Month: May 2012
Revolution, conspiracy or civil war? Yes
After a spectacular clear morning walking in the older parts of Istanbul and a visit to the Grand Bazaar, I took in a discussion of Syria this afternoon at Bahçeşehir University moderated with distinction by Samir Aita of le Monde Diplomatique, who noted the key role of the youth movement in Syria, whose cohort faces a disastrous job market with no more than one in five finding even inadequate employment. Control of the Syria by a small, rich rent-seeking elite is no longer acceptable to the younger generation.
He wanted to know whether Syria is experiencing a revolution, a conspiracy or a civil war? Will there be a military or a negotiated solution? If the latter, who should negotiate, how will they attain a modicum of unity and what roles should international powers play, in particular Qatar, Russia and Turkey?
I am not going to identify the respondents by name, even though this was a more or less public event. I don’t want my reports in someone’s file.
A young Syrian activist confirmed it was a revolution but suggested that the civil (nonviolent) revolt needs to split from the military (violent) rebellion, because a democratic outcome requires the former and not the latter (which will lead to civil war). Military intervention will not bring what the Syrian opposition wants. Success in Syria means a democracy established without international intervention.
Confusion reigns in Syria. The Syrian National Council (SNC) has been fragmented among ethnic/sectarian communities in a way that does not reflect Syrian reality. The regime has built a strategy quickly that divides the opposition and drives it in a violent direction. The opposition will be willing to negotiate with secondary members of the regime as well as with Russia and Iran, who are mainstays of the regime, but not with Bashar al Assad.
A Lebanese political scientist living in Paris suggested the Syrian revolution is undergoing three simultaneous processes: militarization of the rebellion because of regime violence (which will create big demobilization challenges in the post-Assad period), territorialization (which will create big governance issues after Assad) and regionalization, with spillover and external interference that makes the conflict increasingly a proxy war among foreign powers (which may ignite a regional conflagration). For the Iranians, the conflict in Syria is now an existential one and they will continue to support Bashar al Assad, but only up to a point, when they feel they have to abandon him to limit their losses. Israel would have preferred that Bashar stay in power, but they have now concluded that the best solution is to replace him with a strong military regime, to block jihadists from taking over.
Negotiation will eventually be necessary, but only on the conditions of the regime’s surrender, in particular amnesty, and an exit for Iran and Russia from their support to Bashar al Assad. There is also a need for negotiation within the revolution on a minimal united front: the role of Islam in the future of Syria, the position of minorities, and international guarantees and assistance.
For the moment, the Annan plan is the only political game in town. To succeed it needs some sticks for use against the regime and as many as 3000 monitors (there are currently fewer than 300) as well as a clear commitment to transition away from Bashar al Assad. If the Annan plan fails, there will be civil war.
A Syrian Kurd underlined that the Kurds have suffered 60 years of oppression in Syria and want to see a real revolution. But the regime is trying to make the rebellion into a sectarian and ethnic conflict. The Kurds fear their efforts will be viewed as separatism. There really is a conspiracy, by the regime, to make the revolution into a civil war. That is increasingly successful, with the conflict framed as Islamists against the Alawites. There will be no military solution without a political one. The Kurds are willing to participate in a unified opposition, but they want to hear an answer to the plan that they have already put forward. They want to see a tolerant society emerge from this revolution.
Another young Syrian activist underlined that the student movement has been in existence since 2001, when Bashar al Assad came to power. The goals have always been freedom, dignity and citizenship. The demonstrators often chant “We are all Kurds, we are all Arabs, we are all Syrians.” The Free Syria Army cannot win a war with the regime. The international powers all have their own agendas, the U.S. with Russia and China and Qatar wanting to export gas to Europe via Syria.
Little did I expect at the end of the presentations to find the session hijacked by hostile remarks from Turks in the audience on the Kurdish question. I should have known. The questioners had heard little about Syria, only about how the Kurds would get what they wanted from the Syrian revolution. The news was not welcome. One of the Syrian Arabs was unequivocal in reply: the Kurds will decide their own destiny.
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Savoring Egypt’s presidential election
Egypt’s presidential balloting has concluded and the vote counting has started. That’s likely to take a little while. There are a lot of good things worth reading while you are waiting for results. Brian Katulis’ preview is a good place to start. He offers a primer of issues, candidates and the uncertainties of the future political process.
Katulis says little about the electoral mechanism, whose integrity is uncertain. A great deal depends on the electorate viewing the results as legitimate. The nitty-gritty detail of campaiging, balloting and vote counting can be excruciatingly technical, but important nonetheless. The campaign during the first round has been rough and tumble, but most seem to view it as free and fair, with violations around the margins. The balloting appears to have proceeded in a mostly orderly way, without widespread intimidation or other efforts to affect voters. The turnout appears to have been low, at a little over 40%. Counting is the most sensitive, and often least transparent, part of the process. Let’s hope it goes smoothly.
Tarek Masoud offers a more philosophical reflection:
In the face of this uncertainty—about who will win and about what he’ll be able to do once in office—most of us who write about Egypt have been reduced to platitudinous celebrations of Egypt’s first free presidential contest, lamentations of the hard road that Egypt’s future president has before him, and shopworn declarations of how Egyptian politics has changed utterly. Sometimes, the best we can do is just watch.
That’s not bad advice, so I am going to say ditto to his platitudinous celebrations and sit back to await the results. We won’t know who becomes president until after the second round of voting on June 16-17. Watching a country vote in a serious election with an unknown outcome for the first time in its many thousand-year history is a fine spectator sport. Let’s savor it.
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Nikolić gets his break
This is a somewhat more detailed and updated version of a piece The National Interest published this morning as “Serbian Transition Worries West”:
On his fourth try, Tomislav Nikolić won Serbia’s presidential election Sunday, defeating incumbent Boris Tadić by a narrow margin. Turnout was low. The number of ruined ballots was high. The electoral mechanism appears to have worked smoothly, freely and fairly.
Nikolić’s victory in this second round of the presidential election comes on the heels of his party’s victory in the parliamentary polls, which gave it the largest number of seats. A majority of Serbs was fed up with a leadership that had failed to deliver jobs, economic vitality, sufficient progress in Serbia’s efforts to gain membership in the European Union, or Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
An ethnic nationalist with a history of support to Slobodan Milošević and of close ties to radical nationalist and war crimes indictee Vojislav Šešelj, Nikolić broke from Šešelj in 2008. Allegations that Nikolić committed war crimes in Croatia in the early 1990s have not been proven in court, and he won a related defamation suit in 2009.
Since breaking with Šešelj, Nikolić has taken a more pro-Europe line, while maintaining promises of never recognizing the independence of Kosovo. In this, he is no different from Tadić, who however had convinced Brussels and Washington of his bona fides. American and European officials will be nervous about Nikolić, whose recent moderation they worry could be tactical.
How should Europe and the United States react to Nikolić’s election? Calmly and purposefully. The purpose should be to bring about genuine and deep reform in Serbia, which has failed in the more than 10 years since Milošević’s fall to purge fully its security services, investigate high-level involvement in war crimes and hiding of war criminals, give up its control of northern Kosovo or support the establishment of a viable Bosnian central government. Washington and Brussels have put up with this, fearing that a tough line would undermine Tadić at the polls and strengthen nationalists like Nikolić.
The coddling of Tadić has not worked. Tadić sought credit with nationalist voters by promising never to recognize Kosovo’s independence and supporting the Serb entity in Bosnia to the hilt. Its increasingly nationalist president campaigned openly for Tadić, who failed for years to provide the support to expensive international efforts in Kosovo and Bosnia that would make them successful.
Some in Brussels and Washington will still want to play their hand in formation of the new government by pushing for Tadić’s Democratic Party to lead the majority in parliament and “cohabit” with President Nikolić. That may be the way things will turn out, even though Nikolić’s party won more seats, if the Democratic Party alliance with Ivica Dačić holds. Some think such an arrangement would enable Serbia to make policy adjustments that Tadić was unwilling to make on his own, for fear Nikolić and others would benefit.
But there is no reason to believe that a Democratic Party-led government coalition under a Nikolić presidency will necessarily prove better from an American or European perspective than the outgoing Democratic Party-led government under Tadić. Cohabitation could allow Tadić to continue promising without delivering, with the blame cast on Nikolić. Washington and Brussels should look this gift horse in the mouth, trying to ensure that it is truly committed to a course they can support before encouraging or rewarding it.
If Nikolić forms a government without the Democratic Party, prying Dačić away from his alliance with the Democrats and relying on other more conservative nationalists like former prime minister Vojislav Koštunica, the result would be far more coherent. Washington and Brussels would then be free to push hard for real policy changes.
But it is unclear whether Nikolić would in fact choose the EU path over closer ties with Russia, where he is planning to make his first foreign visit since the election. If Nikolić chooses to align Serbia more closely with Moscow, that won’t make anyone in Washington or Brussels happy, but it will relieve them of the burden of worrying about Serbia’s “Atlantic” orientation.
Alternation in power is an essential feature of truly democratic systems. It has now happened in Serbia for the first time since the fall of Milošević. Europe and the United States should recognize in these elections a clear expression of the will of Serbia’s people: like others in Europe, they wanted change. In Serbia the only viable alternative was the more nationalist, less pro-European variety.
What Brussels and Washington need to do now is draw clear red lines that both can support wholeheartedly, no matter who gains power in Belgrade. Once the new parliamentary majority is formed and the government appointed, they should ask Serbia, which will seek a date to begin negotiations for European Union membership, to end its resistance to Kosovo’s independence, to push the Bosnian Serbs towards full acceptance of the Sarajevo government and to begin deep reform of the security services. There is no reason to coddle Nikolić, who in the past has proven himself pragmatic when faced with clear and forceful requirements.
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Serbia’s musical chairs
Tomorrow peacefare will publish a piece on international implications of the Serbian elections. Today Milan Marinković writes from Niš:
Serbia elected a new president last weekend: Tomislav Nikolić, the leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Nikolić defeated incumbent Boris Tadić of the Democratic Party (DS) in the second-round runoff of the presidential race. This comes on top of a parliamentary election in which SNS won the largest number of seats. The time is coming to form a governing coalition with a majority of votes in parliament.
Nikolić’s victory strengthens Socialist Party leader Ivica Dačić as the kingmaker in postelection negotiations. He is the essential ingredient in either an SNS or a DS dominated coalition. In a statement following Nikolić’s election, Dačić said that his party’s pre-electoral agreement with DS basically remained in place, but the situation had now become more complex.
Dačić already proved to be an unreliable partner in 2008, when he was also the kingmaker following the parliamentary elections that year. Shortly after Daćić announced that his party had come to terms with the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), he suddenly jumped ship, defecting to Tadić (DS).
In line with his proven pragmatism, Dačić is now keeping his options open. He knows that Nikolić as president is entitled to offer the mandate to the party of his own chosing. SNS will be Nikolić’s logical first choice not only because it is his party, but also because it won the largest single portion of the parliamentary seats.
Serbia’s constitution strictly limits the authority of president . His predecessor managed to hold a far greater share of power than the constitution allows due to the fact that his party was the core member of the ruling coalition. Incumbent prime minister Mirko Cvetković was just a figurehead. Tadić ran the government .
The only way for Nikolić to attain substantial power is to make his party a member of the next government. Otherwise, he will be as weak a president as Mr. Cvetković was a prime minister under Tadić. Nikolić therefore needs to give Dačić an exceptionally attractive offer to lure him away from the coalition with Tadić and DS. And Tadić – or whoever might replace him as the party’s next leader – will then have to offer even more to Dačić in order for DS to stay in power.
Only a grand coalition between Nikolić’s SNS and Tadić’s DS would leave Dačić out in the cold, but that’s a solution Nikolić presumably wants to avoid. Most of the people who voted for Nikolić did so out of their animosity to Tadić. If Nikolić were to ally with his fiercest rival, his voters would no doubt feel betrayed. After nearly a decade of unsuccessful attempts to defeat Tadić in one presidential race after another, Nikolić is unlikely to risk losing the popular support he has finally won in his fourth try, especially given the small margin of his victory.
A less irksome option for Nikolić would be the so-called “cohabitation” with a government in which his party does not participate – i.e. one that involves Tadić’s DS and Dačić’s (inescapable) SPS. That would help Nikolić portray himself as a responsible politician who puts the interest of his country before everything else – including his own and his party’s interests – serving as a “corrective factor” that supervises the government’s actions. Nikolić would thus be able to cooperate with a government that involves Tadić’s party, but without direct participation in an alliance with his main political opponent – something his voters probably could swallow.
If Nikolić wants to avoid cohabitation at all costs, his party and SPS will still need a third coalition partner. The Democratic party of Serbia (DSS), led by a former prime minister Vojislav Koštunica, seems most likely to join in. DSS publicly supported Nikolić prior to his runoff with Boris Tadić.
Such a government could put the European integration of Serbia at serious risk. DSS is irreconcilably anti-EU and openly pro-Russian. It is unclear what Nikolić could do to persuade Koštunica and his party to soften their stance against the EU. SNS itself maintains strong relations with Moscow, recently formalized in a cooperation agreement with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia. Some Serbian observers even suspect that SNS is a “Trojan horse” that has infiltrated Serbia’s pro-EU camp on behalf of the Kremlin.
According to opinion polls, Nikolić’s supporters oppose Serbia’s potential membership in the EU despite his official pro-EU position. Nikolić and Dačić share the dark nationalist past of 1990s and have adopted the European agenda only recently. They both have yet to prove their newfound commitment.
A “nationalist” government composed of SNS, SPS and DSS might most coherently reflect the election results. Most SPS voters also prefer Nikolić to Tadić, even though Dačić called on them to vote for the latter. But cohabitation, with DS leading the government but Nikolic in the presidency, would be preferable from a regional and international perspective, which sees risks in a return to a strongly nationalist Serbia.
An additional complication would occur if the SPS were unable to hold the allegiance of its other two electoral coalition members. That would greatly increase the number of arithmetic possibilities for achieving a parliamentary majority.
Dačić of late has begun to play down his ambition of becoming prime minister, which may suggest that he has realized it would be advisable to avoid the hot seat at a time when a number of unpopular steps will have to be taken and instead patiently wait for a next – more opportune – occasion.
Serbia’s game of musical chairs has begun. Who will be left out when the music stops?
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Ramifications of an Iran nuclear deal
Optimism is breaking out in some circles for tomorrow’s nuclear talks in Baghdad with Iran. Tehran Bureau hopes for a win/win. Stimson projects possible success.
This hopefulness is based on the emerging sense that a quid pro quo is feasible. While the details people imagine vary, in general terms the deal would involve Iran revealing the full extent of its nuclear efforts and limiting enrichment to what the amount and extent it really needs under tight international supervision. The international community would ease off on sanctions.
What is far less clear than the shape of a deal is whether politics in either Tehran or Washington will allow it to happen, as Zack Beauchamp speculated on Twitter last week. Europe, which leads the p5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany) talks with Tehran is useful to the process but will go along with whatever the Americans and Iranians decide.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been a major stumbling block in the past. He scuppered a deal a few years ago that would have supplied Iran with the enriched uranium it needs for a research reactor in exchange for shipping its own stockpile of 20% enriched uranium out of the country. Unquestionably more in charge than in the past, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards who support him need hostility with the West to maintain their increasingly militarized regime. A resolution–even a partial one–of the nuclear standoff may not be in their interest.
It might not please hawks in the U.S. Congress either. They want a complete halt to enrichment in Iran and don’t want to rely on international inspections that might be suspended or otherwise blocked. Improvement in relations with Iran would hinder their hopes for regime change there. It would also make it difficult to criticize Barack Obama in the runup to the election for his diplomatic outreach to Iran, which failed initially but with the backing of draconian international sanctions seems now to be succeeding.
The smart money is betting that both Tehran and Washington will want to string out the negotiating process past the U.S. election in November. This would be a shame if a deal really is possible before then. The world economy would look a lot brighter if oil prices, pumped up since winter by Iranian threats to close the strait of Hormuz, sank well below $100 per barrel. Improved relations with Iran could also have positive knock-on effects in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Iran (which neighbors both countries) has sought to make things hard for the Americans.
A nuclear deal could also free the American hand a bit in Syria, where Washington has been reluctant to act decisively because it needs Russia and China on board for the P5+1 effort. Of course it might also work in the other direction: Washington could decide to give a bit in Syria in order to get a nuclear deal with Iran. That would not be our finest moment.
PS: Julian Borger is, as usual, worth reading, in particular on how low the bar has been set for the Baghdad talks.
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Hats off!
International institutions of all sorts come in for so much criticism in Washington these days I thought I would take a moment off from the usual bashing. Compliments are due to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), its head of mission in Kosovo Ambassador Werner Almhofer, and his deputy (my colleague and friend) Ed Joseph, for a small, serious and highly positive contribution to stability and peace in the Balkans.
The occasion was the recent presidential election in Serbia, which completed its second round yesterday (yes, I’ve got a piece drafted on its results, but my traveling co-author needs a chance to read it before we go to print). Serbs throughout Kosovo were entitled to vote, but it was not obvious how to enable them to do so. Pristina is none too happy these days with Belgrade’s monkeying around in north Kosovo, and Belgrade had to ensure that Serbs could vote throughout Kosovo in a way that did not put in doubt the results.
Enter a last-minute negotiated solution via the OSCE, the only viable alternative. In record time (I’m told 5 days!) it managed the electoral process in a way that seems to have satisfied both Pristina and Belgrade.
Anyone who wants to hear how this is done can attend Ed’s talk at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, his perch before going off to Pristina, Friday 10-11:30 in room 500 at 1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW (BOB to the cognescenti). I won’t be there, as I’m headed Thursday for Istanbul, then Pristina next week. But Ed is a really good speaker and has a great tale to tell!
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