Day: May 10, 2013
Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe
This past Tuesday I moderated the Q and A for a Middle East Institute presentation by Baroness Valerie Amos, the UN’s Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, on “The International Response to Syria’s Humanitarian Catastrophe.” Here is the video, which is also up on the MEI website:
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Syria: is there hope?
Salon.com asked me to review recent events in Syria and their significance. They published it today under the heading “Has the Syria threat cooled?”:
Watching Syria is like looking through a kaleidoscope. The picture seems to change dramatically in response to the slightest jolt, but the components remain the same. The past week has seen lots of jolts, but no real change in the elements that make up the sad picture.
Inside Syria, the regime’s forces have started an ethnic cleansing campaign in the west intended to clear Sunnis from areas its Alawite supporters want to secure for themselves. The regime has also successfully pushed south toward the Jordanian border. In much of the rest of the country, there is lots of fighting but only marginal changes in the confrontation lines, which run through many urban areas, or between the urban centers and the countryside. Almost 7 million Syrians are now thought to need humanitarian assistance. The number could rise dramatically during the rest of the year.
Secretary Kerry’s visit to Moscow this week revived, once again, hopes for a negotiated settlement. He and the Russians agreed to try to convene a conference, even before the end of the month, that would include both the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime. The prospect of this conference will relieve President Obama of any need for a quick decision on unilateral action in Syria, since it would hardly be appropriate to preempt the conference. That is likely what both the Russians and the Americans wanted: more time.
Pressure had been building for action, including possible direct American shipment of arms to the opposition, safe areas for displaced people, a no-fly zone, or an attack on Syria’s air force and missiles, which are being used against civilians. Evidence that the regime has used chemical weapons put President Obama on the spot, as he has several times said that crossing this red line would change his calculus. American credibility, some thought, was at stake.
The ink was barely dry on the allegation of chemical weapons use when Carla Del Ponte, a Swiss member of a U.N. human rights inquiry for Libya, suggested that she knew of evidence that chemical weapons were used by the opposition rather than the regime. This allegation has little credibility, not only because of the technical difficulties involved but also because Del Ponte has a record of sensational allegations that are difficult to prove (or disprove).
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Islamists in the political vortex
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace launched its most recent report this week with a panel on Islam and Politics in the New Egypt. Author Nathan Brown focused primarily on the long term outlook for religion and politics in Egypt, purposefully avoiding entanglement in the day-to-day political chaos of Egypt. Jocelyne Cesari of Harvard University and Jonathon Brown of Georgetown joined him in analyzing the motivations and interactions of the three major Islamic forces in Egypt: the Muslims Brotherhood, the Salafis and al-Azhar University.
The current power holder, the Muslim Brotherhood, defines itself as a reform movement, built on an Islamic foundation. Before the 2011 revolution the Brotherhood saw itself as representing a silent majority with only distant aspirations to govern. Their rise to power was so rapid that their political calculations have been reduced to day-to-day reactions with no time for long-term reflection. Cesari commented that the Brotherhood has been successful at the new political game, but that does not mean that it actually has the capacity to govern. One of its biggest blunders was to pose as winners after the election. This behavior polarized the opposition, thwarted dialogue and stunted the pluralism necessary for democracy.
The Salafi movement has also enjoyed substantial electoral success. It claims to stand for religious truth and proper practice of Islam in Egypt and internationally. But like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis have to think politically for the first time: ‘what does it mean to be a political party?’ and ‘how should we vote and what should we ally ourselves with?’ The political competition has been much more intense than the Salafis anticipated. This has led to recruitment of much needed political experts, who do not necessarily identify with Salafism. Adjusting to competitive politics, the Salafis are going to have to endure an unprecedented amount of criticism and even ridicule in Egypt’s post-revolutionary, relatively open society.
Al-Azhar, Egypt’s center of Sunni learning, has always striven to understand and interpret Islam in a scholarly way. The institution has never been fundamentally political, but sees itself as a moral voice of Islamic interpretation caught up in political games. The university wants to emerge as the central voice in all religious political debates. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi movement latch onto al-Azhar as a source of Muslim understanding and national pride. This gives al-Azhar the opportunity to mediate. Al-Azhar’s centrality is critical right now, but in the long term it could become a political football once other parties become more polarized. Nathan Brown writes in the introduction of his report “al-Azhar in particular may find that every step towards increased centrality moves it further away from autonomy.”
None of these three entities were ever entirely about politics, but the revolution sucked each into the vortex of governing and power. They were given an unprecedented opportunity to achieve a more valuable place in Egyptian society. If they allow themselves to be too tempted by power, then they are going to have to face the consequences down the road. Jonathan Brown thought the ideological leanings of each group not entirely distinct and decreasingly important. Increasingly, international funding has turned internal Egyptian politics into a contest among various Gulf states, which have aligned either with the Brotherhood or the Salafists.
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