Good behavior and laughter make better revolution
As incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo is being forced out of power by election winner Alassane Ouattara in the Ivory Coast, it is time to remind all concerned that proper behavior of security forces is required of good guys as well as bad guys. This is not only a matter of international humanitarian law but also of good policy. If you are claiming power in the name of democracy or freedom and intending to establish the rule of law, the last thing in the world you should want is for your security forces to begin behaving even remotely like the ones they have just defeated.
This will be important also in Libya, where revenge killings–in particular of Gaddafi “mercenaries” thought to be of non-Libyan origin–have already occurred. The International Criminal Court should not limit its investigation only to the Gaddafi loyalists but should also keep its eye on those generally called “the rebels,” even if actual prosecutions for war crimes may prove technically difficult because the rebel forces are not an organized armed force, or at least don’t appear to be yet.
I am hoping that this problem will not arise in Yemen or in Syria, where the protesters have tried hard to maintain nonviolent discipline. The prerequisite for doing so is to mass large numbers of people, something the regimes will try to prevent by instilling, or re-instilling, fear. It may seem odd, but the winners in nonviolent confrontations are often those who can laugh best at their opponent, a clear metric for the removal of fear.
I’d be the first to admit that Gbagbo and Gaddafi scare me, and it is hard to fault those on the spot who decided to take up arms rather than rely on laughter and massive nonviolent protests. But if they want the rest of the world to help them, they’ve got to keep it clean.
PS: Rival demonstrations in Sanaa today appear to have been relatively peaceful, so far. Saleh is clever, but will it buy him until the end of the year? Sporadic but persistent Twitter reports from Syria suggest the regime is using violence and the threat of violence to prevent demonstrations.
PPS: In Ivory Coast, the outcome is still not quite final, but Outtara is sounding the right notes:
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It remains crucially important, just what kind of government you decide to use peaceful protest and laughter against. (Milosevic’s government wasn’t the first or the last to make ridicule of itself illegal.) More important is what kind of police and military forces the government has available. In Kosovo’s case, the military was Serbian and supported by the vast majority of the population in any action against Albanians. During the demonstrations against Milosevic in 1991 (when the citizens of Belgrade stood in the snow for weeks on end to protest a stolen election) they used to chant against the police “Don’t beat us, go beat the Albanians!”)
Good – exemplary, even – behavior got the Kosovars exactly nowhere for a decade, it just convinced the rest of the world that the situation was “stable” and therefore could be safely ignored, even after Srebrenica, when the potential results of Serbian nationalism had become obvious. The people marched with the traditional flowers and candles, they peacefully withdrew – the over-whelming majority of the region simply withdrew from recognition of the national government and established their own health and education systems – and sent their representative, a professor of literature, around the world to argue their case. It wasn’t until a few rash souls starting shooting and bombing police stations that the situation began to change. There was no chance of convincing Serbs that the “ethnic-Albanians” deserved the right to rule themselves within their own borders – it was part of the national identity that, whether any Serbs actually wanted to live in impoverished Kosovo, it was an inalienable part of Serbia. “Shiptars are just a minority and had better learn to act like one” was not just regime propaganda – it was more like an article of faith.
A united people may be able to use peaceful methods against a repressive government (Egypt, Tunis), and minorities may be able to use them against governments with qualms about using force (the Blacks in the US), but minorities protesting against a government with majority support and no qualms? They may be forced to roll the dice and hope for international pressure and the self-immolation of the government under such pressure. Or wait for the decades to pass and the demographic situation to change in their favor?