Washington Report, December 2005, pages 36-37

Special Report

Mohamed ElBaradei Named Man of Peace: The Politics of the Nobel Peace Prize

By Peter C. Valenti

Egypt’s four Nobel Prize laureates (clockwise from upper left): IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei (peace, 2005); Egyptian-American Ahmed Zeweil (chemistry, 1999); author Naguib Mahfouz (literature, 1988) and the late President Anwar Sadat (peace, 1978) (AFP Photo/DSK).

ON OCT. 7 the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded equally to Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei and the organization he heads, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Committee cited its reasons for selecting the IAEA and its director general as “their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way. At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its director general.”

On Oct. 14, the Board of Governors of the IAEA, which is a U.N.-sponsored organization, announced that it will use the $1.3 million monetary award that accompanies the prize to help developing nations fund peaceful programs of nuclear energy, especially as they relate to improving human health and food production. In his statement to the board, ElBaradei expressed his gratitude to the Nobel Committee and shared the credit with the IAEA: “I compare ourselves to an orchestra. I am simply the conductor of a qualified, well-tuned and dedicated orchestra....We need to make every possible effort for the highest level of security. We owe it to humanity. The award also shows the will of humanity to address challenges and to seize the opportunity for a better life for future generations.”

As many commentators in the U.S. and around the world have noted, awarding ElBaradei the Nobel Peace Prize can be viewed as a backhanded slap to President George W. Bush. It was Bush’s administration that launched its war on Iraq based on accusations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed an imminent threat to world security. ElBaradei, however, strenuously disavowed the veracity of these claims, and argued that Iraq had been free of WMDs since the late 1990s. History has proven ElBaradei correct.

Moreover, as a result of ElBaradei’s diplomatic—and failed—efforts to prevent the U.S. from launching a war on Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration subsequently waged its own diplomatic war (complete with more covert means) to oust ElBaradei from office. Against the  background of ElBaradei’s attempts to diffuse the recent rising rhetorical war the Bush administration has launched against Iran, the White House instructed the new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, to prevent ElBaradei from being offered a third term as IAEA director general. Bolton fought a lonely, and ultimately losing, war.

Given this history, it is no wonder that Arab writers have something to say. However, they also add a few other dimensions to the discussion that are not covered elsewhere. In addition to justly deserved praise for ElBaradei, Arab commentators reveal their great pride in this son of Egyptian soil.

Naturally, one finds glowing assessments in the Egyptian press, where commentators often remark on how ElBaradei brings great honor to Egypt. The title of the lead editorial in Egypt’s al-Ahram on Oct. 8 expresses this sentiment with “Congratulations to Egypt [for] the Triumph of Its Great Scientist.” Furthermore, referring to the recent U.S. attempts to have ElBaradei removed from his post, al-Ahram states that “the Nobel Committee wanted to confirm that ElBaradei is a man sincere and devoted to his work…”

Dr. Muhammad Ni’man Jalal’s op-ed in the Oct. 9 edition of al-Ahram reminds readers that ElBaradei is a product of the “Egyptian diplomatic school [of thought]…and that he is characterized by the nature of a gentleman and a calmness of his moderate and balanced demeanor.” Jalal applauds ElBaradei’s bravery for having not “gone along with the American text regarding Iraq and Iran.” Not only has ElBaradei presided over some of the most difficult and important nuclear talks and inspections, such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, but it was also under his watch that the IAEA oversaw the elimination of Libya’s weapons program and made its first ever trip to Israel. Jalal concluded with another reminder—Egypt has proudly sired its share of Nobel prize winners who have made outstanding contributions to the world, including Dr. Ahmed Zewail for Chemistry (1999), Naguib Mahfouz for Literature (1988) and Anwar al-Sadat for Peace (1978).

As usual, the writer who got to the heart of the matter was Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, and it is his quote that is included in the title of this article. A man who has long condemned terrorism and al-Qaeda and advocated more self-criticism inside the Arab Muslim community, al-Rashid comments in Saudi Arabia’s Asharq al-Awsat of Oct. 8 that the message of the selection of ElBaradei, an Arab and Muslim, is “a reply to two groups of slanderers—the first among Arabs and Muslims, whose thirst for blood has defamed our reputation all over [the world], and the second are those [people] who carry in their souls a hatred for Arabs and Muslims, and have ascribed as proof to their claims that it is a problem of religion and race.”

Negligent on Israel?

Not all writers were positive in their analysis, however. Magdi Shendi’s Oct. 10 op-ed in the United Arab Emirates’ al-Bayan reveals a deep ambivalence. He suggests that ElBaradei, and the IAEA generally, have become “a sharp-clawed cat against the weak” and that ElBaradei was given a mandate by nations in the nuclear club to prevent technological development among non-nuclear nations, especially Arab and Islamic ones. Meanwhile, Shendi writes, ElBaradei, whether by design or choice, has remained negligent “in even opening the file on Israel’s nuclear strength.”

Ali Sa’d al-Musa is suspicious of the selection process. In his Oct. 11 op-ed in the progressive Saudi al-Watan, al-Musa writes that he can’t shake the feeling that it is “merely compensation or a reward for a political position.” This is the case with all the Arabs who have won the Nobel, he feels, with the exception of Dr. Ahmed Zewail for Chemistry.

In his Oct. 14 op-ed in the UAE’s al-Bayan, Juzif Samahah articulates more clearly what al-Musa insinuates. He discerns a general message, Samahah wrote: “The good Arab is the peacemaking Arab.” Because both Anwar al-Sadat and Yasser Arafat had to share their Nobel Peace Prize with their Israeli counterparts—Menachem Begin in 1978, and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1994—an Arab winning the Nobel was explicitly tied to his (good) behavior toward Israel. And, as al-Musa laments, the irony of Yasser Arafat being a Nobel Peace Laureate is that he ended his days a prisoner in his presidential palace, surrounded by the forces of the supposed Israeli peacemakers, proving the futility and falseness of the Nobel Peace.

According to Samahah, ElBaradei’s peacemaking also has been affected by Israel, but in an inverse manner. Even though Israel has had a nuclear weapons program since the 1950s and refuses inspections, he points out, ElBaradei and the IAEA “have not proceeded with their work as they should, nor had success in implementing treaties that the international community has entrusted them with. And they didn’t proceed in their work because they were prevented from doing so.”

Samahah argues that because ElBaradei failed to enforce any kind of inspection regime on Israel, the only nation known to have nuclear weapons but refusing IAEA oversight, he cannot be seen as an effective champion of global peace. “Thus if the world was [truly] just,” he writes, “it should grant the Nobel prize to Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed some of the secrets of [Israel’s nuclear research center] Dimona, and was kidnapped contrary to the law and passed [18] bitter years in an Israeli prison.”

Obviously, then, Israel’s undeclared and uninspected nuclear stockpile lies just beneath the surface of Arab concerns, and ElBaradei’s prize reopens some old wounds. Furthermore, because the Arab press has closely followed the Bush administration’s efforts and threats against Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program, the issue of nuclear power and weaponry has been in the Arab press long before this Nobel announcement. In this kind of atmosphere, Muhammad Mithqal Asfur, in his Oct. 11 op-ed in Jordan’s al-Ra’i, expresses a hope for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. It is depressingly obvious to Asfur, however, that the U.S. is the main obstacle to this happening, due to its cooperation with and shielding of Israel from international standards. “The nuclear issue at this time is a political issue of the greatest heat,” Asfur concludes, “and civilized logic as well as justice, respect for people and international law make it requisite that cooperation be implemented regarding the Israeli nuclear case with the same criterion used to measure the Iranian nuclear case.”

Peter C. Valenti, a free-lance writer and translator, teaches Islam and modern Middle East history at New York’s New School University.