Sunday, February 01, 2015

Faruq Ash-Shar`'s new book, "The Missing Narrative"

Faruq Ash-Shar`'s new book, "The Missing Narrative" is out.  It deals with the era of Hafidh Al-Asad and negotiations with the US and Israel.  The author is a good writer and the account is quite interesting but it also shows the silly antics of Arab negotiators.  At one point he mentions that Bill Clinton greeted him at the door and said: "that this was a nice gesture from the president".  When I read that yesterday, I kept thinking about the great Lee Duc Tho.  Kissinger famously said about this great man: He made me age prematurely.  Tho never earned any degrees and devoted his life to communist struggle and spent close to a decade in jail fighting the French colonialists.  But he did not need degrees: this solid man used to lecture the former professor at Harvard sitting across the table from him.  He never wavered and never compromised and acted like he was the representative of the Great Power, and he was.  Even if you read Kissinger's account of Tho you realize that. And who does the Arab side have?  Saeb `Urayqat and Amru Musa and `Abdul-Halim Khaddam and Faruq Ash-Shar`.  Arab negotators are too impressed with empty gestures (Mahmoud Abbas in his account of Oslo expressed his pleasure and pride that Henry Kissinger even moved his chair in one event).   But the account by Shar` also reveals that Hafidh Al-Asad and his administration were greatly deceived by the Clinton administration and that Hafidh really liked Clinton and trusted him.  The Asad regime (from this volume at least) acted as if they even thought that the Clinton administration deceived the Americans but they couldn't countenance that they themselves were deceived by the American side.  Lee Duc Tho.