province-level pressures navigated by Jinnah, his lieutenant Liaquat Ali Khan, and other Muslim Leaguers as they made their claim to represent all of India’s Muslims. Jalal charts the notion of Pakistan as it gains strategic viability and as Jinnah advances himself as the “one man to deal with” in Indian Muslim affairs. Pakistan thus emerges variously as a threat against Congress, a bargaining tool with the British, and a rallying cry for once disparate Muslim factions.

Jalal’s analysis of the continued deterioration of relations between Muslim League and an obstinate Congress following the instatement of Louis Mountbatten, India’s ultimate viceroy, provides perhaps the most compelling passage. London’s desire to maintain a firm bond with a strong central government in the Subcontinent, along with the quickened pace of British withdrawal upended Jinnah’s underlying agenda in Bengal and the Punjab and confirmed Pakistan as a political reality. The possibility of a single Union of India collapsed and a truncated Pakistan emerged from Jinnah’s longstanding bluff. The answer to Jalal’s query thus boldly challenges earlier scholarship on Indian communalism and paves the way for a host of new questions on the origins of Pakistan.

Photo credits:

Hulton Getty, “New Delhi, Lord Mountbatten and the main leaders of India negotiate the partition India according to the British plan. From left to right: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Vice-President of the Interim Government; Lord Hastings Ismay, adviser to Lord Mountbatten; Lord Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India; and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-e-Azam (All-India Muslim League,” 3 June 1947

Hulton Getty via Flickr Creative Commons (user Eye 4 It)

Jack Loveridge’s review of Jawaharlal Nehru’s biography.

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V: Interview with Professor Mohammad Amin

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV: Interview with Professor Masood ul Hasan

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Interview with Professor Irfan Habib

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Volume I: 1889-1947) by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)

After serving in Jawaharlal Nehru’s government for ten years, Sarvepalli Gopal opens his biography of India’s first prime minister with a pledge to maintain objectivity. Gopal appears to overcome his biases, tracking Nehru from his privileged upbringing in Allahbad to his assumption of power in New Delhi in 1947. The author’s focus on the evolution of Nehru’s political thinking proves particularly compelling. We see Nehru as an enthusiastic young Congressman embrace Gandhian nationalism, writing in 1922: “In the golden days to come when the history of our times and our country comes to be written, the present will occupy a glorious chapter.” Gopal dampens this trademark romanticism of Nehru’s writings, putting his subject’s assertions and musings into conversation with the correspondence and observations of a wide range of contemporaries. The sources depict a wavering politician becoming a respected national leader. Nehru steps out of the shadows of his father, Motilal, and Mohandas Gandhi, forging his own intellectual path and developing a concrete vision for an independent India. He maneuvers the cause of Swaraj (home rule) toward a call for independence, proves instrumental in negotiations with the British Raj, and deviates from Gandhian ideals, embracing notions of industrialization and democratic socialism.

Despite his balanced assessment of Nehru and his Congress allies, Gopal leaves a gaping hole in his analysis of Nehru’s controversial role in India’s partition. The author neglects to consult primary sources surrounding Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Indeed, the papers of Muslim leaders fail to appear in Gopal’s work while the collections of top Congressmen and British administrators garner manifold citations. The resulting imbalance paints Jinnah as obstinate and prideful, particularly in the Muslim League’s rejection of the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan. In spite of this substantial shortcoming in engaging available sources, Gopal’s work provides an intimate and appropriately critical view of Jawaharlal Nehru’s development as a nationalist leader and statesman.

Photo credits:

Photographer unknown, “Jawaharlal Nehru hands out sweets to students at Nongpoh in Meghalaya”

Flickr user ktravasso via Wikimedia Commons

You may also like:

Amber Abbas’ review of “Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan.”

Jack Loveridge’s review of “Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal.”

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V: Interview with Professor Mohammad Amin

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV: Interview with Professor Masood ul Hasan

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Interview with Professor Irfan Habib

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal by Archibald Percival Wavell, ed. Penderel Moon (1973)

Archibald Percival Wavell served as the penultimate viceroy of India from 1943 to 1947, meticulously chronicling his experience through the twilight of the British Raj. With only light edits from Penderel Moon, Wavell’s journal delivers a lucid account of declining imperial power and rising nationalist aspirations in India during the Second World War. Wavell’s frustrations multiply through the journal, revealing not only the viceroy’s suspicions of key Indian leaders, but also the growing intractability of continued colonial rule.

The journal confirms Moon’s opening assertion that the structural limitations of the viceroyalty crippled Wavell. His entries reveal his claustrophobic position between the competing factions of Indian nationalism and the British government itself. Indeed, Britain’s War Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, demonstrates remarkable stubbornness through the 1943-1944 Bengal famine, cynically dismissing the viceroy’s relief proposals. Similarly, the Simla Conference of 1945 crumbles as much from pressures imposed by London as by the recalcitrance of the Congress and the Muslim League. Even after the Labour Party’s victory in the summer of 1945, Wavell reveals the government’s rigidity in its approach to Indian nationalism by exposing its refusal to grant the viceroy greater autonomy in negotiating the transfer of power and excluding him from the inner workings of the 1946 Cabinet Mission. In these ways, Wavell’s writings provide strong evidence for the charge that the British government’s failure to innovate in an administrative capacity precluded a smoother road to Indian independence.

Wavell candidly admits his own limitations as a negotiator, stating flatly: “I do not pretend to be a diplomatist.” Yet his journal reveals a creative and introspective individual, concerned both with the practical politics and the moral ramifications of his imperial role. While highly critical of India’s nationalist leaders, Wavell clearly aspires to deliver on promises of self-government. Evidence pours forth, condemning the inflexibility of that very role and redeeming the individual. Wavell emerges as a complex and contemplative character, in sharp contrast with his contemporary image as unimaginative and out of touch.

Photo credits:

No. 9 Army Film and Document Unit, “Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein KG GCB DSO 1887-1976. Montgomery as CIGS (Chief of Imperial General Staff) designate in the Vicerehal Gardens, New Delhi with the Viceroy, Field Marshall Wavell and Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, Field Marshal Sir Vlaude Auschinleck,” 17 June 1946.

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Isabel Huacuja’s review of the novel “Passage to India.”

…also her review of C.A. Bayly and Tim Harper’s “The Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945.”

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V: Interview with Professor Mohammad Amin

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV: Interview with Professor Masood ul Hasan

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Interview with Professor Irfan Habib

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009)

by James Hudson

For many historians of China and even for many Chinese, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of China’s Nationalist Party and then founder of the Republic of China in Taiwan, was a classic “bad guy” of history. He was incompetent and ruthless. He cared little for the Chinese people or for those who worked under him. In popular history such interpretations of Chiang abound, but Jay Taylor’s biography casts the General in a different light, crediting Chiang with establishing and strengthening a faltering economy during a period of intense political and social turmoil. Taylor also observes that, while “Chiang could be heartless and sometimes ruthless, but he lacked the pathological megalomania and the absolutist ideology of a totalitarian dictator,” and regarding the potential of his own ideas was “more self-delusional than hypocritical.”

Chiang’s collaboration and subsequent rivalry with the Allied Commander in China during World War II, General Joseph Stilwell, was chronicled by Barbara Tuchman in her famous book, Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-45. Although Tuchman portrays Stilwell as one of the most brilliant military minds of his generation, she often paints Chiang as nothing more than an inept tyrant, whom Stilwell affectionately referred to as “peanut.”

But Taylor provides Chiang’s side of the story, noting that the American general bore just as much responsibility for the nationalists’ failure to engage the Japanese and eventually defeat the communists, and that in the end Stilwell’s deep animosity for Chiang “clouded his judgment.” In this regard one also wonders if Taylor reaches too far. For instance, although he accounts for Stilwell’s impulsive character, he does not address the fact that all of the American commanders who worked with Chiang — Joseph Stilwell, Albert Wedemeyer, and even George Marshall, who eventually became Secretary of State—found him difficult to deal with. Some other leaders, such as Gandhi, Franklin Roosevelt, and commander of the Flying Tigers, Claire Chennault, found Chiang personable and charming. Such appeal was no doubt augmented by the influence of his wife. Educated in the United States and fluent in English, Madame Chiang Kai-shek remained her husband’s constant advocate throughout the war with Japan, representing the Nationalist Party abroad, even becoming the first woman to ever testify before Congress, pressing the continued need for American aid during World War II.

Perception of the seeming luxurious lifestyle of Chiang and his wife both at home and abroad at times strengthened and at times weakened the nationalist cause. But although the comforts enjoyed by Asia’s most influential couple may seem extravagant today, Taylor concludes that “luxury and constant attendance by personal servants, however, do not necessarily ruin prospects for a serious life. [Winston] Churchill all his life was dressed and undressed by someone else.”

For both popular as well as academic audiences, this book stands as a thorough and engaging read of a complex man and his leadership of China in the early twentieth century.

Photo credits:

Roberts, “Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt are shown on the White House lawn February 24, 1943 during the former’s visit to the Capitol,” 24 February 1943

U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs via The Library of Congress

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Peter Hamilton’s review of Pearl Buck’s classic, Nobel Prize-winning book – and the first paperback bestseller – A Good Earth.

Iran’s Nuclear Program and the History of the IAEA

by Jonathan Hunt

The recent assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, an Iranian nuclear scientist and the deputy director of the enrichment site at Natanz, has underscored that a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program is underway. At the end of January 2012, Iranian officials will meet with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As the international community scrambles to stop a nuclear-armed Iran from adding more fuel to the powder keg of Middle Eastern geopolitics, it is vital that contrasting understandings of the international nuclear nonproliferation regime among nations, particularly the purpose of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty administered by the IAEA, be acknowledged and resolved.

Mohamed El-Baradei, former director and Yukiya Amano, current director of the IAEA

“God Bless the IAEA,” read an editorial in Le Monde on November 9, 2011, the day after the IAEA issued a report expressing serious concerns that “Iran has carried out … activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” The response from Moscow had a different tone, with the Russian foreign ministry (echoing Russian Prime Minister and once-and-future president, Vladimir Putin) declaring the report “biased” and “purposely twisted,” by pressure from the U.S. and the EU. President Mahmoud Ahmaninejad of Iran was blunter, demanding to know why Yukiya Amano, the IAEA director general, had allowed U.S. “bullying” to shape the agency’s conclusions.

In the United States, international organizations are something of a four-letter word. The case of the United Nations is exemplary. It is frequently denigrated in U.S. media and politics as a haven for despots, a forum for anti-Americanism, and a graveyard for U.S. initiatives. The criticisms leveled at the IAEA were similar in 2003 when the U.S. argued that an Iraqi attempt to obtain weapons of mass destruction and medium-range missiles was a casus belli, and tried to assemble an international coalition to depose Saddam Hussein. When Secretary of Defense Colin Powell brandished U.S. intelligence before the UN General Assembly he described as the smoking gun of Iraqi nuclear ambitions, the IAEA warned that, in actuality, there was little to no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program with a military object. In hindsight, their verdict was as accurate as it was disregarded by an American society at the height of its power and hubris.

Today, U.S. and European officials present the IAEA as an irrefutable source. In part, this is because Yukiya Amano is widely seen as a more dependable ally of the West than Mohamed El Baradei, the Egyptian statesman who served as the agency’s director general from 1997 to 2009. The international community saw El Baradei as an honest broker. But recent revelations have indicated that Amano is more responsive to U.S. interests. A U.S. Department of State cable disclosed by WikiLeaks shows U.S. officials describing Amano as “director general of all states, but in agreement with us.” Republicans have cited the IAEA report as proof of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nefarious intentions. The GOP’s presidential frontrunner, Mitt Romney, has gone so far as to state that progress made by Iran’s nuclear program is President Obama’s “greatest failing … [in] foreign policy,” and, that if Obama were reelected, Iran would become the world’s ninth nuclear power.

In reality, however, the November 8, 2011 report overstepped the IAEA’s constitutional mandate and relies on stale evidence that fails to substantiate the agency’s concerns. As the leading U.S. authority on the legal history of the IAEA and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Daniel Joyner, has pointed out in the legal blog Jurist:

“The IAEA is given no authority to inquire into or to examine activities within Iran that are not directly related to fissile materials, even if they may possibly relate to the development of a nuclear explosive device. Again, the IAEA has a limited legal mandate that does not include being a general nuclear weapons watchdog.”

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist who has followed the story for The New Yorker magazine, asked Robert Kelley, a former IAEA director and a nuclear engineer with decades of experience, about the report’s evidentiary basis. He observed that the information used by the IAEA to support its extra-legal “concerns” was chiefly taken from a single laptop of questionable origins. He also picked holes in the revelatory nature of the findings. The substance of the report, in his words, was “old news,” and he wondered “why this same stuff is now considered ‘new information’ by the same reporters.”

This institutional overreach is damaging the agency’s reputation as an independent and impartial regulator. The IAEA was the brainchild of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who announced in 1953 the creation of an agency that would ensure that “fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind.” Amid the push-button fear of the early Cold War, U.S. policymakers wanted Atoms for Peace (as the proposal was famously dubbed) to showcase the socioeconomic benefits of applying nuclear science and technology to energy production, agriculture, and medicine. The hidden agenda, however, was to justify the country’s mounting investment in its nuclear-weapon complex. In the Kennedy and Johnson years, the IAEA safeguard regime designed to keep fissile nuclear materials (uranium and plutonium) from being put to military use was folded into the international nuclear nonproliferation regime with the NPT and the IAEA at its heart.

This focus on fissile nuclear materials has meant that research and technical activities to develop the practical knowledge and equipment necessary to construct a nuclear warhead lie beyond the agency’s ambit. The history of the NPT and IAEA demonstrate that the agency was not designed to be a nuclear “watchdog” supervising any and all research work relevant to nuclear weapons, but instead a “regulator” certifying that the fissile byproducts of peaceful nuclear energy were not used in a military program.

The public debate about Iran and the IAEA is marked by the divergent readings of the history and purpose of the nonproliferation regime. The United States regards the IAEA as a linchpin of a peaceful and progressive world under U.S. guardianship; China and Russia as a way to reinforce their special status as nuclear powers; Britain and France as a bulwark of international law and Western influence; and the developing countries of the G-77 as a discriminatory system that perpetuates a hierarchy of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” The controversial report has brought these clashing views into starker relief. As the U.S. and the EU rachet up economic sanctions and Iranian scientists continue to find themselves the targets of what appear to be covert assassinations, the IAEA will find it more and more difficult to act as a intermediary. The implications for peace in the Middle East, and the future of nuclear nonproliferation, could be grim.

Photos via Wikimedia Commons

Undergraduate Essay Contest Honorable Mention: Beirut City Center Recovery: The Foch-Allenby and Etoile Conservation Area by Robert Saliba (2004)

by Katherine Maddox

The city of Beirut witnessed a legendary amount of violence during the fifteen year long Lebanese Civil War.News programs the world over broadcast it into the homes of millions of people from 1975 till the Lebanese Parliament ratified the Taif accord in late 1989. Less well known is the reconstruction process that began in the Lebanese capital almost immediately after the war ended and which continues today. After commissioning but failing to implement an initial plan in 1992, the Lebanese government entrusted the reconstruction to Société libanaise pour le développement et la reconstruction de Beyrouth (Solidere), which was founded by then-Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, in 1994. Focusing primarily on the downtown area, the company sought to preserve what few buildings remained, create an international business district, and make a profit. As is the case with many urban reconstruction projects, Solidere’s plan was met with resistance and protest, especially considering the still-divided nature of Lebanese society. Therefore, Solidere took on the secondary task of defining and emphasizing an architectural heritage that could bridge the sectarian gaps inherent to Lebanon and thus Beirut.

In his book commissioned by Solidere, Beirut City Center Recovery: The Foch-Allenby and Etoile Conservation Area, Robert Saliba provides an historic and architectural commentary to accompany the physical work undertaken by the company. Saliba, who is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Graphic Design at the American University of Beirut, has published extensively on colonial architecture in Beirut from the Late Ottoman and French Mandate periods, and was thus the ideal researcher to provide Solidere with the historic justification and explanation of their project. Like many of his other books, Beirut City Center Recovery is a multimedia visual study as well as a scholarly work. It traces the development of the zones around Rue Foch and Rue Allenby and Place de l’Etoile from their emergence and consolidation at the turn of the 20^th century up to their current contested renovation. Like the reconstruction project he ultimately validates, Saliba must synthesize the diverse history of the Beirut Central District. Not only does he provide an historical account supported by archival images and maps, the last third of the book is comprised of comprehensive architectural surveys of the remaining historic buildings in both zones. With access to private collections, including Solidere’s own private archive, Saliba provides an unprecedented look into the history that informed Solidere’s plan.

Weighing in at five pounds, Beirut City Center Recovery could be deemed a “coffee table book” and indeed its strongest elements are its visuals, including haunting photos of downtown’s deserted streets taken directly following the Lebanese Civil War and after their reconstruction. No other book exists that so wholly addresses the often-disputed visual character of downtown Beirut. However, just as many critics of Solidere’s new downtown accuse the company of glossing over the legacy of the war, Saliba also neglects any real commentary on this chapter in Beirut’s history. Perhaps, as is the case with Solidere, Saliba wants the downtown area to transcend the sectarian conflict that divided the city for fifteen years. Since the book was published in 2004, Beirut has seen a war with Israel, the assassination of Rafic Hariri and many others, and the rise to power of Hizbollah. In light of this, Beirut City Center Recovery has become a historical artifact in itself, an optimistic presentation of a unitary space in a city, and a country, that is still very divided.

Photo credits:

Unknown photographer, Beirut and St. George’s Bay. Showing snow-clad Sunnin

American Colony (Jerusalem) via Library of Congress

James Case, Beirut, Martyr’s Square, 1982

via Wikipedia

Check out the other winning and honorable mentions submissions for our First Annual Undergraduate Writing Contest:

Carson Stones’s review of Odd Arne Westad’s Global Cold War

William Wilson’s review of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia

Lynn Romero’s review of Open Veins of Latin America

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)

by Isabel Huacuja

Set during the nascent years of the Indian nationalist movement in the fictitious North Indian town of Chandrapore, E.M. Foster’s novel, A Passage to India, follows Adela Quested, a young English woman visiting India for the first time. During a trip to the nearby Marabar caves, Adela accuses Dr. Aziz, an educated and well-reputed Muslim, of attempting to rape her. The contentious trial, which follows Adela’s accusation, brings to the surface the racial and sexual tensions of the British Raj.

British officials condemn Dr. Aziz before the hearing begins, and the judge comments at the onset of the trial that “the darker races are physically attracted to the fairer races but not vice versa.” Foster implies, but never explicitly states, that Dr. Aziz never molested Adela and that she imagined the entire incident. Therefore, the British abuse of power, or more explicitly British colonialism, and not the attempted rape, represent the real crime in the novel. Forster unashamedly condemns British colonialism, which he believes victimizes not only Indians, but also British women. Even though Adela causes Dr. Aziz great distress, Foster portrays her as a victim of patriarchy. As the literary critic Jenny Sharpe explains, colonial officials, “treat Adela as a mere cipher for a battle between men.”

Furthermore, Foster’s perceptive eye captures the political forces at work. Published in 1924, A Passage to India anticipates the nationalist movement’s eruption and India’s and Britain’s final rupture. “India should be a Nation!” yells Dr. Aziz in a spurt of passion. “India a Nation? What an apotheosis!” replies Mr. Fielding. At the end of the novel, Dr. Aziz and Mr. Fielding accept their differences and reconcile, but the two shall never be close friends again. “Why can’t we be friends now?” says Mr. Fielding to Dr. Aziz. “It is what I want. It is what you want,” replies Dr. Aziz. But the friends “swerved apart” because “the earth did not want it,” because “the sky said ‘No.”

Yet, to focus only on the political implications of the novel, and not mention its artistic accomplishments, would do a great disservice to Foster’s genius. He tells the story as an outsider and describes an India that is foreign, exotic, and incomprehensible to him – an India, that he lusts to understand, but humbly acknowledges he could never master. Forster recognizes his shortcomings as an outsider and perhaps that is why instead of attempting to present a whole and coherent picture of India, he sets out to capture special details: a festival, the monsoon sun, a man’s love of poetry. In his characteristic colorful style, Foster writes: “As it rose from the earth on the shoulders of its bearers, the friendly sun of the monsoons shone forth and flooded the world with color,” Simple, yet evocative passages such as this one, lend a magic touch to this extraordinary story and bear responsibility for the novel’s enduring popularity.

You may also like:

Voices of India’s Partition – Part 1

Sundar Vadlamudi’s review of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandi and his Struggle with India

Amber Abbas’s reviews of Krishna Kumar’s Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan and Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

UT professor of history Gail Minault’s review of The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Photo credits:

Photographer unknown, Hindus and Muslims displaying the flags of both the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League as a part of Mohandas Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement in 1922

via Wikipedia

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