A still small voice
I’ve been wondering how Syrians are feeling about their regime and its disdain for the its citizens. Over at Diadochi they are expressing it clearly:
Yet nothing hurt like witnessing the parliament. Watching them one by one deliver their legendary praises like trained apes crushed our spirit. It made us realize, this is us, the ones stupid enough to stay loyal to a contract that has been desecrated time and time again. We realized the opinionated peaceful pro-reform youth are not the face of Syria, the face of Syria is an old demented suck-up who lavishes wondrous feats to a system that does nothing but slap him around, suffocate him, ridicule his stupid fantasies and stomp on his dignity. Suddenly we went down from the golden generation, to vermin.
Ever seen a whole nation assume fetal position? It’s quite a sight.
Even the most optimistic are broken. Some still say words of hope, but it’s not with the old spark you’d see in their eyes. It’s more of a desperate attempt to cling on to what has already been destroyed. Most of us, we’re grinding our teeth in a rage that can hardly be kept in. You see, even if they actually do the unlikely attempt of making all they pledged happen, it won’t matter. The contract is broken, our dignity has been stung bad, we feel detached from a system which very clearly doesn’t represent us to the slightest.
I don’t take this as a voice of despair. This is a still small voice getting ready to act. I wish it well in its efforts.
PS: On Bahrain,which has almost disappeared from the news since the Saudis intervened, see this.
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Barbarities
It doesn’t get much more senseless than this: a pastor in Florida conducts a mock trial of the Koran, then burns it. No one notices, until Afghan President Karzai denounces the Koran burning and arouses the sensibilities of Muslims almost half a world away. A group of them compounds the evil by attacking a local UN office and killing twelve, none of whom have any connection to the Koran burning (and at least four of whom were Afghans). Another nine people died today in Taliban-inspired protests in Kandahar, where the Americans have made an enormous effort to win over the local population.
This isn’t a clash of civilizations; this is a clash of barbarities.
They are not the only barbarities in today’s world. The Red Cross says 800 were killed in fighting over a town in western Ivory Coast between the forces of president-elect Alassane Ouattara and incumbent Laurent Gbagbo. An American testified at trial that he and his U.S. Army comrades wantonly killed innocent Afghans, for the sake of entertainment.
Apart from the obvious, several of these incidents have in common something surprising: the passion to do something “good.” The pastor thinks the Koran is evil–that’s the avowed reason for the mock trial and Koran burning. Those who attacked the UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif were led by imams seeking to punish the evil that had been done to Islam. Outtara and Gbagbo are both fighting for what they claim was the legitimate outcome of an election.
What about those Americans? Entertainment is I guess a “good” of sorts, but it really doesn’t match up with the other good causes implicated in these barbarities. What makes it possible for Americans to kill for entertainment?
They can do this only if they view the Afghans as the “other,” a group that does not merit respect for human life. This is likely to be the case in the other instances of barbarity as well. The “othering” of individuals or groups is at the root of much interethnic and sectarian violence. Americans are not immune, especially if they have reason to fear, or want to instil fear in adversaries (two sides of the same coin).
How to respond to such senselessness? Prosecutions in Afghanistan are clearly in order. The UN, desperately needed in Afghanistan to help with everything from negotiations with the Taliban to feeding and sheltering the poor, will not be able to stay if its staff can be murdered with impunity. The incitement in Florida is truly irrelevant to the need for accountability in Mazar-i-Sharif, and Kandahar.
That said, the church in Florida–I don’t want to name it or give its pastor any more of the publicity he so obviously craves–is abusive. Symbolic acts like the burning of the Koran (or of the New Testament) are constitutionally protected in the U.S. The church folk know this and are using that protection as a shield while they attack Islam. I have no idea how the American justice system will handle this–there is precedent for restraining people from symbolic acts that incite violence. But it seems to me that those ideologically close this pastor have a clear responsibility to stop him from further provocations. This includes his own parishioners as well as much of what is known today as the “Christian right,” which has been quick to ask that American Muslims restrain their own from extremism. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
Accountability in Ivory Coast seems far off, but if Ouattara wants to avoid Gbagbo’s fate he’ll tend to it even before the fighting is over. The appeal for Gbagbo’s people to come over to his side that I’ve published in the previous post is not enough. He needs to restrain his own people and prevent harm to civilians, no matter whom they support. Starting his regime with a massacre will do him no good at all.
The Americans have already tried and convicted one of the U.S. Army perpetrators. He got off with a relatively light sentence, apparently in exchange for testimony against his buddies. I find that disgraceful, but I suppose also unavoidable. Let’s hope the others get what they merit, as a clear signal to the rest of our soldiers and marines that the institution they work for will hold them accountable.
My personal inclination would be to put all these perpetrators in the same prison cell together and let them sort it out. I suppose it is better that what will happen is that the respective justice systems will slowly sort out which punishments are merited. Let’s hope they do it quicker and better than usual. Preventing future barbarities requires ending impunity for past ones.
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No joke
The day is done in the Middle East, with no definitive results:
- protests were widespread in Syria, with at least a dozen demonstrators killed
- duelling demonstrations in Yemen came off, I gather peacefully
- Libyan rebels remain on the defensive
Even in Ivory Coast expectations of a definitive end to Gbagbo have not been fulfilled, as fierce fighting is said to continue in Abijian. Ah well, it is April Fools’ Day, and maybe I’m the fool for having hoped for better outcomes.
Srdja Popovic, the Serb Otpor (Resistance) leader who now participates in a network of people training others for “nonviolent conflict” was here at SAIS today. His messages as always to those who seek to overthrow dictators and embark on a path to democracy: unity, planning, nonviolent discipline.
The Syrians are handicapped: they haven’t had time for serious planning, but so far they’ve been pretty good at maintaining nonviolent discipline and unity. If Bashar keeps on giving them the gift of failing to offer serious reform, they may be able to catch up with their planning homework, but maintaining momentum won’t be easy.
Yemen has developed into a more unified movement and seems to be maintaining nonviolent discipline. President Saleh is slippery though and keeps on squirming out of deals that would lead to his stepping down. The demonstrators are going to have to keep it up for a while longer.
Libya and Ivory Coast are violent situations, not nonviolent ones. Each in its own way demonstrates why nonviolent discipline is so important.
Violence in Libya gave Gaddafi the advantage, as his forces are far better equipped and trained than the rebels. A stalemate for weeks while they equipped and trained would be ruinous for Libya and for the coalition supporting UN Security Council resolution 1973. It is important to get Gaddafi and his family out of the country as soon as possible.
In Ivory Coast, president-elect Ouattara showed enormous discipline in resisting a military solution. Now that he has embarked on one, he has the international community–even the African Union–on his side. He needs to keep the military action clean and avoid revenge killings, which would set his administration off on the wrong foot and deprive him of vital international support. He also needs to win quickly, before more innocent people are killed.
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Good behavior and laughter make better revolution
As incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo is being forced out of power by election winner Alassane Ouattara in the Ivory Coast, it is time to remind all concerned that proper behavior of security forces is required of good guys as well as bad guys. This is not only a matter of international humanitarian law but also of good policy. If you are claiming power in the name of democracy or freedom and intending to establish the rule of law, the last thing in the world you should want is for your security forces to begin behaving even remotely like the ones they have just defeated.
This will be important also in Libya, where revenge killings–in particular of Gaddafi “mercenaries” thought to be of non-Libyan origin–have already occurred. The International Criminal Court should not limit its investigation only to the Gaddafi loyalists but should also keep its eye on those generally called “the rebels,” even if actual prosecutions for war crimes may prove technically difficult because the rebel forces are not an organized armed force, or at least don’t appear to be yet.
I am hoping that this problem will not arise in Yemen or in Syria, where the protesters have tried hard to maintain nonviolent discipline. The prerequisite for doing so is to mass large numbers of people, something the regimes will try to prevent by instilling, or re-instilling, fear. It may seem odd, but the winners in nonviolent confrontations are often those who can laugh best at their opponent, a clear metric for the removal of fear.
I’d be the first to admit that Gbagbo and Gaddafi scare me, and it is hard to fault those on the spot who decided to take up arms rather than rely on laughter and massive nonviolent protests. But if they want the rest of the world to help them, they’ve got to keep it clean.
PS: Rival demonstrations in Sanaa today appear to have been relatively peaceful, so far. Saleh is clever, but will it buy him until the end of the year? Sporadic but persistent Twitter reports from Syria suggest the regime is using violence and the threat of violence to prevent demonstrations.
PPS: In Ivory Coast, the outcome is still not quite final, but Outtara is sounding the right notes:
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Another BIG Friday
The President of Syria has thumbed his nose at the protesters, suggesting that they are operating on an Israeli agenda. After much vacillating and many negotiations, the President of Yemen has called for his supporters to rally in Sanaa tomorrow, a day when the opposition is also planning another mass rally in the capital. Gaddafi’s favorite Foreign Minister has defected in London and other regime stalwarts are thought to be on their way, even as the rebels lose ground to his forces in eastern Libya and the CIA tries to train them into a more effective fighting force.
Tomorrow promises to be a big day. Will Syrians respond en masse to the President’s provocation? Will the opposition in Yemen push the vacillating president past the tipping point? Is the Gaddafi regime near collapse?
It would be easy to be cynical and suggest that the answer to these three questions is “no.” It is not likely to be “yes” to all three on the same day. I’m more inclined to hedge a bit.
Maybe the best bet is on clashes tomorrow in Sanaa. The more nonviolent they can keep it, the better the chance for the protesters to win a confrontation. Violence will evoke a violent response on the part of the security forces, and in a violent confrontation the protesters lose. President Saleh would appear to have more than nine lives. He definitely wins the survivor prize so far, but nine is a finite number and he is certainly close to it.
Syrians have long given Bashar al Assad the benefit of more doubt than can seriously be alleged to exist. They really haven’t even reached the point of asking for his departure. They stop short of that by asking for suspension of the emergency laws that prop up his regime. He has responded violently and likely will again tomorrow. Numbers of demonstrators, and non-violent discipline, will be vital to the outcome. Whatever residual support for him the Americans (and Israelis) harbor, on grounds that he provides stability, should by now have been dispelled: he is as bad as his father, and likely as violent too. His father killed 20,000 at Hama.
Libya is the great uncertainty. By all rights, Gaddafi should be gone already. But he holds on in Tripoli and has again fought back the rebel advance. The Americans are loudly debating whether to move ahead with arming the rebels, in accordance with a covert action “finding” that the President has already signed. I suppose they expect this noisy display to scare him. He is definitely frightened, but that makes him hold on tighter. There is no way he can stay on in Libya if he loses this fight, and he knows that sooner or later justice will find him if he leaves.
Maybe none of these issues will be decided tomorrow, but it would certainly be a fine trifecta if all three went down on April Fools’ Day.
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Disturbing, not disappointing
That’s the best that can be said about President Bashar al Assad’s speech today, in which he blamed the demonstrations in Syria on foreign conspiracies, accused his opponents of having an Israeli agenda, and promised, once again, still unspecified reforms. No lifting of the emergency laws, no opening of the political space to parties other than his Ba’ath, no moves against corruption. Emphasis on stability and the economy, not on opening the political system.
Now it is up to the Syrians to respond. Their first real opportunity will be Friday, when it is hard for the regime to prevent people from gathering for prayers. But one lady already took her shot:
I wonder what happened to her thereafter.
Can anyone still be disappointed? The guy is absolutely consistent in avoiding serious reform. It’s not disappointing, it’s disturbing. The people it should disturb most are John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, who have been at pains to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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