Rami G. Khouri at PostGlobal

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, he is also the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Dubai School of Government. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006. He teaches annually at American University of Beirut, University of Chicago and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University and Stanford University, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum. He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA. Close.

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. more »

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July 2008 Archives



July 17, 2008 4:21 PM

Justice For All, Not Just Darfur's Bashir

The Current Question: The UN is pulling non-critical staff from Darfur after the indictment of Sudan's president increased tensions there. Isn't this like what happened in Rwanda in 1994 just before the genocide began--protecting UN lives at the cost of African ones?

The UN move to pull noncritical staff out of Sudan's Darfur region is a wise precaution under the circumstances. The prosecutor's decision to ask for an indictment against Sudan's President Bashir reflects the difficult trade-off between taking action against mass murder and genocide -- as the ICC sees it -- and preserving the uneasy security situation and ongoing peace efforts there. On balance, the decision to prosecute is correct if the evidence is strong, which it seems to be in most cases.

An important allied issue from the Arab world's perspective is whether other people who commit crimes of equal or similar magnitude in the Middle East will also be held accountable in some legitimate way. This includes other Arab regimes, the Iranian and Israeli governments, and those who have triggered the death and destruction in Iraq, including the U.S. and UK governments. Their actions have resulted in far more death and refugee flows than events in Sudan. Will they get away with it? Prosecuting the Sudanese for their actions, via a fair trial, should be the first step towards holding accountable all those leaders who have willingly unleashed death and destruction in their societies. We should work for an end to impunity, for sure, but also for an end to racism and colonialism...


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