Après eux?

President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and non-president of Libya Muammar Gaddafi will soon be gone.   They have cracked their respective countries beyond repair.  It looks unlikely that Bashar al Assad will last much longer in Syria.  What can, or should, come next?

There is no reason why these revolutions should follow a common pattern, but it may be worthwhile to look at what is happening in Egypt to get an idea of the issues that will arise.  The New York Times has made a brave effort in this week’s magazine to give us a well-rounded, if optimistic, snapshot.  I was struck with this compelling observation:

The revolutions of 2011 were led by a generation that is tired of ideologies and that tends to see its own struggle in terms of more concrete personal rights and freedoms.

Many observers worry that the generals who now run Egypt may want to remain in power, or that the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood may dominate the post-revolution political space, or that economic distress will upend hopes for democracy.  All these worries are real, but the Times found the generals interested in returning to barracks, the Muslim Brotherhood split and other Islamist groups less threatening than imagined.  Economic problems may well endure and present the most serious threat to improvements in personal rights and freedoms.

Jane Novak, a keen observer of Yemen blogging at Armies of Liberation, proposes a locally-based approach to politics, social services and jobs once Saleh is gone.  I don’t really know if her “Interim Transitional Mechanism” and its local “Community Centers” is realistic.  Is it too schematic?  Cartesian organization doesn’t strike me as a likely formula for success in Yemen.  But she is on to something:  the Saleh regime’s attempt to run Yemen from Sanaa has been notably unsuccessful, and the political “opposition” seems also to lack strong roots outside the capital.  It might be a lot smarter post-revolution to try something more locally based, drawing on tribal loyalties. There is of course a risk that southerners will take advantage of the opportunity to secede, but Novak seems to feel this can be prevented, at least temporarily.

It is easy to imagine something similar in Libya, where the resistance to Muammar Gaddafi seems to have evolved largely along municipal and tribal lines, starting in Benghazi but certainly extending also to Misrata and other towns.  The same is true on Gaddafi’s side of the ledger, where his tribal strength in Sirte helps to protect Tripoli from the insurgent forces.  Building the new Libyan state from the grassroots up strikes me as preferable to replacement of Gaddafi with some internationally acclaimed worthy.  Far better a decentralized approach that makes Tripoli listen to other population centers more than it has in the past. Libyans seem fully committed to national unity, despite the current civil war, and economic hardship could pass quickly if the oil revenue is used effectively.  But of course that is a tall order.

In Syria, the risk of disintegration is serious.  Some of its Kurds–treated as second class citizens in an Arab Republic–aspire to the kind of autonomy they see next door in Iraq.  So too is the risk of a Sunni Islamist takeover that would breach one of the current regime’s only virtues:  commitment to religious pluralism. Many Syrians will be looking to settle accounts with the Alawites who run the current regime, and they will not wait to be attacked before defending themselves (that in a sense is already what they are doing).  Constitutional succession in Syria seems even more unlikely than in Egypt, which abandoned that route mid-stream. Economic problems are likely to be at least as challenging, as Syrian oil production is declining and the current regime’s repressive efforts are no doubt emptying the treasury (if it hadn’t already been emptied by the kleptocrats).

I don’t have a ready-made formula for Syria, Yemen or Libya except this:  we need to listen to the locals, and follow their lead if we can figure out what it is.  It is striking, as the Times observes, how the street protesters are committed to individual rights and freedoms.  We should be finding and supporting that vein of gold in each of these societies.  I remember all too well how we quickly abandoned the Otpor youth who led the revolt against Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, because we were more concerned to support the new government than to make sure it was true to democratic ideals.  Above all, we should not make that mistake again.