Category: Bridget Gill
Peace picks, September 28-October 2
- Ukraine: From Evolutionary to Revolutionary Reforms | Monday, September 28th | 12:00-1:30 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Please join us for an in-depth discussion of Ukraine’s reform agenda since the Maidan revolution, and the public release of a new, comprehensive assessment of what has been achieved so far and the challenges ahead. Since Ukraine’s Maidan revolution, Ukrainian leaders pledged to push through a long list of urgent reforms, including fighting corruption, securing stable energy supplies at market prices, simplifying the tax code, overhauling civil service, and ensuring macroeconomic stability. VoxUkraine, a network of experts, led by a group of leading global economists, lawyers, and members of the Ukrainian policy community has monitored the reform process in detail. Olena Bilan, Chief Economist at Dragon Capital and Editor of VoxUkraine, and Mike Duane, Contributor and Editor of VoxUkraine, will discuss their assessment of the reform process and what still needs to be done. The most prominent reform achievements are the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau to fight high-level corruption, the introduction of a new police force in the cities of Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv, the reform of the banking system, and the restructuring of the natural gas sector. However, these reforms are still insufficient given the vast reform agenda Ukraine’s authorities face. The key question is not whether the country must implement reforms but rather where the government should start the process. After years of mismanagement, nearly every aspect of economic and political life in Ukraine needs reform. There is no time for slow evolutionary changes. Radical and revolutionary reforms are the only way to success.
- Israel in a Dynamic and Changing Region: A Conversation with Ambassador Michael Oren | Monday, September 28th | 4:00-5:00 PM | Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Rarely has the situation in the Middle East seemed more dangerous and complex. Please join us as veteran historian, diplomat and now Knesset member Michael Oren shares his analysis of Israel and the region. Dr. Henri J. Barkey, Director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, will introduce Ambassador Oren, and Aaron David Miller, Vice President for New Initiatives, will moderate. This talk is presented by The Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Middle East Forum of the Middle East Program.
- The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Challenges for Syria’s Neighbors and the International Community | Tuesday, September 29th | 10:30-12:00 | Brookings Institution | REGISTER TO ATTEND | In the last five years, more than four million Syrian refugees have crossed into neighboring countries seeking safety from the unending civil war. Providing protection and public services for the refugees has taxed the capacities of host countries, with hospitality wearing thin and many refugees despairing about their futures. In recent months, the European dimension of the Syrian refugee crisis has finally drawn global public attention to the catastrophe and the need to increase burden-sharing with neighboring host countries. Does the international community have the political will and the resources to respond, and if so, how will it address the challenge? How is the crisis affecting Syria’s neighboring countries that still bear the brunt of the refugees? Why is burden-sharing so important? Brookings will host a panel discussion to explore the international response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Brookings Senior Fellow Elizabeth Ferris and Brookings, TÜSİAD Senior Fellow and CUSE Turkey Project Director Kemal Kirişci will present their new study, “Not Likely to Go Home”, an examination of the challenges that Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey face in providing protection and humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees. They will also reflect on what these conclusions mean for the wider international community. Following their presentations, Simon Henshaw of the U.S. State Department, Gregory Maniatis of the Migration Policy Institute, and Alar Olljum of Brookings and the European External Action Service will provide remarks. Elizabeth Ferris will moderate the event and offer opening remarks. Following the presentations, the panelists will take questions from the audience. Join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #RefugeeCrisis.
- Egypt: Reducing Risks, Unlocking Potential: Middle East Institute 3rd Annual Conference on Egypt | Wednesday, September 30th | 9:00-4:00 | The Ritz-Carlton | REGISTER TO ATTEND |The Middle East Institute is pleased to announce its third annual conference on Egypt, which will convene a diverse group of Egyptian and American officials, activists, scholars, and entrepreneurs to look beneath the surface of Egypt’s most pressing issues. Three expert panels will examine Egypt’s political situation, domestic and regional security challenges, and economic and human development priorities. MEI’s annual Egypt conference seeks to increase understanding of the risks and opportunities facing Egypt today. The conference is free and open to the public. Updated agenda for the conference, as well as speaker bios, may be found here. Don’t forget to join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #EgyptConf2015.
- Women Leading Peace: Women’s Political Participation in Peace Processes | Wednesday, September 30th | 10:00-11:30 | Gaston Hall, Georgetown University | REGISTER TO ATTEND | In Commemoration of the 15th Anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, Georgetown’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security is hosting a high-level symposium on women’s political participation in peace processes. The symposium features remarks from the President of the Republic Kosovo, H.E. Atifete Jahjaga, and the Hon. Secretary Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, as well as the launch of the institute’s new report, Women’s Political Participation in Peace Processes in Northern Ireland, Kenya, Guatemala and the Philippines. There will be an expert panel featuring the following speakers: Monica McWilliams, Professor, Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University; Njeri Kabeberi, Executive Director, Center for Multi-Party Democracy Kenya; Claudia Paz y Paz, Former Attorney General of Guatemala; and Miriam Coronel Ferrer, Chair, Government of the Philippines Peace Panel.
- Colombia’s Peace Progress and Transitional Justice | Wednesday, September 30th | 8:30-5:00 | US Institute of Peace | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Colombia’s government and the FARC movement achieved their September 23 breakthrough in peace negotiations by setting down basic principles on the rights of victims to truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition. USIP’s next Colombia Peace Forum, on September 30, will analyze the role of historical memory in these transitional justice issues. As policymakers and analysts consider how the new breakthrough might be consolidated, Colombian researchers will present a report, central to these issues, to a U.S. audience for the first time. The report—Basta Ya! Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity—was produced by Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory. Its authors will join other scholars and practitioners to examine lessons that might contribute to the creation of the national truth commission and other architectures as part of the peace process.The event will be co-sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Washington Office on Latin America, the International Center for Transitional Justice and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The discussions will take place in English and Spanish with simultaneous interpretation in both languages. The event will be streamed live without interpretation; webcasts will be posted later in both languages. To participate via Twitter, use the hashtag #ColombiaPeaceForum. The full agenda is available in English and Spanish.http://https://youtu.be/e6qEvgYN6dE
- Indonesia’s Foreign Policy Shifts | Thursday, October 1st | 12:00-1:00 | East-West Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The last fifteen months have seen robust domestic and international debates on the changing fundamentals of Indonesia’s foreign policy. These debates have highlighted different shades of Indonesian foreign policy, exhibiting the complex nature of Indonesian strategic thinking and the multiple challenges it seeks to address. Experts have variously labeled Indonesia’s current strategic thinking as assertive, inward-looking, internationalist and auto-piloted. Some have also wondered whether Jokowi’s Indonesia has any foreign policy direction at all.Emerging powers, such as Indonesia, often encounter growing dissonance between their existing international status and aspirations. Jokowi’s Indonesia is exhibiting a similar dilemma, prompting Indonesia watchers to revisit Indonesia’s long-standing debate about whether Indonesia is punching below, above or at par with its weight. Jokowi’s Indonesia seems to have moved away from ASEAN, altered some of its normative and ideological approaches, and changed its long-standing position on the South China Sea. Experts debate whether Indonesia is “going it alone”.Dr. Vibhanshu Shekhar, an Asia Studies Visiting Fellow at the East West Center, will discuss these issues in order to highlight strategic underpinnings of the foreign policy of Jokowi’s Indonesia.
- Averting a Deepening U.S.-China Rift Over the South China Sea | Thursday, October 1st | 4:30-6:00 | Bernstein-Offit Building, SAIS | RSVP via email to: Reischauer@jhu.edu | Dr. Michael D. Swaine will address how ongoing disputes threaten to drive U.S.-China relations in a far more adversarial, zero-sum direction and destabilize the region. He will emphasize how Washington and Beijing face a growing need to clarify their claims and grievances, provide a clear indication of consequences to unacceptable behavior, provide mutual near-term assurances to avoid entanglement, and work to stabilize the long-term relationship.
- Striving for Northeast Asian Peace | Friday, October 2nd | 9:00-12:00 | CSIS | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Please join us for an international conference with senior opinion makers, policy makers, and officials to look in-depth at the prospects for regional cooperation among the major powers of East Asia, in advance of the White House summit between the United States and the Republic of Korea.
This event is by RSVP only and all remarks are on-the-record. Speakers include: Dr. Evan Medeiros, Former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asian Affairs, National Security Council; Dr. Kurt Campbell, Chairman and CEO, The Asia Group; Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Ambassador Ahn Ho-Young, Ambassador to the United States; Dr. Victor Cha, Senior Adviser and Korea Chair, CSIS; Professor and Director, Asian Studies Program, Georgetown University; Dr. Shin Beomchul, Director General for Policy Planning, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea; Dr. Jin Canrong, Professor and Associate Dean, School of International Studies, Renmin University of China; Dr. Choi Kang, Vice President for Research, Asan Institute for Policy Studies; Former National Security Council Staff, The Blue House; Dr. Narushige Michishita, Director of Security and International Studies Program, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan
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Transition matters
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a panel on Thursday entitled “Searching for Answers to Troubled Democratic Transitions,” co-sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). The panel gave Abraham Lowenthal, professor emeritus of International Relations at USC, and Sergio Bitar, non-resident senior fellow and project director at Inter-American Dialogue, the opportunity to present their new book, Democratic Transitions: Conversations with World Leaders, an edited volume of lengthy interviews the two editors conducted with leaders who oversaw the gradual and successful transition of their countries from autocracy to democracy, as well as with some opposition figures from those countries.
The aim of conducting the interviews was to determine whether lessons can be drawn from earlier transitions in ‘Third Wave’ countries such as Indonesia, Chile, and Ghana and applied during what some have termed a democratic recession. After their overview, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, contributed comments, while the audience also heard from two experts on countries currently on the cusp of transitions: Priscilla Clapp, senior advisor at the US Institute of Peace and the Asia Society, discussed Myanmar, while Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at Carnegie, discussed Venezuela.
Carnegie’s vice president for Studies, Thomas Carothers, introduced the panel, remarking that the world has not seen a single new democracy emerge in the past decade. The Arab Spring was a period of hope, but with transitions thwarted in many of those countries, we have also been observing worrying global trends that would seem to suggest the push for democracy has slowed or even begun to reverse. Carothers still believes that the arc of history bends toward democracy, however, and the panelists would appear to agree.
Lowenthal underlined that the aim of the book was not to produce a work of theoretical comparative politics, but to try to distil best practices and recurrent issues for democratic transitions from the experiences of leaders who had lived and struggled through them. The narrative of prior experience can provide general principles that politicians in developing democracies can apply to local problems. Through their interviews, Lowenthal and Bitar observed that a set of issues cropped up in each case, apparently inherent to the process of transitioning. These included the problems of unifying oppositions while marginalizing destabilizing elements within them, preventing violence while separating a legitimate police force from the armed forces, and fighting corruption and impunity, among others.
Lowenthal and Bitar came up with ten imperatives for transition:
- Move gradually and take every opportunity, not waiting for a ‘better’ choice
- Maintain a hopeful vision about the process
- Build coalitions between political parties and social movements
- Protect the spaces of open dialogue
- Build a constitution that represents all members of society and institutes a system for problem-solving
- Enhance and reinforce political parties, or create them if necessary
- Separate the police from the armed forces and ensure the latter is subject to the government
- Ensure transitional justice
- Manage the political economy of transition, to provide the basic conditions for governance
- and manage external support, so that it converges with domestic forces
Gershman found the book instructive. Despite apparent autocratic resurgence and a crisis of confidence or political dysfunction in many advanced democracies, he thought what is currently occurring should not be understood as a democratic recession, but rather a ‘third reverse wave’ following on the Third Wave of the late 20th century. He offered steps that ought to be taken by advanced democracies to shepherd democratic transitions elsewhere, including a call to regain the will to fight the political and intellectual battle for liberal democratic values.
Gershman was uncompromising; he diverged from Lowenthal and Bitar in rejecting gradualism, saying that we cannot accept hybrid regimes as better than dictatorships. The editors, however, confirmed that all the interviewees had come out strongly in favor of gradual transitions. That is often how transitions transpired successfully.
Clapp found much similarity between the cases described in the book and the situation in Myanmar today, although the transition there is still in early stages and needs to be further developed. The international community entertains very high expectations given Myanmar’s specific history and context: it has been for so long a repressed society and still faces significant challenges in its transition, in military-civilian relations, an economy thoroughly controlled by an oligarchy, and exclusion of ethnic minorities.
Naím presented a dissent. By interviewing leaders only, the book presents one perspective on the transition process. Valuable as this work is, there are significant differences with many of the countries today on the cusp of transitioning, as opposed to the Third Wave countries covered in the book. These ignored factors include the phenomenon of states incorporating crime into their behaviour, as ‘mafia states’ (like Russia or Venezuela); the crucial role oil plays in oil-producing autocracies, shoring up regimes; the outsized influence of foreign actors; the role of social media; and expanding middle classes. Naím also thought it a simplification that militaries are treated as unified institutions, when really within militaries there are numerous factions competing for power.
A key issue remained unresolved: whether the experiences of Third Wave democracies could be applied to countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere in the future.
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The Anwar al-Awlaki tale
On Thursday Brookings hosted a conversation with the national security reporter for the New York Times, Scott Shane on “Anwar al-Awlaki, Yemen, and American counterterrorism policy.” Shane discussed his new book, Objective Troy: A Terrorist, A President and the Rise of the Drone, with Bruce Riedel, the director of the Intelligence Project at Brookings. An investigation of al-Awlaki’s path to becoming a charismatic English-language recruiter for al-Qaeda, the book deals with the important question of whether an executive authority should have the power to order the extrajudicial killing of its own citizens. The question of drones is especially relevant today, as Britain has also recently killed two of its citizens who were Islamic State combatants in Syria with a drone.
Riedel began by asking Shane why he became interested in al-Awlaki’s story. Shane highlighted how unexpected it seemed for al-Awlaki to become a conservative Salafi preacher and an ally of al-Qaeda, given his early background. The American-born son of a Yemeni minister who admired America, al-Awlaki studied engineering at Colorado State University. There he became attracted to Salafism, a puritanical, conservative form of Islam. He began preaching his new faith, surprising his roommates. He went on to become the most influential English-language recruiter for al-Qaeda, as well as an operational planner in Yemen. Even after he accepted Salafism, however, this role was not in any sense inevitable.
Shane became intrigued about this trajectory – what changed? He hoped he might shed light on the larger phenomenon of radicalization by investigating al-Awlaki’s story. Al-Awlaki attracted the FBI’s attention at various points, for suspicions of connections to known terrorists and, after 9/11, the hijackers involved in that attack. Shane determined in his research that at that point in his life, there was no real connection. Two of the 9/11 hijackers had attended the San Diego mosque at which he was imam, but al-Awlaki never had knowledge of the plot and soon after condemned the attacks to his younger brother.
What the FBI found, through following his movements on a daily basis, was that al-Awlaki habitually visited prostitutes. In Shane’s opinion, this is a fascinating part of his story that has not been highlighted enough. A well-regarded and even famous preacher on moral aspects of life, al-Awlaki appears a hypocrite when this aspect of his life is known. Though it is a small part of the larger story, it is information that the FBI and the administration could have used to discredit al-Awlaki publicly, reducing his effectiveness as a recruiter, Shane pointed out.
Riedel asked about al-Awlaki’s transition to Yemen, and how he began Inspire, which was a propaganda magazine for al-Qaeda, or as Riedel noted, from another perspective, public diplomacy. Once al-Awlaki was informed about the FBI’s file on him, and in the context of heightened tension about the treatment of Muslims in the US, he moved to the UK, with increasingly frequent trips to Yemen, where he eventually ended up. Al-Awlaki had always been a prolific preacher who was adept at using new media to disseminate his sermons – cassette tapes in the 90s, then box-sets of CDs, and finally Youtube, where there remain some 40,000 of his videos. Much of the content nevertheless concerned the banalities of everyday devout Muslim life, rather than incendiary calls for jihad or war with America. Shane said that for a few years al-Awlaki wavered about re-starting his life in the US. But after he was imprisoned in Sana’a and the US declined to intervene on his behalf, he began to get involved with al-Qaeda. Even while he was in Yemen, al-Awlaki’s path was not definite; he tried many different ventures, but he wanted to make his mark, according to Shane. Public diplomacy was something he excelled at.
It is from this point, as early as 2006 but certainly by 2008, that the US began noticing al-Awlaki’s presence in terrorism cases, in the searches suspects were making on line and the videos they were watching. After the case of the 2009 ‘Underwear Bomber’, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had gone to Yemen to find al-Awlaki and was guided by him in his attempt, Obama asked his lawyers to explore the legality of adding him to his ‘kill list’ with the objective of eliminating him with a drone strike. While propaganda alone wasn’t enough to take this step, in Abdulmutallab’s case, al-Awlaki had taken the role of an ‘operational’ terrorist, in connecting the bomber to the bomb-maker.
Al-Awlaki had become prominent and convincing for American Muslims. Shane argues he was effective in this role because of his duality: equally fluent in English and Arabic, equally at home in Yemen and the US. Having lived in the US as a Muslim, he understood the tensions that brought about and knew how to activate young American Muslims’ grievances. Like other transnational Islamists, al-Awlaki stressed the umma, the global community of believers, allegiance to which overrides allegiance to any country.
Riedel observed that al-Awlaki’s influence seems only to have grown since his death. In light of that, were there alternatives that could have been taken to deal with him as a threat? Shane thought so. He believes that Obama and his administration did not take the role of the internet into consideration, nor how death by drone would effectively turn al-Awlaki into a martyr, whose legacy would then become valued. There were other options – the FBI, in 2003, could have used its information on his sexual habits to get him to cooperate with them, or the US could have attempted a deal with al-Awlaki’s tribe to hand him over. The legal justification for using a drone centered on the claim that it would have been too dangerous, and near impossible, to enter Yemeni tribal lands to capture or kill him. Shane also pointed out that it was a political decision on Obama’s part, in order to represent himself as a decisive commander in chief who could protect Americans from external threats.
Al-Awlaki’s story highlights questions about US counterterrorism strategy and the projection of American power abroad. Questions from the audience focused on why the administration was reluctant to use information about al-Awlaki’s sexual habits to discredit him, as well as to provide information from several closed cases that Shane researched while writing this book. In Shane’s view, there is an option for the administration to amplify its soft power and create a counter-narrative to religious extremism through highlighting al-Awlaki’s moral hypocrisy. Though al-Awlaki’s videos remain in the public domain on the internet, the response shouldn’t necessarily be censorship, or removing the videos, but rather to counter bad speech with more speech.
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Anti-Semitism in present-day Europe
CSIS hosted a panel Wednesday on “Understanding and Combating Anti-Semitism in Present-Day Europe” featuring Gilles Clavreul, the French inter-ministerial delegate for the Fight Against Racism and Anti-Semitism; Rabbi Andrew Baker, personal representative of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Chairperson-in-Office for Combating Anti-Semitism; and Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent with The Atlantic. The panel was moderated by CSIS Vice President Europe Program, Heather Conley.
Clavreul and Baker highlighted the increase of anti-Semitism in recent years in public discourse, in political parties, and in minority groups. They are eager to push back and ensure Europe remains a safe and healthy environment for Jews. Goldberg had a more pessimistic outlook, believing that “there’s not much hope for the future of European Jewry.” Not only has it seen demographic decline, but Europe is now an inhospitable environment for Jews.
Clavreul highlighted that hate speech and hate-based acts have become more common in France since 2000. Jews are not the only target. The rest of Europe has also witnessed this increasing hate and xenophobia, which divide the national body politic and are antithetical to Republican values shared by a broader Atlantic community. Clavreul hopes to be able to mobilise all sectors of French society to combat hate.
Baker agreed, noting that people were slow to recognize resurgent anti-Semitism for what it was. Jewish anxieties have been growing, and recent anti-Semitic attacks across Europe have driven the point home for the public. One reason for slow identification of the problem is that in recent years many perpetrators behind hate speech and acts have been Muslim Europeans. There remains a lingering political correctness wary of highlighting crimes committed by a minority community. The panelists agreed there are two primary strains of anti-Semitism in Europe today: the old guard of right-wing Europeans, and the more recent phenomenon occurring among Muslim communities.
Goldberg has written on this issue before. Hitler accomplished the destruction of European Jewry as a vibrant and feasible community. There was no real post-war recovery, and the nature of the community has changed: three quarters of French Jews, for instance, are of North African descent. Today’s anti-Semitism, in his view, should make Jews leave Europe behind; today, North America and Israel are the centers of Jewish culture. Goldberg, together with Baker, pointed out the European tendency towards anti-Zionism, or anti-Israel sentiments that often bleed into outright anti-Semitism, especially given Europe’s historical relationship with it. Goldberg believes such an environment encourages those – mainly within Muslim extremism – who have violent impulses to act, and validates certain trends within the Muslim community.
Conley highlighted the potential implications of the migration crisis, given that the majority of refugees are Muslim: will it lead to an increase in anti-Semitism in Europe, exacerbating intercommunal tensions? The panelists and moderators agreed that the refugees needed to be assimilated, in order to provide for the security of Europe in general and Jews in particular. Baker emphasized that it is inevitable that Jews feel a degree of empathy for the plight of the thousands who find themselves forced to leave their homes, and are often confronted with closed doors. The panelists agreed that this major demographic movement will present cultural and security challenges to the Europe.
There are positive voices in Europe against anti-Semitism today. Clavreul works directly with French PM Manuel Valls, who insists that Jews are an integral part of the French community. France aspires to be an environment hospitable to Jews (and other minorities). German Chancellor Angela Merkel is another important voice. Baker highlighted the diversity of contexts and experiences within Europe. One should not paint a broadly negative picture. Clavreul believes that with increased education about the Jewish experience at the childhood level, paired with increased regulation of hate speech and especially the internet, France (and Europe overall) can begin to roll back the tide of hate.
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Libya questions and answers
After yesterday’s talk, Daniel Serwer answered questions:
Q: Could the international community have taken any different action after the 2011 revolution that would have led to less conflict in the past few years?
A: Yes. For a year and a half or so, the situation in Libya was looking stable and positive. The militias were not called on to disarm and for a period played a role in maintaining security. However, eventually these militias began to align themselves with political forces, embroiling armed groups in political contests. We should have been prepared to provide assistance to disarming, demobilizing and reintegrating the militias.
The Europeans in particular should take responsibility, because of migration flows and because of oil and natural gas interests.
Q: What lessons could be learned from other conflicts – such as Iraq and Syria, but also the Balkans?
A: First and foremost we need to pay attention to local circumstances. Libya does not have the same sort of political and civil society infrastructure as the Balkans did, nor the same sectarian or tribal politics as Iraq, and so the lessons that may be drawn from either are few.
The Balkans had something the Middle East lacks entirely: a sense of direction, because the European Union has made it clear that all the Balkans countries can become members once they qualify. In the Middle East, people are fed up with secular dictatorships, but they have little idea what they want in their place. Islamists are filling that gap.
In Libya as in the Balkans (and Iraq and Afghanistan), decentralization of governing authority is likely to be an important part of the solution. Devolution of power enlarges the pie and helps to empower the population with authority over important aspects of their lives.
Q: Is a central government in Libya feasible, or does power have to be devolved to regions, or should we even contemplate breakup of the country?
A: Libya is the classic case of a country cobbled together by colonialists just before independence. But division of the country into two or more parts does not make much political or strategic sense at this juncture. Firstly, Libyans by and large view themselves as Libyans – it is one of the central components of professed identity, along with ‘Muslim’. There is no Libyan consensus that the country ought to be divided, even though there are competing, regionally-based political camps as well as a relatively small fringe that advocates independence for Cyrenaica in the east. Nor is there consensus on lines of division. The oil and gas reserves would be a major bone of contention in any attempt to divide the country – they are not evenly distributed. Libya could not be equitably or peacefully divided so long as participants disagreed as to allocation of hydrocarbon reserves and territorial claims.
Re-concentration of power in a central government in a former autocracy nevertheless will be no easy task. At this point Libyans are wary of recentralization and what it may entail. What most don’t want is a character like Khalifa Haftar to gain power and become another Qaddafi-esque strongman. The only scenario in which break-up would be feasible is if the majority of Libyans vote for it in a free and fair referendum, along pre-determined lines.
Q: How serious is the ISIS threat and what should we do about it?
A: Libya is an important beachhead for ISIS, ranked only after Syria and Iraq. Libya may be where ISIS retreats to if they lose ground in the Caliphate. The hinterlands and the south could be ideal ungoverned spaces for them. We know very little from open source material about their operations in Libya, but militarily they are still relatively weak. It is unclear why they have managed to take Sirte, Qaddafi’s home town. There has been a foiled rebellion there. Their rule seems to be similar to what they do in Syria and Iraq.
It will be important for the US to be involved in training Libyan counterterrorism units, building up a confident and unified military force under a respected and professional leadership.
The EU is thinking about a peacekeeping force of 5000, which doesn’t amount to much once you figure in a 24 hour day and tooth to tail ratio. That number would be able to do not much more than guard the government and foreign embassies. How do we expect the Libyans to feel about international peacekeepers who do no more than that? Ideally, Libya needs at least 15,000 peacekeepers to help maintain order in Tripoli and Benghazi, with logistical, intelligence and air support from NATO (especially the US).
Q: What about migration from Libya? Can we expect another big flow of refugees, similar to that from Syria?
A: The humanitarian crisis is of course urgent, but it is not the root of the problem. Refugees are a symptom of years of the political turmoil and conflict. Treating the symptoms won’t solve the problem. Libya and Syria both need political solutions.
Libya is not one of the more prominent sources for refugees – it is more of a conduit for sub-Saharan and East African nationals. Libyans, who are far fewer than Syrians in any event, are also better off, having enjoyed social payments from the state for many years as well as subsidized food commodities. Some Libyans have simply been able to drive to Tunisia and take a plane to Europe. Many have also gone to Cairo. Libya is not among the top 10 countries sending people to Europe. The predominant refugee and migrant concern remains Syrians, who mainly take Eastern Mediterranean routes, usually through Turkey.
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