Day: June 4, 2011
How do you say serendipity in Arabic?
Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh has gone to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, due to injuries suffered Friday in an attack by rebellious tribal forces on the presidential palace. This is an extraordinary bit of good luck for Yemen, but the country will need a lot more serendipity if this story is to end well.
Vice President Abd Al-Rab Mansur Hadi, in office since 1994, is the constitutional successor. Who knows what he will do, but the right thing is to implement the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) agreement that Saleh never signed. It calls for an opposition-led government of national unity to prepare free and fair elections. If the attack on the palace leads in this direction, without further violence, we can all thank our lucky stars (and the Saudi princes who fund Yemeni bigwigs).
What could go wrong? Just about everything: tribes or the protesters could refuse to go along, someone in the military could try to seize power, Saleh’s family and cronies could balk, the Vice President could decide to crack down hard on the protesters, the Saudis could decide to back someone else, Saleh could try to return to Yemen…my imagination runs amuck. Yemen is one of the most fragile states on earth, more like neighboring Somalia than like the GCC rich guys who live on the other side of the Arabian peninsula. Its oil and water are running low, the population is very poor and very young, it faces an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south, and its institutions are weak enough to attract Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to take up residence.
That abused word, stability, is what Yemen needs now. A constitutional succession that follows the path outlined by the GCC is likely to be the best deal on offer. Anything else bodes ill not only for Yemenis but also for the United States. Can we get lucky again?
PS: I took down the video originally posted with this, because it was starting up automatically.
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Marvel the Syrians!
From Hama, yesterday:
You’ve got to admire the fortitude and organizational capability of the Syrians. Josh Landis has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of both the “Friday of the Children of Freedom” and the opposition conclave Wednesday and Thursday in Antalya, Turkey.
The demonstrators inside Syria managed to turn out in good numbers to protest the torture and murder by security forces of a 13-year-old boy as well as other atrocities against children, despite shut-down of a large part of the internet and cell phone systems. Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two biggest cities, are still not turning out big numbers, but yesterday’s demonstrations were widespread and energetic according to the reports that have leaked out. Several dozen people appear to have been killed.
The opposition meeting in Antalya that ended Thursday not only reached agreement on a statement (not yet available in its entirety) but also elected an executive board. So far as I can tell, the program focuses on getting rid of Bashar al Assad in favor of his vice president and holding free and fair elections within a year. There is talk as well of maintaining separation of state and religion as well as Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity (Kurdish representation in Antalya was strong, so this is significant). The Washington Post reported:
The statement also called for the creation of a democratic, secular Syrian state, in which freedom of worship would be guaranteed, but religion would play no role, and the rights of the country’s minorities would be respected.
All of this is fine, but of course the big problem is the regime’s determination to hold on to power. My understanding is that the protesters are not promising amnesty to Bashar al Assad, who therefore has a choice of using maximum repression to stay in power or expatriating himself to some safe haven. All indicators are that he is determined to hold on.
The protesters now have the challenge of maintaining nonviolent discipline and unity while under enormous pressure from the security forces. They also need eventually to spread their mass mobilization efforts into the centers of Damascus and Aleppo. Only when some of the security forces begin to hesitate–when they refuse to fire on protesters or even join them–will the revolution in Syria begin to see the fruits of its labors. Connecting with the army, some units of which are believed to be less committed to Bashar al Assad than others, needs to be a priority objective. This is likely to happen earlier in the provinces than in the major cities, where Assad will station the most loyal troops.
The international community is still proving ineffective on Syria. No UN Security Council resolution has emerged, despite expectations earlier in the week. Washington is sounding a bit more stentorian, but nevertheless holding on to the slim hope that Assad will institute reforms. The Wall Street Journal had a good article Friday detailing Obama Administration efforts to win Assad over to a settlement with Israel and a break with Hizbollah, Hamas and Iran. The odds of that now seem vanishingly small, but I suppose someone in the White House (and in Senator Kerry’s office) may still harbor hopes.
The die is cast. Either Assad will succeed, as his father did, in repressing the protests with state violence or he will have to yield to what is beginning to look like a more or less united, determined and focused revolution.
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