Category: Daniel Serwer
Couphobia
Fear of coups (couphobia?) has broken out in all too many places. Turkey’s President Erdogan is cracking down on the Gulen movement members for fear they are plotting against him. Russia’s President Putin has done the same with foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations. Egypt’s President Sisi fears the Muslim Brotherhood will do to him what he has done to their (former) President Morsi, who languishes in prison.
Even in Macedonia, an EU candidate country, the Prime Minister says the opposition was plotting to oust him. Then again, the United States is said to be orchestrating an anti-Victor Orbán coup d’état in EU member Hungary.
I can’t be sure all these claims are as baseless as that last one. Washington just doesn’t care enough about Hungary to engineer a coup there. My guess is that Sisi has plenty to worry about, as he has vastly overdone the repression, creating a growing reservoir of resentment that might fuel an effort to oust him one day, though Egyptians are so tired of disorder (and the army so satiated) that it is unlikely a coup there would be popular. Erdogan and Putin are likewise doing their best to fulfill their own prophecies by making life hard for their legitimate opponents, whose natural reaction will be to think about their options. A coup might be one of them.
Then there are the guys–and they are guys–who really should fear a coup. Syria’s President Asad has destroyed his country in order to prevent anyone else from challenging his hold on power. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un presumably thinks he protected himself, but who knows which uncle or cousin still alive might make the attempt?
Yemen’s President Hadi is facing a coup in everything but name. The Houthi rebels who have him trapped don’t want to displace him, partly for fear that would end military assistance against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from the Americans the Houthis love to hate. Libya can’t have a coup because it is unclear who has power. It is having a civil war instead.
All the couphobiacs should remember Nouri al Maliki. He was so afraid of a coup that he appointed cronies to command his army and grabbed as much direct control over the other institutions of the state as he could. The result was collapse of the Iraqi Security Forces when faced with the Islamic State and his removal from power because even the Iranians and his own Dawa party turned against him. It doesn’t always work that way, but the example should serve to illustrate the perils of concentrating power too much.
The couphobiacs are unlikely to be chastened however. Once they start down the road of repression, it is hard to turn around or back out. They fear removal from power means they lose their lives as well. What Erdogan, Putin and Sisi need more than anything else is assurance that they can retire gracefully and live out their natural lives. Not everyone can afford to keep autocrats in power well into senility, as the Saudis do. But countries that want their autocrats to retire need to follow the Vatican’s lead and provide funding and protection (before they start committing war crimes and crimes against humanity). Come to think of it, that’s America’s solution too.
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The war may be over, crime persists
Sergio Guzmán Escobar, a SAIS master’s student, reports from Friday’s conversation with Juan Carlos Pinzón, Colombia’s Minister of Defense, at the Inter-American dialogue. Video of the event is available here.
With the Colombian peace talks between the Government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaras de Colombia (FARC) – the world’s longest lasting Marxist-Leninist insurgency – reaching what analysts call a “point of no return” the Colombian Minister of Defense, Juan Carlos Pinzón, discussed the country’s security outlook. The minister arrived from Davos, Switzerland where he reassured international investors about the continuity of Colombia’s security policies in a post-agreement scenario.
Moreover, he reviewed the country’s current security threats and outlined them as:
1. Armed Insurgent Groups – Communist insurgencies groups like the FARC and the Ejercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN), who engage in terrorist activities, drug trafficking, extortion, child recruitment and illegal mining.
2. Organized Crime – Remnants of the former right-wing paramilitary organization Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) and groups of organized gangs that engage in drug-related violence in both urban and rural contexts.
3. Citizen Security – street crime and urban gangs who are responsible for the palpable insecurity in the cities, including muggings and house burglary.
The fact that the negotiations come to a successful end will not necessarily mean that the country’s security outlook will improve overnight. The nature of the threats will change and the armed forces and the police will have to respond accordingly. The minister noted that Colombia has already undergone four different Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) processes and will be able to see the process through in collaboration with multiple government agencies that have experience in this field, especially the National Agency for Reintegration.
As a result of the negotiations, rumors have emerged about the future of the Colombian military possibly downsizing as part of the agreements with the FARC. The minister was emphatic that the armed forces are not going to be downsized regardless of budgetary pressures. The size of the armed forces in the next 5-10 years will remain constant. But there will be a greater mix of military police activities (the Colombian police is a under the Ministry of Defense and is a separate branch of the Armed Forces), to enable the armed forces to engage threats resulting from the peace process. “An agreement will not banish crime.”
Responding to allegations that a new rural police force would include demobilized members of the FARC, the minster remarked “No.”
A pending issue the minister failed to signal in his remarks arises from Venezuela. As the peace agreements are close to being finalized, Colombia is no longer dependent on Venezuela’s “good offices” to keep the FARC at the negotiating table. If oil prices remain low, Caracas’s economic situation will be dire. Scarcity of basic goods will cause President Maduro’s political support among the population to wane. Turbulence in Colombia’s neighbor may represent a real security threat.
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Macedonia in Europe
The Conflict Management Program
and
The Center for Transatlantic Relations
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
present
Macedonia: Can It Join Europe?
Presenter:
Fatmir Besimi
Deputy Prime Minister of Macedonia for European Affairs
Introduction and Moderator:
Daniel Serwer
Professor, Conflict Management
Senior Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations
SAIS
Rome 806
1619 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Tuesday February 3rd
3-4 PM
RSVP: itlong@jhu.edu
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Thaçi at SAIS
The Conflict Management Program
and
The Center for Transatlantic Relations
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
present
Kosovo: From importer of security to a stabilizing factor of South East Europe
Presenter:
HE Hashim Thaçi
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
Republic of Kosovo
Introduction and Moderator:
Daniel Serwer
Professor, Conflict Management
Senior Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations
SAIS
Rome Auditorium
1619 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Wednesday February 4
10 AM
RSVP: itlong@jhu.edu
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Putin’s Petard
I participated last night in SAIS’s Central Asia-Caucasus Forum, which convened a panel on “Putin’s Kosovo Card: its Meaning to Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia” that included Kurt Volker and Mamuka Tsereteli with the skillful moderation of Fred Starr. These are my speaking notes:
• Vladimir Putin has persistently and insistently claimed that what the US did in Kosovo sets a precedent for what Russia has done in Ukraine.
• He has conveniently forgotten that Russia argued in 1999 that only the UN Security Council could authorize bombing of Yugoslavia, so if Kosovo is a precedent it is one Russia should not be following in Ukraine without UN approval.
• Putin has also conveniently forgotten that Russia played a critical role in urging Slobodan Milosevic to yield control of Kosovo to NATO.
• I have no doubt that in his mind what he is doing in Ukraine is in part retaliation for what the US did in Kosovo, over Russian objections. But that is quite different from claiming Kosovo constitutes a precedent.
• The claim it is a precedent is based on a bizarre and false analogy with no serious validity. Let me count the things that are wrong with it:
1. NATO intervened against Serbia to protect Kosovo Albanians from a concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity by the Serbian government. There have been human rights violations, but no comparable campaign of mass atrocity and expulsion by the Ukrainian government against Russian-speaking Ukrainians either in Crimea or in Donbas.
2. Russia intervened overtly in Crimea, taking territory by military force and annexing it. The US never sought to annex Kosovo’s territory, or to attach it to any other country, something its internationally imposed constitution now prohibits.
3. The UNSC voted an end to the Kosovo war in June 1999 with resolution 1244, which confirmed the outcome and made the issue of its legality moot. There is no such resolution for Crimea or eastern Ukraine. I hope there will never be one unless Russia agrees to withdraw and yield sovereignty back to Ukraine.
4. The UN established a protectorate in Kosovo and governed it until 2008, ensuring that it transitioned to democracy and implemented all the requirements of the UN-sponsored Ahtisaari plan, including in particular protection for the Serb population in Kosovo. Russia has blocked any international engagement in Crimea to protect non-Russians. There is no sign that Crimea or any Russian-controlled part of Ukraine is headed for democracy, and ethnic cleansing of both Ukrainians and Tatars is ongoing.
5. Kosovo is now recognized de jure as sovereign by more than 100 other states and accepted de facto by many more. The Russian annexation of Crimea and the supposed independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have obtained few international acknowledgements.
6. Russia has also intervened covertly in eastern Ukraine, constantly denying its official presence and prevaricating about its military aid to the Russia-sponsored insurgents. It is currently launching an offensive against Mariupol, which has a large Russian-speaking population (44.4% in 2002, 48.7% Ukrainian). There was no such covert intervention in Kosovo, where the NATO air campaign, its preparations for a ground offensive and even its support for the Kosovo Liberation Army were well-known at the time.
• If there is a Kosovo precedent for what Russia is doing in Ukraine, it is not NATO’s protection of the Albanians but rather Russia’s own attempt to grab the Pristina airport by force in June 1999 as prelude to the arrival of Russian forces by air and occupation of northern Kosovo.
• An even more significant precedent is Slobodan Milosevic in the early 1990s, who claimed to be protecting his co-national Serbs from mistreatment while expelling Croats and Bosniaks from territory the Yugoslav National Army seized in Croatia and Bosnia.
• The pattern is a familiar one: exaggerated reports of mistreatment, organization of militias to protect against largely fictional mistreatment, provocation by those militias against legitimate state forces, then intervention to protect co-nationals from any efforts to restore law and order.
• Russia has repeatedly engaged in this pattern of creating problems in order to control territory with Russian-speaking majorities in the former Soviet space: Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Transnistria, it should be noted, pre-dates Kosovo.
• Moscow has gotten away with it before, so it will try again. Maybe in Kazakhstan. And it will encourage copy-cat efforts in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and Nagorno-Karabakh, trying to ensure that the sovereign states in which those entities are located cannot exert effective control.
• This is a strategy of destabilization and control by military and paramilitary means.
• One more thing: if Putin seriously thought Kosovo was a precedent for Ukraine that he is justified in following, Moscow would accept the results of the NATO intervention and recognize Pristina. Fat chance of that.
• So as the Russian army attacks Mariupol, let’s call it what it is: naked aggression on neighboring state with the aim of grabbing territory populated in part by Russian speakers.
The discussion revolved in part around criteria for statehood and sovereignty as well as partition questions. Putin’s card is a petard, which is a small explosive device with a tendency to explode in ways that “hoist” the owner. The Russian Federation may well eventually face internal problems inspired in part by Putin’s own behavior in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, not to mention Syria.
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Syrian opposition getting their act together
The Syrian Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces informs me that members of various factions of the Syrian opposition met in Cairo over the past few days and agreed yesterday on the attached Cairo Declaration. They also agreed to hold a national conference for all Syrian opposition factions in the coming months.
Attendees and signers included members of a broad spectrum of opposition groups, as well as national figures from various segments of Syrian society, including: Aref Dalilah, Hussein Awdat, Haitham Manaa, Ahmad Jarba, Nibras Fadel, Jamal Suleiman, Riad Naasan Agha, Saleh Muslem, Jihad Makdesi, and Samir Seifan.
I am told the signatories include a significant slice of opposition from inside Syria as well as a higher proportion of Alawites and Christians than in the Syrian Coalition itself. The Muslim Brotherhood was not present (after all, the meeting was in Cairo) but the door remains open to its participation in the spring conference.
This looks to me like the latest in a long series of efforts to unify the opposition. This time the platform is nationalist, non-sectarian, civil, and democratic, including explicit reference to gender equality. It pays due deference to decentralization but also foresees a unified Syria and withdrawal of all foreign forces. I think it doesn’t explicitly address the upcoming intra-Syrian dialogue Moscow is sponsoring, but it is possible some of the signatories may be planning to attend that meeting starting Sunday.
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