Month: February 2013
Tunisia: stalled
With no constitution written and no date yet for elections, the political transition in Tunisia is stalled. At SAIS’s Thursday discussion of economic decline and political violence in Tunisia, former governor of the Tunisian Central Bank Mustapha Nabli warned that continued political stagnation will condemn Tunisia to a serious economic crisis.
The post-revolutionary transition has neglected the country’s economy. Inflation reached 6% in 2012, up from 3.5% in 2010. The budget deficit reached 8% of GDP in 2012, up from a mere 3% in 2010. The slow transition has already cost Tunisia at least 200,000 jobs. In the absence of firm political leadership, the indicators will continue in this undesirable direction.
The sharp polarization between Islamists and secularists is stalling the transition and obstructing progress on the economic front. Steve McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, argued that since coming to power Ennahda has increasingly catered to Islamist radicals while ignoring secularist and Western fears. Party leader Rashid Ghannouci’s high profile 2011 visit to Washington soon after the revolution brought assurances of moderation. But the party’s strategy changed thereafter as the Salafists appear to gain strength. A worrisome video featuring Ghannouchi strategizing with Salafists on how to drive liberals out of positions of power disturbed secularists. Since then events have escalated, culminating in the assassination of secularist opposition leader Chukry Beleid and the subsequent dissolution of the government.
Tunisia has more than political instability and an uncertain economic prospect to worry about. A perfect storm of porous borders, floods of Libyan weapons, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, and the flow of uprooted militants from France’s Mali intervention increasingly threatens Tunisia’s security. Alexis Arieff, an analyst at Congressional Research Services, pointed to evidence of Tunisia’s role as a transshipment point for weapons, people and militants to the rest of the region. Skirmishes between Tunisian security forces and militants are on the rise. Instances of religious-based Salafist violence are also on the increase.
Nabli claimed that the political stagnation stems from misunderstanding of the October 2011 elections. The elections were meant to establish a constituent assembly, but Ennahda insisted it had a mandate to govern. Until this fundamental issue is sorted out, it will be difficult to address political differences and move on to taking care of the economy.
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Labored mightily and brought forth…
Rick Barton, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), did a public briefing at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday. As the media will find it unworthy of coverage, I offer a summary and some reflections on this latest attempt to make State more responsive to current and future needs.
First the good news. Rick thinks the new bureau needed to tighten the focus that had prevailed under its predecessor, a coordinating office for reconstruction and stabilization. So 80% of the effort is now focused on just four countries: Syria, Kenya, Burma and Honduras. The time scale is 0-365 (CSO aims to stay operational in a country for less than a year). It seeks to provide both leadership and agility within the State Department using a “conflict” lens focused on peacebuilding in specific contexts. It also aims to mobilize in the priority countries “silenced majorities,” by funding and encouraging local initiatives without taking them over. CSO treats the local business communities as important potential allies. Program evaluation is real-time but otherwise a bit vague.
The focus within the four priority countries is also tight:
- in Syria, on nonlethal support to the unarmed opposition;
- in Burma, on land mines, because that is a subject the regime and its ethnic opponents agree on;
- in Honduras, on high murder rates;
- in Kenya, on preventing election violence.
CSO is winding down in Afghanistan, where it had a relatively large presence in recent years. The focus there is now on transitioning to Afghan leadership.
All of this is eminently sensible given the very limited resources devoted to fragility and conflict at State (Secretary Kerry says $60 million in program funds under the current continuing resolution and a well-informed source tells me perhaps 140 staff). But that really doesn’t begin to make a serious dent in the issues associated with fragile and failing states, increasingly recognized as posing a wide array of security challenges. The European Union spends, I would guess, ten times as much. A one-year time horizon is laughable to those of us who have played on this turf. Ten years are more like it. Nor can isolated programmatic efforts on specific issues be effective outside the context of a broader end-state focused strategy undertaken in partnership with the host government and population.
There were other indicators of how limited the CSO effort necessarily is, within an institution that itself is severely constrained. Rick hopes to give staff two weeks of training per year (compare that to the military!). He was less than confident that conflict-focused training has reached far into the rest of the Foreign Service, many members of which resist going into conflict zones. He was pleased to have cut staff and gained some liquidity, so that he could approach ambassadors with an incentive of $1 million or so in hand (that tells you a lot about the nickel and dime availability of liquidity at State). He noted the importance of urgency in getting attention and resources at State–I regard that as one of the institution’s weakest points, as it allows the urgent to crowd out the merely important.
So here is the major result of the much-vaunted Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. The elephant labored mightily and brought forth a mouse. That’s better than nothing, but it’s not what you expect of an elephant. That, of course, is where the problem really lies.
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Doing little and doing a lot
Iran and North Korea are the two big nuclear non-proliferation challenges of our day. Iran is moving to acquire a capability that will allow it to move quickly to nuclear weapons, should the Supreme Leader decide his country needs weapons he has declared immoral. North Korea has exited the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and conducted its third nuclear test, with implicit and explicit resentment and threats against the United States.* So what can be done?
Non-proliferation experts at the Carnegie Endowment have published a series of three short pieces saying “not much”: we should focus on preventing North Korea from proliferating nuclear technology to others, on understanding and defining deterrence in Asia and missile defense, and on strategic consultations with the Chinese.
That seems close to the Obama Administration’s conclusions. It has said the necessary minimum in response to the latest North Korean test, but it has done nothing to rouse American public concerns and seems content to let the echoes fade. President Obama himself has made it clear he will also do nothing to offer further carrots to Pyongyang, which in his view is a mistake previous administrations have made in hopes of moderating the North’s behavior.
The hermit kingdom will continue to be isolated, poor and belligerent. We can hope that the prospect of American retaliation will make it reluctant to use its nuclear weapons against anyone. Both South Korea and Japan are likely to continue to refrain from going nuclear, as doing so would cause them big problems (especially with China and the US).
So the hope is we may be able to adjust to North Korea’s nuclear status without too much difficulty. That is much less likely with respect to Iran. There are two big problems arising from Iran’s push for nuclear technology: proliferation in the region and Israel.
The Center for a New American Security thinks Saudi Arabia will not go for nuclear weapons if Iran does. The American experts on Saudi Arabia I talk to are split on this issue. Some think Riyadh will definitely go nuclear, likely buying weapons from Pakistan rather than establishing their own program. Others doubt that. The uncertainty itself is enough to make me think we need to worry more about the consequences of Iranian nuclear weapons than we do about North Korea’s.
More important: Israel. The Israelis view the Iranian theocracy as irrational. The Iranians view the Jewish state as irrational. There is minimal communication between Tehran and Jerusalem. Deterrence depends on rationality and good communications. If Iran were to make and deploy nuclear weapons, the Israelis would need to decide on a nuclear posture in response. They have a second strike capability (on submarines), but they cannot wait to launch on launch. A very few nuclear weapons would deal a devastating blow to tiny Israel. It would have to launch on warning.
This is inherently destabilizing and highly dangerous for Iran. My guess is the Israelis would not just launch against whatever they could see being prepared for launch, but against every nuclear weapons site they know about in Iran, and perhaps not only those. We are talking here about a massive Israeli nuclear strike, not the surgical strikes conducted against the reactors in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. So Iran getting a nuclear weapons decreases Iranian security as much as it decreases Israel’s.
That ironically gives me some hope that Tehran will stop short of making and deploying nuclear weapons. But it has to do so in a thoroughly transparent and verifiable way. If the P5+1 negotiations with Tehran at the end of the month in Almaty do not take a big step in this direction (but some are optimistic), we could well be on the way to an American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, one with dramatic consequences not only for the US and Iran but for the rest of the world as well.
*Have doubts about the threats to the US part? Watch this North Korean propaganda film (with gratitude to the Washington Post and North Korea News:
Transcript:
North Korea has succeeded in proceeding with this nuclear test despite the United States’ increasingly unfair bully activities against North Korea. That United States that has no respect to others nor appreciation to equality…
It is not incorrect to state that the United States strong hostility policy and endless violence toward North Korea in the past 70 years has helped North Korea become one of the world’s strongest military power states.
Words spoken by the United States, a country that uses the law of jungle as the law of survival for fitness, is meaningless. As a result, North Korea’s high level nuclear test conducted against American imperialist invaders is a nuclear deterrent that protects our sovereignty.
Thus, the United States has practically guided North Korea towards nuclear testing and therefore needs to be considered as an American virtue.
North Korea’s third underground nuclear test! Let it be known once more that this is strictly our practical counter-measure for North’s safety and to protect its sovereignty from the aggressors. It is also a solemn warning that time is no longer on the side of the United States.
The people are watching. America should answer.
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A Syrian vision of tomorrow
While the official Syrian Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces has outlined a possible but still unlikely political process, I spent some time in Turkey recently with Syrian activists who produced and have now posted the following paper (also in Arabic) outlining their vision of a post-Asad future:
Syria: Vision of Tomorrow
A group of Syrian civil society activists meeting in Turkey examined the current situation in their country, suggested reasonable goals for a democratic transition over the next three years and defined courses of action to take their country in the desired directions. While Syria’s future depends on how and when the Assad regime finally departs, it also depends on the opposition having clear ideas about what to do once he is gone.
- Equal rights
Goal: Citizens with equal rights participate in building the nation.
Present situation: There is no protection of equal rights in Syria today. People are arrested and killed for what they say. Kurds lack citizenship and property rights. The judiciary is not independent. People are arrested without warrants. There is no freedom of movement, as people are arrested for being outside their residential area or based on their place of origin. Some are executed without trial. The police and courts are corrupt and arbitrary. Security force violence against citizens is common.
Courses of action:
- Syria needs active political parties competing for power. A new parliament should be elected from the people and for the people, based on “one person one vote.”
- New laws are needed to preserve equal rights of all citizens, reducing the role of religion in the state.
- Distribution of state resources should be fair, taking into account destruction during the revolution and discrimination before the revolution.
- Citizens should be encouraged to vote and to participate in unions, syndicates and civil society organizations.
- The backlog of court cases should be cleared and courts should decide cases expeditiously based on the evidence.
- A law on equal opportunity and merit-based employment should ensure that people are treated equally, without favoritism and discrimination in employment and elsewhere.
- Official salaries should be increased and corruption at all levels punished. The public should be given channels through which to complain about corruption and inefficiency of state institutions to an independent authority.
- Civil society organizations should be created to inform citizens about their rights and provide them with legal aid.
- Civil state
Goal: A civil state provides fairness, accountability and social justice.
Present situation: There is no civil state in Syria today. It is a military state composed of the army, security apparatus and civil servants who follow regime orders. Army officers, security officers and high officials determine priorities. They seek to transform the whole nation into an army, imposing military uniforms on school children, military lessons and military training camps, even at university level. Civilians supporting the regime form popular committees and are armed to fight the opposition. Seventy to eighty per cent of the wealth of the nation is concentrated in the hands of 2% of the society, creating fissures between social classes. Eighty per cent of government revenue goes to the military, under the pretext of defending the border with Israel.
Courses of action:
- Religion has to be separated from the state in a new constitution.
- An independent, rehabilitated judiciary and serious legislative body are needed.
- The ruling elite and regime officials with blood on their hands must be held accountable in court, either in Syria or at The Hague, for its past crimes.
- All forms of military indoctrination should be abolished from the schools and universities.
- Military service should be voluntary.
- The Ministries of Interior and Defense as well as the other security services need to be vetted for those with blood on their hands, their mandates limited by law to defending Syria and the public and put under civilian control, including parliamentary oversight.
- The Free Syria Army and other armed groups will need to be disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated, with qualified individuals joining the army or the police and others entering civilian life.
- Nonviolent dispute resolution
Goal: Disputes are resolved by nonviolent means.
Present situation: There is an absence of dialogue throughout the society. The regime today controls nongovernmental and civil society organizations. Peaceful activities like petitions, communiqués and rallies are repressed. The main media are under government control. The opposition media and lawyers working on human rights are persecuted. Martial law is enforced.
Courses of action:
- Dialogue needs to increase throughout Syrian society, especially between sects and with minorities. Open debate and exchange of opinion should be the rule rather than the exception.
- Much more information about minorities should be made available, so as to increase respect and dialogue between sects and ethnicities. This should include mutual visits between groups as well as rallies for minority awareness and nonviolence.
- Militias need to be disarmed and their members reintegrated in society.
- The armed forces, police and other security forces should be retrained to use less force.
- The press should be free and opposition expressed in the media.
- Justice for criminal acts committed during and before the revolution, by all sides, needs to be done.
- Trauma treatment should be made available to those who need it.
- Civil society leaders, including clergy, higher councils of the minorities, tribal leaders, business people, and professors should take the lead in promoting broad societal dialogue
- It should be clearly understood that Alawites, some of whom are pillars of the Assad regime, are not targeted by the opposition, which would welcome their participation and willingness to deal with abuses committed by members of their community.
- Women and children
Goal: Women and children have full rights and women are a main pillar of society.
Present situation: Women and children suffer particular deprivation of their rights in Syria today. Children have been arrested and tortured. Their schooling is riddled with Ba’athist propaganda. Children born without a father cannot have the mother’s family name. Women are murdered in so-called “honor” killings. Divorce, inheritance, custody and alimony laws are biased towards men. Women married to non-Syrians cannot pass citizenship to their children. Rapists are given the opportunity to marry their victims.
Courses of action:
- Civil society organizations should devote their attention to protecting the rights of women and children and informing women of their rights.
- The civil status law has to be amended.
- Child labor should be abolished and laws enacted that punish parents who allow children to work.
- Recreational centers are needed for children and orphans.
- Full a citizen rights should be guaranteed at age 18.
- Economy
Goal: A stable economy satisfies citizens’ needs.
Present situation: The Syrian economy is weak. Mainly monopolized by the governing minority, no local or international investments can operate without control by the Assad family. The revenues from sale of oil and gas go directly to the pockets of the ruling family. High customs duties make many goods too expensive for ordinary Syrians. Some customs border points are controlled by influential members of the regime, in addition to free-market shops at the borders. Smuggling is common and known to state officials. Lattakia port is a particular problem.
Unemployment is high. Suitable jobs are scarce. New ones are not being created. Ordinary people have difficulty meeting necessary expenses. Employees have few guaranteed rights in either the public or private sectors. Agricultural land is confiscated without compensation. Infrastructure was in bad shape even before the revolution. Services in the provinces and villages are poor, which encourages migration to cities. That causes more poverty, unemployment and congestion. Regime economic policy—like free trade with Turkey—has not benefited the Syrian economy.
Courses of action:
- Syria should be opened to foreign and domestic investment, which will create jobs and contribute to stability.
- Taxes need to be lowered and the system made more equitable.
- Agricultural products should be subsidized and support provided to rural communities, in order to decrease migration to cities.
- Foreign exchange should be free and reserves of foreign currency held by the central bank restored.
- Labor rights need to be enacted in law and guaranteed in practice.
- Corruption should be punished. An independent accountability office should ensure efficient and non-corrupt use of state resources.
- Religion
Goal: All Syrian citizens should have a free choice of religious practice and affiliation.
Present situation: The Syrian regime has been built since its beginnings on ethnic and racial discrimination, creating fissures between the various ethnicities and sects. For some sects, the freedom to practice religion has been limited. The regime has closed mosques and prevented people from praying. The regime exploits religion to serve its own interests, fooling large numbers of people in the society. Unfortunately, some of the opposition is also exploiting religion for its own interests.
One of the regime’s tactics has been to make minorities afraid of the majority and possible future extremism, thus portraying itself as a protector of minorities. At the same time, the regime has brutally oppressed certain ethnicities and religious sects and marginalized some areas due to their ethnic and religious affiliation.
Courses of action:
- A constitutional provision should establish free choice of religion and equal rights for minorities.
- The Ministry of Religion should encourage moderate Islam as well as awareness and respect for other religions.
- The judiciary, the state and the educational system should discourage extremism.
- Civil marriage should be made available to all citizens.
- In reconstructing Syrian cities, mixed neighborhoods should be encouraged.
- The government should establish cultural centers for different ethnicities and sects.
The group looks forward to renewal of nonviolent mobilization on March 15, the second anniversary of the revolution. This will include boycotts of regime-affiliated companies intended to compel the regime to end its reign of terror against the Syrian people and enter a serious dialogue for peaceful transition of authority.
February 11, 2013
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Treachery could go a long way
With appreciation to the Etilaf (National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces) media department, here is the Interim Political Advisory Committee “framework for any political solution.” It was adopted in Cairo last Friday. I am publishing it in full here because I haven’t seen it elsewhere:
The Interim Advisory Political Committee of the Syrian Coalition held its regular meeting to discuss the latest political and field developments. Members of the committee examined the domestic, regional and international developments that relate to the Syrian revolution. As the Syrian Coalition is keen on elevating the suffering of the Syrian people, the protection of Syria’s national unity, saving Syria from the crimes committed by Assad’s regime, and preventing foreign interference, the committee developed the following framework for any political solution:
1. Achieving the objectives of the revolution in achieving justice, freedom, and dignity, as well as sparing the country from any further devastation and preserving the unity of Syria in order to achieve a transition to a civil and democratic system that ensures equal rights for all Syrians.
2. Bashar Assad and security leadership who are responsible for the current destruction of the country are outside the political process and must be held accountable for their crimes.
3. All Syrians will be part of any future political solution, including those currently serving with the state institutions, Baathists, political, civil and social forces as long as they did not participate in any crimes committed against other Syrians.
4. Any acceptable political initiative must have a clear timeline and clearly stated objectives.
5. Member States of the Security Council, especially Russia and the United States of America, must secure appropriate international support and adequate safeguards to make this process possible. They should adopt such political initiative, which could result in issuing binding resolution from the UN Security Council.
6. We expect Russia to turn its statements about not adhering to having Bashar Assad into practical steps. Any agreement between Russia and Syrians must be done with legitimate representatives for the Syrian people. Such agreement will not be implemented as long as Assad and his regime are controlling the government.
7. The Iranian leadership must recognize that its support of Bashar Assad is pushing the region towards sectarian conflict, which is not be in the interest of anyone. Iranian government should realize that Assad and his regime have no chance to stay in power nor will they be part of any future solution for Syria.
8. The friends of the Syrian people should understand lasting political solution that ensures the stability of the region and preserves the institutions of the state will only take place through changing the balance of power on the ground which requires supporting the Syrian coalition and Joint Chiefs of Staff with all possible means.
I take this to be the political committee’s effort to reframe the proposal by the Coalition’s leader, Moaz al Khatib, for talks with the regime. That “personal” (i.e. uncoordinated) proposal was conditional on release of political prisoners and renewal of passports for expatriates, two conditions that were not met within the time limit al Khatib proposed.
Now we have this more elaborate, and more opaque, proposition from al Khatib’s followers. It does not suggest talks with the regime but rather an internationally sponsored political process backed by both the US and Russia and approved in a Chapter 7 resolution of the UN Security Council. While the details of that process are unspecified, the committee asks for a timeline and clear objectives, which clearly include a democratic Syria. Bashar al Asad is not to be part of the political process envisaged.
There’s the rub, the same as almost a year ago. So far, Asad has refused exclusion from the political process and backed his refusal with brutality. The regime has cracked but not broken. The Coalition is saying only a military response to its brutality (“changing the balance of power on the ground…with all possible means”) will enable a “lasting political solution.” But the Europeans yesterday refused to lift their arms embargo in order to help the opposition. The Americans are likewise still sitting on their hands.
Serious international negotiations don’t sound likely. Moscow and Washington are still unable to agree on a plan. But the interim political committee is correct that ultimately it will be conditions inside Syria, not the best laid plans of those outside, that will determine what happens. Both the expatriate opposition and the regime leadership are insulated from the violence, which is creating a much bigger humanitarian problem than has been acknowledged so far. My admittedly limited contact with opposition people inside the country suggests they are more inclined to negotiate, albeit not with Bashar. I can only hope that the same is true of some within the regime. Treachery could go a long way to ending this criminally violent regime.
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Africa’s drylands: dangers and opportunities
Hye Jung Han, one of my master’s students at SAIS, reports from a SAIS event last week. The speaker was Dr. Dennis Garrity, UN Convention to Combat Desertification Ambassador:
The Sahel region of West Africa faces worsening social, political, economic and food insecurities. With a population burgeoning to 1.8 billion people, at least twice as much food must be produced per year by 2050 to avoid widespread starvation. Food production per capita has been declining since the 1960s. Land degradation has become a serious problem, with declining soil fertility, escalating fertilizer prices and heightened risks of devastating droughts from climate change. The region suffers erratic and extreme rainfall and increasing temperatures that lead to higher crop stress. Smallholder food production, the economic mainstay of the region, is at serious risk.
Worsening food insecurity overlaps with low human development indices and extreme poverty. These structural vulnerabilities drive chronic political conflict in the region. Terrorism and political instability are centered on the African drylands. Mali has been the most recent iteration, with destabilizing spillover effects in Niger, Nigeria and Algeria. The combination of conflict and land degradation is leading to rapid disappearance of available lands for farming.
For Dr. Dennis Garrity, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Drylands Ambassador, part of the answer lies in EverGreen Agriculture, a form of intensive farming that integrates trees with annual crops to regenerate land on small-scale farms. Fertilizer trees such as faidherbia albida have been widely used by farmers for generations. This indigenous tree improves soil fertility and moisture conditions by buffering the microclimate, providing an effect not dissimilar to a greenhouse. It is highly compatible with food crops because it does not compete with them for light, nutrients or moisture, and its nitrogen-rich leaves are used as fodder for livestock.
By scaling up this indigenous farming practice and applying scientific, tree-based management, EverGreen Agriculture has yielded significant livelihood and environmental benefits. In Malawi, maize yields on farms with fertilizer trees are 2.5 times higher than on farms without them, increasing from 1.3 to 3.1 tons per hectare. Mali has seen increases in household and national food security, with the intercropping of faidherbia trees leading to the enhancement of millet, sorghum, and livestock fodder production. Agroforestry is proving itself one of the lowest cost, least risky, and most easily diffused agricultural practices that can be made accessible to small scale farmers.
National governments are deepening their support. The successful experiences of Zambia, Malawi, Niger, and Burkina Faso prompted the Ethiopian Prime Minister to promise the establishment of a billion fertilizer trees on smallholder farms at the UN Climate Change Conference at Durban in 2011, prompting the Prime Minister of Uganda to announce a larger program. Seventeen countries are currently engaged in EverGreen Agriculture, with national scaling-up programs supported by the African Union, World Bank, IFAD, GEF, FAO, UNEP, UNCCD and other regional and local organizations.
Agroforestry systems such as EverGreen Agriculture build more productive and drought-resilient farming systems, relying upon local knowledge, science and practice. Working to regreen the Sahelian landscape and combat desertification, EverGreen Agriculture can improve household and national food security, increase the resource pie and ameliorate some of the chronic drivers of conflict that continue to plague the region today.
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