The Middle East What Next? 2013 Camden Conference Part 1

26th Camden Conference
by Doug Mills
World and National News Editor
RCN America Network

As a writer I am always happy When I cover a convention or meeting with high expectations and those expectations are met. Then there is that rare instance when those high expectations are not only met but are blown away! Such was the case for the Camden Conference this past week. So often the hype does not match the reality.

The 26^th Camden Conference included an amazing array of speakers who were the best in their field from Egypt, Israel, Iran and many others. If you think these were long dry speeches you should have been there when R. Nicholas Burns one of our former top diplomats in the State Department sat down on the same stage with Seyed Hossein Mousavian Iran’s former diplomat in charge of nuclear negotiations with Europe you would be dead wrong, the fireworks had everyone in the auditorium on the edge of their seats. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As a writer I am always happy When I cover a convention or meeting with high expectations and those expectations are met. Then there is that rare instance when those high expectations are not only met but are blown away! Such was the case for the Camden Conference this past week. So often the hype does not match the reality.

The topic for the 26th Annual Camden Conference, “The Middle East - What Next?”. The keynote address was presented by Robin Wright. Robin Wright is a journalist, author, and foreign policy analyst. She has reported from more than 140 countries on six continents for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Sunday Times of London, CBS News, and the Christian Science Monitor. She won the National Magazine Award for The New Yorker. She has also written for The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and many others. Wright has been a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and spent several years as a roving correspondent in Asia and Latin America. She most recently covered U.S. foreign policy for the Washington Post. Besides a long career in journalism, Wright has been a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yale, Duke, Stanford, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Southern California. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Michigan. Wright has held a joint appointment as a United States Institute of Peace Senior Fellow and Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar during which she produced three books: The Iran Primer: Power, Politics, and U.S. Policy (2010), Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World (2011), and The Islamists Are Coming: Who They Really Are(2012).

Rock The Casbah: What Next In The Middle East?

It had been two years since the Arab Spring movement. What is the state of the Middle East today? Are things better or worse? Robin gave us 5 Positives of Change in the Middle East.

1. Music: Music has helped to fuel change especially in the rap community. Music very often plays a part in social change.
2. New Roll Models: Young people are being presented new positive roll models to follow.
3. New Muslim Comedians: A new crop of Muslim comedians have emerged providing comic relief and pointing out some of the more negative aspects of jehadism.
4. New Muslim Theater: Many new theater productions are being produced teaching the positive side of the Muslim religion.
5. Women are on the front lines of the change that is taking place.

However after two years there is still very much to be concerned about.

1. 120,000,000 are now struggling to gain rights. The old order is gone and the new order has not taken shape. It is “the law of the jungle” in the streets of the Middle East.
2. Every one of these countries is worse off economically today than it was two years ago.
3. The proliferation of democracy. This new freedom has caused the rise of hundreds of political parties, all with different priorities.
4. The proliferation of Islamist ideas. Many new Islamist groups have emerged and with the old line groups are all seeking to foll the vacuum left by the Arab Spring Movement.
5. Security of the region has been affected by the rise of new militant groups.
6. Tribes are reemerging as a defining forge in society.
7. Demographics, government leaders are older, the population is young and the economy is down.
8. Corruption is rampant.
9. Women are not fairing well and are often targeted for violence.
10. The map of the Middle East could change drasticly as countries break up into tribal factions.

Bad news? Scarey news? Robin reminded us how long after the American Revolution it was till all people in this country were truly free. “Change takes time.”

NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East

PASADENA, Calif. - A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., found during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs.

The findings, to be published Friday, Feb. 15, in the journal Water Resources Research, are the result of one of the first comprehensive hydrological assessments of the entire Tigris-Euphrates-Western Iran region. Because obtaining ground-based data in the area is difficult, satellite data, such as those from NASA's twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, are essential. GRACE is providing a global picture of water storage trends and is invaluable when hydrologic observations are not routinely collected or shared beyond political boundaries.

"GRACE data show an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India," said Jay Famiglietti, principle investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine. "The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws."

Famiglietti said GRACE is like having a giant scale in the sky. Within a given region, rising or falling water reserves alter Earth's mass, influencing how strong the local gravitational attraction is. By periodically measuring gravity regionally, GRACE tells us how much each region's water storage changes over time.

"GRACE really is the only way we can estimate groundwater storage changes from space right now," Famiglietti said.

The team calculated about one-fifth of the observed water losses resulted from soil drying up and snowpack shrinking, partly in response to the 2007 drought. Loss of surface water from lakes and reservoirs accounted for about another fifth of the losses. The majority of the water lost -- approximately 73 million acre feet (90 cubic kilometers) -- was due to reductions in groundwater.

"That's enough water to meet the needs of tens of millions to more than a hundred million people in the region each year, depending on regional water use standards and availability," said Famiglietti.

Famiglietti said when a drought reduces an available surface water supply, irrigators and other water users turn to groundwater supplies. For example, the Iraqi government drilled about 1,000 wells in response to the 2007 drought, a number that does not include the numerous private wells landowners also very likely drilled.

"Water management is a complex issue in the Middle East -- an area that already is dealing with limited water resources and competing stakeholders," said Kate Voss, lead author of the study and a water policy fellow with the University of California's Center for Hydrological Modeling in Irvine, which Famiglietti directs.

"The Middle East just does not have that much water to begin with, and it's a part of the world that will be experiencing less rainfall with climate change," said Famiglietti. "Those dry areas are getting dryer. The Middle East and the world's other arid regions need to manage available water resources as best they can."

Study co-author Matt Rodell of Goddard added it is important to remember groundwater is being extracted unsustainably in parts of the United States, as well.

"Groundwater is like your savings account," Rodell said. "It's okay to draw it down when you need it, but if it's not replenished, eventually it will be gone."

GRACE is a joint mission with the German Aerospace Center and the German Research Center for Geosciences, in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin. For more about GRACE, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grace and http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA