Month: July 2011
A Libya busman’s holiday
I’ve got a paper coming out on Libya over at the Council on Foreign Relations in the next couple of days, but I mosied over to the Carnegie Endowment this afternoon for a discussion on Libya’s post-Gaddafi transition featuring Esam Omiesh of the Libyan Emergency Task Force and Fadel Lamen of the American-Libyan Council, Carnegie’s Marina Ottaway in the chair.
Marina started off with a cautionary tone: the transition has to be fast enough to provide the country with some semblance of order and governance, but not so fast that legitimacy is brought into in doubt. The country was already devastated by the Gaddafi regime even before the fighting, which has now split it east and west. The security forces are also divided. Political agreements take time, elections are not urgent, but some sort of interim administration is necessary.
Esam outlined the process as currently foreseen by the Transitional National Council (TNC). The goal is a united, constitutionally based, democratic Libya. In the immediate future, the NTC hopes for a ceasefire and withdrawal of Gaddafi’s forces, creation of humanitarian “safe zones,” release of prisoners and removal from power of Gaddafi and his family.
The NTC thinks of itself as a temporary umbrella group, a hybrid executive and legislative body. It has already expanded from the original 31 members to 60 and will need to expand further as more areas are liberated. Tripoli will be a particular challenge. Tribal cleavages will not be an issue in Libya, as so many foreigners seem to think. Nor will ethnic differences emerge as important, as Berbers are thoroughly integrated and have been fighting with the rebels in the Nafusa moutains.
The NTC foresees a committee of 15 to write a new constitution within 45 days by a committee of 15, then approved in a referendum. Legislative elections would follow in 4 months, with presidential elections 2 months later. Fadel and Marina preferred a provisional constitution, subject to subsequent revision in an unspecified way. The new constitution, it has already been decided, would cite Islam as “a” (not “the”) source of law.
All this would be done in line with international mandates and seeking international support through a reconstruction conference. International nongovernmental organizations will be welcomed, provided they are well informed and seek the trust of the Libyans, and especially if they have Libyan American staff. The NTC may negotiate with Gaddafi, but it will not agree to allow him or any of his family to remain in power.
Fadel, noting that Libya under Gaddafi was a stateless state, or worse a stateless autocracy, surveyed the key players. The TNC, he said, is accepted as legitimate everywhere, as is its chair Judge Abdul Jalil. There is controversy about some of its other members, and it does not always make good decisions, but it has served well so far.
Local councils have grown up in liberated areas as well as in Gaddafi-held territory, including Tripoli (where there are thought to be four). They are the ones governing at the local level. The February 17 coalition of lawyers and judges is influential. A relatively moderate Muslim brotherhood seems to dominate the Islamists part of the political spectrum, at least for the moment. Technocrats from the Gaddafi regime, military officers, militia leaders, “syndicates” (regime-sponsored guilds of lawyers, doctors, etc.), secular democrats will all have roles to play.
An international honest broker will be needed, but not Qatar or the Arab League. The UN and EU will play important roles, but Fadel wants the U.S. not to lead only from behind. There will be a real need in order to ensure security for Muslim and Arab peacekeeping boots on the ground.
My comment: A lot of wishful thinking here, especially about the speed and ease of the transition. But what’s a revolution without a bit of idealism and hope? I’m not one to fault people for wanting a good outcome, moving quickly, and being inclusive.
The local councils are the real news here: few conflict societies generate bodies of this sort with palpable legitimacy. For some reason, Libya does. It will be difficult but important to preserve them from the depredations of the foreign invasion of embassies and NGOs, who will want to hire away everyone in sight who speaks English or has a decent education.
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Let’s be practical
As I thought I might be giving a talk this week about the Balkans, I prepared the following text, which I would not want to see go unused. So here are my latest, but not very new, thoughts about the Balkans:
The Balkans are a region that produces more history than it can consume but also generates less future than its people would like.
There are two places that still merit attention in Washington. One is Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the state created at Dayton in 1995 is facing a serious partition challenge from Republika Srpska, its Serb-dominated half. The other is Kosovo, where a similar challenge arises from Serbia’s desire to hold on to the northern 11% of the country.
These are the last territorial issues in the Balkans, a region once wracked by ethnic claims. Either one might, if mishandled, generate instability and ethnic conflict, vitiating 15 years of progress. Not only Bosnia and Kosovo might be affected, but also Macedonia and Serbia, which has Muslim and Albanian-majority areas that will want whatever the Serbs get in Bosnia or Kosovo. We need to ensure that Pandora’s box remains closed.
That reassurance can no longer come only from the United States. Today, the European Union holds most of the leverage in the Balkans. The prospect of EU membership—now ensured for Croatia and not too far off for Montenegro—has become a major incentive for Balkan reform, where otherwise there is an inclination towards ethno-territorial breakdown.
We need the Europeans to secure stability in the Balkans, but they also need us. American-led interventions ended the Bosnian war as well as Yugoslav repression in Kosovo. Nowhere are Americans more appreciated than among Bosnian Muslims and Kosovars.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Let’s start with Bosnia. In the first 10 years after the Dayton agreements were signed, it made good progress with a lot of international tutelage. But Bosnia has stalled for the past five years, since rejection in 2006 of the April package of constitutional amendments. They failed to reach a two-thirds majority in the Bosnian parliament by just two votes. It was a setback from which Bosnia has still not recovered.
Since then, Milorad Dodik, now president of the Serb-controlled 49% of Bosnia, has set course to make his Serb entity as autonomous as possible, denying the validity of decisions by the internationally designated High Representative and challenging the authority of Sarajevo-based governing institutions and courts. His stated goal is independence for Republika Srpska, even if he has often stepped back from irreversible steps in that direction. It is not an accident that Dodik has also been predicting that EU membership for Bosnia is 50 years in the future.
We need to recognize that Dodik is serious. His strategy is to maximize the separation of Republika Srpska from the Bosnian state so that he can, if political conditions ever permit, achieve independence in the future. This is essentially the same strategy that was pursued successfully by Milo Djukanovic in Montenegro, which became independent in 2006.
There is, however, a big difference between Montenegro and Republika Srpska, whose population today is overwhelmingly Serb because of an aggressive ethnic cleansing campaign during the Bosnian war. Montenegro gained the support of all but its Serb minority for independence and conducted a referendum under strict supervision of the international community. Dodik has no intention of allowing the return to Republika Srpska of its pre-war Muslim plurality. To the contrary, the RS is unwelcoming to Croat and Muslim returnees and maintains an atmosphere hostile to non-Serbs in its schools, press, governing institutions and social life. Ratko Mladic, now on trial in The Hague for genocide and crimes against humanity, is still a hero in Republika Srpska, which is funding his defense.
There is another difference in Bosnia: secession of Republika Srpska would lead quickly to secession of at least some Croat-majority areas of Bosnia, leaving in central Bosnia the “green garden”: a non-viable, rump Islamic state. Neither Zagreb nor Belgrade would want to see the green garden planted in their midst, and it is hard to picture the Americans or Europeans liking the idea either. Avoiding this outcome was a major motive for the Americans in supporting a united Bosnia in the 1990s; it is no less important in 2011.
If ever there is a referendum in Bosnia, it should be conducted in the entire country on a serious proposition: do you want to live in a Bosnia that can qualify to become a member of the European Union? I have no doubt at all that such a proposition would pass with a strong majority and silence most talk of secession.
The European Union approach to this problem has been accommodation. Dodik this spring scheduled a contentious referendum on the Bosnian court system and the High Representative that would have set a precedent for an independence referendum. The High Representative was prepared to annul the legal arrangements for the voting, something he can do as the referendum violated the Dayton agreements. Instead, the European Union, without telling the Americans, arranged to accommodate Dodik’s demand for discussions on the Bosnian court system, without consulting the Bosnian government.
I have rarely seen American diplomats more outraged, though they have largely kept their fury out of the public eye. Blind-siding the Americans—actually it is usually called sand-bagging in the bureaucratic world—no doubt gave Dodik a great deal of satisfaction, as it meant that the European Union came to him and met his demand for discussion of institutions belonging to the Bosnian state, without representatives of that state present.
So what we are seeing in Bosnia is obvious deterioration of the international consensus on how to handle Dodik’s determined and consistent efforts to gain the kind of autonomy that will make independence some day in the future possible.
Kosovo
I am pleased that we are not seeing the same thing in dealing with Kosovo, where the EU has been leading a dialogue effort between Belgrade and Pristina intended to resolve practical problems that would improve life for both Serbs and Albanians. Robert Cooper, who has led this effort on behalf of Brussels, has kept the Americans at the table and in the loop.
The dialogue has now produced its first modest results: agreements on mutual recognition of documents and license plates as well as provision by Serbia to Kosovo of copies of official records taken at the end of the NATO/Yugoslavia war. Other more far-reaching agreements are thought to be imminent. This illustrates clearly what can be achieved when the Americans and Europeans act together.
There is still, however, a long way to go. Belgrade has said it will never recognize an independent Kosovo, which is not a problem so long as it eventually lifts the Russian veto on its membership in the UN General Assembly. This it will have to do before Serbia can enter the EU, which will not want to accept a new Cyprus-like divided member. In fact, Serbia is under pressure to specify sooner rather than later on what territory it intends to apply EU laws and regulations—the acquis communitaire. It hopes to hold on to at least the part of Kosovo north of the Ibar river, which is contiguous with Serbia and is still governed by Belgrade. If it specifies all or part of Kosovo, Serbia won’t be taken seriously as a candidate for EU membership–it would be best if the EU can be convinced not to allow it candidacy status until it settles the issue of the north with Pristina.
The Serbian political leadership, even its more forward-looking and pro-European president Boris Tadic, has painted itself into a corner on Kosovo issues. Belgrade refuses to meet with Pristina officials who are clearly identified as such. It needs to find its own way out of this cul-de-sac. I would suggest it work along this path: recognition not of Kosovo’s independence, but of the legitimacy of the Kosovo’s democratic institutions, with whose representatives it has already reached limited agreements.
Pristina could help this process if President Atifete Jahjaga would invite Tadic to visit Kosovo’s capital and pay a courtesy call. If he refuses, he embarrasses himself: why wouldn’t he call on the democratically legitimized president of a territory he claims is part of Serbia? If he accepts, we get past a silly hurdle that the Serbs have erected for themselves.
The American role
What is the American role in all of this? We need to do what we can to complete the state-building process in Bosnia and Kosovo so that American troops and civilians can turn their attention to more pressing matters.
Here are my relatively few recommendations for what the United States should still do in the Balkans:
1. Working with the EU, get Serbia to tell RS it will never be independent or part of Serbia and that Dodik needs to turn his attention to strengthening the Bosnian state so that it can become an EU member.
2. Urge Pristina to invite Tadic to visit.
3. In a joint statement with the EU, declare that Kosovo and Bosnia will not be divided and can only hope to enter the EU as states within their well-established borders.
Even the five members of the EU that have not recognized Kosovo’s sovereignty can, I believe, acknowledge that its independence will not be reversed and that partition of either Bosnia or Kosovo is a bad idea. If we expect Belgrade to be practical, we should expect ourselves to be practical as well.
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What if Gaddafi holds on?
The Atlantic Wire has usefully assembled all the occasions on which Muammar Gaddafi has indicated he will step down. Obviously that hasn’t happened, and it may not, malgré Juppé. The question is what do we do if he continues to hold on to power in Tripoli and the rebels are unable to make real headway in taking territory? What is plan B?
Failure is definitely an option, at least in the near term. While the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi has not lost any ground in weeks, it hasn’t gained much either. It is managing more or less to administer the territory it does control, where street crime is down, local councils have been set up and humanitarian assistance is delivered. Electricity and water are still ample, but fuel and medicine is reportedly low in some areas.
The NTC is viewed as legitimate outside of Tripolitania (Tripoli and the western portion of the country), not least because it is not claiming to be a government-in-waiting but only a stopgap until a full interim administration with representation from the whole country can be formed after a ceasefire takes effect. Its roots are particularly strong in Cyrenaica (the eastern portion of the country, where Benghazi is located).
If Gaddafi manages to hold on to Tripoli and there is no ceasefire, my guess is the NTC will need to do more than it currently plans. This creates a great moral hazard: the more we help the NTC to govern the country separately from Gaddafi, the greater the likelihood Libya will split into two (or more) pieces, something that most in the international community would find highly objectionable.
What would be needed then is a concerted effort to broaden participation in the NTC and keep its governing structure as open as possible to eventual reformulation. This might mean incorporating more prominent representatives from Tripoli, creating a Tripoli administration-in-exile and maintaining some degree of consistency between how Cyrenaica and Tripolitania are governed. It would mean maintaining insofar as possible those infrastructure networks that still function across the front lines between Gaddafi’s forces and the rebels.
It will also likely mean finding a way to get at least some of Libya’s oil and gas flowing again. This will not be easy: oil company lawyers are rightfully cautious about property rights, which would remain “sketchy,” as my kids say, if Gaddafi is still around. I gather it is legal to buy from Arab Gulf Oil, which is under rebel control. A mechanism for depositing revenues into a UN or other fund, with transparent and supervised drawdown by the NTC, might help get the oil and gas moving again.
The question of currency is likely to arise sooner or later. Libyans seem still to be using Gaddafi-era dinars, but what if they run short in areas outside Gaddafi’s control, or if people lose confidence and want a substitute? Issuance of a new currency would be a big step in the direction of dividing Libya. It would likely be better to allow euro-ization or dollarization to proceed according to market forces, something that has worked reasonably well in a number of conflict situations.
The UK-led International Stabilisation and Response Team, which visited Libya May 20-June 30), has prepared an excellent draft report on what to do once a ceasefire is in place. Is it time to consider more deliberately what happens if there is no ceasefire?
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Crunch time in Baghdad
Well into July and still no Baghdad decision on whether to ask the Americans to keep some troops in Iraq past the end of the year. Defense Secretary Panetta is making his displeasure known, even as the Iraqis postpone a decision for another couple of weeks.
CNN asked me yesterday about a drop dead date–presumably the date past which the Americans can no longer get out in time, or after which the drawdown is essentially irreversible. The answer of course depends on how quickly we want to move. Better to ask U.S. Forces Iraq rather than me, but certainly we are there by October 1. I see no sign that the 46,000 still in Iraq are starting to move right now, though preparations have presumably been made.
Everyone is expecting a request to the Americans to stay, though the numbers are still unclear. Both Prime Minister Maliki and his rival (and coalition partner) Ayad Allawi want it. But neither wants to take the responsibility of making the decision, since it is widely unpopular in Iraq and will therefore likely redound to the benefit of Shia firebrand Moqtada al Sadr, who has led a vigorous campaign against what he terms the American “occupation.” Allawi is trying to use his agreement to ask the Americans to stay as a bargaining chip to get Maliki to agree to name defense and interior ministers agreeable to Iraqiyya, Allawi’s coalition.
The issue of course is much larger than a few thousand U.S. troops, who would be happily welcomed home by most Americans. The real issue is Iraq’s international alignment, and in particular its relationship with Iran, which is pushing hard for the Americans to leave (and pumping in weapons and training to aid those who are trying to push them out). The Americans want Iraq to act as a counterweight to Iran in the region, limiting its influence and providing a bulwark against Iran’s efforts to establish itself as a leader of the Muslim world.
Iraqis will be hesitant to cast their own role in such grandiose terms. Even those highly suspicious of Tehran regard Iran as a fact of life, one that unquestionably will have substantial influence in the largely Shia south. But
most Iraqis, including those in the south, will want the country to be able to protect its territorial integrity, defend itself and export its oil freely.
There are many ways to achieve these objectives, in addition to maintaining a U.S. troop presence. The purchase of American F-16’s fighter jets, reported today by the Wall Street Journal to have been quietly revived, is another important dimension of Iraq’s future military capabilities. The Iraqi navy is important too.
In my view, another important contribution to Iraq’s future international alignment could come from its capability to export oil other than by loading it on ships and moving it through the Gulf and the strait of Hormuz. The Gulf export facilities are already a bottleneck, not to mention the risk that conflict there could disrupt Iraq’s exports.
But Iraq is geographically advantaged. It can export oil (and gas) to the north and west, reaching European markets more directly and cheaply than through the Gulf. My understanding is that even Iraq’s southern oil fields can export more economically to the north and west, provided the “strategic pipeline” that once linked them to northern Iraq is repaired and enlarged.
If the Americans really want an Iraq that will see its interests more aligned with the West, oil and gas pipelines to the north and west are likely to be at least as important as F-16’s and American troops in the long run. There is no time like the present to get busy making the long run happen.
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A different kind of ambassador
The Syrian government is so anxious to keep order in Hama, where the American ambassador Friday expressed solidarity with the protesters, that it couldn’t manage to protect the American and French embassies over the weekend. I guess Bashar al Assad figures that will show us what failure to use his security forces would lead to. All it really proves is that he isn’t any better than the thugs he hires for his rent-a-mob.
The question is what to do about behavior of this sort. My friends over at the Washington Institute are proposing vigorous diplomatic protest, not only to the Syrians but also to the Russians, whose flag the demonstrators carried during the attack. Somehow that doesn’t sound likely to prove effective.
Attacks on American embassies of this sort are diplomatic signals, in this case a signal that Ambassador Ford’s presence in Hama was vastly unappreciated, as I trust is his open Facebook support for the protests:
Hama and the Syrian crisis is not about the U.S. at all. This is a crisis the Syrian people are in the process of solving. It is a crisis about dignity, human rights, and the rule of law.
He has been bold, bolder than the Administration and therefore exposed. I hope they come around to his perspective rather than making him heel to theirs.
The only real limit for Ford should be maintaining his presence in Damascus. He is valuable there as a symbol of international support to the protesters, as a restraining influence on the regime, as a communicator of American views, which have unfortunately been less clear than I might have liked. But those who think we would be better off withdrawing him are wrong. This is an ambassador who has now made himself clear. He deserves Washington’s support so long as the Syrians allow him to stay.
That likely won’t be for long, though I can hope they may wait until his “recess” appointment is up at the end of the Congressional session, likely sometime late next year. Whenever it is, at least we have occasion to applaud a courageous ambassador, one who is showing those who resisted his appointment and others who have wanted him recalled why they were wrong.
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Diplomacy stirs
I won’t claim it is due to what I asked three days ago on peacefare.net (where are the diplomats?), but there are stirrings in the last day or so of American diplomacy. Ambassador Robert Ford made his way to Hama in a show of support show of support for the Syrian demonstrators there, along with French Ambassador Eric Chevallier. Anti-terrorism “czar” John Brennan met with Yemen’s President Saleh in Saudi Arabia and let it be known he had asked Saleh to sign the Gulf Cooperation Council agreement that would begin a transition with Saleh stepping aside. Less visible: U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz has cancelled a scheduled Middle East Institute event this week, I understand in order to meet with Libyan National Transitional Council people in Doha about planning for the post-Gaddafi era.
All good, if a bit late and less decisive than I might like. Ford is in a particularly sensitive spot, as the Syrian-government sponsored “national dialogue” is supposed to have started today, with a good part of the street opposition staying away. The Americans still have not asked for President Assad to step aside, and it seems unlikely he would even if they did. That said, there is likely more to be gained from the American perspective from a successful transition to a more democratic society in Syria than just about any place else, since it would presumably offer less cooperation to Iran and Hizbollah. Ford needs somehow to signal clear support for transition without getting out ahead of the demonstrators or President Obama, who inexplicably hangs on to the hope that Bashar al Assad will undertake serious reform.
Brennan’s visit with Saleh to read him the riot act and get him not to return to Sanaa is likewise a good move, but one that comes late in the game. Saleh shows no signs of wanting to sign an agreement he has repeatedly promised to sign. Brennan is the right guy to deliver the message because he controls the military assistance to counter-terrorism in Yemen that Saleh values. But I trust he is also lining up the Saudis not only to say the right things but to do them: they should not allow Saleh to leave for Yemen and they should make it clear his allowance will be zeroed out if he manages somehow to get back to Sanaa.
As for Libya, it is high time Europeans, Americans and Arabs put their heads together to plan the post-Gaddafi era. As I’ve previously note, there is a lot to do, and the international community is thoroughly occupied elsewhere. But somehow we’ve got to put together a serious post-conflict reconstruction effort in Libya, if only to prevent a failed transition: restoration of a Gaddafi or Gaddafi-like dictatorship, split up of the country, or breakdown into chaos. Any of these outcomes would discredit the Security Council-authorized, NATO-led intervention and put American interests at risk, if only by providing our terrorist enemies with a new platform. We need a Libyan-led post-Gaddafi effort, one that can command broad legitimacy not only in Benghazi but also in Tripoli. Easier said than done, but I’m glad to the effort beginning to move ahead.
PS: For those with Arabic, and even for those without (watch Brennan’s unhappy face) here is a video report on Brennan’s meeting with Saleh:
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