Category: Daniel Serwer
Negotiations fail, force prevails
The United States is closing its embassy in Sanaa in the aftermath of the takeover (that’s a coup by another name) by Houthi insurgents, who Friday issued a constitutional declaration. It provides for dissolution of the existing parliament, formation of a “more representative” 551-member National Transitional Council that will elect a five-member presidency council, and a two-year transition period. The goals are laudable:
- achieve a dignified life for the popular masses,
- end corruption through an effective national strategy, reform public service,
- eliminate flaws in community justice,
- relieve oppression,
- reform the security and military institutions on national bases as well as
- restore trust and respect for these institutions,
- improve the livelihood of their members,
- achieve security in society,
- face down criminal takfiri forces and their allies and supporters,
- build a strong, cohesive Yemeni society that does not exclude any person or party, and
- end conflicts, divisions and ruptures.
What could go wrong?
As Nadwa Aldawsari pointed out at the Carnegie Endowment this afternoon, the Houthi victory marks the death knell of the Gulf Cooperation Council transition plan that UN envoy Jamal Benomar has tried assiduously to implement. It failed, she thought, because it provided immunity to former President Saleh and kept in place much of his regime, while excluding the Houthis. Despite having previously fought against them, Saleh took advantage of his situation to make common cause with the Houthis, an armed group that is dominated by an early Shia sect known as Zaidis.
While Nasser Arrabeyee, speaking by Skype from Sana’a, would prefer that the Houthis leave parliament as is and occupy instead places in the Shura Council, there is no sign they are prepared to do that. The Houthis seem intent on governing through the transition period. The risks that entails are all too obvious: Nadwa pointed to the large ungoverned spaces in Yemen, where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)–the Sunni takfiris mentioned above–have more or less safe haven, despite the American drone war. It is unclear to me whether that will continue without the embassy open. In any event, it has not been successful at stemming recruitment to AQAP, which appears to be stronger in manpower and weapons today than several years ago.
The situation in Yemen may also evolve into a proxy war between Iran, which has supported the Houthis with money, arms and ideology, and Yemen’s weightiest neighbor, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have cut off aid to Yemen, which is an astoundingly poor country. Key Yemeni tribal leaders are thought to be in the Kingdom now. They are no doubt looking for support to do combat with the Houthis.
Yemen’s south, once independent, is once again moving in that direction, hindered only by the disunity of its secessionist advocates. According to Laura Kasinof, the state has evaporated there, with little impact as its presence was already so attenuated. Tribal rather than formal justice is preferred in much of the area.
Nasser underlined that the Houthis are for the moment very much in charge. The powersharing arrangement President Hadi had been using is gone. Former President Saleh is no longer “dancing on the heads of snakes” to govern, but he is still orchestrating the dance and trying to ensure that his son Ahmed eventually takes power.
Negotiations have failed. Force has prevailed. Not clear what is next, but it isn’t likely to be good.
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It’s not just about today’s Ukraine
Washington is now in a full-fledged debate on whether to send lethal (but “defensive”) arms to Ukraine. The President has said it is one of the options on the table.
The advocates argue that arming Ukraine would raise the costs of Russia’s aggression and, along with Western sanctions, improve the odds for a negotiated solution. A successful effort would also bolster confidence in American policy, both within the NATO Alliance and more broadly, redounding to Washington’s benefit in countering Putin’s moves not only in Ukraine but also elsewhere in the world.
The opponents say Russia will escalate further, even before any additional weapons can be deployed in the hands of people who know what to do with them, intensifying the conflict to Ukraine’s disadvantage, allowing Moscow to impose a unilateral solution and undermining confidence in the US. Opponents also fear an Alliance-rending split with the Europeans (especially Germany) and a proxy war with Russia, with negative implications for cooperation with Moscow on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other important issues.
Who is right?
I’m afraid both are, which complicates the decision-making. I doubt a decision to provide defensive arms now will do anything militarily significant in the near term other than accelerate the Russian offensive. Moscow will win the the battle for Mariupol if it really wants to. But failing to supply arms will allow Moscow to impose its will not only now but also in the future, undermining the credibility of American commitments elsewhere even more.
It is still possible to hope that the discussion of arming Ukraine in Washington will weigh heavily enough to cause Moscow to take seriously the proposal that German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande carried to Russian President Putin. But if that proposal–whose contents are unknown–essentially allows the insurgents to establish their own autonomous states only nominally linked to Kiev, it will lay the basis for the next war and encourage further Russian adventures in neighboring territories where Russian speakers happen to live.
There is lots of advice out there on how to manage the relationship with Putin’s aggressive Russia, which seems intent on challenging the West in what amounts not so much to a new Cold War as a pale imitation of the 20th century version. Ukraine is not the first Russian attempt to extend its influence to ethnic Russian or otherwise Russo-philic territories. Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Republika Srpska have all presented opportunities for Russian defiance. Moscow is even mucking about in Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia, three countries strongly committed to European Union membership (and the first two also to NATO membership).
Not getting too excited about these challenges is part of the solution. Russia is biting off more than it can chew in Ukraine. The situation in already annexed Crimea does little credit to Russia, which is hard-pressed to finance needs there due to dramatically lower oil prices and demands elsewhere in the parts of Ukraine Russia now controls. Putin is said to be insistent that he not be responsible for reconstruction in Donbas, where the damage is extensive.
But making life harder for Putin should also be part of the strategy. The Ukrainian army needs to vastly improve its training, equipment and performance if it is to mount anytime in the future a serious threat to take back the parts of Ukraine already under Russian dominance. If the German/French proposal fails, that would be the moment to up the ante by providing serious military assistance to Ukraine. It won’t help much in this decade. But it might be vital in the next.
Putin is playing a long game, one that encompasses not only Ukraine but also other neighbors in what the Russians used to like to call their “near abroad.” The West also needs to play a long game that encompasses not only military assistance to Ukraine today but also much closer economic and political relations with Russia’s now terrified southern neighbors, including NATO membership for those that want it.
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Blueprint for revolution
Srdja Popovic, one of the Otpor (Resistance) leaders who were vital to bringing down Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000, will talk at SAIS Tuesday morning 10-11:30 in the Rome building about his new book, for which this is the promotional video:
Please RSVP to itlong@jhu.edu
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End of status quo
Vetëvendosje Movement member of parliament Ilir Deda writes from Pristina:
Kosovo has entered a turbulent year. The winter started with the election of a new government composed of former rivals – the PDK of Hashim Thaçi and the LDK of Isa Mustafa. The Western Embassies were satisfied – the status quo seemed ensured. Three out of twenty-one cabinet posts were given to the Serbia-created, -funded and politically -controlled Serbian List, which emerged victorious among Kosovo Serb political parties.
The new American/German brokered government, whose sole purpose is to maintain the status quo, signaled the end of hope for Kosovo’s people, 70 percent of whom voted in the June 2014 elections against the PDK in government. On November 20, 2014 – a day after it was announced that PDK and LDK would govern together, buses of hopeless citizens began leaving Kosovo towards Hungary – through Serbia – and on towards Western Europe. As a direct consequence of the creation of the PDK-LDK government, over fifty-five thousand people have left Kosovo since the end of November.
Amid this despair, the leader of the Serbian List, Aleksandar Jablanovic, led a bus with Serb pilgrims who were trying to come to the western Kosovo town of Gjakova to celebrate Orthodox Christmas. Jablanovic was accompanied by Djokica Stanojevic, the former ethnic Serb mayor of Gjakova during Milosevic’s occupation of Kosovo, who was directly involved in crimes against Albanians in the city and the area.
Gjakova proper and the surrounding area was among the worst hit areas during the Kosovo war in 1998-99, where not only some of the strongest fighting took place, but also thousands of civilians were executed and massacred. Thousands more went missing, and still are unaccounted for. The leading association of missing persons, “The Call of Mothers,” organized a protest to block the visit of the Serb pilgrims. The bus was stoned. Jablanovic called the protesters “savages.”
While over the last 150 years he is not the only Serb politician who called Albanians savages, he is the first Kosovo Serb minister of the government of the Republic of Kosovo to do so. Several days later, Jablanovic questioned the well-documented record of war crimes committed by Serbia’s police and military forces, saying he “didn’t know” whether they had occurred.
A week later, Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, came to Kosovo for a “religious purpose” – to celebrate the Orthodox New Year. When asked whether Serbia would apologize for the state crimes in Kosovo, he added fuel to the fire by responding “everybody can dream.” To the protesting Albanians he said that next time he would bring “books to educate them on politeness.”
Vucic was a minister in the Milosevic’s government in 1998 – 1999, which was responsible for ethnic cleansing, war crimes, execution of civilians, deportation of Albanians and destruction of public and private property in Kosovo. The apology cannot be a “dream” but a firm political position of the Kosovo government as a precondition for normalization of relations with Serbia.
The first two protests were held in Gjakova on January 10 and 17, gathering five and ten thousand protesters respectively, organized by “The Call of Mothers,” Vetëvendosje and few civil society organizations. The same demand was repeated the following week when thousands took to the streets in eight other Kosovo cities.
Amidst these protests, the government sponsored a law to nationalize Trepça – a mine rich in zinc, silver and lead, with deposits worth more than $14 billion – in an attempt to save it from liquidation. Serbia protested and held a joint meeting with the three Serbian List ministers of the Kosovo government. The Kosovo government backtracked on its initial a plan to nationalize Trepça because of Serbia’s opposition. The public was left aghast to see that 15 years after the war and removal of Serbia’s say in Kosovo’s domestic affairs, and almost seven years after the declaration of independence, Serbia still had a say in Kosovo’s affairs. This reversal of history is unacceptable to the people of Kosovo.
On January 23 “The Call of Mothers” and Vetëvendosje, supported by other opposition parties, civil society organizations, unions and independent public figures organized the largest protest held in Kosovo since 1999 in Prishtina, gathering over thirty thousand people. The government was issued a deadline – to dismiss Jablanovic and sponsor the law on nationalization of Trepça in two days, or the protest would continue. At the end of the protest, a small crowd of several dozen people threw rocks at the government building.
The government and its controlled media began the expected propaganda, accusing Vetëvendosje of being behind the violence. The international sponsors of the government followed the same line. Meanwhile, all the security institutions in Kosovo had credible information that Vetëvendosje was not behind the violence, but did not come forth publicly with this information. Instead, the government said that Jablanovic would not be dismissed.
January 27 saw twenty thousand people gathering in Prishtina. Since early morning the police, under orders from the government, showed hostility and brutality – it did not allow the organizers to set the stage in the center of the city, confiscated protest materials, and prevented citizens from other cities from joining the protest in Prishtina. The police started throwing tear gas at the crowd while the speeches of the opposition figures were ongoing. One hundred seventy people were injured, as the police used tear gas, water cannons, and UN-banned rubber bullets on the protesters, while the protesters threw rocks at the police. The clashes lasted over six hours. Almost two hundred protesters – mostly young – were arrested. Such police brutality has not been seen in Kosovo in the last fifteen years. Nor was such anger of young protesters, who blame the government for the lack of hope.
The government accused the opposition of wanting to “violently overthrow” the government. Prime Minister Mustafa went further – he accused the media of aiding the opposition in the “destabilization of the state,” because media were broadcasting live scenes and reporting from the protest. In the US, it is quite normal for CNN and other media to broadcast from such events. In Kosovo, the PDK-LDK government began using rhetoric similar to the worst totalitarian regimes.
On February 3, the prime minister informed the public that Jablanovic would not be part of the Government any more, while the opposition halted the protests to await the response of the government on Trepça. If the law on transforming Trepça into a public company is not proposed soon, the protests will continue.
The protests brought the return of hope among the citizens, who see that an arrogant government can be forced to be accountable to its people, and not only to Western Embassies. The protests were not against the Kosovo Serbs, as alleged continuously over the last month. The anger of Kosovo’s people 15 years after the war with the overall state of affairs – no economic development, high unemployment, high corruption, Serbia’s destabilizing role, and alarming poverty of half of the population – has reached extreme heights. There is no more space for unconvincing justifications of incompetent politicians. This is the beginning of the end of the fifteen years status quo in Kosovo. The majority of people who are determined to stay in Kosovo are resolute to see the state succeed. They are determined to have a dignified life in the Republic of Kosovo.
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Drums don’t win wars
A president who was trying to extract America from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is now preparing to escalate the war in Ukraine and the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Yesterday, his nominee for Defense Secretary made it clear he supports sending lethal armaments to the Ukrainian government to fight off Russian aggression, a position also advocated by former officials. The White House is also preparing to send Congress a request for an authorization to use military force (AUMF in Washington parlance) against ISIS, something the administration is already doing.
Both these moves fall in the inevitable category. We’ve pretty much run out of alternatives.
ISIS is universally regarded as not only a threat to vital interests but also one with which it is impossible to negotiate. They seem intent on proving that with the immolation a month ago of a Jordanian pilot whom they then feigned being prepared to exchange for an Al Qaeda terrorist. If we are going to fight ISIS whenever and wherever, it is certainly proper that there be a Congressional authorization. Hawks will want it broad. Doves will want it narrow. But both will want it, even though it will make little difference to what the US actually is doing.
In Ukraine, the government is losing control of the southeastern Donbas region and could lose control of even more of its territory to insurgents fully backed by Russia’s substantial military might. I’ll leave to military experts assessment of whether American assistance with lethal but defensive weapons will have a serious impact at this point. It could take a year or more before any significant materiel and training is deployed on the battlefield. In the meanwhile, Moscow will use any American decision to arm the Ukrainians as an excuse to redouble its own efforts.
So neither of these noisy headline issues is likely to have any quick impact. Drums don’t win wars. And these two wars are not only conventional force-on-force clashes between organized military forces, even if they involve some battles of that sort. Both involve counter insurgency, the kind of war (known in the Pentagon as COIN) the US loves to forget.
I’ll leave to the COINistas the analysis and policy prescriptions on the military side. The important point for me is that COIN necessarily involves an important civilian component. You win the war against insurgency by protecting the civilian population. You have to win the peace over a decade or more by ensuring a continued safe and secure environment, establishing the rule of law, ensuring stable governance, growing the economy and meeting social needs. If you fail to do those things in the aftermath of war, you end up with Libya: a weak state that has collapsed now into civil war, leaving breeding grounds for extremists.
The civilian efforts required are in the first instance the responsibility of the governments involved. But their capabilities are at best limited and at worst nonexistent. In Ukraine, even a government victory would likely require peacekeepers to ensure stability in Donbas and avoid reignition of conflict. In Iraq, it is hard to picture the Baghdad government’s security forces welcomed in Anbar and Ninewa provinces. Some kind of local governance with its own security forces (the proposed National Guard?) will be needed. In Syria, Bashar al Asad has shown no sign of willingness to govern fairly or effectively in areas the government retakes. There too some kind of local governance will be needed.
The international capacity to contribute to these efforts is also limited. The State Department has shrunk its civilian conflict and stability operations capability, which was never substantial. The European Union has grown weary and leery of deploying its much more substantial capacity. The UN is stretched thin. OSCE is doing a yeoman job of observing the much-violated ceasefire in Ukraine, but it is a giant step from that to peacekeepers and monitoring implementation of a peace agreement.
We are embarking on another long period of war. We should be strengthening not only our military capacities, but also our civilian ones.
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Why pay attention to Kosovo?
If you stick around international affairs long enough, some of the people you met in the earlier years are likely to turn up in high places later on. I first met the still youthful Hashim Thaci, a two-term prime minister who is now foreign minister, in 1999, when the US Institute of Peace hosted a post-war meeting of Kosovo Albanians at Lansdowne in Virginia.
The issue at the time was not so much conflict between Serbs and Albanians. With notable exceptions, NATO brought large scale interethnic violence to a fairly quick end after the war, until rioting in 2004 unsettled things again. At Lansdowne we were concerned with Albanian on Albanian violence, as different factions vied for post-war dominance. The dialogue and the Lansdowne Declaration they agreed on that occasion are often credited with ending an incipient civil war and turning both the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and its more peaceful rivals in the direction of political rather than military competition.
Hashim Thaci was a key figure at Lansdowne, representing an important faction of the KLA that had fought the Serbs from the mid 1990s until the war ended in June 1999. His role was mainly a political one. He had also been a key figure at the failed Rambouillet negotiations that preceded the war and played a role in the UN administration of Kosovo, though he remained out of power until he was elected prime minister in 2007. He presided over independence in 2008 and governed until this year, when his party won a plurality in parliament but failed to be able to put together a majority without giving up the prime ministry.
His talk here today focused on Kosovo’s post-war transition, its increasing role in the region, Russian efforts to influence the Balkans, Kosovo’s efforts to counter violent extremism, and the importance of keeping the country on its democratic and European trajectory. He is looking for American help to keep the doors to NATO and the EU open, as well as private sector American investment.
I asked the foreign minister about the firing yesterday of a Serb minister from the government. He underlined that the minister was fired for inappropriate remarks he had made, not because he is a Serb. That’s the right thing to say, even if it is a bit of distinction without a difference in this circumstance. No Albanian would have made the same comments. I also asked about the special tribunal Kosovo is supposed to create to prosecute in The Hague crimes committed during and after the NATO/Yugoslavia war. He said he thought there was no need for it to convene in The Hague, but the legislation will pass and the court will be created, enabling EULEX to proceed with indictments.
Thaci pledges cooperation in countering the flow of extremists to Iraq and Syria and the influence of Russia, both of which are inimical to Kosovo as well as the US. Moscow is now more active than in many years in Serbia, Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, Macedonia and even Montenegro, which has rejected the Russian overtures. The number of Kosovar “foreign fighters” is not huge–hundreds rather than thousands–but it represents an important qualitative shift in a country that has generally not taken religion too seriously. The government is now cracking down and has arrested more than 130 returnees.
Washington has a hard time even remembering that it once saved Kosovo from a Serbian onslaught that made half the Albanian population refugees. With threats throughout the Middle East and in Ukraine, few care much about Kosovo. But it behooves us to remember that a bit of diplomatic dynamism to help Kosovo to get into the EU’s visa waiver program and to sign a Stabilization and Association Agreement as well as enter NATO’s Partnership for Peace could go a long way to preventing further radicalization and ensuring that Kosovo becomes the consolidated European democracy it aspires to be.
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