Counterrevolution, again
With the U.S. Government immobilized by its own self-generated problems–a kind of self-licking ice cream cone phenomenon–dictators are resurgent in the Middle East again. They are doing what they know to do best: killing their own citizens, hoping that will make the popular protests against their interminable rule go away.
In Syria, the demonstrations were once again widespread yesterday, if not gigantic. The killing seems to have focused on the southern town of Deraa, where Bashar al Assad seems to be wanting to demonstrate how really dangerous it is to protest persistently. In Yemen, yesterday’s killing focused on Taiz, a southern town that President Ali Saleh sees as the leading edge of separatism. In Egypt, Tahrir square was cleared in the early morning hours by an army riot. In Libya, Gaddafi continues to make mincemeat of rebel forces, which have also been bombed unintentionally by NATO. Negotiations with the Gaddafi family are ongoing, but Washington seems to be holding a hard line on getting them all out of Libya. In Bahrain, the monarchy continues with a hard line on the demonstrations, which it increasingly paints with a sectarian brush.
It is surprising to me that the dictators think this will work, but they know their own people better than I do. Alistair Crooke published yesterday on foreignpolicy.com a piece on “Syrian exceptionalism” that essentially says Bashar knows best and will win his bet. There will surely be people in the U.S. administration who are also hoping now to stem the tide and save a few really important autocratic regimes (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia foremost) for future use, while arranging soft landings for others (Yemen in particular). Secretary of Defense Gates has been running up his frequent flyer miles with visits to key stalwarts and Gulf states worried about the situation.
That said, President Obama has issued strong statements on Syria and Yemen in recent days. He seems much more inclined to emphasize the legitimate aspirations of the people than to help preserve Bashar and Bashir.
It is nowhere written that counterrevolution will fail, and in fact it has often succeeded. Regime principals and their oligarchs are clever about using their remaining power and money to divide the opposition, crack down on the weaker but more militant portion, and preserve at least some vestige of their own privilege and control. We should expect no less from them.
Those who want to complete their revolutions and emerge as free societies with more or less representative governments will somehow need to keep the pressure on. But they will also have to stay united, and plan carefully for where and when to confront their respective regimes nonviolently. The consequences of violent rebellion should by now be obvious to everyone who follows events in Libya–it isn’t pretty, and it may not end well.
PS: Just to complete the picture, in Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo’s forces are reportedly today attacking the hotel where Alassane is headquartered, as well as the French Embassy. You have to wonder when Paris will see fit to take decisive action.
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Non-violent protests have a better chance in societies that play by certain rules (say, the British in India) or where the ruling faction can be influenced by foreign opinion (South Africa). The Palestinians probably could have had a deal with Israel decades ago, if they hadn’t insisted on winning militarily and destroying the Israeli peace movement in the process. Where neither condition prevails – where the government has the self-confidence to use whatever force necessary (as Assad Sr. did in killing 10,000? 40,000?) or it has a hold over the relevant foreign powers (oil, support from alternate foreign governments, or where the country is China) – waiting out the protests seems to be a good bet. Unless the government cracks from within, or the military gives way.
The best hope in Libya seemed to be that the rebels’ initial successes would convince enough people in the government and military that their final success was inevitable and that it was best to jump to the winning side immediately. Now that Gaddhafi has their families under control in his compound, this easy scenario seems unlikely. And with the US getting involved enough to be able to say they tried but not enough to necessarily win, a lot of people are going to die.
Which may actually be necessary to determine anything decisively. Rumsfeld’s idea of wars that could be determined by quick, clean interventions was idealistic – assuming that human beings would rationally agree to accept an outcome that left them losers while “undefeated” (that is, alive – to argue about a stab-in-the-back until they are ready for a rematch.) Caesar’s technique – offer easy terms initially, but in the case of rebellion, kill the males and sell the women and children into slavery – is unlikely to be implemented again, at least, explicitly, but it solved the problem. Unfortunately for Caesar, and maybe Rome, he couldn’t bring himself to apply the solution to fellow Romans.
An army, especially a conscript army (especially one whose officers have been trained by the US for generations) may not finally be willing to fire on its own people, but an army with a backbone of experienced mercenaries? The papers in Serbia are now writing openly about Serbian soldiers-for-hire supporting Gaddhafi (also “Bosnians” and “Croatians” – as in Bosnian and Croatian Serbs?), and Serbian troops proved at Srebrenica that they are willing to follow orders.
I’d like to be more enthusiastic about the possibilities of people power, it brightened my whole day just seeing that Tunisian flag with “Yes, we can!” stenciled on it, but the people leading these demonstrations bear a large responsibility in essentially asking others to go out to either be mowed down by tanks or picked off by snipers. Would Otpor have been successful against a less-squeamish leader than Milosevic (according to Mladic’s diaries, he was willing to pull out of Bosnia at the threat of air attacks), or if he hadn’t lost a war and with it, part of the country and public support – the football hooligans who provided the muscle? And if Nato hadn’t been sitting on the border, their guns barely cool?
I hope Otpor is teaching hopeful revolutionaries techniques for calculating their chances of success at any time and estimating the probable number of dead it will take to overthrow their local dictators in a given situation. It’s one thing for an elected government to risk its people’s lives, it would seem to be something different for self-selected idealists to do the same. Dead is forever.