Month: August 2016
Dear Mr. President,
Secretary Kerry last week failed to reach agreement with Moscow on coordinating attacks on extremists in Syria. Even his effort to reinstate the cessation of hostilities and ensure humanitarian access has proven a bridge too far for the Russians.
Syria is now in the sixth year of a war that has killed half a million people, displaced more than half the population, threatens the stability of friends throughout the Middle East, and has damaging repercussions among our European allies. Your remaining months in office provide an opportunity to steer this horrendous conflict towards a peaceful settlement. If you refuse to do more than you have done so far, it will discredit your efforts to reduce and reshape US commitments in the Middle East and haunt your legacy.
Your policy has been a judicious one. You have tried hard to keep the US focus on the most serious threats to our national security: the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. You have avoided military clashes with the pro-Assad coalition, including the Russian air force, the Syrian armed forces, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as its surrogates. You have provided military assistance to non-extremists prepared to fight the Islamic State as well as billions in humanitarian and other assistance to civilians.
The results in the past year have been good when measured narrowly against your objective: to block the main threats to the US. The Islamic State is losing territory, especially along the northern border with Turkey. The successful operation with Turkish support took Jarablus and blocked an unwarranted move there by the Kurds. This will cut off ISIS’s vital supply lines and reduce its revenue. An attack on ISIS’s capital Raqqa next year is a real possibility. The Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria has disowned its loyalty to Al Qaeda central, though it maintains goals that are anathema to US interests. We are currently talking with the Russians about jointly targeting what is now call Jabhat Fateh al Sham (JFS).
Your judicious approach has however had unintended consequences. Fully backed by Russia and Iran, Assad is gaining ground. Attacks on JFS, should the talks with Moscow eventually prove successful, will give him an opportunity to gain more. Over a million civilians are besieged. Few new refugees are escaping. Talks on a 48-hour humanitarian truce for Aleppo have bogged down. The stalwart rebels of Daraya have surrendered, after a four-year siege. It is clear the Syrian regime is again using chemical weapons. The Assad forces and their allies are killing the non-extremists America supports, driving others to make common cause with extremists. There is declining hope for a political transition to a non-Islamist, democratic regime that will preserve Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The US should not abandon that goal. Here are three things you can do in the next few months that will demonstrate American will and reignite diplomatic efforts in favor of a negotiated political solution to the Syria conflict that meets US requirements:
- Support legislation in Congress that imposes sanctions on those responsible for harm to civilians.
The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2016 would levy financial, trade, travel and arms sanctions on those who are responsible for human rights abuses and those who facilitate them. While its practical impact might be limited, because few of the perpetrators are likely to come within US jurisdiction, it would send an important signal and could raise doubts in the Syrian security forces about carrying out illegal orders to harm civilians. We should invite the EU to join us in imposing sanctions.
2. Ground the Syrian air force, both fixed wing and helicopters.
John Kerry is still trying to get the Russians to do this, as the quid pro quo for cooperation with the US in attacking the former Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. If he fails, you should tell the Russians and Syrians that any Syrian aircraft responsible for bombing civilians will be subject to attack by the US. Few Syrian pilots will be prepared to take the risk. If they do, even shooting down one or two such aircraft, or striking them on land, would likely ground the entire fleet.
3. Get Hizbollah out of Syria.
Lebanese Hizbollah has provided vital ground forces to Assad, especially in the fighting around Aleppo and along the Lebanese border. This Shia militia also contributes to Islamic State and Al Qaeda recruitment of Sunnis, as its activities illustrate all too clearly that the fight in Syria now has a sectarian dimension. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization that has killed Americans and will likely do so again in the future. If the US is fighting terrorism in Syria, it should not be immune. We should tell the Russians and Iranians that we want Hizbollah out of Syria or it will be subject to US attacks, like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
You could also consider a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, to protect opposition-held enclaves in the north and south for example. But that would create target-rich areas that have to be continuously defended, both on the ground and in the air. The options above are less burdensome and would signal more unequivocally US determination to protect Syrian civilians wherever they live.
These moves would also improve the odds for a diplomatic solution. Once Assad is deprived of the air and ground assets that have enabled him to survive and even given him an edge in the fighting, the conditions will ripen for a negotiated outcome early in Hillary Clinton’s presidency. That would be a worthy legacy.
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Here is why we don’t need a wall
While Donald Trump has let up on deporting millions of people out of the US, he continues to press for the wall on the Mexican border, largely to prevent crime (especially murders). The Economist provides this compelling graphic illustrating why the wall is unnecessary:
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Believing in peace in Colombia
A SAIS alum living in Bogotá writes:
While the world rejoices that the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) reached an agreement to end a 52 year-old conflict, my parents refuse to accept the terms negotiated in the agreement. “Those people should be in jail for what they have done to this country!” announced my father, a 65 year-old who in his life has not seen peace. “I am going to vote ‘No’ in the plebiscite, because I don’t believe in this government,” declared my mother. The October 2 will give Colombians an unprecedented opportunity to vote ‘Yes’, or ‘No’ on a yet-to-be determined question.
My parents are not alone in their skepticism of the agreement. Many Colombians, led by former president (2002-10) Alvaro Uribe Velez, are campaigning against it on the grounds that the government was too lenient in terms of transitional justice, political participation, and reparations for victims. The sentiment is understandable. The name FARC in Colombia carries the psychological weight of massacres, kidnappings, bombs, and all sorts of terrorist attacks orchestrated by the world’s longest standing Marxist guerrilla.
The terms of the agreement are revealed in a 297-page document that the government has done a poor job socializing to the public. It contains important concessions by both the government and the FARC. Tellingly, the FARC agreed to disengage from the narcotics trade. However, the scourge of narcotrafficking will remain as long as consumers in Europe and the United States continue with their voracious and inelastic appetite for cocaine. The agreement also contains landmark steps on victims rights, a truth commission, and transitional justice for FARC-fighters, paramilitaries, and state actors who committed grave crimes in the context of the conflict.
The agreement will arguably take 20 years or more to implement, but its effects will begin to be seen on tomorrow, August 29,when the government and the FARC declare a complete bilateral ceasefire. The accords will be signed in Bogota on September 23, which will signal ‘D-day,’ the beginning of the transition period when the FARC will move to 23 hamlet zones and eight temporary camps across the country for 180 days. This will be followed by an 18-month stabilization period, a 10-year period of implementation of the agreements and a further 10-year period to consolidate peace. This doesn’t mean Colombia is out of the woods yet, as there remain important narcotrafficking Organized Armed Groups (GAO) and a smaller, yet fierce, communist insurgency, the National Liberation Army (ELN). These groups will continue their criminal activities for a while. But removing the FARC from the picture will make a huge dent in the bloodshed.
Figure 1: Showing the number of civilian, public forces, and FARC deaths during offensive actions and combats. Source: CERAC
As a result of the agreement, little will change for urbanites in Bogota, Medellín, Cali, and Barranquilla. Yet for individuals living in distant rural areas, the effect will be enormous. No longer will the FARC recruit their children for war, plant landmines, destroy their makeshift infrastructure, or participate in battles in their territories. The implementation of the accords will mark the beginning of the implementation of an ambitious plan to redistribute land to victims, build tertiary roads, and provide rural electrification to the countryside, which has suffered from the abandonment of the State for over 200 years. It is an enormously complex challenge, to which the United States, European Union, and United Nations have pledged assistance.
Yet the opportunity to dream of a better country, one where political differences are debated and argued, where we finally get an opportunity to heal 52 year old wounds, depends on the October 2 vote. Peace with the FARC is within our reach. The referendum will initiate a transition to a period full of uncertainty but immense promise.
In order to fulfill that promise, the first order of business will be to rid ourselves of the generational bitterness caused by the longstanding confrontation. “Do you think you will see peace during your lifetime, Dad?” I asked. “Probably not,” he replied, “but your children might.”
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Prejudice
This is an extraordinary question. Heather McGhee has a good answer:
Hers would be good advice in many countries, across many social divides, not just in the US between whites and blacks.
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White Helmets merit the Nobel Prize
As one of what I trust were many people who wrote a Nobel Prize nomination for the White Helmets, I’m interested in seeing as many people as possible sign the petition Marieke Bosman of the Asfari Foundation circulated in an email I received this morning. She wrote:
Help us tell a different story about Syria – one of peace and hope: the story of the White Helmets, Syria’s humble heroes. Please support their nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize
I hope this finds you well.
As you may know, some years ago the Asfari Foundation played a crucial role in setting up the Syria Campaign. This social media campaign was set up to show the world that Syria isn’t a bipolar nightmare of radical extremists and violent government forces. It was to show what those who know Syria well are so aware of: that the majority of ordinary Syrian citizens want a different, peaceful and democratic future for their country. We wassnted to show the lives of these ordinary people, and, in particular, the brave efforts of civil society organisations, courageous Syrians who, at risk of their own lives, provide education, food, shelter, medical care, and search and rescue for fellow citizens as the conflict rages on.
One such organisation is the White Helmets. Also known as the Civil Defence, it consist of young men and women all over Syria who work day and night to rescue people from the terrible bombardments of the Asad regime and Russia. They are in their twenties and thirties, and have left jobs and educations to save the lives of others, pulling from the rubble many people who have died, so they can be buried; Syrians young and old with horrendous injuries, so they can be treated by the equally heroic medical workers; and occasionally those with only minor physical injuries, such as little Omar Daqleesh, whose picture was shown worldwide last weekend, sitting dazed and shocked in a White Helmets ambulance.
For a detailed overview of who they are and what they do, I suggest you read this Washington Post article or watch this very moving PBS news item.
The White Helmets have saved over 58,000 lives, and yet they are entirely level-headed and modest about their work. When we recently met a group of them in Turkey, they talked about their immense bravery in simple, calm, straightforward terms, as if it is the most normal thing to spend your days going out to pull body parts and people in agony from buildings that may fall on you any moment while planes carrying bombs return again and again. When I asked one 19 year old – the puppy fat still on his cheeks – how he kept going, he admitted there had been a time when he could not take it anymore; ‘but then I went out that day for one last rescue, and we saved a little girl. I have been working ever since.’ I am constantly and deeply humbled by what the White Helmets do with such modesty. Make no mistake: they are constantly at risk. Only a few weeks ago, Khaled, who features in the PBS news item, was killed when rescuing people. 135 White Helmets have lost their lives in the line of duty to date.
The White Helmets have been supported by the Asfari Foundation and many other organisations. Both the UK and the US government have given them millions in support so they can continue to do their vital work. They have been to the US and many other capitals, and spoke at the UN and the London donor conference for Syria last November. They met John Kerry, and Obama has seen the video above. They have won an award for bravery. A documentary has been made about them by an Oscar winning film maker, which will be distributed on Netflix. And in a very touching moment, they have also met their counterparts in New York, the 9/11 firefighters.
We feel the White Helmets are a testament to the resilience, courage and compassion of the Syrian people, and an example of true peacemakers: saving the lives of fellow Syrians, not because of what they believe or what side they are with, but because they are human and need help. The Asfari Foundation therefore encouraged the White Helmet’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. The White Helmets have now been nominated; the decision will be made in November. The Syria Campaign is launching a public petition to support the nomination. I, and we all at the Asfari Foundation, are asking you to stand with us to honour these young men who unfailingly work for peace in Syria so that one day they can lay down their helmets and go back to their schools, jobs, families and homes in a peaceful Syria.
More information about the White Helmets is below. You can sign the petition here: Add your name if you think the White Helmets deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Please forward this email to others.
With warmest wishes and many thanks
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Middle East and Europe: impact and prospects
I had the privilege this morning of speaking today by Skype to the Ambassadors’ Council convened at the Macedonian Foreign Ministry in Skopje. These are the notes I used:
- First let me thank the organizers, in particular Ambassador Abdulkadar Memedi and Edvard Mitevski, for this opportunity. It is rare indeed that I get to talk about my two favorite parts of the world: Europe and the Middle East.
- My focus today will be on the latter, as I am confident that Europeans—a category that in my way of thinking includes all the citizens of Macedonia—know more than I do about the impact of the refugee crisis on your part of the world.
- But big as it looms for you, the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from the Greater Middle East is a fraction of a much larger problem.
- There are 4.8 million refugees from Syria in neighboring countries, the largest number in Turkey but millions also in Lebanon and Jordan. Upwards of 8.7 million will be displaced within Syrian by the end of the year. 13.5 million are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.
- The number of refugees leaving Syria has leveled off, but asylum applications in Europe are well above 1 million and still rising, albeit at a declining rate.
- The U.S. is committed to taking only 10,000 Syrians. I don’t anticipate that our politics will allow a lot more anytime soon, though eventually we will have many more arrive through family reunification and other modalities.
- The 1.5 million people you saw flow through Macedonia over the past year or so were the relatively fortunate Syrians, not the most unfortunate. Moreover, most who have arrived in Europe are male. If their asylum applications are successful, that will lead to large numbers of family members eventually joining them.
- The vital question for me is this: what are the prospects for ending the wars that are tearing Syria to shreds? And what are the prospects for other potential sources of migrants and refugees from Iraq, from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya?
- More than five years after Bashar al Assad’s attempted violent repression of the nonviolent demonstrations in his country, prospects for peace still look dim.
- The Russians and Iranians, whose support to Assad has been vital to his survival, show no signs of letting up and have in fact doubled down on their bad bet.
- The Iranians have committed Lebanese Hizbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and their own Revolutionary Guard to the fight, not to mention Afghan and other Shia fighters.
- The Russians have not only redoubled their air attacks but also added flights from Iran, now suspended, as well as cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea. Moscow has now killed more civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, than the Islamic State.
- The Americans continue to refuse to fight Assad, Iran, or Russia. President Obama lacks both legal authorization and popular support to attack them. Americans want him to focus exclusively on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, which is what he is doing, apart from assistance to some Syrian opposition forces willing to join in the fight against extremists.
- Donald Trump would certainly follow the same policy, perhaps redoubling efforts against the Islamic State and looking for opportunities for cooperation with Russia. Hillary Clinton has pledged to look at other options like protected areas or no-fly zones, but it is not clear that she will pursue them.
- The space for moderates in Syria is shrinking. Violence always polarizes, as you know only too well. In addition, the Americans are restraining the forces that they have equipped and trained from attacking the Syrian army. They want moderates focused exclusively on fighting the Islamic State.
- This morning, Turkish forces entered Syria at Jarablus on the Euphrates, in support of Arab and Turkman forces aiming to deprive the Islamic State of its last border point and block the expansion of Kurdish forces from taking the last stretch of the Turkish/Syrian border they don’t control.
- When will it all end? I don’t know, but I think it likely to end at best not in a clear victory of one side or another but rather in a fragmented and semi-stable division of areas of control.
- The Syrian government will control most of what Assad refers to as “useful Syria”: the western coast and the central axis from Damascus through Homs and Hama, with Idlib and Aleppo still in doubt.
- The opposition will likely control part of the south along the Jordanian border as well as a wedge of the north, including a piece of the border with Turkey stretching from Azaz to Jarablus.
- The Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey. Raqqa and Deir Azzour are still up for grabs, with the likely outcome opposition in the former and government in the latter.
- That is the likely best. Will that end the refugee problem?
- I think not. Nothing about this fragmented outcome is likely to make it attractive for Syrians to return home. Security will remain a serious problem and little funding will be available for reconstruction. Syria will remain unstable for years to come.
- What about other parts of the Greater Middle East?
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