Month: March 2011
Syria is getting serious
The protests and violent crackdown in Dara’a, in the southwest corner of Syria near the Jordanian border, appear to have left dozens dead. This is not remarkable in Al-Assad family history. The President’s father, Hafez al Assad, killed tens of thousands in Hama in February 1982 to quell an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
But the current president, Bashar al Assad, claims to be made of more modern stuff. He told the Wall Street Journal in January,
Internally, it is about the administration and the people’s feeling and dignity, about the people participating in the decisions of their country. It is about another important issue. I am not talking here on behalf of the Tunisians or the Egyptians. I am talking on behalf of the Syrians. It is something we always adopt. We have more difficult circumstances than most of the Arab countries but in spite of that Syria is stable. Why? Because you have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people. This is the core issue. When there is divergence between your policy and the people’s beliefs and interests, you will have this vacuum that creates disturbance.
Bashar has hit the nail on the head, and it looks as if there might be a gap opening between policy and the people’s beliefs and interests.
How pervasive is this gap? In my month studying Arabic at the University of Damascus a couple of years ago, I found it widespread. Syrians focus their hostility not so much on Bashar himself as on the regime, which they recognize as one in which friends and family get rich while the rest of the country remains poor. They want what Bashar says they should have (also in his Wall Street Journal interview):
Actually, societies during the last three decades, especially since the eighties have become more closed due to an increase in close-mindedness that led to extremism. This current will lead to repercussions of less creativity, less development, and less openness. You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind. So the core issue is how to open the mind, the whole society, and this means everybody in society including everyone. I am not talking about the state or average or common people. I am talking about everybody; because when you close your mind as an official you cannot upgrade and vice versa.
Bashar al Assad has talked the talk, but he has not walked the walk. Dara’a is the testing ground, and he is failing the test. Will it spread? Only events can tell, but I won’t be surprised if it does.
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Jon Stewart’s freedom packages
If you didn’t see it on TV, and you are not among the 156,073 people who have viewed it on line since Monday night, this is well worth all 6 minutes and 49 seconds.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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It takes a region
The Pickering/Brahimi report on negotiating an end to the war in Afghanistan is on less than firm ground in claiming that its publication happens to coincide with the perfect moment to launch negotiations to end the insurgency in Afghanistan (see my previous post), but its discussion of the regional interests in Afghanistan is better framed. They do not limit themselves to Pakistan, as so many reports seem inclined to do, but look farther to Iran, India, China and Russia.
Still, they leave me with a lot of question marks. They don’t deal with Pakistan’s ISI, which seems rather more wedded to the Taliban than the rest of the Pakistani government. In fact, they treat “Pakistan” as a unified actor, which is certainly not the way it has acted in the past, and I don’t know many analysts who expect it to act that way in the future.
They cite Iran’s interests in controlling drugs, protecting Shia, preventing the Taliban from returning to power and maintaining influence in Herat. But they don’t deal with Tehran’s apparent willingness to provide some military support to Taliban insurgents inside Afghanistan.
The report counts China as a possible influence in the right direction on Pakistan. Beijing might certainly wish it so, as Afghanistan’s minerals are appetizingly close by. But I wonder whether the Pakistan that would have to be influenced is all that interested in what the Chinese have to say on Afghanistan. Again there is that unified actor question.
The treatment of “Central Asian states,” (aka the Stans, I think) and Russia is rather cursory, with a reference to their interests in a stable Afghanistan, their worries about U.S. presence and the possibility of jihadis breaching their borders. It seems to me that they have been surprisingly non-meddling, even helpful. How do we account for that, and is there something more they can do?
The discussion of how the proposed international “facilitator” would deal with the various layers of neighborly and other international interest is well done. The idea would be a series of bilateral consultations, to precede any multilateral meeting (one coming up in Istanbul).
The suggestion that international peacekeepers may be needed post-settlement I find mind-stretching. It’s a bit difficult to imagine Afghanistan safe for peacekeepers, Muslim or not, rather than peace enforcers. But of course that is just the point: if there is a broad political settlement, most of the insurgency would presumably go away.
All of this may be wishful thinking. But it is more realistic wishful thinking–maybe even “visionary” thinking–than believing we are going to be able to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014 without a negotiated political settlement.
I have feared the terms of that settlement inside Afghanistan for human rights, in particular for women. I’ve too often sat in State Department meetings where assistant secretaries promised not to sell out human rights, only to discover a week later that is precisely what was done. And what real leverage do we have over how women are treated in a Helmand governed by Taliban? The best of intentions somehow go astray when faced with the need for a power-sharing agreement with people who have been violating human rights for years, if not decades. That conflict of interests and values, again.
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Even if Afghanistan is not ripe, negotiations should start
The Century Foundation’s report on Afghanistan: Negotiating Peace, out today, is an eminently reasonable exploration of the issues for resolution and processes required for a broad political agreement that would end the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and lead to the withdrawal of NATO and U.S. forces. The kind of agreement the report advocates is one that meets the stated American war objective: “An accord must include a verifiable severing of Taliban ties with al Qaeda and guarantees that Afghanistan will never again shelter transnational terrorists, with possible UN Security Council measures to support counterterrorism capability during a transition period.”
The question is this: is now the time? Are the conditions “ripe” for negotiation?
Lakhdar Brahimi and Thomas Pickering, co-chairs of the task force that wrote this report, argue that the answer is “yes” to both these questions. Afghanistan, they say, is “settling in to stalemate.”
In the conflict management world, “ripeness” is associated with a “mutually hurting stalemate.” But is this a mutually hurting stalemate? Not I think in the description Brahimi and Pickering provide:
While some counsel holding back from negotiations until military momentum is clearly and decisively in their favor, we believe the best moment to start a political process toward reconciliation is now. For the government’s allies, the optimal window would seem to be before their capacities peak, not when force levels have commenced a downward trajectory. For the insurgency, the prospects for negotiating a share of national power are not likely to become appreciably brighter by waiting until 2014. On the contrary, the prospect that the Americans could find a way to reduce the size of their force deployment and yet maintain force lethality for years to come suggests that perhaps the only way they can get the Americans truly out is with a negotiated settlement. For the United States, a negotiating process allows it to shape the ultimate political outcomes with more confidence than by betting on a prolonged and inconclusive war.
The situation they are describing is not a stalemate. It is more like mutual anticipation of declining military power, something adversaries find it difficult to do (and which is unlikely to happen on both sides at the same time). Only once the situation is hurting both sides, and waiting will not relieve the hurt on either side, does “ripeness” theory suggest that negotiations will be fruitful. With General Petraeus vaunting progress and the Taliban expanding their operations, it is hard for me to see where the stalemate is.
I think the argument for negotiations at the moment in Afghanistan would be better made on other grounds, some of which are referred to in the Century Foundation report. We need not wait for ripeness. We often don’t: witness Bosnia and Kosovo, for example. The Dayton agreements and the end of the NATO/Yugoslavia war over Kosovo were not negotiated at a time of mutually hurting stalemate, but rather in moments of rapidly shifting military circumstances. Neither was a perfect agreement, and both have been difficult to implement, but the peace has held.
In Afghanistan, we think we know that there is no military solution and that there will have to be a political resolution. We also know that continued fighting will kill lots of people, including a lot of innocent people. While we are reasonably certain we can sustain the NATO effort until 2014, we are not certain that it can be sustained thereafter by the Afghans, even with ample U.S. assistance. This provides the rationale for negotiations: not a mutually hurting stalemate, but rather a desire to limit risks to human beings and to the sustainability of the Afghan state.
In other words, this may not be the best moment for negotiations, but it is the moment we find ourselves in as we begin to develop a real appetite for getting out of Afghanistan. If there is even a small probability of successfully negotiating an early end to the war, that could easily justify the risks and expense involved. The U.S. is today spending on the order of $8 billion per month in Afghanistan; it is hard to picture that negotiations will cost more than one-one thousandth of that number ($8 million per month). Surely there is a one in a thousand chance of success. Negotiating is worth the gamble.
At the very least, negotiations–which Brahimi and Pickering argue should be led by a third party, likely the UN–will teach us a good deal more about the enemy than we seem to know today. Or negotiations may split off at least part of the insurgency and ease the military task. They could also settle some issues and not others, reducing the intensity of the conflict without eliminating it entirely.
In the end, the Century Foundation report may be remembered less for its advocacy of negotiations based on a mistaken assessment of “ripeness” and more for its analysis of regional interests, including but not limited to those of Pakistan and Iran. More on that in a later post.
PS: For a skeptical, on-the-ground perspective about prospects for negotiations, see Martine van Biljert’s piece.
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Anyone still interested in Macedonia?
Last time I headlined a blog post asking whether anyone out there was interested in Macedonia, I got a ton of visitors to www.peacefare.net, so I thought I would try again. Here are my notes for a presentation I did yesterday. I was asked to focus on cross-border linkages. No fair asking what others said, or who else was there, or where this discussion was held: it was done (in DC) under Chatham House rules. Needless to say, these notes were not delivered verbatim, but they are true to what I said and represent my views:
Macedonia
March 21, 2011
1. I was asked to explore the interconnections in the Balkans – including cross-border issues – from a Macedonia-focused perspective.
2. I suppose being a talking head on the Balkans over the past 15 years does gives me some perspective on the issues. Before that I was Mr. Federation in Bosnia as well as an office director in State Department Intelligence and Research in 1996-97, when we tracked Dayton implementation, the virtual collapse of Albania, the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Zajedno demonstrations.
3. Let there be no doubt: what happens in Kosovo does not stay in Kosovo, and what happens in Bosnia doesn’t stay in Bosnia.
4. I imagine it is perfectly obvious to all of us that ethnic partition in either of Macedonia’s neighbors could be catastrophic for Macedonia. Certainly the Macedonians understood this when they recognized Kosovo, hoping that its borders would not be changed, and proceeded successfully with the demarcation of their own border with the new state.
5. Likewise, if Macedonia comes apart it will affect Kosovo and Bosnia. That is not the issue today, but I can assure you it was the issue in 2000/2001, when a very calm and rational Prime Minister Georgievski called me in, making me promise that I would not bring the American Ambassador or Jim Pardew.
6. He then told me he wanted to partition Macedonia and asked that I take that message back to Washington.
7. I refused, telling him I did not work for the U.S. Government but knew perfectly well how unwelcome his proposal would be.
8. The problem with partition is not only the idea of drawing a line, but the difficulty of deciding where to draw it. This is especially true for Macedonia, where the largest Albanian city is Shkup. Look at the difficulties that have arisen over a Church museum on the “wrong” side of the river. Can you imagine what it would take to draw a new national border at the river? The answer is clear: war. And that war would quickly spread to Kosovo and to Bosnia.
9. So disintegration is subject to the domino theory in the Balkans. What about integration?
10. Certainly we know that integration works well for the organized crime networks, which have no difficulty cooperating across borders.
11. I hasten to add that this is also true for the taxi drivers. One day in 2000 or 2001, when my staff had failed in weeks of efforts to arrange ground transportation from Belgrade to Pristina, I called the concierge at the Hyatt.
12. The next day Milenko, the doctor of taxi cab science, deposited me at Gate 3, Podujevo, and I was picked up by his “colleague” from Pristina.
13. I have taxi-hiked all over the Balkans since.
14. Once I got to Pristina, I quickly ran out of Serbian cell phone credits. Psst, I whispered to the concierge in the hotel Baci. Would it be possible to buy more here in Pristina. Of course he said loudly, any of the guys on the street will sell you credits for your Serbian phone.
15. So integration is possible in the Balkans, and basically healthy even if it involves gray market cell phone credits.
16. The problem is that the official efforts at integration are always running behind the unofficial ones.
17. Macedonia in particular has been slow to take advantage of what Europe is offering.
18. There are reasons for this: The big threat in the Balkans today is lack of progress: on the Macedonia name issue, on Bosnia’s constitutional reforms, on Pristina/Belgrade dialogue. That last has begun to move, and I hope it will produce good results.
19. These are long-standing irritants that are being allowed to remain unresolved and are blocking progress towards NATO and the EU. This is a mistake—Brussels and the Balkan capitals need to find a way of moving forward, even if only slowly. Washington should help, but it doesn’t want to play the primary mover role any longer.
20. Macedonia has been a candidate country for EU membership since December 2005. Its progress is at best slow: the progress report in November 2010 has lots of “little progress,” “limited progress,” “modest progress.”
21. It seems to me the way the government covers for this is to be belligerent: towards the EU, the US and Greece.
22. Let me say a final word on the name issue, because it is the main obstacle to more rapid integration of Macedonia into NATO and the EU.
23. I testified years before the US recognized Macedonia by its constitutional name that it should do so, and I got then Senator Joe Biden wagging a finger “no” in my face for my trouble.
24. I am entirely sympathetic to the Macedonian position in substance: a country is entitled to call itself, its people and its language anything it wants. If nothing else, the interim accord, which allows Macedonia to use the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, should apply.
25. I hope they win their case at the International Court of Justice, which might at least get Macedonia into NATO, where it belongs.
26. But I can’t help but suspect that Prime Minister Gruevski uses the name issue for political purposes, not only getting votes but also hiding lack of progress on EU reforms.
27. The EU could be tougher with Macedonia—they give a lot of euros to Skopje every year.
28. The name issue will presumably be settled in court, or not.
29. But is it time to make the money more conditional on EU-required reforms?
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Implosions, more and less advanced
While the rest of the world catches up with the question of “how does Libya end,” which I dealt with yesterday, let’s take a look ahead. Today’s big news was not the explosions in Libya, but rather the implosion in Yemen, where President Saleh is now facing an opposition strengthened by defections from his army, government, parliament and diplomatic corps. He is appealing for “mediation” by the Saudis, which is being interpreted in some circles as a plea for Saudi guarantees if he agrees to step down in six months. He had already agreed to step down at the end of his present term in 2013.
It very much looks as if Washington may lose its spear carrier in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is a problem, since no one–including Saleh–seems to think AQAP is a serious threat to Yemen, which it uses as haven and launching pad. No one in his right mind would want to try to govern it.
Washington will have to convince whoever takes over–the betting seems to be on General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, but these things are inherently uncertain–that AQAP merits his attention. This will be difficult: Yemen is a place with a lot of problems. Water and oil are running out, there are more or less perennial rebellions both north and south, the population is high half the day on qat, and the authority of the government barely extends to the outskirts of Sanaa, the capital.
In Syria, the process of popular protest is far less advanced, but firing on demonstrators by the security forces has reaped an increase in demonstrations in the south. No telling whether the Syrians have the stomach to go all the way to revolution, and Bashar al Assad is a clever autocrat. But he too is lacking resources and tied to Iran in ways that make it difficult for him to do what most Syrians want: an opening to the West and foreign investment, which necessarily entails reducing ties to Iran and Hizbollah and settling up somehow with Israel. Syria also has ethnic and sectarian issues: Kurdish citizens treated as second class and a Sunni majority governed by an Alawhite (more or less Shia) but secular majority.
Bahrain, now under Gulf Cooperation Council protection, seems to be doing its best to turn its rebellion into sectarian strife, which is not how it began. It is hard to believe that is in the interests of the (Sunni) Khalifa monarchy, which governs a less than prosperous Shia majority. But when Saudi Arabia decides to embrace you, I guess you have to hug back.
It has already been an extraordinary few weeks in North Africa. While the monarchies in Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia seem to be learning how to keep the lid on, the pot is boiling over in Yemen and may still do so in Syria and Bahrain. It would be nice if the heat rose under the Iranian pot, but that does not appear to be happening, no matter how often the Secretary of State and the President wish it so.
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