Tag: Al Qaeda
A really bad day
The Muslim world has had a busy Friday trashing U.S. embassies and killing Muslims. The latest death toll I’ve seen is seven, but who knows.
The day was a losing proposition all around. The United States suffered serious damage not only to its embassies but to its international standing. Muslims lost people and respect in the West, where no doubt anti-Muslim extremists will take action against mosques and argue that the day proves that Islam is not a peaceful religion. Al Qaeda got to display its flag amid at least the appearance of popular support.
The Arab awakening took an ugly turn that will reinforce skepticism about it worldwide. Syrians might be the biggest losers in the long term: those who are on the fence about intervention there will not want to risk creating yet another opportunity for extremism. Not that it is better to ignore the homicidal maniac who runs that country, but it is certainly easier than doing anything about him. My Twitter feed is full of Arab commentary about the stupidity of protesting a dumb movie when Bashar al Asad is killing thousands, but that entirely justified sentiment won’t change the import of a truly ugly day.
Ironically but not surprisingly, the one place where dignity prevailed was Libya, where it all started. The president of Libya’s parliament, in essence the chief of state, laid a wreath at the American embassy in honor of the Americans killed in Benghazi. Libyans know perfectly well that the Americans and NATO saved them from the worst depredations of Muammar Qaddafi. Except for the Qaddafi supporters, they are overwhelmingly grateful and friendly. That was amply apparent at the Atlantic Council’s event on Libya yesterday, when the Libyan ambassador (and every other Libyan who spoke) made affection for slain Ambassador Chris Stevens amply evident.
I am afraid the lesson of the day is one we already know: transitions to democracy take time and resources. Our effort to get off cheap and easy in Libya is not working out well. We need to be thinking about how we can help Tripoli gain control of the armed groups on Libyan territory and help the Libyans achieve a measure of reconciliation with those who supported the Qaddafi regime. We also need to work with the Libyans to bring the murderers to justice.
Egypt’s President Morsi has finally come around to recognizing that his hesitancy about blocking the violence was a big mistake. I have some sympathy with those who would use massive U.S. assistance to Egypt–debt forgiveness, military aid and development assistance totalling more than $3 billion–as leverage. There is no way the American public is going to support continuing it unless Cairo starts singing a friendlier tune and reining in extremism, not only in Cairo but also in Sinai. Tunisia is next in line for tough love, though the government’s behavior there has generally been better than in Egypt.
Yemen is a more complicated case. We get lots of support and freedom of action in our war against Al Qaeda in Yemen. No one will want to put that at risk. At the same time, we need to be paying a whole lot more attention to Yemen’s deeper problems: poor governance, underdevelopment, and water shortages. They are what make the country a haven for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Mitt Romney and his acolytes may want to pretend that all these problems can be solved if only the American president is shows resolve and therefore the United States is respected. But as Joe Cirincione pointed out in a tweet, the two worst Muslim terrorist attacks on the United States occurred under Presidents Reagan and Bush. The Romneyites presumably don’t think they lacked resolve, which is something best reserved for top priority conflicts with other states. And those rare moments when you think you know where Osama bin Laden is hiding.
I can well understand Americans who want to turn their backs on the Muslim world and walk away. But that will not work. It will come back to haunt us, as terrorism, oil supply disruption, massive emigration, mass atrocity or in some other expensive and unmanageable form. Muslims, in particular Arabs, are going through a gigantic political transformation, one whose echoes will reverberate for decades. We need to try to help them through the cataclysm to a better place, for them and for us.
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GOP critique: leaks and cuts
This is the third installment of a series responding to the Romney campaign’s list of failures in Obama’s foreign and national security policies.
Failure #3: “Unconscionable” Leaks Of Classified Counterterror Information From The White House That Have Been “Devastating”
Here I find myself in agreement with the Republicans: there have been too many leaks of apparently classified information. The trouble is this complaint comes from people who never said a word about leaks during the Bush administration. So to give the complaint more credibility, I think I’ll just reproduce word for word the main allegations, without the partisan hyperbole:
The damaging leaks include:
- Operational details about the Osama Bin Laden raid.
- Existence of a Pakistani doctor who assisted the United States in finding Bin Laden and who was later arrested and jailed in Pakistan.
- Revelation of a covert joint U.S.-Israeli cyber operation to undermine Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
- The existence of a double-agent who was key to unraveling the second underwear bomb.
- The White House’s process for determining the targets of drone strikes.
The Republican memorandum also cites Democratic concern:
- John Brennan, President Obama’s own counterterror chief and Deputy National Security Adviser, has called the leaks “unconscionable,” “damaging,” and “devastating.”
- Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has criticized the leaks and stated that they are coming from the White House. She said, “Each disclosure puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners, and threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats worldwide.”
The remedy the Republicans suggest is the right one:
Despite the damage done, President Obama has refused to support the appointment of a special counsel to investigate these leaks and hold those responsible accountable. The special counsel mechanism is designed for just such circumstances where the impartiality of normal prosecutors may be compromised because someone in the high chain of command in the White House may be implicated.
Holding people accountable for leaks of truly valuable classified information is a vital component of protecting national security.
Failure #4: “Devastating” Defense Cuts That Will Cede Our Status As A “Global Power”
I confess that my wonkiness does not really extend to budget, which I find fiendishly complicated even if arithmetically simple. The “massive cuts” President Obama has allegedly instituted to the defense budget are all cuts from projected increases, not cuts in the present budget. The Republicans cite two “cuts” in 2011: one of $78 billion and one of $400 billion. But they neglect to mention that the former would take place over 5 years and the later 10 years. They also neglect to mention the massive Pentagon increases over the previous ten years. Then they hold Obama responsible for the $500 billion in cuts (over 10 years) not yet made but scheduled for the January “sequester” if Congress does not pass a budget.
How is President Obama exclusively responsible for the sequester agreement passed in both Houses of Congress? Not clear, but Governor Romney is alleged to have opposed the agreement, which is easy enough since he is not a member of Congress. The President however failed to “steer” the Congressional super-committee to an agreement and has not accepted the Ryan budget plan:
In short, the Commander in Chief is holding our national security and our commitment to veterans hostage to his agenda of tax increases.
It would be at least as correct to say that the Republicans are holding our economy hostage to their agenda of tax cuts.
In all this budget talk, some fundamental facts are lost: the United States spends more on defense than the next 17 countries in the world combined, and all but a handful of those are allies or friends. There is little sign on the horizon of any conventional military threat to the United States for at least 20 years. The only immediate potential military challenge other than the war we are finishing in Afghanistan is the Iranian nuclear program, which is a war we or ally Israel will initiate. The Republicans know this, and the Ryan budget actually proposes a cut in Defense spending for fiscal year 2013, which starts on October 1:
Conventional military challenges may be few, but there are lots of non-conventional and largely non-military challenges in today’s world: weak and failing states, states transitioning to democracy, regional instability in the Middle East and East Asia, terrorist havens, economic collapse, pandemic disease…. The Pentagon budget is not going to help a lot with these challenges, and for many it is the most expensive, not the most cost-effective, way to go. Romney supports the Ryan budget, which makes massive cuts in the kind of civilian foreign affairs spending that would help us to meet those challenges.
The Republicans complain that the only program Obama is all too willing to cut is our military. This is not true. As the GOP never tires of pointing out, he has proposed (and convinced the Congress to pass) $716 billion in cuts to Medicare. The defense budget is by far the largest discretionary slice of Federal spending. There is not credible way to cut Federal expenditures and leave it untouched, much less pay for the increases that the Ryan budget plan proposes in the out years.
Obama’s purported defense budget “cuts” made so far would not cut the defense budget at all, but only slow its increase. The GOP allegation that the president is pursuing a policy of unilateral disarmament is false, as is the allegation that he has sent a message of weakness abroad, leading our friends to question our staying power and emboldening our adversaries. Our allies and friends in Europe and Asia are sticking close by and our adversaries–if you count as such al Qaeda, Iran, and North Korea–have a good deal to fear from an administration that has been tough-minded about tightening the screws.
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No easy call
Having written Tuesday that President Obama should be considering a no-fly zone in Syria, I was surprised but pleased to read this tactical level account confirming my view that this is preferable to safe zones or humanitarian corridors. They wouldn’t make much difference at this point because the opposition already control wide swaths of territory. But of course a no-fly zone over all of Syria would need to be strategically as well as tactically good in order to convince a president.
Steven Lee Myers and Scott Shane of the New York Times summed up the argument against any Western military intervention this way:
American military operations against Syria, officials reiterated on Tuesday, would risk drawing in Syria’s patrons, principally Iran and Russia, at a much greater level than they already are involved. It would allow Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to rally popular sentiment against the West and embolden Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups now fighting the Assad government to turn their attention to what they would see as another American crusade in the Arab world.
The risk is not only greater Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria, but also losing Russia’s cooperation on Afghanistan and on trying to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. These are serious risks involving important American interests.
But Iran and Russia are already heavily involved in Syria, and it is also an important American interest to prevent the war in Syria from “grinding on,” as Andrew Tabler puts it. That would increase the likelihood of Al Qaeda and other jihadi involvement. It will also increase the risk to Syria’s neighbors. Lebanon and Jordan are already in difficulty, the former from sectarian fighting provoked in part by the Syrian conflict and the latter from the burden of tens of thousands of refugees. Iraq could also be threatened. Kurdish extremists are increasing operations in Turkey, presumably egged on by the Syrian regime, but the Turks can counter that effort both diplomatically (by getting the Iraqi Kurds to restrain their Syrian brethren) and militarily.
A no-fly zone could significantly shorten the conflict in Syria, but of course a great deal depends on how it is authorized and who engages in it. There seems no possibility of UN Security Council authorization. Moscow won’t allow it. The Arab League would need to ask for it. That seems within the realm of possibility. The Americans would have to undertake the major military operation needed to defeat Syria’s Russian air defense system, giving the Iranians a pretty good picture of how we would go about a similar attack on them. A continuing effort to patrol the skies and strike occasionally afterwards might rely on Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The alternative, or possibly a supplement, to a no-fly zone is to supply the Syrian revolutionaries with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADs). The risk is that these would fall into the wrong hands, as they did in Afghanistan and Libya. Few however have been used effectively against Western targets. I imagine that our geniuses have managed to create MANPADs that don’t last long and are therefore useless after a few months, but I don’t actually know it (and Al Qaeda might be able to defeat any technological wizardry).
I don’t think a no-fly zone or giving the revolutionaries anti-aircraft capability is an easy call. But refusing to somehow redress the imbalance that Bashar’s air force is exploiting to kill civilians also has consequences. President Obama appears to have already made his decision not to intervene (I am less sure that we aren’t giving the revolutionaries some anti-aircraft capability), but the mounting toll, especially in Aleppo and Damascus, means that the issue will have to be revisited.
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Quicker is better, but use the delay well
“Impractical, unenforceable and unwise” are the labels I gave yesterday to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s proposal for highly conditional military aid to the Syrian revolutionaries aimed at creating safe areas.
Today, Kofi Annan resigned as the UN/Arab League negotiator, having failed to make progress on the peace plan that bears his name. This likely dooms the UN observer mission, which has been useful in providing the international community with some objective data on what is going on and in assigning responsibility. It could prove helpful in the future in identifying who is emerging within the on-the-ground leadership. We’ll miss them when they are gone.
So what do I think should be done now?
There are two criteria I would ideally like to meet:
- Get it over quickly
- Empower people who will take post-Asad Syria in a democratic direction
The first is important because the Syrian war is starting to overflow the country’s borders to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. This could precipitate a nightmare scenario of widespread sectarian war that will open opportunities for extremists (including from Al Qaeda) and reshape the Levant in ways that are likely to be inimical to U.S. interests.
The second is important because only an inclusive democratic regime in Syria will be able to re-establish stability and reduce risks to the region. The last thing we need in Syria is what its history suggests is most likely: a series of coups and narrowly based, unstable governments that mistreat Syria’s minorities, destabilizing the region and prolonging the agony.
Or worse: a break-up of the country along ethnic and sectarian lines, with Alawites establishing a homeland along the Mediterranean coast and Kurds trying to carve out something like Iraqi Kurdistan (even though the Kurdish population is not nearly as concentrated as in Iraq).
The big question on Washington’s mind yesterday was whether military action, either direct or through proxies, would speed the denouement. Andrew Tabler testified at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
Washington should lead its allies in the “Core Group” of the Friends of the Syrian People gathering—Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia—in issuing a stark warning to Assad that mass atrocities in Syria will be met with an immediate military response.
Jim Dobbins was more circumspect:
I do not believe the United States should become the standard bearer for such an intervention. I do believe, however, that the United States should up its assistance to the rebels; quietly let those on the front lines, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia, know that it will back initiatives they may wish to take toward more direct military engagement; and provided the earlier mentioned conditions can be met, America should provide those military assets needed for success that only the United States possesses in adequate number.
Martin Indyk, more concerned with speed, nevertheless focused on political and diplomatic measures and recommended no military action. Less concerned about how long it takes for Bashar to fall, Aaron David Miller, writing on foreignpolicy.com, was unequivocally against direct intervention:
The time for guilting the United States into expensive and ill-thought-out military interventions has passed. Indeed, the reasons to intervene in Syria — the hope of defusing a bloody religious and political conflict and dealing the Iranian mullahs a mortal blow — are just not compelling enough to offset the risks and the unknowns.
My own view is that U.S. (aerial) military intervention might accelerate the fall of Bashar, but only if it is direct and massive. If the Arab League and the Syrian opposition request it, the United States and whatever allies are willing to join could take direct action against Syria’s command, control and communications, aiming not to create safe areas but rather to decapitate the regime and render the Syrian army harmless. This would not necessarily work right away, but it has a far better chance of working quickly than a messy operation devoted to creating euphemistic safe areas. First step: move a carrier battle group to the Eastern Med visibly and ostentatiously.
If Washington doesn’t want to take decisive military action, and my reading is that it does not, it is better to follow Miller’s advice: let the natural course of events develop, with proxies arming and training the Syrians, as Dobbins also suggests. This isn’t likely to fulfill my first hope–to get it over quickly–but it is better than the fractious opposition trying to control territory rather than fighting the regime.
Empowering people who will take Syria in a democratic direction is a much more difficult trick. This is where Jim Dobbins put his emphasis. Our best bet is to try to identify people who are emerging as leaders inside Syria, many of them at the local level. Without an embassy in Damascus, we are flying blind.
Ironically, the people who can help us best are the much-maligned UN monitors, who have been engaging at the local level with leaders of the opposition for months now and should have an idea of who is emerging town by town and what their political views are. They will also know everyone in the regime who might be helpful to a transition.
So where I come down is this: short of taking decisive military action from the air targeting the regime’s command, control and communications, we are going to have to live with a painful and unpredictable process of regime collapse. We should use the time to develop a much better understanding of who is who on the ground inside Syria and how things can be nudged in a democratic direction.
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Iraq and its Arab neighbors: no port in the storm
Speakers painted a bleak picture of a lebanized Iraq, weakened by internal divisions and unable to craft coherent regional policies, at a Middle East Institute event today.
Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie, former Iraqi ambassador to the United States, likened contemporary Iraq to a leaking ship, barely floating on the regional political waters as storms rage all around. The Ambassador bemoaned the lack of support for secularists after the American invasion and lambasted American support to Iraqi Sunni and Shi’a Islamists. This policy worsened sectarianism. The United States left Iraq with a constitution that forbids discrimination on the basis of religion, but with an unwritten political pact that “lebanizes” the executive branch, with the presidency Kurdish, the prime ministry Shi’a and the speaker of parliament Sunni. This built-in sectarianism weakens the Iraqi state.
These internal divisions are at the heart of Iraq’s tepid relations with its Arab neighbors, who are standoffish, especially towards the Shi’a and Kurds. The Kurdistan Regional government conducts its own foreign policy, including a representative in Washington. The Ambassador is pessimistic about Iraq’s immediate future in the region: “it is in a crisis, but the horizon seems to be more of the same.” Only if Iraq improves its internal cohesion and mends fences with Kuwait and Turkey can it avoid being engulfed by the ongoing political firestorms raging in Syria.
Kenneth Pollack, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, focused on the “brightly burning” Syrian flame. Like Ambassador Sumaida’ie, he bemoans Iraq’s internal lebanization, especially with regard to policies towards Syria. There is no coherent Iraqi policy, but rather multiple Iraqi policies toward Syria. The complex interplay of internal factionalization within Iraq’s weak state muddles its external relations, as each faction approaches the region in general, and Syria in particular, with an eye towards its own interests. The Kurds see events in Syria as an opportunity, not a threat; Masoud Barzani is strengthening ties to Turkey, trying to reassure the Turks that Kurdish interests are aligned with their own in the case of Syria. Sunni tribal leaders also see Syria as more of an opportunity than a threat: Syrian Sunnis in their view are throwing off the yoke of an Iranian-backed Shi’a minority. If it can happen in Syria, the thinking goes, why not in Baghdad? Despite some sympathy for the Syrian opposition, Iraqi Shi’a associated with Moqtada al Sadr are still wary of developments there, which threaten a regime aligned with Tehran. Prime Minister Maliki fears spillover from Syria that may damage Iraqi stability and security. This multiplicity of Iraqi approaches to Syria is driven by internal Iraqi political divisions, and is emblematic of the larger foreign and domestic policy problems facing Iraq.
Gregory Gause, professor of political science at the University of Vermont characterized Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy toward Iraq as passive. The Saudi view of Iraq and the Maliki government is negative, because they view the prime minister as an agent of Iran. The Saudis have done little or no outreach to Kurds or Iraqi Shi’a, and even with the Sunnis they have made no real appeal to Arabism. Saudi policy toward Iraq is a policy of complaint, not outreach. Saudi elites are focused on what appears to them a losing struggle for influence in the Middle East against Iran. This struggle for influence in the region plays out not through armies, but through contests for influence in the domestic politics of weak Arab states. The Saudis find Sunni allies, and Iran finds Shi’a allies. This sectarian alignment is counterproductive for the Saudis, because it gives Arab Shi’a in the region no choice but to ally with Iran. Ultimately, this will cause long-term problems for Saudi Arabia, Iraq and America, as it creates an atmosphere where al Qaeda type ideas can flourish. Other GCC states have largely followed Saudi Arabia’s lead.
John Desrocher, Director of the Office or Iraq Affairs at the Department of State focused on the positive, in terms of Iraq’s relations to its regional neighbors: Iraq and Kuwait have made “considerable progress in terms of resolving disputes,” relations with Jordan have improved, Saudi Arabia named an ambassador to Iraq for the first time since 1990, and Qatar airways now flies to Iraq. However, internal political divisions in Iraq have led to “real political gridlock” both in terms of domestic policy and regional relations.
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At last
The defections in the last few days of a senior Syrian republican guard commander and Damascus’ ambassador to Iraq could be a tipping point. It has taken a remarkably long time for cracks in the regime to show. But these two defections could be the beginning of an avalanche, one that would sweep away Bashar al Asad’s murderous regime.
If so, we need to begin considering seriously whether the international community and the Syrian opposition are ready for the difficult days ahead. Syria, unlike Libya, has limited oil resources and frozen assets abroad. It is a more diverse society than Tunisia, with significant Alawite, Christian, Druze and Kurdish minorities. It has seen a great deal of violence.
So what should we be expecting? The country will be broke at the end of this year and a half of contestation. It will have several armed forces on its territory: the Syrian army and intelligence forces (including non-uniformed thugs), the Free Syria Army and various neighborhood watch and other militias. Sectarian resentment against Alawites, who form the mainstay of the regime even if some have joined the revolution, will be ferocious. Some Christians and Druze will also be afraid of retaliation. Large numbers of regime supporters may flood into neighboring countries (there are still hundreds of thousands of Qaddafi-supporting Libyans in Tunisia and Egypt). Refugees now in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon will flow back into Syria to reclaim and defend their homes. Weapons will be circulating freely, with some risk that the regime’s heavier armament and chemical weapons will fall into the hands of malefactors. Sunni extremists (whether Al Qaeda or other varieties) will see a chaotic situation and try to take advantage of it.
I see no sign that the international community is ready for post-Asad Syria. I know why: we are tired of doing post-war reconstruction, which has posed expensive and seemingly insurmountable difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d like Syria to be like Libya and Tunisia, which are taking reasonably good care of themselves. Or like Yemen, which is bumbling along under the former autocrat’s vice president with help from the UN and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Or at worst like Egypt, where the military is clumsily trying to steer a revolution that has managed so far to avoid massive violence.
I doubt that is possible in Syria. Too much blood has been spilled for the revolution to entrust the army with steering anything, even itself. The army is unlikely to evaporate, as Qaddafi’s did in Libya. While many of its draftees will happily go over to a revolutionary regime, the elite units of the republican guard are unlikely to do that. Nor will the Alawite paramilitaries known as shabiha.
I’ve seen little sign of serious thinking or preparation for the big challenges ahead: creating a safe and secure environment, separating combatants, minimizing sectarian violence, providing for returnees and refugees, re-establishing law and order, beginning a political transition and somehow funding the effort. Nothing about the Syrian National Council’s performance in recent months suggests that it is capable of handling the situation with the modicum of legitimacy and skill that the Libyan National Transitional Council managed. Nothing about the Syrian army’s performance suggests that it could do even as well as the shambolic performance of the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Nothing about the UN’s performance in trying to implement the Annan peace plan suggests it can take on Syria and be effective.
We are in for a rough ride in Syria. Post-war transitions are difficult in all situations. This one will be among the toughest.
PS: Nothing in Steve Heydemann’s The End Game in Syria convinces me the situation is better than the doubtful one I describe above.
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