Day: March 29, 2012
Maliki wins another bet
Nouri al Maliki, the prime minister orginally chosen in 2006 because he and his Dawa party were regarded as too weak to threaten the bigger fish of Iraqi politics, is improbably completing his sixth year in office (give or take a month or two) with another relative success: the Arab League Summit he hosted this week in Baghdad. It marks the reemergence of Iraq as a regional player, one which borders both Syria and Iran, the West’s two big preoccupations in the Middle East these days.
While the Western press is underlining that fewer than half the 22 heads of state attended the summit, the Iraqis will be glad to have gotten 10 of them to a security-handicapped Baghdad, including the Emir of Kuwait. That’s significant, not only because of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 but also because relations between the two countries were tense until recently.
Also significant is the absence of the other Gulf heads of state, who want to see better treatment of Sunnis in Iraq. Boycotts are not my style of diplomacy–they’d have done better to attend and complain. But I suppose the message was clear enough.
The main substantive issue was Syria. The Arab League is now backing Kofi Annan’s plan, which to Baghdad’s satisfaction backs off the demand that Bashar al Assad step down. Instead it talks about “an inclusive Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people.” Anyone who has followed Maliki’s elastic interpretation of his domestic political commitments over the past year–in particular to his putative coalition partners Iraqiyya and the Kurdish bloc–will understand immediately that this language will not constrain him to insist that Bashar has to go.
That said, it is not really Iraq’s role, or even the Arab League’s, to push Bashar aside. That role belongs mainly to the Russians, who have so far protected him from a UN Security Council resolution. They are showing signs of impatience with their protégé, who is not looking so reliable these days. The Americans need to convince the Russians that they have better chances of maintaining their port access and arms sales in Syria with a successor who can last rather than a wobbly Bashar.
In the wake of the Summit, Iraq will take over the presidency of the Arab League from Qatar. This will put Baghdad in a decisive role vis-a-vis Syria during the period in which a denouement is likely to occur. Iraq will want to make sure that the successor regime in Damascus is one that does not feed Sunni insurgency in Iraq and treats Alawis gently.
Baghdad will face enormous challenges if Bashar al Assad does step down. The West will look to the Arab League for answers to difficult questions: how will law and order in Syria be maintained? What will have to be done to help it revive its flagging economy? Where will the necessary relief come for what are now likely more than a million refugees and displaced people? Iraq, not far itself from having been a basket case, will have a major role fixing another broken state.
But those challenges lie in the future. For the moment, Maliki can enjoy his earnings from what was a high stakes bet.
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Here’s the rub
We are coming to a critical and delicate moment in the diplomacy about Syria. The Annan peace plan, which does not call explicitly for Bashar al Assad to leave power, has gained Arab League and UN Security Council backing. Bashar has said he accepts it. The Syrian opposition has not.
They are going to get their arms twisted, hard. The clear signal comes from David Ignatius, who argues in this morning’s Washington Post that they should go along with the deal. This is the opening salvo in what will no doubt be an intense U.S. government effort to convince the Syrian National Council and anyone else who will listen to go along. There is a strong likelihood that the pressure will split an already fractious opposition.
Ignatius simply assumes that the Annan plan will lead to the departure of Bashar. That is where the opposition, and the United States, have to be very careful. So far as I can tell, the Annan plan addresses this question only obliquely, by requiring that the Syrian government work with the UN envoy
in an inclusive Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people
I have been a supporter of Annan’s efforts, but I have to confess that this is a very weak reed on which to hang anyone’s hopes for a serious political transition. That Bashar al Assad needs to step aside in order “to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people” may be perfectly obvious to me. But it is not obvious to Bashar, who has repeatedly claimed that he understands and expresses the aspirations and concerns of the Syrians.
This of course is the issue that precipitated the Russian and Chinese vetoes of Security Council resolutions. Neither Moscow nor Beijing wants to be seen as carrying out regime change in Syria at the behest of the West or the Arab League.
The question is whether they are prepared to do it, even if they are not prepared to say it out loud. There is a big question mark here, one that the Syrian opposition needs a clear answer to, at least in private, before it signs on. Washington needs to help them get that answer and be prepared to guarantee it will happen.
The rest of the plan is a re-hash of things Syria has already agreed to do, and then not done: stop fighting, cessation of hostilities, pullback of the Syrian army and heavy weapons from population centers, deployment of UN monitors, humanitarian assistance, release of detainees, access for journalists and respect for free association and the right to demonstrate.
Opinion on whether Bashar can be made to comply with the plan this time is split. I don’t really think there is any possibility he will if he stays in power. His removal is a prerequisite for the Annan plan to have a chance to work. But he is feeling buoyed by recent military success, even as it becomes clearer with every passing day that his regime has lost legitimacy with the vast majority of the Syrian people.
There’s the rub: it is more than time for him to go, but he clearly intends to stay.
PS: Here is footage of a Syrian government helicopter allegedly rocketing ‘Azaz near Aleppo on March 25. If anyone in the Obama administration is looking for a reason to impose a no-fly zone, here it is:
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Dumb and dumber
Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić yesterday announced the arrest of two Kosovo Albanians in retaliation for the arrest of four Serbs by Kosovo authorities:
The reciprocal measures are not in Serbia’s interests and the Serbian police does not wish to do this….[but] this type of situation (arrests of Serbs) can obviously no longer happen without reciprocal measures.
I hardly need mention that “reciprocal” or retaliatory arrests have no place in a rule of law lexicon. Nor need I mention that doing things not in your country’s interest is dumb. With this singular act of hubris, Dačić has likely done more to tarnish Serbia’s European credentials than anyone else in recent months.
The problem goes deeper. The arrests were made under a warrant issued by a Serbian court, one that is no longer resident in Kosovo. This illustrates how little Belgrade respects UN Security Council resolution 1244, to which it appeals regularly and mistakenly as the basis for claims to Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. That resolution, if it did nothing else, put Kosovo–including its judicial system–under temporary UN administration, pending a decision on final status. Serbia does not accept the proposition that the decision has been made, which is its right. But under 1244 it has no right to be administering law in Kosovo.
The law under which the arrest was made includes, according to Balkan Insight, the following:
Whoever attempts to unconstitutionally bring Serbia or SaM[Serbia and Montenegro] into a position of subjugation or dependence in respect of another state, shall be punished by imprisonment of three to fifteen years.
So we are not talking small beans here. And the impact of the arrests will be much broader than on the two people arrested. It will curtail travel by Kosovo Albanians in Serbia, which the recent EU-brokered agreement between Belgrade and Pristina on travel documents and border regime was supposed to encourage.
Dačić is no fool. He knows full well that his move will bring him nationalist votes and embarrass President Tadić, who has sought to burnish Serbia’s European credentials as he tries to convince Brussels to give Serbia a date on which to start accession talks. Tadić is going to have a hard time explaining to Brussels why it should bend over backwards for Serbia when Belgrade is busy undoing an agreement the EU brokered.
What about the arrest of the four Serbs by the Pristina authorities? According to the press, they were carrying election materials for the May 6 Serbian elections, which Belgrade wants to conduct in Serb communities in Kosovo and Pristina wants to prevent.
I am sympathetic with those Kosovars who want to establish full sovereignty on the entire territory of Kosovo, but I still need to ask why it was necessary to arrest the four Serbs. Surely there are more nefarious activities going on than carrying election materials. I suspect the answer is that it will be a politically popular move for Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who faces strong pressure from more nationalist Albanians to stop Serbia’s many activities inside Kosovo. But he also expects to visit Washington next week, where a provocative move like the arrests is unlikely to be welcome.
I’d call this dumb and dumber. I’ll let you decide which is which.
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