Dodik’s next move: squeezing Brcko dry
Matthew Parish, who now practices law in Geneva with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, has kindly given me permission to publish this interesting analysis, which has already appeared in the Bosnian newspaper Oslobodjenje. From 2005 to 2007, Matthew lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked for the Office of the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR) as the Chief Legal Adviser to the International Supervisor of Brčko.
While I think Matthew is overly harsh in his description of OHR officials, the careful dissection of what Dodik is up to merits attention, including from the OHR and other concerned internationals. As it is significantly longer than the usual blog posts, I’ve put the piece in the “From the field” section, where Geneva (and Brcko) are located from my DC perspective.
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Simmer until ready
While it is hard to take eyes off Egypt, the rest of the Arab world is simmering. We should make sure nothing boils over while we aren’t watching:
- Syria: “days of rage” demonstrations called for Friday and Saturday. One wag has proposed calling them “days of mild frustration” and President Bashar al Asad has claimed he is in favor of “opening.” My month studying Arabic in Damascus two years ago suggested to me that the population, while more than mildly frustrated, lacks the stomach for anything like what is going on in Cairo. Bashar knows that. Feb 5 update: the days of rage failed.
- Jordan: Ditto Amman, where weekly protests haven’t grown very large and the government is busy increasing food and fuel subsidies and civil service salaries, despite budget problems. The King sacked the Prime Minister this week, but that won’t change much.
- Algeria: President Bouteflika has promised to lift the state of emergency “soon.” Next, planned and banned rally scheduled for February 12, focused on economic and social issues, not politics. Anyway that’s a political year away at this point.
- Libya: Quiet. Qadhafi looked frightened when Tunisia happened, but I guess oil income that makes GDP well over $12,300 per capita provides a lot of simmering time.
- Sudan: scattered, small protests, but the big news in Khartoum is the loss of the relatively Western-oriented, sometimes English-speaking and Christian South. That will shift the center of gravity in Khartoum sharply in the Islamist direction.
- Yemen: demonstrations and a president who promises not to run again in 2013, but this is at least the third time Saleh has made that promise. Revolution is tough to organize when a good part of the population chews qat, but keep an eye on the southern rebellion (the northern one has gone quiescent).
So to my eye nothing else seems ready to boil over yet, but the outcome in Cairo could well heat things up, especially in Syria. Bashar al Assad gives a great interview to the Wall Street Journal, but I doubt he is quite as in tune with his people as he claims.
PS: I really should not have skipped Saudi Arabia, which was treated in a fine NPR piece by Michelle Norris yesterday. No demos, but a lot of people watching and wondering, sometimes out loud.
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Mubarak’s order
Tuesday was the peoples’ day, yesterday was the regime’s day. What will today and Friday be?
Let there be no doubt. Wednesday afternoon’s rioting against the demonstrators was organized and paid for by the Mubarak regime, which at the very least could have stopped it. I imagine Mubarak hesitated to use his uniformed police for the crackdown, presumably fearing Washington’s wrath, so he had it done in civilian clothes, but many of the rioters carried Interior Ministry identification. They targeted especially the news media, in an apparent attempt to intimidate them from covering the malfeasance. If these are the forces of law and order, why not try chaos?
The demonstrators have done well to hold Tahrir Square, but physical contests with their antagonists are not a good idea. Sometime in the middle of the night the number of demonstrators declines, making another Interior Ministry attack all the more likely. Last night it was sporadic gunfire aimed mainly at legs and feet. Officially five killed. Tonight it may get worse. Mubarak will try to intimidate as many as possible from joining the demonstrations Friday. There is no substitute for a massive presence in Tahrir.
Washington naturally turns to the question, “what should Barack Obama do?” White House spokesman Gibbs was seen today in the twittersphere as less than forceful in condemning the regime violence, but at the same time he was pretty good in insisting that change had to start right away. My sense is that the White House needs to play hard ball with Mubarak in private, but not get too far out in front in public. This shouldn’t be about the United States. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry, in a statement that will be the shame of every professional Egyptian diplomat I know, was only too happy yesterday to reject foreign calls to incitement.
I’m not keen on recalling ambassadors, especially the American one, because it hurts communication with both protesters and the army, not to mention with the regime. Nor do I like blanket aid cuts, though if we can find juicy items the regime is particularly interested in I would be happy to see them cut. I trust Admiral Mullen is making it clear to the Egyptian army that we won’t be able to be as helpful as in the past unless the rioting against the demonstrators stops. This revolution still has to be made, or unmade, in Egypt, not inside the beltway.
It will however have effects within the beltway, and throughout America. The implications are admirably outlined in a piece by Steve Clemons. The big worry is the impact on Egypt’s peace with Israel. While I would not be surprised if Egypt adopted a more pro-Palestinian voice, it seems highly unlikely that a democratic government in Cairo would prefer to pick a serious fight with Israel rather than tend to its own citizens’ needs. But that is precisely what Tehran did after its nondemocratic revolution, so who can predict?
The Egyptians seem remarkably willing to keep up their efforts. If they can hold Tahrir square today, we’ll know Friday whether they can defeat autocratic thuggery with democratic commitment.
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Civilian stabilization efforts in Kyrgyzstan
Please visit the writeup of Ambassador Robert Loftis’ presentation Monday at Johns Hopkins/SAIS, where he talked about civilian whole-of-government efforts at stabilization in Kyrgyzstan.
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Saleh channels Mubarak
Ali Abdullah Saleh, President of Yemen, announced to parliament today that he will not run again in 2013. He was at least more eloquent than his mentor: “No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock,” he said (this from someone who has made and broken the promise not to run previously). This blatant copying of Egyptian President Mubarak’s approach to deflating protests is intended to fend off protests scheduled for tomorrow (why don’t Yemenis prefer Friday for protests?). Saleh is also reported to be helping pro-regime elements get to the capital for the occasion.
There had been contradictory reports from Yemen on whether demonstrations there were serious or not. The Washington Post reported that democracy activists are divided from political opposition, and the regime handles both with skill and occasional brutality. The demands of the political opposition have been relatively mild: electoral and other reforms rather than the immediate departure of the president.
But if objective indicators mean anything, Yemen is still ripe for trouble, more likely of the state collapse than the revolutionary sort. Here’s the short list of what ails it:
- Water: lacking and declining rapidly.
- Oil: also declining rapidly.
- Rebellion: in the north and the south.
- Poverty: big time.
- Drugs: qat, every day.
- Autocrat: Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power longer than Mubarak.
- Role in the war on terror: front line against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
- Dependence on the U.S.: increasing.
I can’t think of any countries that come close to this litany of ailments, apart from Somalia (an instructive analogue, and just across the Bab el Mandeb). Yemen may not have enough of a middle class to generate the kind of revolution of rising expectations that chased Ben Ali from Tunisia, and the population’s addiction to qat may make any revolution (or state collapse) more psychedelic than monochrome. President Saleh has been trying hard to ease tensions by raising salaries, lowering taxes, promising not to steal another term, and asserting boldly that Yemen is not Tunisia.
It has been more than a year since a real expert on Yemen predicted:
If left unaddressed, Yemen’s problems could potentially destabilize Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states. The inability of the Yemeni central government to fully control its territory will create space for violent extremists to regroup and launch attacks against domestic and international targets. The international community must be realistic about the limitations of intervention in Yemen. In the near term, however, inaction is not an option.
It may not be an option in the think-tank world, but it is pretty much what we’ve done. I certainly don’t think Christopher Boucek’s recommendations have been fully implemented, though U.S. assistance is increasing rapidly:
* Yemen must build local capacity in law enforcement and its legal and judicial systems by enacting counterterrorism legislation, passing terror finance laws, improving police training, and professionalizing the prison service.
* The Gulf states should make Yemen’s membership of the Gulf Cooperation Council contingent on tough steps, including progress on curbing government subsidies, addressing corruption, and enacting measures to curtail security concerns.
* U.S. aid to Yemen is disproportionately small given its importance to U.S. national security. Development assistance, education and technical cooperation, capacity building, institution strengthening, and direct financial assistance can better address the interconnected challenges facing Yemen than military and security aid.
So are we living on borrowed time in Yemen, or can President Saleh succeed using Mubarak’s tricks?
PS: See also Unhappy Yemen: a White House view.
PPS: See also from the February 4 New York Times. The headline is misleading. She thinks he is safe for six months, maybe not more.
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Mubarak tries another kind of crackdown
The demonstrators remaining in Tahrir square this morning after yesterday’s massive protest calling for President Mubarak to step down immediately are now facing attack from pro-regime thugs. This is a crackdown of another kind, a kind that will allow the regime to tell the Americans they didn’t use the security forces (and avoid the use of a conscript army, which might not like to crack heads). Mubarak, having announced yesterday that he will not stand for election again in September, is hoping the violence will discourage any more protests and get Egyptians to choose stability over prolonged uncertainty.
The protesters are in a bind. Yesterday was a tremendous show of their support in Egyptian society. But Mubarak’s refusal to step down means they have to turn out a big crowd Friday to trump his recalcitrance. The army, which had expressed sympathy with the protests, has now called for an end to demonstrations, and a lot of ordinary Egyptians will be getting impatient with the disruption of their lives. Violent clashes today and tomorrow could scare off a lot of people and leave only a few, hard core protesters. That would spell triumph for Mubarak.
So the right course of action, which in any event should be nonviolent, is whatever will ensure a big crowd on Friday. I wouldn’t pretend to know what that is from Washington, DC. That is a decision for those behind the protests, who have done really well so far and should be relied on to lead again. Made in Egypt is still the best way.
One thing the protesters will have to consider is the complex constitutional situation. Free and fair elections to choose a successor to Mubarak will not be possible under the present constitution. How do you get the constitution revised in a parliament that is 90% National Democratic Party (Mubarak guys) by September? What alternative is there?
I should note that the interpretation I offer above of the pro-regime thug attacks is open to debate. Here is quite a different view, just in from the newly reopened internet in Cairo:
…[a] sort of a thinking man’s NDP member says he thinks the latest attacks on the demonstrators mean that Mubarak is done, if not today, by Friday. Just yesterday, he thought the gradual return to stability, and creation of a sort of free protest zone in Tahrir was going to eventually calm things down, and let Mubarak finish out his term. Then he could shepherd in new parliamentary elections, and possibly modify the constitution to allow Omar Suleiman to run outright.
However, the chaos of today is clearly a result of some sort of rift within the regime. The internet was turned on literally just a couple hours before the pro-mubarak thugs attacked the protesters. If this was planned, one would think that they would have waited to turn the internet on after all this was over. My friend thinks that elements in the NDP that normally control these thugs felt things slipping away from them, and saw the only solution as trying to clear Tahrir with their protesters, hoping once things got chaotic the army would intervene to just clear things out. Instead, there is talk of the military intervening against the pro-mubarak forces to protect the protesters, although it is unclear if this has happened yet.
Of course this interpretation is not entirely inconsistent with the one I offer above–but it underlines splits in the regime and suggests that it would have been better not to allow the thugs to do their handiwork. Only time will tell whether it might have been wiser to leave some room for the protesters. The military for the moment is standing by, not intervening.
PS: For those who prefer the video version, here courtesy of AP and The Lede you can watch a minute or so of what a regime is willing to try to stay in power (and it may well get worse before it gets better):
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