The Gulf/2000 Project
Gary Sick, Columbia University

THE COMPUTER has gone through several metamorphoses since all of us began to make room for it on our desktops more than a decade ago. First it was a nimble and versatile typewriter, then a hefty number cruncher, and now it is becoming the ultimate communications device, connected by modem and telephone lines to an amorphous global network called the Internet. I eagerly invested in one of the earliest personal computers, a quaint little machine that I now realize was the research equivalent of training wheels. I also bought a modem when such devices were little more than clumsy novelties and dutifully plugged into a telephone jack, only to discover there was nothing of any significance on the other end of the line.

Many things have changed. My three computers are now swifter and more capacious than I could have imagined in 1982. Modems are smaller, faster and far more cunning than their predecessors. But still there is not as much really useful information at the other end of the line as I would like. One of the objectives of the Gulf/2000 project at Columbia University is to help the information superhighway live up to its hype, at least for those scholars like myself who are interested in the politics of the Persian Gulf.

Two years ago, I sat down to lunch with an officer of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, a small and respected institution located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was concerned that public information about developments in Iran and the Persian Gulf was so meager and distorted that the United States was at risk of stumbling into a new crisis in that volatile region out of sheer ignorance. I was thoroughly sympathetic. I had been a member of the National Security Council staff in the White House during the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, and I had written two books about US crisis decision-making in circumstances of uncertain or deliberately false information.

The Gulf/2000 project grew out of that conversation. There seemed to be two problems. The first related to the "cold war" in the Gulf, where historical enmities and political insecurities fueled suspicions and stifled dialogue, reminiscent of the US-Soviet rivalry. The other problem was the absence of a forum for the exchange and analysis of timely and accurate information about events in the region. The community of scholars working on the Gulf was not a community at all. It consisted of a relatively small number of individuals scattered around the globe who seldom saw each other and who had no mechanism for routinely sharing research data or assessments. One of the predictable effects of this isolation and separation was the absence of an intellectual critical mass and, too frequently, the absence of a discernible and credible voice.

In response to the first, we decided to see if we could assemble a group of knowledgeable observers from each of the eight countries of the Gulf: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Drawing on the model of the Dartmouth conferences during the Cold War, which brought together non-official American and Soviet policy specialists for regular private discussions even when their governments were at odds, this group would meet periodically to discuss issues of mutual concern. With luck, the trust and personal friendships forged in those meetings would facilitate a level of informed discourse that would transcend the acerbity of the public debate and perhaps even feed back quietly to their respective governments.

Second, since this gathering would necessarily be limited to a small and select group of individuals, a global meeting place needed to be created where a wider community of Gulf specialists could meet, share views and draw from a common body of information and opinion. Such an endeavor, which would have been inconceivable even a few years earlier, was made possible by the growing access of scholars worldwide to the Internet.

On paper, the concept was sufficiently attractive to convince the board of the W. Alton Jones Foundation (later joined by the Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations) to provide generous funding. Putting it into practice, however, was an entirely different matter. My fairly extensive rolodex proved wholly inadequate, so I spent six months asking people with long experience in the Gulf to recommend individuals who might be professionally and temperamentally suited to such an enterprise. There was no Gulf-wide institution that could be tapped, and I was warned repeatedly that there was no tradition of civil discourse among the regional states, each one of which bore some grudge against most of the others.

It was therefore with some misgiving that I began to fax invitations to more than 20 citizens of the Gulf, most of whom I had never met. To my relief, most accepted quickly and with apparent enthusiasm. I was even more apprehensive as they arrived in Italy for the first conference, for I had learned that most of them also were not acquainted with each other. In a meeting of this nature, personal chemistry was everything, and there was no way to know if it would work until they arrived.

It was an instant success. Curiosity and a shared interest in policy issues overcame national differences, as did a mutual passion for soccer as we joined together the first night to watch the finals of the World Cup. Three days of intensive and often heated discussion seemed to enhance mutual respect, even when disagreements ran deep. There was genuine appreciation for an opportunity to converse seriously with their counterparts from countries popularly regarded as hostile. That experience was repeated, with most of the same individuals, at a subsequent meeting in Abu Dhabi on sensitive issues of security, and again in Italy this past summer, where policy recommendations were debated.

The electronic library of Gulf/2000 opened its virtual doors in October 1994 with fewer than a dozen members and a reference collection comprised largely of a chronology of events in the Gulf that I had developed for my own use over the previous eight years. But, just like the Internet itself, the facility and its membership have grown in unpredictable ways. There are now nearly 200 members on five continents, and the accumulated reference materials have become a unique and invaluable resource. Several specialized journals on Gulf issues now routinely make their contents available to our members on-line. Some of this material is extremely difficult to find, even in a library system as large as Columbia’s, and nowhere else is it available so quickly after publication.

The Forum of the library has evolved from a rather ragged scattering of news and opinion by various members into a managed series (“threads”) of more than 70 topics, where major issues are tracked from day to day, and current news reports are interspersed with commentary and illuminating material from the members. Thus, for example, the "thread" on the demonstrations in Bahrain that began in November 1994, but which received almost no attention in the western media, provides a detailed chronology of events and commentary from visitors and Gulf residents that is self-contained and a unique reference source. The number of topics is limited only by the imagination (and time) of the editor and members.

The Forum is augmented with extensive chronologies (a typical month consists of more than 70 printed pages), a full text archive of significant articles and other documentation, and documents related to the project. The list of e-mail addresses of the members is becoming an important resource in its own right.

The bad news for Internet users is that the electronic library is available only to members. The criterion for membership is that the prospective member have an established, professional interest in the Gulf. At present, students cannot be accepted for membership, though exceptions are sometimes made for PhD students working on Gulf-related dissertations. The limitations on membership are not simply an exercise in elitism. There are costs in time (and grant funding) to process memberships, and students tend to change their interests (and e-mail addresses) rather frequently. The Gulf/2000 electronic library is intended to be a site for serious research and for an exchange of views among knowledgeable specialists. Within those limitations, however, new members are actively sought and welcomed. To apply for membership, send an e-mail message to ggs2@columbia.edu with a few words about your background and interest in the project.

Unmoderated discussion groups on the Internet tend to be noisy places, where people with strong opinions (and often little expertise) conduct raucous exchanges. The Gulf/2000 electronic library is not noisy, though it can be contentious. The good news for members is that for no fee they become affiliate members of the Columbia computer system, with access to the extensive services it provides. This is particularly valuable to scholars in distant locations with limited local research facilities.

The true potential of this facility was demonstrated in May and June 1995, after President Clinton announced a trade embargo against Iran. The original wording of his Executive Order was exceptionally broad and seemed to prohibit travel to Iran, participation of Iranian scholars in academic conferences, even subscriptions to Iranian newspapers and journals. If implemented as written, it would have been a catastrophe not only for Gulf/2000 but also for US ability to remain informed about what is happening in Iran.

Using the Internet and the e-mail network of Gulf/2000, a letter writing campaign was initiated which eventually mobilized all corners of the Middle East studies community. The campaign produced, among other things, a letter by 74 Middle East scholars to the President and a letter to the Secretary of State by Human Rights Watch drawing attention to the potential infringement on freedom of expression. This was the first time that the Gulf studies community (which is highly fractionated politically) had ever been mobilized to express a unified view on anything. It seems to have had some success. The regulations eventually released by the Treasury Department excluded normal academic activities from the scope of the Executive Order.

We have also had an occasional scoop. Gulf/2000 was the first news source to identify the change of policy by Jordan’s King Hussein toward Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq. At least one Gulf/2000 member was present in the private meetings that King Hussein held in London with the Iraqi opposition and provided an authoritative account of the discussions. This account was then picked up by several journalists in the Gulf/2000 network and resulted in the first media reports about King Hussein’s decision to cooperate with the opposition in its efforts to overthrow the Baghdad regime. The library has continued to track the complex and shifting politics of the Iraqi opposition in exile and the rivalries among its various branches in northern Iraq, Amman and Damascus.

Gulf/2000 is still young, and it is not clear what it will become if and when it grows up. But for the moment it represents an experiment in political discourse and adds a small new room to the growing edifice of the Internet. It is introducing Gulf citizens to each other, and it is introducing Gulf scholars to each other, wherever they may be. This is something new for Columbia and it is something new for political scientists. Maybe we are starting something.